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The Construction of the Feminine Voice in Early Medieval Chinese Literature
This book studies the formation of the male-constructed conventional voice of women in Chinese literature from the 3rd to 6th century.
It highlights specific moments during which the feminine voice became recognized, accepted, and stabilized, including the shift of focus from the performative to the textual in female representations; the formation of a male literary community; the popularity of romanticized historical narratives; and the emerging sense of literary history.
This study emphasizes the historicity of the feminine voice and strives to question and challenge established notions about textual stability, authorship, the literary canon, and literary history.
It highlights specific moments during which the feminine voice became recognized, accepted, and stabilized, including the shift of focus from the performative to the textual in female representations; the formation of a male literary community; the popularity of romanticized historical narratives; and the emerging sense of literary history.
This study emphasizes the historicity of the feminine voice and strives to question and challenge established notions about textual stability, authorship, the literary canon, and literary history.
The Construction of the Feminine Voice in Early Medieval Chinese Literature
This book studies the formation of the male-constructed conventional voice of women in Chinese literature from the 3rd to 6th century.
It highlights specific moments during which the feminine voice became recognized, accepted, and stabilized, including the shift of focus from the performative to the textual in female representations; the formation of a male literary community; the popularity of romanticized historical narratives; and the emerging sense of literary history.
This study emphasizes the historicity of the feminine voice and strives to question and challenge established notions about textual stability, authorship, the literary canon, and literary history.
It highlights specific moments during which the feminine voice became recognized, accepted, and stabilized, including the shift of focus from the performative to the textual in female representations; the formation of a male literary community; the popularity of romanticized historical narratives; and the emerging sense of literary history.
This study emphasizes the historicity of the feminine voice and strives to question and challenge established notions about textual stability, authorship, the literary canon, and literary history.
Abstract
The pursuit of divine women or women with divine beauty is a common theme in the earliest works of Chinese literature. Many fu (rhapsodies) composed at the Western Han courts feature the speaker’s failed pursuit of a beautiful woman. Yet during the Jian’an period, the image of a seductive yet inaccessible woman lost its prominence in the literary imagination and was replaced by a lonely beauty yearning for a worthy match and lamenting the swift passage of time. This transformation had much to do with the social and cultural transitions of this particular historical moment. This article places Jian’an representations of women in the context of group composition and literary communication at the Cao courts, and discusses the literary and political implications of these representations in comparison with previous court writing about women. The article argues that under a new environment of court writing, Jian’an literati transformed the image of beautiful women from the embodiment of imperial power and privilege into the symbol of their ideal personality and shared values. Writing about women became a crucial means to forming a literary and political community, and defining that community’s values and principles in a troubled time.
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