Description
Book SynopsisAfter first appearing around 1590, Jing Ping Mei was circulated among some of China's best known writers of the time and subsequently published in three major recensions. By arguing from the standpoint of feminism, this title can contribute to studies of Chinese literature, Asian studies, feminism, politics of sexuality, and cultural studies.
Trade Review“Ding’s reading of
Jin Ping Mei is unique and extremely important. By reading this novel as a cumulative accretion of text and commentary and as a cultural icon, she shows how all of us who read it from an aesthetic perspective are implicated in covering up its disturbing and hatefully misogynist core. This is a true coup.”—
Maram Epstein, University of Oregon
“In this absorbing study of the multiple lives of a literary classic that is also a popular pornographic text, Naifei Ding steals across the border between cultural studies and feminist/queer literary criticism. Bringing a gendered social history of modern print culture in China into a ‘porous intimacy’ with both a critique of interpretive power and a feminist ‘counter-ethics’ of reading,
Obscene Things is a scholarly work of exceptional creativity. Ding herself is a wonderful storyteller, and her critical narration of the fortunes of
Jin Ping Mei will inspire anyone concerned with the
how of studying historical modalities of gender, sexuality, status, and cultural power.”—Meaghan Morris, Lingnan University
“Those who read Ding’s investigation will never look at critical interpretations of Chinese fiction with the same complacency again.”—Robert E. Hegel, author of
Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial ChinaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
Part One: Practices
1.
Jin-ology
2. The Manic Preface: Jin Shengtan’s (1608-1661)
Shuihu zhuan 3. A Cure for Melancholy: Yuan Hongdao (1558-1610) and
Qifa (
Seven Stimuli)
4. Tears of Resentment: Zhang Zhupo’s (1670-1698)
Jin Ping Mei Part Two: Intervention
5. Seduction: Tiger and Yinfu
6. Red Shoes, Foot Bindings, and the Swing
7. A Cat, a Dog, and the Killing of Livestock
8. Very Close to Yinfu and Enu; or, How Prefaces Matter for
Jin Ping Mei (1695) and
Enu Shu (Taipei, 1995)
Notes
Glossary
Works Cited
Index
