Writing Women in Late Imperial China / ed. by Ellen Widmer, Kang-i Sun Chang.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Armstrong, Nancy, Contributor.

Carlitz, Katherine, Contributor.

Chang, Kang-i Sun, Contributor.

Chang, Kang-i Sun, Editor.

Fong, Grace S., Contributor.

Hung, Wu, Contributor.

Ko, Dorothy, Contributor.

Li, Wai-yee, Contributor.

Oki, Yasushi, Contributor.

Robertson, Maureen, Contributor.

Ropp, Paul S., Contributor.

Saussy, Haun, Contributor.

Waltner, Ann, Contributor.

Widmer, Ellen, Contributor.

Widmer, Ellen, Editor.

Zeitlin, Judith T., Contributor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (560 p.) : 38 illus

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Until recently only a handful of women writers were thought to have existed in traditional China, but new scholarship has called attention to several hundred whose works have survived. Coming from the fields of literature, history, art history, and comparative literature, the fourteen contributors to this volume apply a range of methodologies to this new material and to other sources concerning women writers in China from 1600 to 1900. An opening section on courtesans details the lives of individual women and their male admirers—contemporary and subsequent—who imposed an array of meaning on the category of woman writer. The works treated in this section are mainly poetry, although drama also enters in. The second section focuses on the writings of gentrywomen who, confined to the inner quarters of their residences, turned out a body of poetry impressive both for its volume and for the number of authors involved. The third section takes up the issue of contextualization: how male writers situated women's poetry in their essays, stories, and travelogues. The fourth section pursues the same issue, but with reference to China's greatest work of fiction, Dream of the Red Chamber, first published in 1792, most of whose leading characters are talented gentrywomen. The volume concludes with a chapter by a specialist in comparative literature, who relates the concerns of the other chapters to literary and feminist studies outside the China field.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Contributors

Introduction

Part I: Writing the Courtesan

1 Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China

2 The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal

3 The Written Word and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan's Aura

4 Desire and Writing in the Late Ming Play Parrot Island

5 Women in Feng Menglong's Mountain Songs

Part II: Norms and Selves

6 Ming and Qing Anthologies of Women's Poetry and Their Selection Strategies

7 Changing the Subject: Gender and Self-inscription in Authors' Prefaces and "Shi" Poetry

Part III: Poems in Context

8 Writing Her Way Out of Trouble: Li Yuying in History and Fiction

9 Embodying the Disembodied: Representations of Ghosts and the Feminine

10 De/Constructing a Feminine Ideal in the Eighteenth Century: Random Records of West-Green and the Story of Shuangqing

Part IV: "Hong lou meng"

11 Women's Writing Before and Within the Hong lou meng

12 Beyond Stereotypes: The Twelve Beauties in Qing Court Art and the Dream of the Red Chamber

13 Ming Loyalism and the Woman's Voice in Fiction After Hong lou meng

Postface: Chinese Women in a Comparative Perspective: A Response

Reference Matter

Notes

Works Cited

Character List

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

0-8047-6591-X

OCLC:

1294426427