Details

Reverie and Reality

Poetry on Travel by Late Imperial Chinese Women

von: Yanning Wang
104,99 €
Verlag:	Lexington Books
Format:	EPUB
Veröffentl.:	18.12.2013
ISBN/EAN:	9780739179840
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	222

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

This is a study of Chinese gentry women’s poems on the theme of travel written during the late imperial period (ca.1600–1911), when Chinese women’s literature and culture flourished as never before. It challenges the clichéd image of completely secluded and immobile women anxiously waiting inside their prescribed feminine space, the so-called inner quarters, for the return of traveling husbands or other male kin. The travel poems discussed in this book, while not necessarily representative of all of the women writers of this period, point to the fact that many of them longed to explore the world through travel as did so many of their male counterparts. Sometimes they were able to actualize this desire for travel and sometimes they were forced to resort to imaginary “armchair travel.” In either case, women writers often used poetry as a means of recording their experiences or delineating their dreams of traveling outside the inner quarters, and indeed sometimes far away from the inner quarters. With its promise of adventure and fulfillment and, above all, a broadening of one’s intellectual and emotional horizons, travel was an important, and until now understudied, theme of late imperial women’s poetry.

Titelkurzbeschreibung

Reverie and Reality investigates late imperial Chinese gentry women’s poems on travel ranging from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century.These poems written by groups of women after they “stepped out of the inner quarters” display their diverse journeys, profound experiences of social life, and earnest sentiments. Their travel and poems on travel can be considered milestones in the histories of women’s life and literature.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
 
Introduction
 
Part I: Reverie
 
Chapter One: Recumbent Travel: Liberation and Limitation
 
Chapter Two: Roaming as a Female Transcendent 
 
Part II: Reality
 
Chapter Three: Women’s Footprints beyond the Inner Quarters
 
Chapter Four: A Manchu Woman’s Short Excursions
 
Chapter Five: Women’s International Travels in the Late Qing
 
Epilogue