This course is an investigation into story-telling in Chinese painting: illustrations of historical
events, biographies, Buddhist tales, narrative poetry, personal memoirs, and love stories.  Often in
the form of wall paintings or of long horizontal scrolls (hand scrolls), the scenes of these
illustrated narrative follow one another in something like a cinematic dramatization.
This material presents many questions and invites many possible approaches.  What texts were
illustrated, and what portions of those texts; and why and how did these selections come about?
What is the visual rhetoric of extended narrative illustrations, with devices for suggesting elapsed
time or highlighting details?  How did these selections and solutions and modes of representation
change over time, and why?  And so on.
The class--informal slide lectures with discussion--offers an introduction to a range of Chinese
narrative texts and pictures and related issue, while concentrating on a selection of key examples
for special study and analysis.  Readings will be drawn from a variety of books and articles.  There
will be two quizzes, two papers, and a final.  The course meets with A560.