Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature

Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature PDF Author: Zuyan Zhou
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825713
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
The frequent appearance of androgyny in Ming and Qing literature has long interested scholars of late imperial Chinese culture. A flourishing economy, widespread education, rising individualism, a prevailing hedonism--all of these had contributed to the gradual disintegration of traditional gender roles in late Ming and early Qing China (1550-1750) and given rise to the phenomenon of androgyny. Now, Zuyan Zhou sheds new light on this important period, offering a highly original and astute look at the concept of androgyny in key works of Chinese fiction and drama from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The work begins with an exploration of androgyny in Chinese philosophy and Ming-Qing culture. Zhou proceeds to examine chronologically the appearance of androgyny in major literary writing of the time, yielding novel interpretations of canonical works from The Plum in the Golden Vase, through the scholar-beauty romances, to The Dream of the Red Chamber. He traces the ascendance of the androgyny craze in the late Ming, its culmination in the Ming-Qing transition, and its gradual phasing out after the mid-Qing. The study probes deviations from engendered codes of behavior both in culture and literature, then focuses on two parallel areas: androgyny in literary characterization and androgyny in literati identity. The author concludes that androgyny in late Ming and early Qing literature is essentially the dissident literati's stance against tyrannical politics, a psychological strategy to relieve anxiety over growing political inferiority.

Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature

Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature PDF Author: Zuyan Zhou
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825713
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
The frequent appearance of androgyny in Ming and Qing literature has long interested scholars of late imperial Chinese culture. A flourishing economy, widespread education, rising individualism, a prevailing hedonism--all of these had contributed to the gradual disintegration of traditional gender roles in late Ming and early Qing China (1550-1750) and given rise to the phenomenon of androgyny. Now, Zuyan Zhou sheds new light on this important period, offering a highly original and astute look at the concept of androgyny in key works of Chinese fiction and drama from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The work begins with an exploration of androgyny in Chinese philosophy and Ming-Qing culture. Zhou proceeds to examine chronologically the appearance of androgyny in major literary writing of the time, yielding novel interpretations of canonical works from The Plum in the Golden Vase, through the scholar-beauty romances, to The Dream of the Red Chamber. He traces the ascendance of the androgyny craze in the late Ming, its culmination in the Ming-Qing transition, and its gradual phasing out after the mid-Qing. The study probes deviations from engendered codes of behavior both in culture and literature, then focuses on two parallel areas: androgyny in literary characterization and androgyny in literati identity. The author concludes that androgyny in late Ming and early Qing literature is essentially the dissident literati's stance against tyrannical politics, a psychological strategy to relieve anxiety over growing political inferiority.

Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature

Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004340629
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
The contributors to Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Genres, Subversions and Traditions draw attention to ‘wanton woman’ themes across time as they were portrayed in court history (McMahon), fiction (Stevenson), drama (Lam, Wu), and songs and ballads (Ôki, Epstein, McLaren). Looking back, the essays challenge us with views of sexual transgression that are more heterogeneous than modern popular focus on Pan Jinlian would suggest. Central among the many insights to be found is that despite gender performance in Chinese history being overwhelmingly determined by the needs of patriarchal authority, men and women in the late imperial period discovered diverse ways in which to reflect on how men constantly sought their own bearings in reference to women.

Male Friendship in Ming China

Male Friendship in Ming China PDF Author: Martin Huang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047419588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first interdisciplinary effort to study friendship in late imperial China from the perspective of gender history. Friendship was valorized with unprecedented enthusiasm in Ming China (1368-1644). Some Ming literati even proposed that friendship was the most fundamental relationship among the so-called “five cardinal human relationships”. Why the cult of friendship in Ming China? How was male friendship theorized, practiced and represented during that period? These are some of the questions the current volume deals with. Coming from different disciplines (history, musicology and literary studies), the contributors thoroughly explore the complexities and the gendered nature of friendship in Ming China. This volume has also been published as a special theme issue of Brill's journal NAN NÜ, Men, Women and Gender in China.

Asian Popular Culture in Transition

Asian Popular Culture in Transition PDF Author: John A Lent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136300988
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
Asian Popular Culture in Transition examines contemporary consumption practices in South Korea, China, India, and Japan, and both updates and extends popular culture studies of the region. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this collection of essays explores how recent advances and shifts in information technologies and globalization have impacted cultural markets, fashion, the digital generation, mobile culture, femininity, matrimonial advertising, and a film actress’ image and performance. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources and methods including historical research, content analysis, anthropological observation, textual analyses, and interviews, Asian Popular Culture in Transition makes a significant contribution to this growing area of research. Given its broad range of countries, theories, and approaches, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, and gender studies.

Snakes' Legs

Snakes' Legs PDF Author: Martin W. Huang
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828127
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Snakes' Legs examines sequels (xushu), a common but long-neglected literary phenomenon in traditional China. What prompted writers to produce sequels despite their poor reputation as a genre? What motivated readers to read them? How should we characterize the nature of the relationship between sequels and rewritings? Contributors to this volume illuminate these and other questions, and the collection as a whole offers a comprehensive consideration of this vigorous genre while suggesting fascinating new directions for research. Xushu as a discursive practice reinforces the paradox that innovation is impossible without imitation. It presents us with fertile ground for studying the intricate ties that bind the writer and reader of traditional Chinese fiction: the writer of xushu is always self-consciously assuming the dual role of author and reader and in the writing process must consider both the work in progress as well as its precursor(s). Snakes' Legs contains detailed discussions of some representative xushu works from the late Ming and Qing periods, many of which have received little scholarly attention. It will shed light on the development of Chinese fiction and the various textual practices in traditional China as well as account for the genre’s continuing vitality in modern times. Contributors: Robert E. Hegel, Siao-chen Hu, Martin W. Huang, Keith McMahon, Qiancheng Li, Ying Wang, Ellen Widmer, Laura H. Wu, Shuhui Yang.

Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction

Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction PDF Author: Li Guo
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612496601
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
Women’s tanci, or “plucking rhymes,” are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women’s representations of gender, nation, and political activism in their tanci works before and after the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), as well as their depictions of warfare and social unrest. Women tanci authors’ redefinition of female exemplarity within the Confucian orthodox discourses of virtue, talent, chastity, and political integrity could be bourgeoning expressions of female exceptionalism and could have foreshadowed protofeminist ideals of heroism. They establish a realistic tenor in affirming feminine domestic authority, and open up spaces for discussions of “womanly becoming,” female exceptionalism, and shifting family power structures. The vernacular mode underlying these texts yields productive possibilities of gendered self-representations, bodily valences, and dynamic performances of sexual roles. The result is a vernacular discursive frame that enables women’s appropriation and refashioning of orthodox moral values as means of self-affirmation and self-realization. Validations of women’s political activism and loyalism to the nation attest to tanci as a premium vehicle for disseminating progressive social incentives to popular audiences. Women’s tanci marks early modern writers’ endeavors to carve out a space of feminine becoming, a discursive arena of feminine appropriation, reinvention, and boundary-crossings. In this light, women’s tanci portrays gendered mobility through depictions of a heroine’s voyages or social ascent, and entails a forward-moving historical progression toward a more autonomous and vested model of feminine subjectivity.

Daoist Philosophy and Literati Writings in Late Imperial China

Daoist Philosophy and Literati Writings in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Zuyan Zhou
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 962996497X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume first explores the transformation of Chinese Daoism in late imperial period through the writings of prominent intellectuals of the times. In such a cultural context, it then launches an indepth investigation into the Daoist dimensions of the Chinese narrative masterpiece, The Story of the Stone—the inscriptions of Quanzhen Daoism in the infrastructure of its religious framework, the ideological ramifications of the Daoist concepts of chaos, purity, and the natural, as well as the Daoist images of the gourd, fish, and bird. Zhou presents the central position of Daoist philosophy both in the ideological structure of the Stone, and the literati culture that engenders it.

Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China

Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Martin W. Huang
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824863739
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why did traditional Chinese literati so often identify themselves with women in their writing? What can this tell us about how they viewed themselves as men and how they understood masculinity? How did their attitudes in turn shape the martial heroes and other masculine models they constructed? Martin Huang attempts to answer these questions in this valuable work on manhood in late imperial China. He focuses on the ambivalent and often paradoxical role played by women and the feminine in the intricate negotiating process of male gender identity in late imperial cultural discourses. Two common strategies for constructing and negotiating masculinity were adopted in many of the works examined here.The first, what Huang calls the strategy of analogy, constructs masculinity in close association with the feminine; the second, the strategy of differentiation, defines it in sharp contrast to the feminine. In both cases women bear the burden as the defining "other." In this study,"feminine" is a rather broad concept denoting a wide range of gender phenomena associated with women, from the politically and socially destabilizing to the exemplary wives and daughters celebrated in Confucian chastity discourse.

Chinese Aesthetics and Literature

Chinese Aesthetics and Literature PDF Author: Corinne H. Dale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791460221
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Featuring the work of renowned scholars, this anthology provides an introduction to Chinese aesthetics and literature.

China from the Margins

China from the Margins PDF Author: Emily Williams
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040087035
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores and brings to light untold stories from the margins of Chinese society. It investigates and reveals grassroots and popular cultural beliefs, amusing anecdotes, items of lore, and accounts of the strange and the unusual. It delves into questions of identity formation, considering gender, sexuality, class, generational divides, subcultures, national minorities and online communities. It examines heritage-making practices and the persistence of marginalized memories. Bringing together views from cultural studies, literature, gender studies, cultural heritage, sociology, history and more, the book argues that neither the margins nor the centre can be understood in isolation, and that by focusing on the margins, a fuller picture of Chinese society overall emerges, including new perspectives on spatial and social marginality, on hierarchies of marginality, and on neglected spaces, voices and identities.