A disease of passion: The "self-iconizing" project of an eighteenth-century Chinese woman poet, Jin Yi (1769-1794)

Journal of Women's History

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 62-90

  Yang, Binbin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84866711330     PISSN: 10427961     EISSN: 15272036     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2012.0029     Document Type: Review

References (49)

1. For studies on the discourse of sentiment in late imperial China, see: Maram Epstein, Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001);
2. Martin W. Huang, Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001);
3. Anthony C. Yu, Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997).
4. For discussions on the creation of the "icons" of sentiment, see: Anne Gerritsen, "The Many Guises of Xiaoluan: The Legacy of a Girl Poet in Late Imperial China," Journal of Women's History 17, no. 2 (2005): 38-61;
5. Paul Ropp, Banished Immortal: Searching for Shuangqing, China's Peasant Woman Poet (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001);
6. Ellen Widmer, "Xiaoqing's Literary Legacy and the Place of the Woman Writer in Late Imperial China," Late Imperial China 13, no. 1 (1992): 111-55.
7. Widmer, "Xiaoqing's Literary Legacy," 128-30.
8. See Ropp's summary of scholarship concerning the "authenticity" of He Shuangqing. Ropp, Banished Immortal, 192-204.
9. For the most recent works in this area, see: Grace S. Fong, Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008);
10. Susan Mann, The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007);
11. Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2006).
12. Mann, The Talented Women, 168.
13. Stephen Owen, "The Self's Perfect Mirror: Poetry as Autobiography," in The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shi Poetry from the Late Han to the T'ang, eds. Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 71-102. See particularly page 79.
14. Fong, Herself an Author, 9-53.
15. Maureen Robertson, "Voicing the Feminine: Constructions of the Gendered Subject in Lyric Poetry by Women of Medieval and Late Imperial China," Late Imperial China 13, no. 1 (1992): 63-110. See particularly page 94.
16. Robertson, "Changing the Subject: Gender and Self-inscription in Authors' Prefaces and 'Shi' Poetry," in Writing Women in Late Imperial China, eds. Ellen Widmer and Kang-I Sun Chang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 171-217.
17. Paul Rouzer, Articulated Ladies: Gender and the Male Community in Early Chinese Texts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001), 130-56.
18. Robertson, "Voicing the Feminine," 82
19. and "Changing the Subject," 200.
20. Robertson, "Changing the Subject," 208.
21. For an introduction to Jin Yi as one of the most important fgures among Qing-Dynasty women poets, see: Zhong Huiling, Qingdai nüshiren yanjiu (A Study of Qing-Dynasty Women Poets) (Taipei: Liren shuju, 2000), 402-27.
22. Cao Xueqin and Gao E., Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, reprinted 1982).
23. Chen Wenshu, "Biography of Jin Yi," in Jin Yi, Shouyinlou shigao (Poetry Drafts from the Tower of the Slender Reciter, hereafter SYLSG), "Biography" 1a-3b.
24. Jin, SYLSG, 17b.
25. Yuan Mei, "Epitaph for Lady Jin Xianxian", 3210b.
26. Zhong, 224. Also see Zhong's reproduction of the scroll that includes Jin Yi: Zhong, "Illustration," No. 5.
27. For instances, see the poems that Jin Yi exchanged with Guo Lin, Yan Shoutian (a government offcial), and Wu Songliang. Yuan Mei, ed. Suiyuan nüdizi shixuan (Selected Poems by Yuan Mei's Female Disciples, hereafter SYNDZSX), 26a-b; 2.8a.
28. Wang Qiong, Ailan shichao (Poetry by Wang Qiong), in Wuzhong nüshi shichao (Anthology of Poetry by Gentry Women in the Wu Area [around Suzhou], 1789), "Preface" 1a; 6b; 7a-8b; 9b; 12a; 17a.
29. Wu, "Elegy for Lady Xianxian," in SYNDZSX, 29b.
30. Li Peijin was known to excel in the art of "ci" poetry or song lyrics. See: Li Mingwan and Feng Guifen, eds. The Suzhou Gazetteer, 11930a.
31. Li Yuankai, "Epilogue," SYLSG, "Epilogue" 1a-b.
32. Ibid. Here I use the translation by Mark A. Borer. Yuan Mei, "Epitaph for Lady Jin Xianxian," trans. Mark A. Borer, in Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism, eds. Kang-I Sun Chang and Haun Saussy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 779.
33. The trope of the "banished immortal" implies that the talent of the poet is "innate" - brought from his past life as an immortal - and that his early death suggests the end of his banishment and, therefore, his return to the immortal world. Judith Zeitlin, The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), 68-71.
34. Wang Zhenyi, "Du Wuzhong nüshi Jin Xianxian yishi gan fu erlü" ("Having Read the Poems Left by Lady Jin Xianxian from Wuzhong, I Wrote My Feelings into Two Poems"), Defengting chuji (An Initial Collection from the Dengfeng Pavilion, 1916), 1213 a-b.
35. See: Cao Yin and Peng Dingqiu, comp. Quan Tang shi (The Complete Anthology of the Tang Poetry) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, reprinted 1997), 1771.
36. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978).
37. For a general discussion of women's poetry on illness in late imperial China, see: Fong, "Writing and Illness: A Feminine Condition in Women's Poetry of the Ming and Qing," in The Inner Quarters and Beyond: Women Writers from Ming through Qing, eds. Grace S. Fong and Ellen Widmer (Leidon and Boston: Brill, 2010), 19-48.
38. Anne H. Hawkins, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993), 24. In borrowing the concept of pathography, I intend to bring fresh theoretical perspectives to my discussion of the ways Jin Yi created meaning and order for her experience.
39. Owen, "The Self's Perfect Mirror," 79.
40. For a discussion of how women in late imperial China resorted to Buddhism for cure or for solace while they were ill, see: Chen Yunü, "Buddhism and the Medical Treatment of Women in the Ming Dynasty: A Research Note," NanNü: Men, Women, and Gender in China 10, 2 (2008): 279-304.
41. Jin, "Guizhong zayong" ("Miscellaneous Poems Written in the Boudoir") No.1, SYLSG 35a.
42. SYLSG 111b;
43. Cao and Gao, Honglou meng, 457.
44. Katherine R. Goodman, "Book Review: Autobiography and Questions of Gender by Shirley Neuman, Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice by Marlene Kadar, Colette and the Fantom Subject of Autobiography by Jerry Aline Flieger, and Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice by Susan Sniader Lanser," Signs 20, no. 3 (1995): 770-775. See particularly page 772.
45. Widmer, The Beauty and the Book, 22.
46. See: Hua Wei, Ming Qing funü zhi xiqu chuangzuo yu piping (Drama and Criticisms on Drama by Women of the Ming and Qing Periods) (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan wenzhe suo, 2003), 70-82.
47. Hu Gui'e, in SYLSG, 211a.
48. For instance, see the famous seventeenth-century writer Feng Menglong's manifestos on the edifying and enlightening power of passion: Feng, Qingshi (A History of Passion) (Shenyang, China: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, reprinted 1986), "Prefaces."
49. Robertson, "Literary Authorship by Late Imperial Governing-Class Chinese Women and the Emergence of a 'Minor Literature,'" in The Inner Quarters and Beyond: Women Writers from Ming through Qing, eds. Grace S. Fong and Ellen Widmer (Leidon and Boston: Brill, 2010), 381-3.