表演理论视域下晚清童裤形制研究OA

In the multicultural context of the Qing Dynasty,children's pants were not merely everyday garments designed to meet the practical needs of covering and warming children.They also served as a comprehensive medium embodying symbolic rituals,artistic craftsmanship,and cultural expression,highlighting their dual attributes of practical functionality and social etiquette.Furthermore,they became an important medium connecting family,society,and history,carrying rich cultural messages and social values within specific historical and spatial contexts. However,constrained by the scarcity of historical records,the oral tradition of craftsmanship transmission,and the marginalized status of traditional children's clothing in historical narratives,multiple factors have led to relatively weak systematic research on Qing Dynasty children's pants in academia.Existing studies primarily focus on categorizing clothing types,analyzing techniques,or compiling historical texts,while paying limited attention to their underlying social performance mechanisms and cultural narrative functions,failing to establish a systematic theoretical framework.This paper adopts Richard Bauman's performance theory as the core analytical framework,combining multiple evidence methods and comparative research approaches to thoroughly explore the structural characteristics and cultural narrative logic of Qing Dynasty children's pants. Research indicates that children's pants in late Qing Dynasty can be regarded as a visual performance symbol attached to the body.Their colors,material craftsmanship,and pattern designs,through a triadic interaction mechanism involving makers,wearers,and viewers,construct a complete and layered cultural expression system in specific contexts such as daily life and ritual performances.First,the makers were often elderly women within the family.During the production of children's pants,they employed metaphorical and symbolic techniques,embedding meanings such as auspicious blessings,ethical teachings,and ethnic identity into patterns and colors,reflecting the interweaving of maternal love,family traditions,and faith.Second,children,as wearers,externalize these clothing symbols silently through bodily performances in daily life and ritual occasions,transforming the attire into a mobile medium of cultural meaning.Finally,viewers,as members of the community and society,participate by observing,imitating,and responding ritually,not only perceiving and interpreting these symbols but also reproducing and disseminating cultural meanings through interaction.These visual elements are continuously imbued with significance during wearing and viewing,making children's pants a convergence point of familial emotions,folk beliefs,and social ethics,as well as a vital carrier of community cultural heritage.This triadic interaction mediated by performance transforms children's pants from material attire into dynamic cultural expression,forming a unique research paradigm of"narrating through objects and interpreting culture through objects."Introducing this theory into clothing studies helps reveal that children's pants are not merely static material carriers but cultural texts constantly activated and reproduced in specific usage and performance scenarios.