From Convention to Subversion: Case Studies on the Female Gaze in Premodern China

Abstract

Abstract:This article engages the ekphrastic mode—the literary representation of visual representation—to examine the female gaze instantiated in women's poetry on paintings of beautiful women in the Ming and Qing periods. Through four case studies, it shows how women poets and painters participated in the visual culture of late imperial China and negotiated gendered difference in their aesthetic vision and artistic production.