Gender Politics in Modern China

by Barlow, Tani E.; Goldblatt, Howard (CON); Liu, Lydia H. (CON); Larson, Wendy (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822313892
• ISBN10: 0822313898
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-11-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Through the lens of modern Chinese literature,Gender Politics in Modern Chinaexplores the relationship between gender and modernity, notions of the feminine and masculine, and shifting arguments for gender equality in China. Ranging from interviews with contemporary writers, to historical accounts of gendered writing in Taiwan and semi-colonial China, to close feminist readings of individual authors, these essays confront the degree to which textual strategies construct notions of gender. Among the specific themes discussed are: how femininity is produced in texts by allocating women to domestic space; the extent to which textual production lies at the base of a changing, historically specific code of the feminine; the extent to which women in modern Chinese societies are products of literary canons; the ways in which the historical processes of gendering have operated in Chinese modernity vis agrave; vis modernity in the West; the representation of feminists as avengers and as westernized women; and the meagre recognition of feminism as a serious intellectual current and a large body of theory. Originally published as a special issue ofModern Chinese Literature, this expanded book represents some of the most compelling new work in post-Mao feminist scholarship and will appeal to all those concerned with understanding a revitalized feminism in the Chinese context.Contributors:Carolyn Brown, Ching-kiu Stephen Chan, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Yu-shih Chen, Rey Chow, Randy Kaplan, Richard King, Wolfgang Kubin, Wendy Larson, Lydia Liu, Seung-Yeun Daisy Ng, Jon Solomon, Meng Yue, Wang Zheng

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The Language of Despair: Ideological Representations of the "New Woman" by May Fourth Writers

Invention and Intervention: The Female Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature

The End of "Funu Wenxue": Women's Literature from 1925 to 1935

Woman as Trope: Gender and Power in Lu Xun's "Soap"

Virtuous Transactions: A Reading of Three Short Stories by Ling Shuhua

Images of Subjugation and Defiance: Female Characters in the Early Dramas of Tian Han

Female Images and National Myth

Writing with Your Body: Literature as a Wound--Remarks on the Poetry of Shu Ting

Harmony and Equality: Notes on "Mimosa" and "Ark"

Three Interviews: Wang Anyi, Zhu Lin, Dai Qing

In the Translator's Eye: On the Significance of Zhu Lin

Yuan Qiongqiong and the Rage for Eileen Zhang among Taiwan's Feminine Writers

Taking Tiger Mountain: Can Xue's Resistance and Cultural Critique

Feminism in the Chinese Context: Li Ang's The Butcher's Wife

Political Evaluation and Reevaluation in Contemporary Chinese Fiction

Contributors

Index

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