This thesis concerns the representation of nakedness in traditional Chinese art. Its objects of inquiry are representations of demons in images of Zhong Kui, the penitent in purgatory in images of the ten kings based on The Scripture on the Ten Kings, and the representation of beggars and street characters. This thesis provides initial inquiry into a motif which has not garnered much scholarly attention. It argues that the naked body signified various forms of deviance from the normative social and moral order which defined traditional China and its inhabitants such as the foreign, the marginal, and the subaltern. As such, the representation of nakedness functioned to highlight order within the imperial realm by displaying what the Chinese center and its inhabitants were not. It could also serve, however, and by virtue of the naked body's deviance from the normative human being, to suggest potential disorder within the imperial realm.
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