Introduction to Research on Late Imperial China: a Perspective from the UK

Abstract

Aiming to highlight thriving research on Ming and Qing China carried out by scholars trained and/or working in the United Kingdom, this special issue of MQYJ includes contributions by Professor Olivia Milburn (Seoul National University), Dr Ewan Macdonald (University of Cambridge), and Dr Gregory Adam Scott (University of Manchester), together with a review by Dr Chen Jiani (previously at SOAS University of London, now at Zhongshan University, Zhuhai) of Yang Haihong’s volume on Women’s Poetry and Poetics in Late Imperial China: A Dialogic Engagement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Olivia Milburn is Associate Professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Seoul National University. She received her PhD in the history of ancient China and Chinese literature at SOAS University of London (2003), after completing her BA and MPhil in Chinese language and literature at Cambridge and Oxford. She has published extensively, authoring volumes and articles on a variety of topics related to ancient China (amongst them: “The Blind Instructing the Sighted: Representations of Music Master Kuang in Early Chinese Texts”, Monumenta Serica, 2018; Cherishing Antiquity: The Cultural Construction of an Ancient Chinese Kingdom, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2013; “Marked out for Greatness? Perceptions of Deformity and Physical Disability in Ancient China”, Monumenta Serica, 2007; “Kingship and Inheritance in the State of Wu: Fraternal Succession in Spring and Autumn Period China”, T’oung Pao, 2004). She is also the author of important annotated translations, such as The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan (Brill, 2016), Urbanization in Early and Medieval China: Gazetteers for the City of Suzhou (University of Washington Press, 2015), and The Glory of Yue: An Annotated Translation of the Yuejue shu (Brill, 2010). In her contribution to this issue of MQYJ, entitled “Zhao Luanluan and Her Tale”, Milburn examines the fictional character of Zhao Luanluan 趙鸞鸞, the Yuan dynasty gentlewoman in the early Ming tragic story Luanluan zhuan 鸞鸞傳 (The Tale of Luanluan) by Li Changqi 李昌祺 (1376–1452). Milburn exposes the late Ming practice of misrepresentation of the poems attributed to Zhao within the story, casting light on their actual author, presumably Li himself. She also cautions readers about the consequences of misattribution, an