Competing Discourses - Orthodoxy, Authenticity & Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction

Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-674-00512-9
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 197, 376 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 658 g

Reihe: Harvard East Asian Monographs

In the traditional Chinese symbolic vocabulary, the construction of gender was never far from debates about ritual propriety, desire, and even cosmic harmony. Competing Discourses maps the aesthetic and semantic meanings associated with gender in the Ming-Qing vernacular novel through close readings of five long narratives: Marriage Bonds to Awaken the World, Dream of the Red Chamber, A Country Codger's Words of Exposure, Flowers in the Mirror, and A Tale of Heroic Lovers. Epstein argues that the authors of these novels manipulated gendered terms to achieve structural coherence. These patterns are, however, frequently at odds with other gendered structures in the texts, and authors exploited these conflicts to discuss the problem of orthodox behavior versus the cult of feeling.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Epstein, Maram

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Ost- & Südostasiatische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Epstein, Maram
Maram Epstein is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon.