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Notes
There is one earlier extant example of a preface composed by the Tang literatus Zhang Yue 張説 (667–730 CE) to the collected works of Shangguan Wan’er 上官婉兒 (664–710 CE). For more on this preface, see Wenkai (2008).
Here I draw upon the work of Sufeng Xu, quoting the same preface by Ouyang Xiu as Xu does in her article. See Xu (2006, pp. 276–277). The translation is Ronald Egan’s, as quoted in Chang and Saussy (2008, p. 728). Unless otherwise noted, all other translations are my own.
Modern day Hangzhou.
It should be said that sinologists in the West have recently questioned Zhu Shuzhen’s historicity. In this paper, I am not concerned with the veracity of Zhu Shuzhen’s historicity, only Wei Duanli’s preface. Egan (2013), following Idema and Grant (2004), argued that “it is likely that most if not all of the poems attributed to Zhu Shuzhen were written by men” (35).
Hades equivalent.
The jinshi was the highest attainable rank in scholar-officialdom. Beginning in the Song dynasty, the jinshi title was granted only after a candidate sat for and successfully passed the palace level examination, presided over by the emperor.
We know little about the Lady Huaren of Shu (Huarui furen 花蕊夫人). The common conception is that she was the highest-ranking imperial concubine (guifei 貴妃) to Meng Chang 孟昶 (r. 934–965), the Prince of Shu during the Later Shu. Li Qingzhao 李清照 (1084–ca. 1155) is generally regarded as the greatest woman poet in Chinese history. For more on Li Qingzhao, see Egan (2013).
For more on the role of courtesans in the oral transmission of ci poetry in the Song dynasty, see Bossler (2013).
I am grateful to Anna Shields for informing my understanding of this reference.
Kong writes: “ The two lines above are all remonstrating the transgression of the concubine. Thus the poet uses them to think of the ritual systems of the ancients. The systems gave order to the high and low, thereby preventing the transgressions of a concubine, and so she thinks of them.” 以上二句皆責妾之上僭, 故以為思古之聖人制禮者. 使貴賤有序, 則妾不得上僭,故思之.
See Foucault (1972; 2010, p. 24): “In fact, if one speaks, so undiscriminately and unreflectingly of an author’s oeuvre, it is because one imagines it to be defined by a certain expressive function. One is admitting that there must be a level (as deep as is necessary to imagine it) at which the oeuvre emerges, in all its fragments, even the smallest, most inessential ones, as the expression of the thought, the experience, the imagination, or the unconscious of the author, or, indeed, of the historical determinations that operated upon him. But it is at once apparent that such a unity, far from being given immediately, is the result of an operation; that this operation is interpretive (since it deciphers, in the text, the transcription of something that it both conceals and manifests); and that the operation that determines the opus, in its unity, and consequently the oeuvre itself, will not be the same in the case of the author of Le Théâtre et son Double (Artaud) and the author of the Tractatus (Wittgenstein), and therefore when one speaks of an oeuvre in each case one is using the word in a different sense. The oeuvre can be regarded neither as an immediate unity, nor as a certain unity, nor as a homogenous unity.”
The Book of Jin is a history of the Jin dynasty (265–420 CE), compiled in 648 CE by Fang Xuanling under Emperor Taizong of the early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). See Xuanling et al. (1999).
As evidenced by the dissemination of Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, which was heavily influenced by Sima Guang. For more on the Family Rituals, see Ebrey (1991).
Ko notes that the earliest extant reference to footbinding appears in a notation by the Southern Song scholar Zhang Bangji, who completed his book sometime after 1148 and claims that “[w]omen’s footbinding [chanzu] began in the recent times; it was not mentioned in any books from the previous eras” (111). Note that Ko does not argue for “repression”; her book, on the contrary, argues for the agency women found in footbinding. For more of Ko’s scholarship on footbinding, see Ko (1997, pp. 8–27).
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Van Bibber-Orr, E. Bodies of work: song dynasty prefaces to women’s poetry as gender discourse. Int. Commun. Chin. Cult 5, 197–212 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-017-0110-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-017-0110-5