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Gender and Friendship in Chinese Literature
Series: - Women and Gender in China Studies, Volume: 15
Volume Editor:
Canvasing a range of materials that include early tales of exemplarity, medieval song lyrics, Ming-Qing poetry and plucked rhymes, twentieth century writings about revolutionaries, opera stars, missionaries, and contemporary fiction, this volume illustrates the discourse and representation of friendship in which women gain agency and participate in broader arguments about ethics, politics, and religious transcendence. Friendship prompts reflections on gender roles, becomes the venue of literary self-consciousness, and heightens the sense of literary community. Gender and community function in new ways through the public dimension of friendship, and most importantly, the intersections of gender and friendship enable us to rethink other relationships.
Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. Her recent books include The Problem and Peril of Things (Columbia, 2022), A Topsy-Turvy World (Columbia, 2023), and an annotated translation of The Peach Blossom Fan (Oxford, 2024).
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Table
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Why Gender and Friendship?
Wai-yee Li
1 On the Difficulty of Friendship: the Case of Li Qingzhao
Ronald Egan
2 In the Absence of Discourse: Articulating Female Friendship in Late Imperial China
Grace S. Fong
3 Laying Claim to an Autonomous Self: Women’s Friendships in the Nineteenth-Century tanci Novel Mengying yuan
Maram Epstein
4 How to Fight with Your Friends: Reconceptualizing Gender and Community
Hu Ying
5 Gender and Friendship in the Staging of a Star: Mei Lanfang
Catherine V. Yeh
6 Intercultural Mutuality: Mary Hannah Fulton and Zhang Zhujun
Ellen Widmer
7 Hermits and Their Wives: Gender and Friendship in Early Chinese Texts
Yiqun Zhou
8 Literary Negotiations: Friendship in the World of Late Ming Courtesans
Wai-yee Li
9 Love or Lust Redux: on the Pure Relationship in Chinese Literature
Haiyan Lee
Index
List of Figures and Table
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Why Gender and Friendship?
Wai-yee Li
Part I: Friendship and Female Agency
1 On the Difficulty of Friendship: the Case of Li Qingzhao
Ronald Egan
2 In the Absence of Discourse: Articulating Female Friendship in Late Imperial China
Grace S. Fong
3 Laying Claim to an Autonomous Self: Women’s Friendships in the Nineteenth-Century tanci Novel Mengying yuan
Maram Epstein
Part 2: The Publicity of Friendship: Gender and Community
4 How to Fight with Your Friends: Reconceptualizing Gender and Community
Hu Ying
5 Gender and Friendship in the Staging of a Star: Mei Lanfang
Catherine V. Yeh
6 Intercultural Mutuality: Mary Hannah Fulton and Zhang Zhujun
Ellen Widmer
PART 3: Rethinking Relationships
7 Hermits and Their Wives: Gender and Friendship in Early Chinese Texts
Yiqun Zhou
8 Literary Negotiations: Friendship in the World of Late Ming Courtesans
Wai-yee Li
9 Love or Lust Redux: on the Pure Relationship in Chinese Literature
Haiyan Lee
Index
Academic institutes, libraries, specialists, graduate students, teachers, undergraduate students, and all readers who are interested in gender and Chinese literature.