Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction

by Maram Epstein

In the traditional Chinese symbolic vocabulary, the construction of gender was never far from debates about ritual propriety, desire, and even cosmic harmony. Competing Discourses maps the aesthetic and semantic meanings associated with gender in the Ming-Qing vernacular novel through close readings of five long narratives: Marriage Bonds to Awaken the World, Dream of the Red Chamber, A Country Codger's Words of Exposure, Flowers in the Mirror , and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674005120
• ISBN13: 9780674005129
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 353 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"