Wai-Yee Li

Biographic Data

ID3831813
NAMEWai-Yee Li
GIVEN NAMESWai-Yee
FAMILY NAMELi
SIGNATURELI W
AFFILIATIONSHarvard University Press
ORCID0000-0002-0608-9857
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS32
TOTAL CITATIONS12
WORKS AS AUTHOR27
WORKS AS EDITOR5
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1989
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX2

  • The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature

    Shangren Kong, Wai-Yee Li et al.BOOKPeach Blossom Fan2025

  • The Promise and Peril of Things

    Wai-Yee LiBOOKThe Promise and Peril of Things2022

    Wai-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.

  • Keywords in Chinese Culture

    Wai-Yee Li, Yuri PinesEDITORBOOKKeywords in Chinese Culture2020

  • Introduction

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEJournal of Chinese Literature and…2020

    Who are "cultural others"? While the question often has broad ethnic reverberations, the articles in this special issue deal with cultural difference from various perspectives. In "Closer to Home, " Ronald Egan shows us how the scholar-official Hong Mai's (1123-1202) stories about merchants, con artists, or singing girls amount to a conscious effort to explore terrains beyond "this culture of ours. " The negotiation of social and political bounda…

  • Cultural Identity and Cultural Difference in Zuozhuan

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEJournal of Chinese Literature and…2020References: 2

    There is no fixed categorical term for barbarians in Chinese. Specific groups are identified as “aliens” or “cultural others” through words like Man 蠻, Yi 夷, Rong 戎, and Di 狄, but all four terms can be specific or categorical. It is often said that the us-versus-them formula in Zuozhuan (and early Chinese texts in general) is cultural rather than ethnic, but precise definitions of cultural difference can be elusive. This article begins with a dis…

  • Keywords in Chinese Culture

    Wai-Yee Li, Yuri PinesEDITORBOOKKeywords in Chinese Culture2019

  • The China Questions

    William P Alford, Peter Kees Bol et al.BOOKChina Questions2018

  • The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature

    Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li et al.EDITORBOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Classical…2017

    This handbook of Classical Chinese literature from 1000 bce through 900 ce aims to provide a solid introduction to the field, inspire scholars in Chinese Studies to explore innovative conceptual frameworks and pedagogical approaches in the studying and teaching of classical Chinese literature, and facilitate a comparative dialogue with scholars of premodern East Asia and other classical and medieval literary traditions around the world. The handb…

  • The Oxford handbook of classical Chinese literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)

    Wiebke Denecke, Xiaofei Tian et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Classical…2017

  • The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy

    Hans Van Ess, Stephen Durrant et al.BOOKLetter to Ren an and Sima Qian's…2016

    Sima Qian (first century BCE), the author of Record of the Historian (Shiji), is China’s earliest and best-known historian, and his “Letter to Ren An” is the most famous letter in Chinese history. In the letter, Sima Qian explains his decision to finish his life’s work, the first comprehensive history of China, instead of honorably committing suicide following his castration for “deceiving the emperor.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries…

  • The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama

    Wei Shang, C T Hsia et al.EDITORBOOKThe Columbia Anthology of Yuan…2014

    This anthology features translations of ten seminal plays written during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), a period considered the golden age of Chinese theater. By turns lyrical and earthy, sentimental and ironic, Yuan drama spans a broad emotional, linguistic, and stylistic range. Combining sung arias with declaimed verses and doggerels, dialogues and mime, and jokes and acrobatic feats, Yuan drama formed a vital part of China's culture of performa…

  • Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature

    Open AccessWai-Yee Li, Li Wai-yee et al.BOOKWomen and National Trauma in Late…2014

    The Ming Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China was an epochal event that reverberated in Qing writings and beyond; political disorder was bound up with vibrant literary and cultural production. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature focuses on the discursive and imaginative space commanded by women. Encompassing writings by women and by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity, as well a…

  • Poetry and Diplomacy in the Zuozhuan

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEJournal of Chinese Literature and…2014References: 4

    Zuozhuan (ca. fourth century BC) records many instances of statesmen who recite or chant odes ( fushi), mostly from the extant Shijing, to convey their political vision, policy recommendation, or diplomatic finesse. This essay examines the implications of this confluence of poetry and diplomacy. Scholars have focused on fushi as seamless political communication, the celebration of a common cultural heritage, and the formalization of ritual judgme…

  • The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature

    Open AccessT Lu, Wai-Yee Li et al.BOOKThe Cambridge history of Chinese…2010

    Book summary page views Book summary page views help Close Book summary page views help Book summary views reflect the number of visits to the book and chapter landing pages. Total views: 0 * Loading metrics

  • The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography

    Open AccessWai-Yee LiBOOKThe Readability of the Past in…2007

  • Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature

    Open AccessWilt L Idema, Wilt Idema et al.EDITORBOOKTrauma and Transcendence in Early…2006

  • Languages of Love and Parameters of Culture in Peony Pavilion and The Story of the Stone

    Wai-Yee Li, Waiyee LiCHAPTERLove and Emotions in Traditional…2004

  • The Limits of Historiography

    Christina Kraus, David S Levene et al.BOOKThe Limits of Historiography1999

    This volume explores the intersection between historiography and related genres in antiquity. Papers cover the geographical range from China through the near east to the classical period in the Mediterranean. Topics addressed include the place in ancient Chinese historiography of philosophical argument; the nature and kind of historical text in the Hittite, Babylonian, Persian and biblical periods, including (for the first time) a full transliter…

  • Dreams of Interpretation in Early Chinese Historical and Philosophical Writings

    Wai-Yee LiCHAPTERDream cultures1999

    In the Zuo zhuan1 (Zuo Commentary Tradition, ca. fifth to fourth centuries B.c.?), the earliest narrative history in China, the representation of dreams emerges as one way to structure events and to impose order on human experience. Dreams establish causality-on the symbolic level, as a sign that is fulfilled, unravelled, or betrayed; on the literal level, as advice or warning heeded or defied. The representation of dreams is motivated by the nee…

  • Heroic Transformations

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEHarvard Journal of Asiatic Studies1999Cited by: 3

    Dans le contexte du debut de la dynastie Qing, les critiques de la sensibilite Ming, la reevalutaion du domaine romantique et esthetique ainsi que les representations litteraires des femmes heroiques sont presentes chez les auteurs de litterature tout autant que l'apologie, la nostalgie, les regrets et le jugement historique, inseparables de la memoire de la transition dynastique Ming traumatique. C'est ce spectre d'attitudes culturelles exprimee…

  • Paradoxes of Traditional Chinese Literature

    Wai-Yee Li, Eva Hung et al.ARTICLEChinese Literature Essays…1997

  • The Late Ming Courtesan

    Wai-Yee LiCHAPTERWriting Women in Late Imperial…1997

  • The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLET oung Pao1995

    In the Record of Famous Through the Ages (Li-tai ming hua chi tet*e [847], hereafter LTMHC), the art historian and painter ChangYen-yuan W§2 (ca. 815-after 875) justifies his passion for collecting and restoring paintings: Yet if I dc) not do that which is useless, how can I take pleasure in this life which does have a limit?''1 phrase wu-i Q (useless, profitless) rings with echoes of the praise of non-action (wu-wei $$EA) and the uses of ( wuyun…

  • The Rheotoric of Spontaneity in Late-Ming Literature

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEMing Studies1995

    (1995). The Rheotoric of Spontaneity in Late-Ming Literature. Ming Studies: Vol. 1995, No. 1, pp. 32-52

  • The Representation of History in the Peach Blossom Fan

    Wai-Yee LiARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…1995

    Etude des considerations esthetiques et des reflexions philosophiques sur l'approche de l'histoire en general et de la chute de la dynastie des Ming en particulier, telles qu'elles appparaissent dans L'eventail en fleurs de pecher de K'ung Shang-jen (1648-1718), piece de theâtre unique en son genre, puisqu'elle est la seule du theâtre chinois ancien a traiter de faits historiques reels et de leur interpretation