Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China: Transforming the Inner Chambers

Notes

no t e s introduction 1. Hu Shi, “Sanbai nian zhong nü zuojia,” 587–88. 2. Hu Shi’s dismissal of Qing women’s poetry followed the critical trend set by late Qing reformists such as Liang Qichao (1873–1929) that was against traditional feminine poetics in general. For more details, see chapter 5. 3. Among the most active scholars in this area are social historians such as Dorothy Ko, Susan Mann, and Paul Ropp and literary scholars such as Kang-i Sun Chang, Grace S. Fong, Beata Grant, Wilt Idema, Maureen Robertson , and Ellen Widmer, whose major studies are listed in the bibliography. 4. See, for example, David Palumbo-Liu’s discussion of the Song poet Huang Tingjian (1045–1105) in his The Poetics of Appropriation. 5. For example, see Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, and Ko, “LadyScholars .” See also Mann, Precious Records, chapter 4. 6. Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine” and “Changing the Subject”; Fong, “Engendering the Lyric.” 7. Robertson, “Changing the Subject,” 200–204. 8. Viewing women’s writings as “particularized by gendered subformations ,” Grace S. Fong shows the literary agency of women writers from their “differential positioning within a normative female hierarchy as daughters, mothers, wives, concubines, maids, etc.” See Fong, Herself an Author. 9. Xu Shen’s (58–147) Shuowen jiezi defines the gui as a gate specially set. See Xu Shen, Shuowen, 12.102. 10. For guige, for example, see Sima Qian, Shi ji, 120.262, For guikun, for example, see Ban Gu, Bai hu tong, 4.266. For guifang, for example, see Ban Gu, Han shu, 76. 264. 11. Ruan Yuan, Shisanjing, 28.533, 28.538, 28.538–39. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 12. Song Ruozhao, Nü lunyu, 70. 3291. 13. Sima Guang, Zhi jia, 22952. For a quotation and discussion of this passage by Sima Guang, see Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 23–24. 14. Ruan Yuan, Shisanjing, 27.520. 15. For a book-length biography and study of Ban Zhao, see Swann, Pan Chao. For discussions of Ban Zhao’s Nü jie, see Lily Xiao Hong Lee, The Notes to Introduction 188 Virtue of Yin, 11–24; Chen Yu-shih, “The Historical Template of Pan Chao’s Nü chieh,” 229–57. See also, Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 11–43. 16. According to Huang Liling, there were two versions of Nü si shu, the Chinese and Japanese versions. The set of four books that circulated in Japan does not include the Nüfan jielu but the Nü xiaojing by Chen Miao of the Tang period instead. The other three are the same. See Huang Liling, Nü sishu, 3. The author of Nüfan jielu is also known as Liu shi. 17. Mann, Precious Records, 80. 18. Bray, Technology and Gender, 55. 19. Ibid. 20. For a discussion of Chen Hongmou’s thought on women and family, see Rowe, Saving the World, 313–22. 21. Chen Hongmou, Wuzhong yigui, 100. 22. Rowe, Saving the World, 314. 23. Furth, “The Patriarch’s Legacy,” 196. 24. In this regard, I agree with William Rowe, who points out that “[n]o elite commentary in late imperial China, no matter how self-consciously reformist on gender issues, challenged the view that women fundamentally were not, could not be, and indeed morally should not be identical with men, or assume the same functions in society.” See Rowe, “Women and the Family ,” 495. 25. Handlin, “Lü K’un’s New Audience.” 26. Ko, “Lady-Scholars.” It is noteworthy that these women poets were active in the same period as Chen Hongmou. 27. Lü Kun, Gui fan, “Xu,” 1a-b. 28. Ibid., “Yuanqi,” 1a. 29. Ibid., “Xu,” 1, 3. 30. Lü Kun, Gui fan, “Yuanqi,” 1a. 31. Lü Kun, Gui fan, “Xu,” 1a, 2a. 32. Handlin, “Lü K’un’s New Audience,” 26. 33. Borrowing the Freudian term “scopophilic instinct,” Maureen Robertson offers an analysis of the aesthetic end of the poems in the Yutai xinyong as intended to satisfy male readers’ “desire for specular pleasure.” See Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine.” For a study of the complicated history involved in Palace-Style poems about women, see Miao, “Palace-Style Poetry.” For a recent interpretation of male authors’ use of women’s image and sexuality as a form of power struggle and social interaction, see Rouzer, Articulated Ladies. 34. Hu Ying, “Re-Configuring Nei/Wai,” 87. 35. Having said that, I am indebted to Catherine Belsey’s understanding of ideology as “both a real and an...