Project MUSE®: Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2014) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Chinese Literature and CultureTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture2329-00562329-0048Latest articles in Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Good Things Come in Pairs: A Computational Study of Poetic Parallelism in the Six Dynasties
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985656
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Parallelism is considered one of the central aesthetic features of classical Chinese poetry. The most widely celebrated verses are cast in parallel couplets, rhythmic and easy to remember, such as the famous lines “Beacon fires last several months, a family letter is worth ten thousand gold” 烽火連三月, 家書抵萬金 and “Zhuang Zhou’s morning dream entangled with butterflies, Emperor Wang’s spring heart entrusted to the cuckoo” 莊生曉夢迷蝴蝶, 望帝春心託杜鵑. The second half of the Six Dynasties (222–589),1 with works by the “two Xies” (Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 [385–433] and Xie Tiao 謝脁 [464–499]), is commonly thought a period of significant development in parallel couplet artistry, and since the early High Tang the inner couplets (second and third)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallGood Things Come in Pairs: A Computational Study of Poetic Parallelism in the Six Dynasties2026-03-17text/htmlen-USGood Things Come in Pairs: A Computational Study of Poetic Parallelism in the Six Dynasties2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1143932026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Beheaded Meanings and Anonymous Signifiers: Forms of Truth and Conditions for Its Emergence in Late Ming Court Case Fiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985657
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Many works of late Ming court case (gong’an 公案) fiction employ the unidentifiable corpse as a narrative device to establish discourses of truth. When a decapitated or decomposed body appears in a story, identifying the deceased becomes the primary objective for the characters who seek to resolve the case. For these stories, it is important that missing body parts be recovered and identities be determined because accomplishing these things not only conforms to the ritual norms of premodern China, which valorized the proper burial of a person’s remains in their entirety, but also fulfills the genre conventions of court case fiction, which calls for a story to end with revelations of concealed truths and resolutions
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallBeheaded Meanings and Anonymous Signifiers: Forms of Truth and Conditions for Its Emergence in Late Ming Court Case Fiction2026-03-17text/htmlen-USBeheaded Meanings and Anonymous Signifiers: Forms of Truth and Conditions for Its Emergence in Late Ming Court Case Fiction2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1029072026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17De-eroticizing the Inner Chamber: Zhou Qi’s Ekphrastic Colophon in Lady at Dressing Table by Wang Qiao
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985658
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The final decades of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) witnessed a sudden surge in women’s writing, a development that persisted throughout the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).1 This literary phenomenon is typically divided into two major phases: the “first high tide,” which extended from the early seventeenth century to the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and the “second high tide,” from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth century.2 Both periods were closely tied to the economic growth of the Jiangnan region in southeastern China, which was characterized by the accumulation of private wealth and the expansion of the printing industry.3 These factors, in turn, facilitated
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallDe-eroticizing the Inner Chamber: Zhou Qi’s Ekphrastic Colophon in Lady at Dressing Table by Wang Qiao2026-03-17text/htmlen-USDe-eroticizing the Inner Chamber: Zhou Qi’s Ekphrastic Colophon in Lady at Dressing Table by Wang Qiao2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1192572026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Reconstructing Confucian Masculinity: Chen Tingzhuo’s Poetic Ideal of “Depth and Circuitousness”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985659
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Since its inception, the song lyric (ci 詞) was deemed inferior to poetry (shi詩). Performed by singing girls in the entertainment quarters, early song lyrics revolved around the romantic longings and sexual encounters of male literati and female entertainers, which rendered the genre frivolous, indecent, and feminine.1 Although the literati ostensibly despised this genre, they composed lyrics with enormous passion, rehabilitating its reputation by incorporating motifs and styles that aligned with their masculine identity.2 Two styles loomed large in male lyricists’ endeavor to canonize and masculinize this genre. The first is the style of “heroic abandon” (haofang 豪放) pioneered by Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), who
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallReconstructing Confucian Masculinity: Chen Tingzhuo’s Poetic Ideal of “Depth and Circuitousness”2026-03-17text/htmlen-USReconstructing Confucian Masculinity: Chen Tingzhuo’s Poetic Ideal of “Depth and Circuitousness”2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1264802026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17The Biji xiaoshuo 筆記小說 Tradition and News Media: The Dianshizhai Pictorial 點石齋畫報as a Case Study
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985660
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First published on May 8, 1884, the Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao點石齋畫報) was issued three times a month. Over the next fourteen years, it produced 528 issues with more than forty-six hundred captioned illustrations. Contemporary scholarship has examined the Dianshizhai Pictorial through diverse lenses—ranging from its reflections on global contexts, urban life, and new knowledge to its engagement with fantastical rural imagery, courtesan representation, and the sensory transformation of modern experience.1 Yet Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, whose research focuses on late Qing news reporting and knowledge circulation, has noted that a major portion of its contents consists of karmic retribution and supernatural
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallThe Biji xiaoshuo 筆記小說 Tradition and News Media: The Dianshizhai Pictorial 點石齋畫報as a Case Study2026-03-17text/htmlen-USThe Biji xiaoshuo 筆記小說 Tradition and News Media: The Dianshizhai Pictorial 點石齋畫報as a Case Study2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1432552026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17The Craft of Oblivion: Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China ed. by Albert Galvany (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985661
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In this welcome collaborative volume, Albert Galvany has brought together some of the finest scholars of early China to address the theme of “oblivion” in text and practice. In his introduction (1–21), Galvany opens with Borges’s story “Funes the Memorious,” about a wretched young man who, as a result of an accident, loses the capacity to forget. The narrator speculates that this unexpected handicap may have contributed to his rapid demise. Galvany then cites some contemporary Western theorists on the importance of forgetting in history and literature and invites us to look for analogous material from early China.As it turns out, there is a robust and neglected classical Chinese discourse on forgetting (both
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallThe Craft of Oblivion: Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China ed. by Albert Galvany (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USThe Craft of Oblivion: Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China ed. by Albert Galvany (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®356762026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Shibun to keisei: Bakufu jushin no jūhasseiki 詩文と経世: 幕府儒臣の十八世紀 by Yamamoto Yoshitaka 山本嘉孝, and: Edo Kanshi no jōkei: Fūga to nichijō 江戸漢詩の情景: 風雅と日常 by Ibi Takashi 揖斐高, and: Hikaku bungaku to shite no Edo Kanshi 比較文学としての江戸漢詩 by Sugishita Motoaki 杉下元明, and: The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran by Jonathan Chaves and Matthew Fraleigh (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985662
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The study of literary Sinitic (aka Sino-Japanese) literature of the Edo period (1603–1868) has waxed and (often) waned in the post–World War II era, but in this third decade of the twenty-first century, signs of renewed vitality have emerged. The four works discussed below amply demonstrate the potential for this field to contribute not only to remapping the considerable proportion of premodern Japanese literature that lies outside of the canon of wabun (writing in Japanese) but also to situating this corpus within the multilingual, culturally, and sociopolitically diverse Sinographosphere that encompasses most of East Asia. For reasons to be discussed below, these recent studies deserve the attention of this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallShibun to keisei: Bakufu jushin no jūhasseiki 詩文と経世: 幕府儒臣の十八世紀 by Yamamoto Yoshitaka 山本嘉孝, and: Edo Kanshi no jōkei: Fūga to nichijō 江戸漢詩の情景: 風雅と日常 by Ibi Takashi 揖斐高, and: Hikaku bungaku to shite no Edo Kanshi 比較文学としての江戸漢詩 by Sugishita Motoaki 杉下元明, and: The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran by Jonathan Chaves and Matthew Fraleigh (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USShibun to keisei: Bakufu jushin no jūhasseiki 詩文と経世: 幕府儒臣の十八世紀 by Yamamoto Yoshitaka 山本嘉孝, and: Edo Kanshi no jōkei: Fūga to nichijō 江戸漢詩の情景: 風雅と日常 by Ibi Takashi 揖斐高, and: Hikaku bungaku to shite no Edo Kanshi 比較文学としての江戸漢詩 by Sugishita Motoaki 杉下元明, and: The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran by Jonathan Chaves and Matthew Fraleigh (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®317662026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Saying All That Can Be Said: The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei by Keith McMahon, and: Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature by Jiwei Xiao (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985663
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Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, now best known in English as Plum in a Golden Vase, is perhaps the most unsettling book in the Chinese literary tradition. Readers have always had a hard time knowing how to feel about it. In the early seventeenth century, scholars like Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568–1610) praised it as a masterpiece, while others declared that the printing blocks should be burned to prevent its circulation. More than one early critic felt that not only the blocks but also the anonymous author and all his descendants should burn in hell. Clement Egerton, who translated the book into English in the 1930s with Lao She’s 老舍 (1899–1966) help, thought it best to put the most sexually explicit parts into Latin. The novel has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallSaying All That Can Be Said: The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei by Keith McMahon, and: Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature by Jiwei Xiao (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USSaying All That Can Be Said: The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei by Keith McMahon, and: Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature by Jiwei Xiao (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®246712026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17How to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology ed. by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, and: A Topsy-Turvy World: Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties ed. by Wilt L. Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Stephen H. West (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985664
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This review deals with two recently published books on classical Chinese drama by Columbia University Press: How to Read Chinese Drama, edited by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, and A Topsy-Turvy World, edited by Wilt L. Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Stephen H. West. The former provides the first English anthology of the kind on classical Chinese drama, and the latter is a collected translation of Ming-Qing short plays, most of them translated into English for the first time. Both books follow the recent trend of increasing research and translation of Chinese drama, making important contributions to and anticipating meaningful impact in the field for years to come.How to Read Chinese Drama, one of ten volumes of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallHow to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology ed. by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, and: A Topsy-Turvy World: Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties ed. by Wilt L. Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Stephen H. West (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USHow to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology ed. by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, and: A Topsy-Turvy World: Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties ed. by Wilt L. Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Stephen H. West (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®674672026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Titles in Chinese Literature from Academic Monthly 學術月刊 (Issues 1–12, 2024): Published by Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985665
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The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture is pleased to feature select titles from Academic Monthly, a journal highly regarded in Chinese academia. Since its founding in Shanghai in January 1957, it has taken a prominent role in advancing research in China’s humanities and social sciences. It publishes research articles in all disciplines of humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, history, economics, politics and law, and others. It has won numerous awards at the national level and is a five-time winner of the Chinese Government Award of Publication for Journals. It is a core journal in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) and is also listed as an authoritative academic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/659/image/coversmallTitles in Chinese Literature from Academic Monthly 學術月刊 (Issues 1–12, 2024): Published by Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations2026-03-17text/htmlen-USTitles in Chinese Literature from Academic Monthly 學術月刊 (Issues 1–12, 2024): Published by Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®57062026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17