Red-light Novels of the late Qing

Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-90-04-15629-6
Verlag: Koninklijke Brill BV

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 294 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 625 g

Reihe: China Studies

Chinese literature has traditionally been divided by both theorists and university course providers into ‘classical’ and ‘modern.’ This has left nineteenth-century fiction in limbo, and allowed negative assessments of its quality to persist unchecked. The popularity of Qing dynasty red-light fiction – works whose primary focus is the relationship between clients and courtesans, set in tea-houses, pleasure gardens, and later, brothels – has endured throughout the twentieth century. This volume explores why, arguing that these novels are far from the ‘low’ work of ‘frustrated scholars’ but in their provocative play on the nature of relations between client, courtesan and text, provide an insight into wider changes in understandings of self and literary value in the nineteenth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Starr, Chloë

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Über Autor(innen)

Chloë Starr, DPhil (2000) in Oriental Studies, Oxford, is a Departmental Lecturer in Classical Chinese at the University of Oxford. She has published on textual and gender issues in late Qing fiction.