Download or read book Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China written by Martin W. Huang and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did traditional Chinese literati so often identify themselves with women in their writing? What can this tell us about how they viewed themselves as men and how they understood masculinity? How did their attitudes in turn shape the martial heroes and other masculine models they constructed? Martin Huang attempts to answer these questions in this valuable work on manhood in late imperial China. He focuses on the ambivalent and often paradoxical role played by women and the feminine in the intricate negotiating process of male gender identity in late imperial cultural discourses. Two common strategies for constructing and negotiating masculinity were adopted in many of the works examined here. The first, what Huang calls the strategy of analogy, constructs masculinity in close association with the feminine; the second, the strategy of differentiation, defines it in sharp contrast to the feminine. In both cases women bear the burden as the defining "other." In this study, "feminine" is a rather broad concept denoting a wide range of gender phenomena associated with women, from the politically and socially destabilizing to the exemplary wives and daughters celebrated in Confucian chastity discourse.
Download or read book Intimate Memory written by Martin W. Huang and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first study of its kind about the role played by intimate memory in the mourning literature of late imperial China, Martin W. Huang focuses on the question of how men mourned and wrote about women to whom they were closely related. Drawing upon memoirs, epitaphs, biographies, litanies, and elegiac poems, Huang explores issues such as how intimacy shaped the ways in which bereaved male authors conceived of womanhood and how such conceptualizations were inevitably also acts of self-reflection about themselves as men. Their memorial writings reveal complicated self-images as husbands, brothers, sons, and educated Confucian males, while their representations of women are much more complex and diverse than the representations we find in more public genres such as Confucian female exemplar biographies.
Download or read book A Flourishing Yin written by Charlotte Furth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-03-05 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Content Description #"A Philip E. Lilienthal book."#Includes bibliographical references and index.
Download or read book Male Friendship in Ming China written by Martin Huang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first interdisciplinary effort to study friendship in late imperial China from the perspective of gender history. Friendship was valorized with unprecedented enthusiasm in Ming China (1368-1644). Some Ming literati even proposed that friendship was the most fundamental relationship among the so-called “five cardinal human relationships”. Why the cult of friendship in Ming China? How was male friendship theorized, practiced and represented during that period? These are some of the questions the current volume deals with. Coming from different disciplines (history, musicology and literary studies), the contributors thoroughly explore the complexities and the gendered nature of friendship in Ming China. This volume has also been published as a special theme issue of Brill's journal NAN NÜ, Men, Women and Gender in China.
Download or read book The Fragile Scholar written by Geng Song and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fragile Scholar examines the pre-modern construction of Chinese masculinity from the popular image of the fragile scholar (caizi) in late imperial Chinese fiction and drama. The book is an original contribution to the study of the construction of masculinity in the Chinese context from a comparative perspective (Euro-American). Its central thesis is that the concept of "masculinity" in pre-modern China was conceived in the network of hierarchical social and political power in a homosocial context rather than in opposition to "woman." In other words, gender discourse was more power-based than sex-based in pre-modern China, and Chinese masculinity was androgynous in nature. The author explains how the caizi discourse embodied the mediation between elite culture and popular culture by giving voice to the desire, fantasy, wants and tastes of urbanites.
Download or read book Misers Shrews and Polygamists written by Keith McMahon and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having multiple wives was one of the mainstays of male privilege during the Ming and Qing dynasties of late imperial China. Based on a comprehensive reading of eighteenth-century Chinese novels and a theoretical approach grounded in poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist criticism, Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists examines how such privilege functions in these novels and provides the first full account of literary representations of sexuality and gender in pre-modern China. In many examples of rare erotic fiction, and in other works as well-known as Dream of the Red Chamber, Keith McMahon identifies a sexual economy defined by the figures of the "miser" and the "shrew"--caricatures of the retentive, self-containing man and the overflowing, male-enervating woman. Among these and other characters, the author explores the issues surrounding the practice of polygamy, the logic of its overvaluation of masculinity, and the nature of sexuality generally in Chinese society. How does the man with many wives manage and justify his sexual authority? Why and how might he escape or limit this presumed authority, sometimes to the point of portraying himself as abject before the shrewish woman? How do women accommodate or coddle the man, or else oppose, undermine, or remold him? And in what sense does the man place himself lower than the spiritually and morally superior woman? The most extensive English-language study of Chinese literature from the eighteenth century, this examination of polygamy will interest not only students of Chinese history, culture, and literature but also all those concerned with histories of gender and sexuality.
Download or read book Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables written by Anne Elizabeth McLaren and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chantefables were popular verse narratives performed by storytellers in late imperial China. This study deals with fifteenth century chantefables, their publishers and readers, their festive, kinship and performative context, and their significance in the emergence of vernacular print in China.
Download or read book Changing Chinese Masculinities written by Kam Louie and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is now almost a cliché to claim that China and the Chinese people have changed. Yet inside the new clothing that is worn by the Chinese man today, Kam Louie contends, we still see much of the historical Chinese man. With contributions from a team of outstanding scholars, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesstudies a range of Chinese men in diverse and, most importantly, Chinese contexts. It explores the fundamental meaning of manhood in the Chinese setting and the very notion of an indigenous Chinese masculinity. In twelve chapters spanning the late imperial period to the present day, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesbrings a much needed historical dimension to the discussion. Key aspects defining the male identity such as family relationships and attitudes toward sex, class, and career are explored in depth. Familiar notions of Chinese manhood come in all shapes and sizes. Concubinage reemerges as the taking of “second wives” in recent decades. Male homoerotic love and male prostitution are shown to have long historical roots. The self-images of the literati and officials form an interesting contrast with those of the contemporary white-collar men. Masculinity and nationalism complement each other in troubling ways. China has indeed changed and is still changing, but most of these social transformations do not indicate a complete break with past beliefs or practices in gender relations. Changing Chinese Masculinities inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Transnational Asian Masculinities.” “Produced by a group of outstanding scholars, this volume offers important insights into little-known aspects of Chinese masculinity. An indispensable reference for those with an interest in Chinese sexuality, social history, and contemporary Chinese culture.” —Anne McLaren, professor of Chinese studies, University of Melbourne “In this book, scholars of late imperial and contemporary China gather to define and critique masculinity in both periods, explore its complexities, and map continuities and discontinuities. What are the traditional models and to what degree do they still maintain a grip today? Is there a ‘masculinity crisis’ in China, and what does it mean to be a Chinese man today? These are some of the daring topics the authors explore.” —Keith McMahon, professor of Chinese language and literature, University of Kansas
Download or read book Masculinity Besieged written by Xueping Zhong and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A feminist psychoanalytic account of changing conceptions of men and masculinity as seen in recent Chinese literature.
Download or read book Wanton Women in Late Imperial Chinese Literature written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Genres, Subversions and Traditions draw attention to ‘wanton woman’ themes across time as they were portrayed in court history (McMahon), fiction (Stevenson), drama (Lam, Wu), and songs and ballads (Ôki, Epstein, McLaren). Looking back, the essays challenge us with views of sexual transgression that are more heterogeneous than modern popular focus on Pan Jinlian would suggest. Central among the many insights to be found is that despite gender performance in Chinese history being overwhelmingly determined by the needs of patriarchal authority, men and women in the late imperial period discovered diverse ways in which to reflect on how men constantly sought their own bearings in reference to women.
Download or read book Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China written by Martin W. Huang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this new study of desire in Late Imperial China, Martin Huang argues that the development of traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre was closely related to changes in conceptions of the fundamental nature of desire. He further suggests that the rise of vernacular fiction during the late Ming dynasty should be studied in the context of contemporary debates on desire, along with the new and complex views that emerged from those debates. Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China shows that the obsession of authors with individual desire is an essential quality that defines traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre. Thus the maturation of the genre can best be appreciated in terms of its increasingly sophisticated exploration of the phenomenon of desire."
Download or read book Literati Identity and Its Fictional Representations in Late Imperial China written by Stephen Roddy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining three works of vernacular fiction dating from 1750 to 1828, this book studies the intellectual and literary factors that in the mid-Qing dynasty contributed to the development of vernacular fiction of unprecedented scholarly and satirical sophistication.
Download or read book The Libertine s Friend written by Giovanni Vitiello and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delving into three hundred years of Chinese literature, from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, The Libertine’s Friend uncovers the complex and fascinating history of male homosexual and homosocial relations in the late imperial era. Drawing particularly on overlooked works of pornographic fiction, Giovanni Vitiello offers a frank exploration of the importance of same-sex love and eroticism to the evolution of masculinity in China. Vitiello’s story unfolds chronologically, beginning with the earliest sources on homoeroticism in pre-imperial China and concluding with a look at developments in the twentieth century. Along the way, he identifies a number of recurring characters—for example, the libertine scholar, the chivalric hero, and the lustful monk—and sheds light on a set of key issues, including the social and legal boundaries that regulated sex between men, the rise of male prostitution, and the aesthetics of male beauty. Drawing on this trove of material, Vitiello presents a historical outline of changing notions of male homosexuality in China, revealing the integral part that same-sex desire has played in its culture.
Download or read book Theorising Chinese Masculinity written by Kam Louie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Chinese masculinity. Kam Louie uses the concepts of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) to explain attitudes to masculinity. This revises most Western analyses of Asian masculinity that rely on the yin-yang binary. Examining classical and contemporary Chinese literature and film, the book also looks at the Chinese diaspora to consider Chinese masculinity within and outside China.
Download or read book Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo written by Grant Hardy and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999-07-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sima Qian (c. 100 B.C.E.) was China's first historian—he was known as Grand Astrologer at the court of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty—and, along with Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, was one of the creators of imperial China. His Shiji (published for Columbia in a translation by Burton Watson as Records of the Grand Historian) not only became the model for the twenty-six Standard Histories that the historians of each Chinese dynasty wrote to legitimize the dynastic succession, but also has been an enormously influential resource to historians, literary scholars, philosophers, and many others seeking an understanding of early Chinese history. In Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo, Grant Hardy presents convincing evidence that the Shiji is quite unlike such Western counterparts as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, for, Hardy argues, Sima Qian's work seeks not only to represent but to influence the world in a manner based on Confucian concepts of sageliness and "the rectification of names." Although many scholars have sought close parallels between Sima Qian and the Greek historians—either criticizing Sima's work, as if Western models of historical interpretation could serve as a template by which to read it, or overemphasizing his "objectivity" to more closely align his text with these "respectable" Greek models—Hardy boldly contends that the Chinese historian never intended to produce a consistent, closed interpretation of the past. Instead, Hardy argues, the Shiji is a microcosm in which Sima Qian sought to represent the open-endedness and multivalence of the world around him, revealing and reinforcing the natural order. In mapping out this model of the world, Sima embodies the historian as sage rather than chronicler. Transcending mere accuracy in recording events, such a historian seeks not to present an opinion about what happened in the past, buttressed with rational arguments and pertinent evidence, but to penetrate the outer details of an incident and discover the moral truths it embodies. Thus intuiting the moral significance of events, the sage-historian delineates the Way and offers his readers a chance to become more in tune with the natural order. Illustrating his provocative theses about the Shiji by analyzing Sima Qian's handling of specific historical personages and episodes such as the First Emperor of the Qin, the hereditary house of Confucius, and the conflicts that ended with the founding of the Han dynasty, Hardy both extends and challenges existing interpretations of this crucial yet understudied text and sheds light on its puzzles and incongruities.
Download or read book The Cloudy Mirror written by Stephen W. Durrant and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sima Qian's writings have influenced the Chinese for over 2,000 years and still serve as a fiscal source of historical information about China.
Download or read book Sharing the Light written by Lisa Raphals and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1998-07-30 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharing the Light explores historical and philosophical shifts in the depiction of women and virtue in the early centuries of the Chinese state. These changes had far-reaching effects on both the treatment of women in Chinese society and on the formation of Chinese philosophical discourse on ethics, cosmology, epistemology, and self-cultivation. Warring States and Han dynasty narratives frequently represented women as intellectually adroit, politically astute, and ethically virtuous; these histories, discourses, and life stories portray women as active participants within their own society, not inert victims of it. The women depicted resembled sages, ministers, and generals as the mainstays and destroyers of dynasties. These stories emphasized that sagacity, intellect, strategy, and statecraft were virtues proper to women, an emphasis that effectively disappeared from later collections and instruction texts by and for women. During the same period, there were also important changes in the understanding of two polarities that delineated what now is called gender. Han correlative cosmology included a range of hierarchical analogies between yin and yang and men and women, and the understanding of yin and yang shifted from complementarity toward hierarchy. Similarly, the doctrine of separate spheres (inner and outer, nei-wai) shifted from a notion of appropriate distinction between men and women toward physical, social, and intellectual separation and isolation.
