Presence and Presentation : Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition

by Edited by Sherry J. Mou

• ISBN13: 9780312210540
• ISBN10: 031221054X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-10-29
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Presence and Presentation is the first volume of essays to focus on the lives of Chinese women before the 10th century. An impressive array of scholars examines historical, religious, and literary texts of medieval China (mainly from the 3rd to the 10th centuries) and discovers topics which are surprisingly modern. A princess dies of a miscarriage as a result of marital violence, marriages are made to form political alliances, and an imperial consort is blamed for natural disasters. Other essays reveal the precarious lives of female entertainers and palace-serving women, wifely procuring for famous husbands, self-mutilation in the name of cultural virtues, and a mother's journey deeper into hell for her son's ability to achieve Buddhahood. The essayists scrutinize mostly male-crafted documents but from the perspectives of the women who lived during this time. Presence and Presentation is a pathbreaking analysis that opens new windows on how many Chinese women lived during the days of the Middle Ages.

Author Biography

Sherry J. Mou, a native of Taiwan, is Assistant Professor of Chinese at Wellesley College.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	x
Explanatory Notes	xii
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties	xiii
Introduction	xv
Sherry J. Mou
The Death of a Princess: Codifying Classical Family Ethics in Early Medieval China	1	(38)
Jen-der Lee
Women in China's Frontier Politics: Heqin	39	(38)
Ning Chia
From Cross-Dressing Daughter to Lady Knight-Errant: The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Women Warriors	77	(32)
Sufen Sophia Lai
Writing Virtues with Their Bodies: Rereading the Two Tang Histories' Biographies of Women	109	(40)
Sherry J. Mou
Jia-Entertainers in Tang Chang'an	149	(22)
Victor Xiong
Smell Good and Get a Job: How Daoist Women Saints Were Verified and Legitimatized during the Tang Dynasty (618--907)	171	(16)
Suzanne Cahill
Father in Heaven, Mother in Hell: Gender Politics in the Creation and Transformations of Mulian's Mother	187	(28)
Sufen Sophia Lai
Bonds of Certain Consequence: The Personal Responses to Concubinage of Wang Anshi and Sima Guang	215	(24)
Don J. Wyatt
Bibliography	239	(28)
Glossary	267	(24)
About the Contributors	291	(2)
Index	293

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