Patrimonial Bonds
Daughters, Fathers, and Power in Tianyuhua
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15028042 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maram Epstein (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-33 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Late imperial China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0884-3236 • E-ISSN: 1086-3257 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/late.2011.0009 |
| OpenAlex | W2016188647 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
Patrimonial Bonds: Daughters, Fathers, and Power in Tianyuhua1 Maram Epstein (bio) Based on its interest in filial piety and lack of mention of the Manchu invasion, I argue that the prosimetric tanci Tianyuhua (The Heavens Rain Flowers) was written closer to the earliest publication date of 1804 than the 1651 date given in the preface. Instead of reading the text as a work of Ming loyalism, I read it as a female-authored rewriting of the conventions of scholar-beauty novels and commentary on the sexual institutions that defined the lives of elite women: patrilocal marriage, the structural tension between a woman’s loyalty to her natal family and husband, cloistering, and chastity. Among the most promising textual sources for uncovering the voices and perspectives of cloistered guixiu women (women of morally proper families) in late imperial China are literary tanci. Literary tanci are long prosimetric narratives that are the equal of xiaoshuo fiction in terms of compositional control and narrative complexity. The writers of China’s modern literary histories, however, relegated tanci to a secondary status. This may have been due to the genre’s association with women both as writers and as the primary audience. It could also be that its reliance on verse as the predominant narrative vehicle disqualified tanci from being recognized as the equivalent of the Euro-American novel in evolutionary histories that carved out a place for Chinese literature in global histories of culture by showing how Chinese writing too progressed from epic to lyric to drama to prose. Unlike xiaoshuo novels that were shedding verse, a vestige of Chinese literature’s oral past, tanci retained its metric form of seven- and ten-character lines. Despite this difference in form, literary tanci share many thematic and compositional features with xiaoshuo novels. As stated in prefaces and the occasional comment, Qing publishers and editors saw certain tanci as the equivalent of xiaoshuo fiction in terms of popularity and literary quality. [End Page 1] The following essay follows these early readers and editors in reading tanci within the literary context of male-authored xiaoshuo. The goal of my close reading of the tanci Tianyuhua (The Heavens Rain Flowers) is to see how the female author of this tanci adapted various compositional techniques, motifs, and themes common in xiaoshuo fiction to express what I claim is a female perspective on the sexual politics of her day. As shall be discussed below, although Tianyuhua gives priority to domestic themes, it has most commonly been read for its perspective on the Ming-Qing transition. Very broadly, it follows the public and private struggles in the lives of the idealized male protagonist Zuo Weiming and his talented daughter Zuo Yizhen. Interwoven into the descriptions of the Zuo household are details of the political and military collapse of the late Ming. Before I turn in the main body of this article to the specific themes in the tanci that I argue reflect a woman’s perspective, this lengthy introduction will address the two interrelated textual issues of dating and authorship. The Ming-loyalist reading of Tianyuhua has been bolstered by the fact that the preface, by an otherwise unknown Tao Zhenhuai (“Chaste Yearning”), is dated 1651; that the idealized central male protagonist is named Zuo Weiming (“Preserving the Ming”); that the text accurately depicts the factional intrigues that plagued the late-Ming court; and that the narrative concludes with the collective suicide of five hundred members of five intermarried families at the fall of the Ming. This textual evidence was enough to ensure that the work was read first and foremost as the work of a Ming loyalist. This political reading of the text also helped support the claims, starting from the eighteenth century, that Tao Zhenhuai was likely a pseudonym chosen by a male writer, since there was a strong cultural association of knowledge about history and politics with male literati interests. This assumption of male authorship continued into the twentieth century After taking into account its political content and focus on a male, rather than a female, protagonist, the great modern scholar Zheng Zhenduo (1898–1958) concluded that Tianyuhua was unlikely to have been written by a woman
Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · China · Drama · Elite · Literature · Narrative · Piety · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |