Heroines of the Qing

Heroines of the Qing PDF

Author: Binbin Yang

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2016-04-18

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0295806451

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Heroines of the Qing introduces an array of Chinese women from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were powerful, active subjects of their own lives and who wrote themselves as the heroines of their exemplary stories. Traditionally, “exemplary women” (lienu)—heroic martyrs, chaste widows, and faithful maidens, for example—were written into official dynastic histories for their unrelenting adherence to female virtue by Confucian family standards. However, despite the rich writing traditions about these women, their lives were often distorted by moral and cultural agendas. Binbin Yang, drawing on interdisciplinary sources, shows how they were able to cross boundaries that were typically closed to women—boundaries not only of gender, but also of knowledge, economic power, political engagement, and ritual and cultural authority. Yang closely examines the rhetorical strategies these “exemplary women” exploited for self-representation in various writing genres and highlights their skillful negotiation with, and appropriation of, the values of female exemplarity for self-empowerment.

Women in Qing China

Women in Qing China PDF

Author: Bret Hinsch

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1538166410

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This groundbreaking work provides an original and deeply knowledgeable overview of Chinese women and gender relations during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). Bret Hinsch explores in detail the central aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, religious roles, and ethics. He considers not only women’s experiences but also their emotional lives and the ideals they pursued. Drawing on a wide range of Western, Japanese, and Chinese primary and secondary sources—including standard histories, poetry, prose literature, and epitaphs—Hinsch makes an important period of Chinese women’s history accessible to Western readers.

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: v. 1: The Qing Period, 1644-1911

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: v. 1: The Qing Period, 1644-1911 PDF

Author: Lily Xiao Hong Lee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-17

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1317475887

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The first biographical dictionary in any Western language devoted solely to Chinese women, this reference is the product of years of research, translation, and writing by a team of over 60 China scholars from around the world. Compiled from a wide array of original sources, these detailed biographies present the lives, work, and significance of more than 200 Chinese women from many different backgrounds and areas of interest.

Men and Women in Qing China

Men and Women in Qing China PDF

Author: Edwards

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-09-13

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9004482717

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Men and Women in Qing China is an analysis of Chinese prescriptions of gender as represented in Cao Xueqin's famous eighteenth century Chinese novel of manners, The Red Chamber Dream or The Story of the Stone. Drawing on feminist literary critical methods it examines Qing notions of masculinity and femininity, including themes such as bisexuality, motherhood, virginity and purity, and gender and power. Its central aim is to challenge the common assumption that the novel represents some form of early Chinese feminism by examining the text in conjunction with historical data. The book will be especially important to those interested in issues of gender in China, the history of Chinese literary criticism and the application of feminist theory to the Asian text.

Fiction's Family

Fiction's Family PDF

Author: Ellen Widmer

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-10-26

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1684170834

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At the end of the Qing dynasty, works of fiction by male authors placed women in new roles. Fiction’s Family delves into the writings of one literary family from western Zhejiang whose works were emblematic of shifting attitudes toward women. The mother, Wang Qingdi, and the father, Zhan Sizeng, published their poems during the second half of the nineteenth century. Two of their four sons, Zhan Xi and Zhan Kai, wrote novels that promoted reforms in women’s lives. This book explores the intergenerational link, as well as relations between the sons, to find out how the conflicts faced by the parents may have been refigured in the novels of their sons. Its central question is about the brothers’ reformist attitudes. Were they based on the pronouncements of political leaders? Were they the result of trends in Shanghai publishing? Or did they derive from Wang Qingdi’s disappointment in her “companionate marriage,” as manifested in her poems? By placing one family at the center of this study, Ellen Widmer illuminates the diachronic bridge between the late Qing and the period just before it, the synchronic interplay of genres during the brothers’ lifetimes, and the interaction of Shanghai publishing with regions outside Shanghai.

Precious Records

Precious Records PDF

Author: Susan Mann

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780804727440

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Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women's participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.

The Inner Quarters and Beyond

The Inner Quarters and Beyond PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-07-14

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 9004190260

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Drawing on a library of newly digitized resources, this volume's eleven chapters describe, analyze, and theorize the enormous literary output of women writers of the Ming and Qing periods (1368-1911) that have only recently been rediscovered.

Celestial Women

Celestial Women PDF

Author: Keith McMahon

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-04-21

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1442255021

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This volume completes Keith McMahon’s acclaimed history of imperial wives and royal polygamy in China. Avoiding the stereotype of the emperor’s plural wives as mere victims or playthings, the book considers empresses and concubines as full-fledged participants in palace life, whether as mothers, wives, or go-betweens in the emperor’s relations with others in the palace. Although restrictions on women’s participation in politics increased dramatically after Empress Wu in the Tang, the author follows the strong and active women, of both high and low rank, who continued to appear. They counseled emperors, ghostwrote for them, oversaw succession when they died, and dominated them when they were weak. They influenced the emperor’s relationships with other women and enhanced their aura and that of the royal house with their acts of artistic and religious patronage. Dynastic history ended in China when the prohibition that women should not rule was defied for the final time by Dowager Cixi, the last great monarch before China’s transformation into a republic.

Heroines of Jiangyong

Heroines of Jiangyong PDF

Author:

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0295800119

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Heroines of Jiangyong is the first English translation of a set of verse narratives recorded in the unique women's script (nushu) of rural Jiangyong County, Hunan, in southern China. This selection of Chinese folk literature provides a rare window into the everyday life of rural daughters, wives, and mothers, as they transmit valuable lessons about surviving in a patriarchal society that is often harsh and unforgiving. Featuring strong female protagonists, the ballads deal with moral issues, dangers women face outside the family home, and the difficulties of childbirth. The women's script, which represents units of sound in the local Chinese dialect, was discovered by scholars in the late twentieth century, creating a stir in China and abroad. This volume offers a full translation of all the longer ballads in women's script, providing an exceptional opportunity to observe which specific narratives appealed to rural women in traditional China. The translations are preceded by a brief introduction to women's script and its scholarship, and a discussion of each of the twelve selections.

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women PDF

Author: Lily Xiao Hong Lee

Publisher: East Gate Book

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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This reference, compiled from an array of original sources, provides biographies of the lives, work and significance of over 200 Chinese women from various backgrounds and areas of interest including literature, painting, drama, embroidery, pottery, politics, science, religion and cuisine.