Plum Shadows And Plank Bridge

Author : Mao Xiang
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231546866
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge written by Mao Xiang and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the turmoil of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China, some intellectuals sought refuge in romantic memories from what they perceived as cataclysmic events. This volume presents two memoirs by famous men of letters, Reminiscences of the Plum Shadows Convent by Mao Xiang (1611–93) and Miscellaneous Records of Plank Bridge by Yu Huai (1616–96), that recall times spent with courtesans. They evoke the courtesan world in the final decades of the Ming dynasty and the aftermath of its collapse. Mao Xiang chronicles his relationship with the courtesan Dong Bai, who became his concubine two years before the Ming dynasty fell. His mournful remembrance of their life together, written shortly after her early death, includes harrowing descriptions of their wartime sufferings as well as idyllic depictions of romantic bliss. Yu Huai offers a group portrait of Nanjing courtesans, mixing personal memories with reported anecdotes. Writing fifty years after the fall of the Ming, he expresses a deep nostalgia for courtesan culture that bears the toll of individual loss and national calamity. Together, they shed light on the sensibilities of late Ming intellectuals: their recollections of refined pleasures and ruminations on the vagaries of memory coexist with political engagement and a belief in bearing witness. With an introduction and extensive annotations, Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge is a valuable source for the literature of remembrance, the representation of women, and the social role of intellectuals during a tumultuous period in Chinese history.

Author : Wai-yee Li
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231553897
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Andrew Schonebaum
Publisher : Modern Language Association
ISBN 13 : 1603294139
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Approaches to Teaching The Plum in the Golden Vase (The Golden Lotus) written by Andrew Schonebaum and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Plum in the Golden Vase (also known as The Golden Lotus) was published in the early seventeenth century and may be the first long work of Chinese fiction written by a single (though anonymous) author. Featuring both complex structural elements and psychological and emotional realism, the novel centers on the rich merchant Ximen Qing and his household and describes the physical surroundings and material objects of a Ming Dynasty city. In part a social, political, and moral critique, the novel reflects on hierarchical power relations of family and state and the materialism of life at the time. The essays in this volume provide ideas for teaching the novel using a variety of approaches, from questions of genre, intertextuality, and the novel's reception to material culture, family and social dynamics, and power structures in sexual relations. Insights into the novel's representation of Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, legal culture, class, slavery, and obscenity are offered throughout the volume.

Author : Li Wai-yee
Publisher : The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN 13 : 9882371191
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Keywords in Chinese Culture written by Li Wai-yee and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2019-12-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture. The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453-V221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 6th?V18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword's reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages? Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history,

Author : Clara Wing-chung Ho
Publisher : The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN 13 : 9629964295
Total Pages : 620 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Overt and Covert Treasures written by Clara Wing-chung Ho and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first published volume on a variety of sources for Chinese women's history. It is an attempt to explore overt and covert information on Chinese women in a vast quantity of textual and nontextual, conventional and unconventional, source materials. Some chapters reread wellknown texts or previously marginalized texts, and brainstorm new ways to use and interpret these sources; others explore new sources or previously overlooked or underused materials. This book is a valuable product witnessing the concerted effort of twenty some scholars located in different parts of the world.

Author : Wilt L. Idema
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684174155
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature written by Wilt L. Idema and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The collapse of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu conquest of China were traumatic experiences for Chinese intellectuals, not only because of the many decades of destructive warfare but also because of the adjustments necessary to life under a foreign regime. History became a defining subject in their writings, and it went on shaping literary production in succeeding generations as the Ming continued to be remembered, re-imagined, and refigured on new terms. The twelve chapters in this volume and the introductory essays on early Qing poetry, prose, and drama understand the writings of this era wholly or in part as attempts to recover from or transcend the trauma of the transition years. By the end of the seventeenth century, the sense of trauma had diminished, and a mood of accommodation had taken hold. Varying shades of lament or reconciliation, critical or nostalgic retrospection on the Ming, and rejection or acceptance of the new order distinguish the many voices in these writings."

Author : Wilt L. Idema
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023155771X
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Topsy-Turvy World written by Wilt L. Idema and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playwriting in many forms flourished during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Shorter theatrical genres in particular offered playwrights opportunities for experimentation with both dramatic form and social critique. Despite their originality and wit, these short plays have been overshadowed by the lengthy masterpieces of the southern drama tradition. A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century plays, spotlighting a lesser-known side of Chinese drama. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays depict deceit, dissembling, reversed gender roles, and sudden upending of fortunes. With zest and humor, they portray henpecked husbands, supercilious and lustful monks, all-too-human sage kings, disgruntled officials, and overreaching young scholars. These plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order. Each translation is preceded by a short introduction that describes the play’s author, context, formal qualities, and textual history. A Topsy-Turvy World offers a new view of a significant period in the development of the Chinese theatrical tradition and provides insight into the role of drama as cultural critique.

Author : Wai-yee Li
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684170761
Total Pages : 653 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature written by Wai-yee Li and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ming–Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China was an epochal event that reverberated in Qing writings and beyond; political disorder was bound up with vibrant literary and cultural production. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature focuses on the discursive and imaginative space commanded by women. Encompassing writings by women and by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity, as well as writings that turn women into a signifier through which authors convey their lamentation, nostalgia, or moral questions for the fallen Ming, the book delves into the mentality of those who remembered or reflected on the dynastic transition, as well as those who reinvented its significance in later periods. It shows how history and literature intersect, how conceptions of gender mediate the experience and expression of political disorder. Why and how are variations on themes related to gender boundaries, female virtues, vices, agency, and ethical dilemmas used to allegorize national destiny? In pursuing answers to these questions, Wai-yee Li explores how this multivalent presence of women in different genres provides a window into the emotional and psychological turmoil of the Ming–Qing transition and of subsequent moments of national trauma. 2016 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Pre-1900 Category, China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies

Author : Xiang Mao
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789888491629
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Romance of a Literatus and His Concubine in Seventeenth-Century China written by Xiang Mao and published by . This book was released on 2019-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Kang-i Sun Chang
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521855594
Total Pages : 830 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: From 1375 written by Kang-i Sun Chang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket.