{"title":"\"She Whistles Freely Shunning Companions\": The Embedded and Transcendent Selves of Poet-Painter Wang Liang in the Eighteenth Century","authors":"J. Theiss","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362405","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the unusual life of the poet and painter Wang Liang (ca. 1720–1790). Granddaughter of a prominent Jiaxing bibliophile and collector, she lost her father in infancy and married into a respected Huzhou family of officials only to witness their demise amidst a very public sex and corruption scandal in 1740, which also implicated her own wealthy merchant family. In the wake of this disaster, she and her husband severed their family ties and lived out their years in genteel poverty, childless. Surviving her husband by over twenty-five years, she fashioned an independent life and a self-image, echoed by observers, of Daoist detachment from the proverbial dust of the world while cultivating relationships with prominent male mentors and female artists across Jiangnan. As poet, painter, and player of the zither and the game of Go, Wang Liang at times articulated a vision of explicitly ungendered artistic perfection resembling aspects of the androgynous ideal associated with the culture of the Ming-Qing transition. Yet she was also poignantly aware that she was still embedded in relationships that pulled her back into family obligation, gendered hierarchy, and social exchange. I delve into her extant poetry and commentary about her to present her life and art as a contrapuntal play between embedded and transcendent modes of identity and expression.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"108 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47691858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agency and Strategy: Chastity Exemplars in an Early Qing Anthology","authors":"J. Moyer","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362444","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article reads exemplary biographies of chaste widows and women who committed suicide to preserve their chastity in the 1656 Yuding Nei ze yanyi 御定内則衍義 (Imperially Commissioned Expanded Meaning of the \"Inner Standards\") by Fu Yijian 傅以漸 (1609–1665, jinshi 1646). In this anthology commissioned by the Shunzhi emperor on behalf of his mother, Fu's commentary emphasizes both the agency of individual women and the mutual resonance of personal virtue and political order. He not only praises the exemplars' virtue but also their agency, intelligence, and strategy. He explicitly acknowledges the different factors that could make chastity more difficult and states that in some situations, multiple courses of action were possible. He comments both on his heroines' political ability and on the political importance of recognizing chastity. Finally, in a context where women's chastity was often linked to political loyalism to the fallen Ming, Fu uses these biographies in a very different way: he presents chastity exemplars of conquered dynasties as foils to the decadent society around them. His commentary is thus recognizably tailored to his audience's circumstances as Manchu and Mongolian imperial women and his own as a Chinese male scholar at the beginning of the Qing.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"195 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48716046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the Inner Chambers: Xu Zhaohua and Her Teacher Mao Qiling","authors":"E. Widmer","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362353","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mao Qiling 毛奇齡 (1623–1713) was a celebrated poet, scholar, and official whose life bridged the transition from Ming to Qing. A lesser-known aspect of his life was his interest in and work with women writers, especially the group associated with Shang Jinglan 商景蘭 (1605–1680). In the mid-1670s, Xu Zhaohua 徐昭華 (17th–18th cent.), the daughter of Shang's younger sister Shang Jinghui 商景徽 (17th cent.), became Mao's disciple, one of the most famous. This article sets the Mao-Xu relationship in the context of Mao's other work with women and brings out its special features. After the Mao-Xu relationship became well known, most talented women who sought instruction still chose to work with female teachers, but some pursued the new alternative of working with a talented man.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"11 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45361970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking Authorship and Agency: Women and Gender in Late Imperial China","authors":"G. Fong, Guojun Wang","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362340","url":null,"abstract":"dynasty rescued the concubine character from oblivion and imbued her with multivalent types of agency — as a concubine, a knight-errant, a loyal subject of the state, and a god-dess. This study examines the relationships among multiple types of authorship: literati authorship of chuanqi dramas, collective authorship of folk opera","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"1 - 10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47393593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10365902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10365902","url":null,"abstract":"Other| April 01 2023 Contributors Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (2023) 10 (1): 294–296. https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10365902 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 1 April 2023; 10 (1): 294–296. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10365902 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsJournal of Chinese Literature and Culture Search Advanced Search LARA C. W. BLANCHARD is Luce Professor of East Asian Art and Lloyd Wright Professor in Conservative Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York. Her interdisciplinary research interests include Chinese arts and literature, particularly gendered images, women artists, women patrons, text-image relationships, and theories of representation. She has published articles about pictorial arts—painting, woodblock printmaking, photography, and video—from the Song dynasty (960–1279) through the contemporary era. She is the author of Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry (2018).MARAM EPSTEIN is a professor of late imperial Chinese literature at the University of Oregon. Her primary interests are xiaoshuo aesthetics, representations of gender, and histories of emotion. She is the author of Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction (2001) and Orthodox Passions: Narrating Filial Love during the High Qing (2019). She is currently... You do not currently have access to this content.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"259 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135672141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Virtue and Women's Authorship in Chinese Art History: A Study of Yutai huashi (History of Painting from Jade Terrace)","authors":"Lara C. W. Blanchard","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362457","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Yutai huashi (History of Painting from Jade Terrace), published in 1837, is rare among Chinese art-historical texts, not only for its focus on women painters of the imperial period but also for its female authorship. While the text preserves information on women who painted, its acknowledged author, Tang Shuyu, draws connections between women authors (defined broadly here to include both artists and writers) and virtuous women. First, her organization of the text's first five chapters foregrounds the social identities of women painters—a system that hints at their virtue. Second, biographies of women painters who are filial, chaste, and/or faithful appear throughout, but these qualities are emphasized in the \"Separate Record\" at the book's end, the only section with significant amounts of new writing. Third, the text positions Tang Shuyu as a woman of virtue herself. Tang compiled materials for her book with contributions from her husband, Wang Yuansun, and she establishes herself as a figure deferential to authority, a woman who begins most passages with a source citation and never develops a clear editorial voice. Scholars of the history of Chinese art increasingly use gender as a category of analysis to understand the accomplishments of women artists and patrons as well as representations of female figures. This article analyzes Yutai huashi's gendered subjects and discussions of gender roles as a means of examining both the contributions of women authors and the priorities of Chinese art-historical writers.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"221 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43987776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Where Have All the Guixiu Gone? Chinese \"Women of Talent\" at the Turn of the Twentieth Century","authors":"Xiaorong Li","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362392","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Guixiu 閨秀 (cultivated gentlewomen of the inner chambers) and cainü 才女 (women of talent) arguably became authorly identities (referring to women writing in classical verse) as women's literary culture took shape in Ming-Qing China. However, the guixiu and cainü were gradually eclipsed by their rising \"modern\" sisters, xin nüxing 新女性 (new women) and nü zuojia 女作家 (women writers), during the late-Qing reform (1890s) and the early-Republican New Culture movement (1910s–1920s). This study provides a historical investigation into two cases of the literary practice of men and women who carried the legacy of their Ming-Qing predecessors into the Republican era: Wang Wenru 王文濡 (1867–1935) and his Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 (Xiangyan Magazine, 1914–1916) and Gu Xianrong 顧憲融 (1901–1955), who published the Hongfan jingshe nü dizi ji 紅梵精舍女弟子集 (Collection of Female Disciples from the Abode of Red Brahman, 1928). They reveal the persistence of guixiu culture in a diversified and transformed world of literary production and consumption from the 1910s to the 1920s.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"107 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43541409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender and Violence: The Multivalent Voices of a Cannibalized Concubine in Late Imperial Chinese Literature","authors":"Guojun Wang, Guo Yingde","doi":"10.1215/23290048-10362483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/23290048-10362483","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Recent studies of Chinese history and literature have revealed the important role of violence—actual and representational—in constructing gendered subjectivities in late imperial China. This article investigates the relationship between violence and female agency through a case study of literary representations of a concubine who was cannibalized during the defense of Suiyang amid the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) in the Tang dynasty. As a result of that event, the ethically questionable act of cannibalism engendered an assortment of writings down through late imperial China. Although historical writings before the Ming dynasty frequently praise the concubine's husband for sacrificing her, a series of dramatic works starting in the Ming feature the concubine character in contention with her husband. This paper parses those materials to reveal vastly different characterizations of the cannibalized woman—as a loyal concubine, a female knight-errant, an independent state subject, and a maternal deity. We suggest that authorship, generic traditions, family-state dynamics, ethnic relations, and religions together influenced the representations of the concubine. In particular, moving further away from the literati writing tradition, literature and performance derived from the story ascribed increasingly potent agency to the concubine character in late imperial China.","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"267 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42175936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The study on the teaching method of ‘Chinese characters and language’Ⅳ ―The study targets 上, 大, 子","authors":"Byung-chang Yeou","doi":"10.31985/jcl.90.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31985/jcl.90.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75736217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wang Hui's Perception of Modernity and the Challenges of Alternative Modernity Theory","authors":"Minho Park","doi":"10.31985/jcl.90.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31985/jcl.90.4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53810,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85930350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}