Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China

Guo Li

Description

In Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Modern China, Li Guo presents the first book-length study in English of women’s tanci fiction, the distinctive Chinese form of narrative written in rhymed lines during the late imperial to early modern period (related to, but different from, the orally performed version also called tanci) She explores the tradition through a comparative analysis of five seminal texts. Guo argues that Chinese women writers of the period position the personal within the diegesis in order to reconfigure their moral commitments and personal desires. By fashioning a “feminine” representation of subjectivity, tanci writers found a habitable space of self-expression in the male-dominated literary tradition.Through her discussion of the emergence, evolution, and impact of women’s tanci, Guo shows how historical forces acting on the formation of the genre serve as the background for an investigation of cross-dressing, self-portraiture, and authorial self-representation. Further, Guo approaches anew the concept of “woman-oriented perspective” and argues that this perspective conceptualizes a narrative framework in which the heroine (s) are endowed with mobility to exercise their talent and power as social beings as men’s equals. Such a woman-oriented perspective redefines normalized gender roles with an eye to exposing women’s potentialities to transform historical and social customs in order to engender a world with better prospects for women.
Editor's Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: Envisioning A Nascent Feminine Agency in Zaishengyuan (Destiny of Rebirth)

Chapter Two: Disguised Scholar, Fox Spirit, and Moralism in Bishenghua (Blossom from the Brush)

Chapter Three: Ethics, Filial Piety, and Narrative Sympathy in Mengyingyuan (Dream, Image, Destiny)

Chapter Four: Gender, Spectatorship, and Literary Portraiture in Mengyingyuan

Chapter Five: Cross-Dressing as a Collective Act in Xianü qunying shi (A History of Women Warriors)

Chapter Six: Illustrating a New Woman in Fengliu zuiren (The Valiant and The Culprit)

Conclusion

Appendix. Chinese Characters for Authors' Names, Terms, and Titles of Works

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• Women Authors
• Literary Criticism
• Women
• Woman
• Chinese
• The Women
• Asian
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612493824
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China
Comparative Cultural Studies Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Series Editor
The Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies publishes single-authored and thematic collected volumes of new scholarship. Manuscripts are invited for publication in the series in fields of the study of culture, literature, the arts, media studies, communication studies, the history of ideas, etc., and related disciplines of the humanities and social sciences to the series editor via e-mail at < [e-mail] >. Comparative cultural studies is a contextual approach in the study of culture in a global and intercultural context and work with a plurality of methods and approaches; the theoretical and methodological framework of comparative cultural studies is built on tenets borrowed from the disciplines of cultural studies and comparative literature and from a range of thought including literary and culture theory, (radical) constructivism, communication theories, and systems theories; in comparative cultural studies focus is on theory and method as well as application. For a detailed description of the aims and scope of the series including the style guide of the series link to < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/seriespurdueccs >. Manuscripts submitted to the series are peer reviewed followed by the usual standards of editing, copy editing, marketing, and distribution. The series is affiliated with CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (ISSN 1481-4374), the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access quarterly published by Purdue University Press at < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb >.
Volumes in the Purdue series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies include < http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/comparative-cultural-studies >
Li Guo, Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China
Arianna Dagnino, Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility
Elke Sturm-Trigonakis, Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur
Lauren Rule Maxwell, Romantic Revisions in Novels from the Americas
Liisa Steinby, Kundera and Modernity
Text and Image in Modern European Culture , Ed. Natasha Grigorian, Thomas Baldwin, and Margaret Rigaud-Drayton
Sheng-mei Ma, Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity
Irene Marques, Transnational Discourses on Class, Gender, and Cultural Identity
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies , Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári
Hui Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture
Yi Zheng, From Burke and Wordsworth to the Modern Sublime in Chinese Literature
Agata Anna Lisiak, Urban Cultures in (Post)Colonial Central Europe
Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror , Ed. Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello
Michael Goddard, Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form
Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace , Ed. Alexander C.Y. Huang and Charles S. Ross
Gustav Shpet’s Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory , Ed. Galin Tihanov
Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies , Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Marko Juvan, History and Poetics of Intertextuality
Thomas O. Beebee, Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction
Paolo Bartoloni, On the Cultures of Exile, Translation, and Writing
Justyna Sempruch, Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature
Kimberly Chabot Davis, Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences
Philippe Codde, The Jewish American Novel
Deborah Streifford Reisinger, Crime and Media in Contemporary France
Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China
Li Guo
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2015 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guo, Li, 1979-
  Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China / Li Guo.
  pages cm.—(Comparative cultural studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55753-713-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61249-381-7 (epdf)
ISBN 978-1-61249-382-4 (epub)
1. Chinese fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. Women in literature. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title.
PL2278.G86 2015
895.13’48099287—dc23
2015014480
Cover image: Reading Books by Yu Lan, Qing Dynasty. ©The Palace Museum, 4 Jingshan Qianjie, Beijing 100009, China. Used by permission.
To my parents
Contents
Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One Envisioning A Nascent Feminine Agency in Zaishengyuan (Destiny of Rebirth)
Chapter Two Disguised Scholar, Fox Spirit, and Moralism in Bishenghua (Blossom from the Brush)
Chapter Three Ethics, Filial Piety, and Narrative Sympathy in Mengyingyuan (Dream, Image, Destiny)
Chapter Four Gender, Spectatorship, and Literary Portraiture in Mengyingyuan
Chapter Five Cross-Dressing as a Collective Act in Xianü qunying shi (A History of Women Warriors)
Chapter Six Illustrating a New Woman in Fengliu zuiren (The Valiant and The Culprit)
Conclusion
Appendix. Chinese Characters for Authors’ Names, Terms, and Titles of Works
Works Cited
Index
Editor’s Preface
Chinese names follow Asian studies convention, where post-1950 names use the English sequence, given name + surname, and pre-1950 names use the source format, that is, surname + given name. In-text citations list names in the same sequence as the works cited to make it easy to locate corresponding works. Thus, citations will provide the first name listed in the works cited if sufficient, or both names will appear—in a post-1950s citation as
(Liu, Kwang-Ching, Orthodoxy 202) in-text and
Liu, Kwang-Ching, ed. Orthodoxy … in the works cited;
in a pre-1950s citation as
(Li Yü, Xianqing ouji 25) in-text and
Li, Yü. ( Xianqing ouji … in the works cited.
In-text citations for verse from the original scrolls are listed in the following sequence: juan (scroll or volume): hui (chapter), page number; thus, (1: 10, 234-55).
Titles of books and articles in Chinese and Japanese are translated in brackets after the title of the book in the original. If the book is not translated and published in English, its translated title is not italicized. If the text is published in English, its translated title is italicized.
Acknowledgments
My passion for conducting research on women’s tanci fiction started in 2008, when Maureen Robertson, a leading scholar in late imperial Chinese women’s poetry, encouraged me to pursue scholarly study in women’s tanci novels as inspiring exemplars of “minor literature” in the pre-1900 Chinese literary tradition. In the early years of studing tanci novels, I received steadfast support from David Wittenberg, Steven Ungar, Linda Bolton, and Barbara Eckstein. This book could not have evolved without the generous help of Hu Siao-Chen, who supported my trip to Academia Sinica in Taipei in 2009 and in 2011 to conduct study on tanci and present research works. I am deeply thankful for Mark Bender, who offered substantial feedback on two of my conference presentations on women’s tanci novels, respectively, in 2011 and 2014, and provided substantial suggestions to enhance the frame of this book.
I received crucial support and encouragement from Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek—series editor of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies at Purdue University Press who supported my manuscript and provided substantial advice for revising and preparing the book for its timely publication. Further, I am indebted to the theoretical trajectory of “comparative cultural studies” that underlies my own work and that has been developed by Tötösy de Zepetnek. My gratitude goes to Dianna L. Gilroy at Purdue University Press for her thoughtful suggestions as well as her careful and meticulous editing of the book in its copyediting stage. I am thankful for the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for giving rich and constructive suggestions for the revision of the book. Chapter 5 has been published as a refereed article in Frontiers of Literary Studies in China , volume 5, issue 4. While workshopping the book, I benefited from the insights and research rigors of Ban Wang and Russell Berman, as well as colleagues at the 2011 NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers at Stanford University. In 2009, Garrett Stewart provided me an opportunity to workshop a book chapter through an Andrew Mellon Dissertation Scholarship at the University of Iowa.
Throughout the research and writing of this book, I have been constantly inspired by the pioneering research on women’s tanci fiction by Taiwanese scholar Hu Siao-chen as well as mainland Chinese scholars Bao Zhenpei and Sheng Zhimei. My research has benefited extensively from Mark Bender, Wilt Idema, Ellen Widmer, and Maram Epstein for their inspiring publications, respectively, on performed tanci , women’s tanci novels, and late imperial women’s fiction. I am deeply indebted to Maureen Robertson’s work on studies of women’s shi poetry, Qingyu Wu’s study of female rule in utopian literature, Grace S. Fong’s work on women’s ci poetry, scholarship by Dorothy Ko and Sus