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The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature
The "phantom heroine"―in particular the fantasy of her resurrection through sex with a living man―is one of the most striking features of traditional Chinese literature. Even today the hypersexual female ghost continues to be a source of fascination in East Asian media, much like the sexually predatory vampire in American and European movies, TV, and novels. But while vampires can be of either gender, erotic Chinese ghosts are almost exclusively female. The significance of this gender asymmetry in Chinese literary history is the subject of Judith Zeitlin’s elegantly written and meticulously researched new book.
Zeitlin’s study centers on the seventeenth century, one of the most interesting and creative periods of Chinese literature and politically one of the most traumatic, witnessing the overthrow of the Ming, the Manchu conquest, and the subsequent founding of the Qing. Drawing on fiction, drama, poetry, medical cases, and visual culture, the author departs from more traditional literary studies, which tend to focus on a single genre or author. Ranging widely across disciplines, she integrates detailed analyses of great literary works with insights drawn from the history of medicine, art history, comparative literature, anthropology, religion, and performance studies.
The Phantom Heroine probes the complex literary and cultural roots of the Chinese ghost tradition. Zeitlin is the first to address its most remarkable the phenomenon of verse attributed to phantom writers―that is, authors actually reputed to be spirits of the deceased. She also makes the case for the importance of lyric poetry in developing a ghostly aesthetics and image code. Most strikingly, Zeitlin shows that the representation of female ghosts, far from being a marginal preoccupation, expresses cultural concerns of central importance.
Zeitlin’s study centers on the seventeenth century, one of the most interesting and creative periods of Chinese literature and politically one of the most traumatic, witnessing the overthrow of the Ming, the Manchu conquest, and the subsequent founding of the Qing. Drawing on fiction, drama, poetry, medical cases, and visual culture, the author departs from more traditional literary studies, which tend to focus on a single genre or author. Ranging widely across disciplines, she integrates detailed analyses of great literary works with insights drawn from the history of medicine, art history, comparative literature, anthropology, religion, and performance studies.
The Phantom Heroine probes the complex literary and cultural roots of the Chinese ghost tradition. Zeitlin is the first to address its most remarkable the phenomenon of verse attributed to phantom writers―that is, authors actually reputed to be spirits of the deceased. She also makes the case for the importance of lyric poetry in developing a ghostly aesthetics and image code. Most strikingly, Zeitlin shows that the representation of female ghosts, far from being a marginal preoccupation, expresses cultural concerns of central importance.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 19, 2012
I read this book a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. I had borrowed it from the library and decided to get a copy when I got my bonus last year. I started to re-read it as I'm writing a 17th century ghost story set in China and thought it would help to refresh my memory.
I enjoyed reading this just as much the second time. The book has three sections looking at ghosts in literature, poetry and plays. Zeitlin looks at the gendered representation of the ghosts and how their portrayal varies between the different mediums. This isn't a book looking at what was believed about ghosts but rather how they were shown and what they represented.
46 talks about ghosts dying and becoming the ghosts of ghosts
60-61 has ghost poems from the tang
78-81 Mei's record of talented ghosts, women's poetry anthologies,
122-123 massacure at the end of the ming and ghost story
150-151;156-157 ghost walk
I'm so glad I have a copy of this and enjoyed re-reading it. I'm sure I will re-read it several more times and it will be an excellent reference work as well.
Review from first reading Sept 08
Wow! This may be my new favorite non-fiction book. It's definitely the best I've read all year. Zeitlin managed to touch on all my favorite sources for Chinese ghost stories, including the obvious Pu Songling and Mu Dan Ting (the Peony Pavillion). She even started by discussing Tsai Hurak's Chinese Ghost Story. She looked at how ghosts became the ideal of womanly beauty at the end of the Ming, as the embodiment of qing. She then went on to look at poetry that was attributed to ghosts. This included poets writing as if they were already dead, including Li He, who I'd totally forgotten but really like as he's particularly beautiful and morbid. (70-71). Zeitlin quotes a Ming critic, Wang siren, talking about Li He saying, "When someone's life is careening to a close, lovely scenery seems pointless. That's why he set his disturbed and mournful thoughts to such an obscure tune. He liked to use words such as Ghost, Weeping, Death and Blood. When someone's poetry is dark, chiling and perverse, as a rule they will die young." She went on to follow the tradition of ghost poems from one's attributed to real people, to those attributed to ghosts and those written by people in seances. Eventually the trend changed from dead scholars to ghostly women composing poetry. Chapter 3 looked at ghosts as a path to historical time. Young men would wander to a particular historical site and be so overwhelmed by feelings of the past that they would be visited by ghosts. Often these ghosts were at the fall of a dynasty, or killed unfairly. Most were palace women who because of their seclusion could tell little about the time that they lived in. Poems set in this vein are called huaigu in chinese, which is translated as "poetic reflections stimulated by visits to historic sites". Chapters 4 and 5 look at the ghost heroine in Ming dramas. Following on the success of the Peony Pavillion there were many women ghosts in plays. Some who came back to life and those who returned only briefly. Some of the examples given were highly amusing. Zeitlin ended up looking at the Palace of lasting Life, which I have a dual language shortened edition of as the Palace of eternal youth. The play follows Yang Guifei, the famous (chubby) courtesan who committed suicide to save Tang Minghuang during the An Lushan rebellion. When I first read the book I was not familiar with the history but now I really want to re-read it. In the full version Yang is a ghost for half the story, and revisits the scene of her death, and spends time living as an immortal in heaven, unfortunately I think the 2nd half is greatly condensed in my version. The book has everything I love, beautiful ghost women, tragic poetry, love of historical places and times, and chinese plays. The author has also written a book about Pu Songling which I must find, but unfortunately is not at SOAS, at least it seems reasonably cheap on amazon. This book costs £40. I liked it so much I wrote to the publishers to ask if a paperback was going to be released, but unfortunately as yet there are no plans for one. But I will definitely have to buy myself a copy at somepoint.
I enjoyed reading this just as much the second time. The book has three sections looking at ghosts in literature, poetry and plays. Zeitlin looks at the gendered representation of the ghosts and how their portrayal varies between the different mediums. This isn't a book looking at what was believed about ghosts but rather how they were shown and what they represented.
46 talks about ghosts dying and becoming the ghosts of ghosts
60-61 has ghost poems from the tang
78-81 Mei's record of talented ghosts, women's poetry anthologies,
122-123 massacure at the end of the ming and ghost story
150-151;156-157 ghost walk
I'm so glad I have a copy of this and enjoyed re-reading it. I'm sure I will re-read it several more times and it will be an excellent reference work as well.
Review from first reading Sept 08
Wow! This may be my new favorite non-fiction book. It's definitely the best I've read all year. Zeitlin managed to touch on all my favorite sources for Chinese ghost stories, including the obvious Pu Songling and Mu Dan Ting (the Peony Pavillion). She even started by discussing Tsai Hurak's Chinese Ghost Story. She looked at how ghosts became the ideal of womanly beauty at the end of the Ming, as the embodiment of qing. She then went on to look at poetry that was attributed to ghosts. This included poets writing as if they were already dead, including Li He, who I'd totally forgotten but really like as he's particularly beautiful and morbid. (70-71). Zeitlin quotes a Ming critic, Wang siren, talking about Li He saying, "When someone's life is careening to a close, lovely scenery seems pointless. That's why he set his disturbed and mournful thoughts to such an obscure tune. He liked to use words such as Ghost, Weeping, Death and Blood. When someone's poetry is dark, chiling and perverse, as a rule they will die young." She went on to follow the tradition of ghost poems from one's attributed to real people, to those attributed to ghosts and those written by people in seances. Eventually the trend changed from dead scholars to ghostly women composing poetry. Chapter 3 looked at ghosts as a path to historical time. Young men would wander to a particular historical site and be so overwhelmed by feelings of the past that they would be visited by ghosts. Often these ghosts were at the fall of a dynasty, or killed unfairly. Most were palace women who because of their seclusion could tell little about the time that they lived in. Poems set in this vein are called huaigu in chinese, which is translated as "poetic reflections stimulated by visits to historic sites". Chapters 4 and 5 look at the ghost heroine in Ming dramas. Following on the success of the Peony Pavillion there were many women ghosts in plays. Some who came back to life and those who returned only briefly. Some of the examples given were highly amusing. Zeitlin ended up looking at the Palace of lasting Life, which I have a dual language shortened edition of as the Palace of eternal youth. The play follows Yang Guifei, the famous (chubby) courtesan who committed suicide to save Tang Minghuang during the An Lushan rebellion. When I first read the book I was not familiar with the history but now I really want to re-read it. In the full version Yang is a ghost for half the story, and revisits the scene of her death, and spends time living as an immortal in heaven, unfortunately I think the 2nd half is greatly condensed in my version. The book has everything I love, beautiful ghost women, tragic poetry, love of historical places and times, and chinese plays. The author has also written a book about Pu Songling which I must find, but unfortunately is not at SOAS, at least it seems reasonably cheap on amazon. This book costs £40. I liked it so much I wrote to the publishers to ask if a paperback was going to be released, but unfortunately as yet there are no plans for one. But I will definitely have to buy myself a copy at somepoint.
April 13, 2010
Zeitlin brings much-needed new ideas to the table here - she frames the figure of the (female) phantom within the discourses of traditional Chinese medicine, music, theatre, visual culture, interrogating in the process the representational codes by which the 'gui' becomes embodied, so to speak. Two thumbs up.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews