Description
Book SynopsisWai-yee Li traces notions of the pleasures and dangers of things in the literature and thought of late imperial China. She considers core oppositions—people and things, elegance and vulgarity, real and fake, lost and found—to tease out the ambiguities of material culture.
Trade ReviewThis wide-ranging exploration of human-object interactions provides a heightened appreciation of the complexity and variety of these relations and of the aptness of a material culture lens for approaching the literary culture of the Ming-Qing transition. -- David Porter, editor of
Comparative Early Modernities: 1100–1800Although owning things may always be transient, the late Ming and early Qing witnessed obsessions, spiritual essence, political significance, and cultural values associated with objects both real and fake. Wai-yee Li brings those complex cultural phenomena to life through a brilliant array of translations and citations. -- Robert E. Hegel, cotranslator of
A Couple of SolesSubtly revising Geertz, Li delves into the irony that humans are suspended in the web of things when trying to discover significance. Readers would likewise get lost in the massive textual labyrinth had Li not thrown us an Ariadne’s thread coordinating things along four tropistic axes: agency, value, identity, and temporality. -- Ling Hon Lam, author of
The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to TheatricalityThe themes of the book permeate Ming-Qing literature and reward the sustained engagement with them here. * Journal of Chinese History *
Highly recommended. * Choice Reviews *
A perceptive and sweeping examination of Ming and Qing literature on objects. * H-Material-Culture, H-Net Reviews *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. People and Things
2. Elegance and Vulgarity
3. The Real and the Fake
4. Lost and Found
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited
Index
