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Harvard East Asian Monographs #231
The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China
One of the most exciting recent developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of an extremely rich and diverse tradition of women's writing of the imperial period (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Many of these writings are of considerable literary quality. Others provide us with moving insights into the lives and feelings of a surprisingly diverse group of women living in Confucian China, a society that perhaps more than any other is known for its patriarchal tradition.
Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, several scholarly books, articles, and even anthologies of women's poetry have been published in the last two decades. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.
The authors have presented the selections within their respective biographical and historical contexts. This comprehensive approach helps to clarify traditional Chinese ideas on the nature and function of literature as well as on the role of the woman writer.
Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, several scholarly books, articles, and even anthologies of women's poetry have been published in the last two decades. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.
The authors have presented the selections within their respective biographical and historical contexts. This comprehensive approach helps to clarify traditional Chinese ideas on the nature and function of literature as well as on the role of the woman writer.
960 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2004
3 people are currently reading
157 people want to read
About the author
Wilt L. Idema
66 books11 followersWilt L. Idema obtained his BA and MA from Leiden University. Following continued study in Sapporo (at Hokkaido University) and in Kyoto (at Kyoto University), and research in Hong Kong (at the Universities Service Center), he returned to Leiden, where he taught in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture. He obtained his doctorate in 1974, and was promoted to Professor of Chinese Literature and Linguistics in 1976. Since 2000, he has been teaching at Harvard as Professor of Chinese Literature. Wilt Idema's research initially was focused on the early development of Chinese vernacular fiction (Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period, 1974), but later shifted more towards early Chinese drama (Chinese Theater 1100-1450, A Source Book, with Stephen West; 1982; The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379-1439), 1985; Wang Shifu, The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing, with Stephen H. West, 1992). In recent years he also has published on Chinese women's literature of the premodern period (The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, with Beata Grant, 2004). His current research is focused on China's rich tradition of popular narrative ballads. He is also the author, with Lloyd Haft, of A Guide to Chinese Literature (1997). For his voluminous Dutch-language translations, especially of classical Chinese poetry, he received the Martinus Nijhof Award for 1991, the highest distinction for literary translations in the Netherlands.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 26, 2017
4.5/5
I had my favorites here and there, but I'd have to go back to tell you their names, what with the near a hundred that were focused on and the thousands of others that were fleetingly referenced through relatives and monumental compendiums. Particular focus points included the Tang Dynasty, cross-crossdressing, and everything post the Boxer Rebellion, but I chalk that up less to personal interest and more to my actually having encountered chunks of this history in variously distorted versions previous. It didn't help that my Eurocentric brain was too busy distracting itself with trying to align what it was reading with the 15th and 16th and 3rd century tidbits it had been trained in for longer periods of time at a far younger age. I can't even say that I picked up some actual compositions to tackle: what existed has for the most part been lost, what hasn't been lost usually makes Proust look like a walk in the park, and what is on a more manageable scale hasn't made itself facile enough for my sort of readership in terms of translation and appealing edition. What I can say is, much as what occurred with The Tale of Genji, I gradually began to recognize under my own power bits and pieces of euphemisms and historical touchstones, enough that future encounters with works originating from Imperial China in the vein of The Story of the Stone and The Plum in the Golden Vase will be far more successful, leastwise on a subconscious-yes-I-know-where-I-am-generally level. Plus, once I got rolling in an era closer to my own, I was in analysis heaven, what with all the women writing poetry and wielding swords and plotting to take down the system entire.
For readers eyeing this, the layout is not of a dip-in dip-out encyclopedia. The authors lay out at the beginning that this, for all its facts and accreditation, is more narrative than reference guide, the latter being encompassed by the last 160 pages of straightforward lists and bibliography. There's nothing stopping you from treating it in a desultory fashion, but I must say, after turning the last page of a history/biography/book review that took on two thousand years and then some in a literary effort that focused on the marginalized in a monumental, one is rather satisfied with oneself.
P.S. I was out clubbing last night and didn't stumble back until 3 am with a sizable number of drinks under my belt, so if this review effort is lacking in any way, chalk it up to that.
It's true enough that poems and books cannot stave off hunger,The only real reason for the half-star difference between my pictorial rating and my numerical is it serves the useful function of reminding me to come back to this topic, if not this particular work, with a lot more know-how under my belt. When will this happen? I have no idea. At this point, I don't even know I'll ever get back to a broad analysis view of Imperial China when there's the Golden Age of Islam and Axum/Mali/Songhai/Ethopian/Benin Empires and the indigenous nations of the Americas/Japan/Taiwan/Pacific Islands and so many others on my bucket list. The problem with my go big or go home appetite is, as many an academic has pointed out to me, how impossible it is that I'll be able to regurgitate all this on tests or during the course of getting myopic degrees utilizing even more myopic papers as proof that I'm good at this scholarly business. It's a good thing, then, that I'm aiming more for recognition and less for Jeopardy.
But if I threw away my poems and books, I wouldn't have a life.
-Wang Duanshu (1621-1685), 'When My Woman Friend Dong Dasurou Came for a Visit, There Was No Cooked Food'
16 "defective" plot elements: 1) men dressing up as women; 2) secret vows of marriage; 3) premarital sex; 4) elopements of adulterous women; 5) widows losing their chastity; 6) robbery and murder; 7) imprisonment; 8) murder for political motives; 9) secret conspiracy with foreign countries; 10) obsequious flattery of the powerful; 11) instruction in the methods of the immortals; 12) evil depravity of ghosts and mosters; 13) plots hatched by monks and priests; 14) prognostic dreams; 15) burglary and theft; 16) abduction and forced marriage.I've run into so many weird coincidences involving taking the right class during the right choice in personal enlightenment reading that I've decided to just chalk it up to some deity looking after my atheist ass when it comes to this English degree of mine. In this case, early Christian hagiographies of holy European women met early Buddhist hagiographies of holy East/Central Asian women, and I was on my way. This way involved fictional personas drawn up to fit ideal prototypes, liberal usage of motifs of sight, asceticism, and devotion from infancy, and narratives that, however much they concerned women, were for the most part written by men. Unlike my class, this male gaze/female subject combo extended throughout nearly a thousand pages of female immortals inspiring human male poets, imperial concubines setting down codes of womanly behavior in accordance to male prescriptive in the years of the BCE, and a two millenia spread of a fascinating twist on fanfiction where the woman writer was likely as created as her compositions. Some of them were more verified than others, but working with ancient texts has made me less obsessed with construction of past realities and more with the cultural, legal, and gendered implications of all this writing of and by and through these women of an empire that will dwarf the reign of the US for a long time coming.
I had my favorites here and there, but I'd have to go back to tell you their names, what with the near a hundred that were focused on and the thousands of others that were fleetingly referenced through relatives and monumental compendiums. Particular focus points included the Tang Dynasty, cross-crossdressing, and everything post the Boxer Rebellion, but I chalk that up less to personal interest and more to my actually having encountered chunks of this history in variously distorted versions previous. It didn't help that my Eurocentric brain was too busy distracting itself with trying to align what it was reading with the 15th and 16th and 3rd century tidbits it had been trained in for longer periods of time at a far younger age. I can't even say that I picked up some actual compositions to tackle: what existed has for the most part been lost, what hasn't been lost usually makes Proust look like a walk in the park, and what is on a more manageable scale hasn't made itself facile enough for my sort of readership in terms of translation and appealing edition. What I can say is, much as what occurred with The Tale of Genji, I gradually began to recognize under my own power bits and pieces of euphemisms and historical touchstones, enough that future encounters with works originating from Imperial China in the vein of The Story of the Stone and The Plum in the Golden Vase will be far more successful, leastwise on a subconscious-yes-I-know-where-I-am-generally level. Plus, once I got rolling in an era closer to my own, I was in analysis heaven, what with all the women writing poetry and wielding swords and plotting to take down the system entire.
For readers eyeing this, the layout is not of a dip-in dip-out encyclopedia. The authors lay out at the beginning that this, for all its facts and accreditation, is more narrative than reference guide, the latter being encompassed by the last 160 pages of straightforward lists and bibliography. There's nothing stopping you from treating it in a desultory fashion, but I must say, after turning the last page of a history/biography/book review that took on two thousand years and then some in a literary effort that focused on the marginalized in a monumental, one is rather satisfied with oneself.
As a result the books lay arranged in rows on tables and desks and were strewn in disorder on mat and pillow. They satisfied our minds, our hearts, and our spirits, and the pleasure was beyond any provided by music or sex, hounds or horses.
-Li Qingzhao, postface for Inscriptions on Bronze and Stone (Jinshi Lu), c. 1132)
P.S. I was out clubbing last night and didn't stumble back until 3 am with a sizable number of drinks under my belt, so if this review effort is lacking in any way, chalk it up to that.
April 20, 2021
The Four Books for Women excerpts; Biographies of Exemplary Women excerpts; gendered subjects Concubine Ban; the talented and virtuous Ban Zhao, Shangguan Wan'er, Xie Daoyun, Cai Yan, Su Hui; Li Qingzhao; Phantom heroines Zhu Shuzhen, Xiaoqing, He Shuangqing; women's script; Courtesans Li Ye, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji, Liang Xiaoyu, Jing Pianpian, Ma Xianglan, Wang Wei, Yang Wan, Liu Shi; Female networks Shen Yixiu, Ye Xiaoluan, Ye Wanwan, Huichou, Gu Ruopu, Liang Mengzhao, Wang Duanshu, the Banana Garden Poetry Club; Cross-dressed heroines and tanci plays Tao Zhenhuai, Hou Zhi, Chen Duansheng, Wu Zao; Zhang Xuecheng, various preface-writers, Liang Qichao
February 14, 2013
Initially when I got the book it was only due to the fact that it was required for a class that I was in. After studying Chinese for years however this is the first book that I have seen to actively document the famous women of imperial China onward. Not only does the book give you an active insight into what life was like for a woman in China, it also catalogs the numerous changes that occurred within China. Unique perspectives and language that is very easy to follow. Anyone curious about China or wanting more information on what ancient China was like should definitely check this book out.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews