Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatalein Early Chinese Historiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20237289 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hanmo Zhang (0000-0001-7689-5611, State University of New York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 249-294 |
| Publication date | 2013-08-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Asian Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1573-420X • E-ISSN: 1573-4218 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/15734218-12341317 |
| OpenAlex | W1949243857 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
In a number of well-framed speeches recorded in the Zuozhuan, women, especially beautiful women, are viewed as the femmes fatales, or women who cause calamities. Among these speeches is a rare record of a famous doctor's diagnosis of a Spring-and-Autumn-period hegemon's illness. How could illness be connected with the notion of the femme fatale? In examining the correlations between this Zuozhuan account and related information in some newly excavated manuscripts, I argue that as far as the medical approach is concerned, both the Zuozhuan and the excavated texts share a common cultural basis at least partly retained in the extant texts after a long course of oral and written transmission. Based on the similarities between those transmitted and newly excavated texts, the illness from which the local ruler suffered can be identified as a kind of sexual disease caused in the lord's bedchamber. This evidence, and the high ratio of sex-related illnesses reflected in the Western Han doctor Chunyu Yi's biographical account, further suggests that the Spring-and-Autumn-period hegemon's illness was not a single isolated case, but rather represented a broader common problem of the patriarch's sexual excess in early Chinese polygamous families. Some of the Zuozhuan accounts of ritual and medical principles are also closely related. This leads me to further suggest that the Zuozhuan historiographers, who knew well both medical knowledge and problems taking place in their contemporaries' bedchambers, chose to condemn the femmes fatales under an abstract principle, that of ritual propriety, as the solution to sex-related diseases in early Chinese polygamous families
Aesthetics · Art · Extant taxon · Genealogy · Hegemony · Historiography · Literature · Medical knowledge · Political science · Politics · Ruler · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts
Myth, Fantasy or Scholarship
The Contents and Terminology of the Mawangdui Texts on the Arts of the Bedchamber
The Culture of Sex in Ancient China
Flourishing Yin
ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese
Virtue and Talent
Les Traités De Shuihudi Et L'Hémérologie Chinoise a La Fin Des Royaumes-Combattants
The Status of Mothers in the Early Chinese Mourning System
Zhongguo Gudai de Yixue Yishi Yu Zhengzhi
The Construction of the "Traditional Chinese Woman" in the Western Academy
A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century B. C
In Search of Personal Welfare
A Patterned Past
Women in China. Current Directions in Historical Scholarship
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |