Writing and Materiality in China

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684170427
Total Pages : 662 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing and Materiality in China by : Judith T. Zeitlin

Download or read book Writing and Materiality in China written by Judith T. Zeitlin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking about Chinese writing entails thinking about how writing speaks through various media. In the guises of the written character and its imprints, traces, or ruins, writing is more than textuality. The goal of this volume is to consider the relationship of writing to materiality in China’s literary history and to ponder the physical aspects of the production and circulation of writing. To speak of the thing-ness of writing is to understand it as a thing in constant motion, transported from one place or time to another, one genre or medium to another, one person or public to another. Thinking about writing as the material product of a culture shifts the emphasis from the author as the creator and ultimate arbiter of a text’s meaning to the editors, publishers, collectors, and readers through whose hands a text is reshaped, disseminated, and given new meanings. By yoking writing and materiality, the contributors to this volume aim to bypass the tendency to oppose form and content, words and things, documents and artifacts, to rethink key issues in the interpretation of Chinese literary and visual culture.

The Inscription of Things

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Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231558031
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Inscription of Things by : Thomas Kelly

Download or read book The Inscription of Things written by Thomas Kelly and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would an inkstone have a poem inscribed on it? Early modern Chinese writers did not limit themselves to working with brushes and ink, and their texts were not confined to woodblock-printed books or the boundaries of the paper page. Poets carved lines of verse onto cups, ladles, animal horns, seashells, walking sticks, boxes, fans, daggers, teapots, and musical instruments. Calligraphers left messages on the implements ordinarily used for writing on paper. These inscriptions—terse compositions in verse or epigrammatic prose—relate in complex ways to the objects on which they are written. Thomas Kelly develops a new account of the relationship between Chinese literature and material culture by examining inscribed objects from the late Ming and early to mid-Qing dynasties. He considers how the literary qualities of inscriptions interact with the visual and physical properties of the things that bear them. Kelly argues that inscribing an object became a means for authors to grapple with the materiality and technologies of writing. Facing profound social upheavals, from volatility in the marketplace to the violence of dynastic transition, writers turned to inscriptions to reflect on their investments in and dependence on the permanence of the written word. Shedding new light on cultures of writing in early modern China, The Inscription of Things broadens understandings of the links between the literary and the material.

Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004349375
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China by :

Download or read book Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight studies examine key features of Chinese visual and material cultures, ranging from tombs and ceramics to Buddhist paintings and colophons on calligraphies. The essays connect visual materials to funeral and religious practices, drama, poetry, literati life, travel, and trade.

Beyond Sinology

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231536305
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Sinology by : Andrea Bachner

Download or read book Beyond Sinology written by Andrea Bachner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New communication and information technologies provide distinct challenges and possibilities for the Chinese script, which, unlike alphabetic or other phonetic scripts, relies on multiple signifying principles. In recent decades, this multiplicity has generated a rich corpus of reflection and experimentation in literature, film, visual and performance art, and design and architecture, within both China and different parts of the West. Approaching this history from a variety of alternative theoretical perspectives, Beyond Sinology reflects on the Chinese script to pinpoint the multiple connections between languages, scripts, and medial expressions and cultural and national identities. Through a complex study of intercultural representations, exchanges, and tensions, the text focuses on the concrete "scripting" of identity and alterity, advancing a new understanding of the links between identity and medium and a critique of articulations that rely on single, monolithic, and univocal definitions of writing. Chinese writing—with its history of divergent readings in Chinese and non-Chinese contexts, with its current reinvention in the age of new media and globalization—can teach us how to read and construct mediality and cultural identity in interculturally responsible ways and also how to scrutinize, critique, and yet appreciate and enjoy the powerful multi-medial creativity embodied in writing.

Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s)

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Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 1501503138
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s) by : Xiaofei Tian

Download or read book Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s) written by Xiaofei Tian and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yan Zhitui (531–590s) was a courtier and cultural luminary who lived a colourful life during one of the most chaotic periods, known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in Chinese history. Beginning his career in the southern Liang court, he was taken captive to the north after the Liang capital fell, and served several northern dynasties. Today he remains one of the best-known medieval writers for his book-length “family instructions” (jiaxun), the earliest surviving and the most influential of its kind. Completed in his last years, the work resembles a long letter addressed to his sons, in which he discusses a wide range of topics from family relations and remarriage to religious faith, philology, cultural arts, and codes of conduct in public and private life. It is filled with vivid details of contemporary social life, and with the author’s keen observations of the mores of north and south China. This is a new, complete translation into English, with critical notes and introduction, and based on recent scholarship, of Yan Zhitui’s Family Instructions, and of all of his extant literary works, including his self-annotated poetic autobiography and a never-before-translated fragmentary rhapsody, as well as of his biographies in dynastic histories.

Un Lun Dun

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Publisher : Del Rey
ISBN 13 : 0345497236
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (454 download)

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Book Synopsis Un Lun Dun by : China Miéville

Download or read book Un Lun Dun written by China Miéville and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2007-02-13 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Endlessly inventive . . . [a] hybrid of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and The Phantom Tollbooth.”—Salon What is Un Lun Dun? It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too–including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas; Obaday Fing, a tailor whose head is an enormous pin-cushion, and an empty milk carton called Curdle. Un Lun Dun is a place where words are alive, a jungle lurks behind the door of an ordinary house, carnivorous giraffes stalk the streets, and a dark cloud dreams of burning the world. It is a city awaiting its hero, whose coming was prophesied long ago, set down for all time in the pages of a talking book. When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba find a secret entrance leading out of London and into this strange city, it seems that the ancient prophecy is coming true at last. But then things begin to go shockingly wrong. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Mieville’s Embassytown. Praise for Un Lun Dun “Miéville fills his enthralling fantasy with enough plot twists and wordplay for an entire trilogy, and that is a good thing. A-.”—Entertainment Weekly “For style and inventiveness, turn to Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville, who throws off more imaginative sparks per chapter than most authors can manufacture in a whole book. Mieville sits at the table with Lewis Carroll, and Deeba cavorts with another young explorer of topsy-turvy worlds.”—The Washington Post Book World “Delicious, twisty, ferocious fun . . . so crammed with inventions, delights, and unexpected turns that you will want to start reading it over again as soon as you’ve reached the end.”—Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners “[A] wondrous thrill ride . . . Like the best fantasy authors, [Miéville] fully realizes his imaginary city.” —The A.V. Club “Mieville's compelling heroine and her fantastical journey through the labyrinth of a strange London forms that rare book that feels instantly like a classic and yet is thoroughly modern.”—Holly Black, bestselling author of The Spiderwick Chronicles

The Chinese Empire in Local Society

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000283267
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chinese Empire in Local Society by : Michael Szonyi

Download or read book The Chinese Empire in Local Society written by Michael Szonyi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) military, its impact on local society, and its many legacies for Chinese society. It is based on extensive original research by scholars using the methodology of historical anthropology, an approach that has transformed the study of Chinese history by approaching the subject from the bottom up. Its nine chapters, each based on a different region of China, examine the nature of Ming military institutions and their interaction with local social life over time. Several chapters consider the distinctive role of imperial institutions in frontier areas and how they interacted with and affected non-Han ethnic groups and ethnic identity. Others discuss the long-term legacy of Ming military institutions, especially across the dynastic divide from Ming to Qing (1644-1912) and the implications of this for understanding more fully the nature of the Qing rule.

Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy

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Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295746351
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy by : Lei Xue

Download or read book Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy written by Lei Xue and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eulogy for Burying a Crane (Yi he ming) is perhaps the most eccentric piece in China’s calligraphic canon. Apparently marking the burial of a crane, the large inscription, datable to 514 CE, was once carved into a cliff on Jiaoshan Island in the Yangzi River. Since the discovery of its ruins in the early eleventh century, it has fascinated generations of scholars and calligraphers and been enshrined as a calligraphic masterpiece. Nonetheless, skeptics have questioned the quality of the calligraphy and complained that its fragmentary state and worn characters make assessment of its artistic value impossible. Moreover, historians have trouble fitting it into the storyline of Chinese calligraphy. Such controversies illuminate moments of discontinuity in the history of the art form that complicate the mechanism of canon formation. In this volume, Lei Xue examines previous epigraphic studies and recent archaeological finds to consider the origin of the work in the sixth century and then trace its history after the eleventh century. He suggests that formation of the canon of Chinese calligraphy over two millennia has been an ongoing process embedded in the sociopolitical realities of particular historical moments. This biography of the stone monument Eulogy for Burying a Crane reveals Chinese calligraphy to be a contested field of cultural and political forces that have constantly reconfigured the practice, theory, and historiography of this unique art form. Art History Publication Initiative A McLellan Book

Text, Performance, and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9047441419
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (474 download)

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Book Synopsis Text, Performance, and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music by : Maghiel van Crevel

Download or read book Text, Performance, and Gender in Chinese Literature and Music written by Maghiel van Crevel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-11-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together new research on Chinese literature and music by twenty-two scholars, on topics ranging from Tang poetry to women's writing and the internet, this collection pays tribute to Wilt Idema as a leading scholar in a field of tremendous scope and diversity.

The Promise and Peril of Things

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231553897
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Promise and Peril of Things by : Wai-yee Li

Download or read book The Promise and Peril of Things written by Wai-yee Li and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Our relationship with things abounds with paradoxes. People assign value to objects in ways that are often deeply personal or idiosyncratic yet at the same time rooted in specific cultural and historical contexts. How do things become meaningful? How do our connections with the world of things define us? In Ming and Qing China, inquiry into things and their contradictions flourished, and its depth and complexity belie the notion that material culture simply reflects status anxiety or class conflict. Wai-yee Li traces notions of the pleasures and dangers of things in the literature and thought of late imperial China. She explores how aesthetic claims and political power intersect, probes the objective and subjective dimensions of value, and questions what determines authenticity and aesthetic appeal. Li considers core oppositions—people and things, elegance and vulgarity, real and fake, lost and found—to tease out the ambiguities of material culture. With examples spanning the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, she shows how relations with things can both encode and resist social change, political crisis, and personal loss. The Promise and Peril of Things reconsiders major works such as The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Story of the Stone, Li Yu’s writings, and Wu Weiye’s poetry and drama, as well as a host of less familiar texts. It offers new insights into Ming and Qing literary and aesthetic sensibilities, as well as the intersections of material culture with literature, intellectual history, and art history.

The Edge of Knowing

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295999004
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (959 download)

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Book Synopsis The Edge of Knowing by : Roy Bing Chan

Download or read book The Edge of Knowing written by Roy Bing Chan and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Edge of Knowing explores the relationship between the rhetoric of dreams and realist literary practice in modern Chinese literature from the May Fourth Era in the early twentieth century through the period just following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The writers� attention to dreams demonstrates the multiple influences of Western psychology, utopian desire for revolutionary change, and the enduring legacy of traditional Chinese philosophy. At the same time, modern Chinese writers used their work to represent social reality for the purpose of nation-building. Recent political usage of dream rhetoric in the People�s Republic of China attests to the continuing influence of dreams on the imagination of Chinese modernity. By employing a number of critical perspectives, The Edge of Knowing will appeal to readers seeking to understand the complicated relationship between literary form and Chinese history and politics.�

Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110698854
Total Pages : 511 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication by : Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang

Download or read book Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication written by Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a comparative study of the practice of impagination across different ages and civilizations. By impagination we mean the act of placing and arranging spatially textual and other information onto a material bearer that could be made of a variety of materials (papyrus, bamboo slips, palm leaf, parchment, paper, and the computer screen). This volume investigates three levels of impagination: what is the page or other unit of the material bearer, what is written or printed on it, and how is writing or print placed on it. It also examines the interrelations of two or all three of these levels. Collectively it examines the material and materiality of the page, the variety of imprints, cultural and historical conventions for impagination, interlinguistic encounters, the control of editors, scribes, publishers and readers over the page, inheritance, borrowing and innovation, economics, aesthetics and socialities of imprints and impagination, and the relationship of impagination to philology. This volume supplements studies on mise en page and layout – an important subject of codicology – first by including non-codex writings, second by taking a closer look at the page or other unit than at the codex (or book), and third by its aspiration to adopt a globally comparative approach. This volume brings together for comparison vast geographical realms of learning, including Europe, China, Tibet, Korea, Japan and the Near Eastern and European communities in which the Hebrew Bible was transmitted. This comparison is significant, for Europe, China, and India all developed great traditions of learning which came into intensive contact. The contributions to this volume are firmly rooted in local cultures and together address global, comparative themes that are significant for multiple disciplines, such as intellectual and cultural history of knowledge (both humanistic and scientific), global history, literary and media studies, aesthetics, and studies of material culture, among other fields.

Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110698757
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication by : Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang

Download or read book Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication written by Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comparative history that studies the practice of impagination across different ages and civilizations. By impagination we mean the act of placing and arranging spatially textual and other information onto a material bearer that could be made of a variety of materials (papyrus, bamboo slips, palm leaf, parchment, paper, and the computer screen). This volume investigates three levels of impagination: what is the page or other unit of the material bearer, what is written or printed on it, and how is writing or print placed on it. It also examines the interrelations of two or all three of these levels. Collectively it examines the material and materiality of the page, the variety of imprints, cultural and historical conventions for impagination, interlinguistic encounters, the control of editors, scribes, publishers and readers over the page, inheritance, borrowing and innovation, economics, aesthetics and socialities of imprints and impagination, and the relationship of impagination to philology. This volume supplements studies on mise en page and layout – an important subject of codicology – first by including non-codex writings, second by taking a closer look at the page or other unit than at the codex (or book), and third by its aspiration to adopt a globally comparative approach. This volume brings together for comparison vast geographical realms of learning, including Europe, China, Tibet, Korea, Japan and the Near Eastern and European communities in which the Hebrew Bible was transmitted. This comparison is significant, for Europe, China, and India all developed great traditions of learning which came into intensive contact. The contributions to this volume are firmly rooted in local cultures and together address global, comparative themes that are significant for multiple disciplines, such as intellectual and cultural history of knowledge (both humanistic and scientific), global history, literary and media studies, aesthetics, and studies of material culture, among other fields.

Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China

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Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295804661
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China by : Antje Richter

Download or read book Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China written by Antje Richter and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2013-06-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention for the 2016 Kayden Book Award This first book-length study in Chinese or any Western language of personal letters and letter-writing in premodern China focuses on the earliest period (ca. 3rd-6th cent. CE) with a sizeable body of surviving correspondence. Along with the translation and analysis of many representative letters, Antje Richter explores the material culture of letter writing (writing supports and utensils, envelopes and seals, the transportation of finished letters) and letter-writing conventions (vocabulary, textual patterns, topicality, creativity). She considers the status of letters as a literary genre, ideal qualities of letters, and guides to letter-writing, providing a wealth of examples to illustrate each component of the standard personal letter. References to letter-writing in other cultures enliven the narrative throughout. Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China makes the social practice and the existing textual specimens of personal Chinese letter-writing fully visible for the first time, both for the various branches of Chinese studies and for epistolary research in other ancient and modern cultures, and encourages a more confident and consistent use of letters as historical and literary sources.

Making Saints in Modern China

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190494565
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Saints in Modern China by : David Ownby

Download or read book Making Saints in Modern China written by David Ownby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each chapter of this book offers a biography of a religious leader and a detailed discussion of his or her rise to sainthood over the course of China's twentieth century. Throughout, emphasis is on the creative and largely successful strategies deployed in the face of state indifference or hostility.

The Tapestry of Popular Songs in 16th- and 17th Century China

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004145869
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tapestry of Popular Songs in 16th- and 17th Century China by : Kathryn A. Lowry

Download or read book The Tapestry of Popular Songs in 16th- and 17th Century China written by Kathryn A. Lowry and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of popular songs offers a new hypothesis about the role of elite in popular culture and evidences how commercial publishing facilitated the rise of selective reading and imitation of texts in late-Ming China, creating a new basis for describing desire and the self.

Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China

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Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295804432
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China by : Xiaorong Li

Download or read book Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China written by Xiaorong Li and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2013-05-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of poetry by women in late imperial China examines the metamorphosis of the trope of the "inner chambers" (gui), to which women were confined in traditional Chinese households, and which in literature were both a real and an imaginary place. Originally popularized in sixth-century "palace style" poetry, the inner chambers were used by male writers as a setting in which to celebrate female beauty, to lament the loneliness of abandoned women, and by extension, to serve as a political allegory for the exile of loyal and upright male ministers spurned by the imperial court. Female writers of lyric poetry (ci) soon adopted the theme, beginning its transition from male fantasy to multidimensional representation of women and their place in society, and eventually its manifestation in other poetic genres as well. Emerging from the role of sexual objects within poetry, late imperial women were agents of literary change in their expansion and complication of the boudoir theme. While some take ownership and de-eroticizing its imagery for their own purposes, adding voices of children and older women, and filling the inner chambers with purposeful activity such as conversation, teaching, religious ritual, music, sewing, childcare, and chess-playing, some simply want to escape from their confinement and protest gender restrictions imposed on women. Women's Poetry of Late Imperial China traces this evolution across centuries, providing and analyzing examples of poetic themes, motifs, and imagery associated with the inner chambers, and demonstrating the complication and nuancing of the gui theme by increasingly aware and sophisticated women writers.