This study of poetry by women in late imperial China examines the
metamorphosis of the trope of the "inner chambers" (gui), to which
women were confined in traditional Chinese households, and which in
literature were both a real and an imaginary place. Originally
popularized in sixth-century "palace style" poetry, the inner
chambers were used by male writers as a setting in which to
celebrate female beauty, to lament the loneliness of abandoned
women, and by extension, to serve as a political allegory for the
exile of loyal and upright male ministers spurned by the imperial
court. Female writers of lyric poetry (ci) soon adopted the theme,
beginning its transition from male fantasy to multidimensional
representation of women and their place in society, and eventually
its manifestation in other poetic genres as well.
Emerging from the role of sexual objects within poetry, late
imperial women were agents of literary change in their expansion
and complication of the boudoir theme. While some take ownership
and de-eroticizing its imagery for their own purposes, adding
voices of children and older women, and filling the inner chambers
with purposeful activity such as conversation, teaching, religious
ritual, music, sewing, childcare, and chess-playing, some simply
want to escape from their confinement and protest gender
restrictions imposed on women. "Women's Poetry of Late Imperial
China" traces this evolution across centuries, providing and
analyzing examples of poetic themes, motifs, and imagery associated
with the inner chambers, and demonstrating the complication and
nuancing of the gui theme by increasingly aware and sophisticated
women writers.
"Li Xiaorong's study is ambitious, comprehensive, and
wide-ranging, presenting a multi-dimensional but ultimately
coherent view of the seemingly simple notion of 'gui.'" -Beata
Grant, author of "Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of
Seventeenth-Century China"
"A highly ambitious and thoughtful approach to a complex and
intriguing subject. Li discusses convincingly how Ming-Qing women's
literary discourse both relates, and challenges, the existing power
(mainly male) structures in Chinese literature. A very important
book." -Kang-I Sun Chang, co-editor of "Women Writers of
Traditional China" and "The Cambridge History of Chinese
Literature"
Xiaorong Li is associate professor of Chinese literature at the
University of California, Santa Barbara
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