HSIAO LI-LING. THE ETERNAL PRESENT OF THE PAST. ILLUSTRATION, THEATER AND READING IN THE WANLI PERIOD, 1573 - 1619. Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2007. XIX, 347 p., ill. (China studies. Vol. 12)* Hsiao Li-ling, a native of Taiwan, comes from a family of hereditary actors of traditional puppet theater, according to the author's dedication. Having received a serious sinological education in various educational institutions in Taiwan and the UK, she teaches at UNI- * Xiao Li-ling. The eternal present of the past. Ildustration, theater, and reading in the years under the motto of Wan-li's reign, 1573-1619. Leiden-Boston: Bril, 2007. XIX, 347 p., ill. (Chinese Studies, vol. 12). page 202 University of North Carolina. She published a number of articles about book illustration and theater in China in the XVI-XVIII centuries. The peer-reviewed work is her first monograph, based on a wealth of factual material relating to Chinese illustrated publications and Chinese theater, with the realities of which she is familiar from the inside. The purpose of the monograph is formulated as a review of various aspects of the "culture of the Wan-li years" - book illustration, painting, theater, literature and philosophy in the context of publications of Chinese drama. Xiao Li-ling rightly believes that Chinese book illustration is studied somewhat one-sidedly: either from the standpoint of purely art criticism, in isolation from the publications that it actually illustrates, or as an object of interest for a literary critic who sees in book illustration only a publishing trick to attract the attention of the readership. Both positions are identified with the works of two venerable scholars with whom the author has a lot of controversy: Clunas C. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. L.: Reaktion Books, 1997) and Hegel R. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)1. By combining these positions and adding a historical approach, as the ... Read more