Writing gender in early modern Chinese women's tanci fiction

"Women's tanci, or "plucking rhymes," are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women&...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Guo, Li (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
WorldCat: WorldCat
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: West Lafayette, Indiana Purdue University Press [2021]
In:Year: 2021
Series/Journal:Comparative cultural studies
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B China / Chinese language / Literature / Feminine literature / Tanci / History
Further subjects:B LITERARY CRITICISM ; Asian ; Chinese
B Gender identity in literature
B Chinese literature ; Women authors ; History and criticism
B Literary Criticism
B Chinese literature Women authors History and criticism
B Identite sexuelle dans la litterature
B Chinese literature - Women authors
B Criticism, interpretation, etc
B Chinese literature ; Women authors
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:"Women's tanci, or "plucking rhymes," are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women's representations of gender, nation, and political activism in their tanci works before and after the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), as well as their depictions of warfare and social unrest. Women tanci authors' redefinition of female exemplarity within the Confucian orthodox discourses of virtue, talent, chastity, and political integrity could be bourgeoning expressions of female exceptionalism and could have foreshadowed protofeminist ideals of heroism. They establish a realistic tenor in affirming feminine domestic authority, and open up spaces for discussions of "womanly becoming," female exceptionalism, and shifting family power structures. The vernacular mode underlying these texts yields productive possibilities of gendered self-representations, bodily valences, and dynamic performances of sexual roles. The result is a vernacular discursive frame that enables women's appropriation and refashioning of orthodox moral values as means of self-affirmation and self-realization. Validations of women's political activism and loyalism to the nation attest to tanci as a premium vehicle for disseminating progressive social incentives to popular audiences. Women's tanci marks early modern writers' endeavors to carve out a space of feminine becoming, a discursive arena of feminine appropriation, reinvention, and boundary-crossings. In this light, women's tanci portrays gendered mobility through depictions of a heroine's voyages or social ascent, and entails a forward-moving historical progression toward a more autonomous and vested model of feminine subjectivity"--
Item Description:Description based on print version record
ISBN:1612496601
Access:Open Access