A01=Ronald C. Egan
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Ronald C. Egan
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
Category=DSC
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780674726697
- Weight: 703g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Feb 2014
- Publisher: Harvard University, Asia Center
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Widely considered the preeminent Chinese woman poet, Li Qingzhao (1084–1150s) occupies a crucial place in China’s literary and cultural history. She stands out as the great exception to the rule that the first-rank poets in premodern China were male. But at what price to our understanding of her as a writer does this distinction come? The Burden of Female Talent challenges conventional modes of thinking about Li Qingzhao as a devoted but often lonely wife and, later, a forlorn widow. By examining manipulations of her image by the critical tradition in later imperial times and into the twentieth century, Ronald C. Egan brings to light the ways in which critics sought to accommodate her to cultural norms, molding her “talent” to make it compatible with ideals of womanly conduct and identity. Contested images of Li, including a heated controversy concerning her remarriage and its implications for her “devotion” to her first husband, reveal the difficulty literary culture has had in coping with this woman of extraordinary conduct and ability. The study ends with a reappraisal of Li’s poetry, freed from the autobiographical and reductive readings that were traditionally imposed on it and which remain standard even today.
Ronald Egan is the Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D. Professor of Sinology at Stanford University.
