Competitive Discourse (Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and the Meanings Generated in Ming-Qing Fiction)

Author: (American) Amy Lowell, translated by Luo Lin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book analyzes five Chinese novels from the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries, depicting the ideological and aesthetic significance embedded in the handling of social gender in Ming and Qing Dynasty fiction. It points out that a gender poetics based on the Yin-Yang and Bagua system is a fundamental structural element in many Ming and Qing novels. The author treats gender as an analytical category, overlooked by traditional critics, and argues that gender terminology originates from the meta-narrative of orthodox discourse's Yin-Yang symbolism. The book is divided into two parts: Part one elaborates on the "gender poetics system" of "orthodoxy" and "authenticity" in Ming and Qing fiction, while the second part interprets five novels: A Dream of Red Mansions, Dream of the Red Chamber, Wild Man's Outburst, and Children of Heroism. The author particularly analyzes how the gender patterns based on Yin-Yang symbolism grant these novels structural coherence. An insightful aspect of the book is that the author does not treat orthodoxy and authenticity as a categorical framework but as a processual description.