Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation: From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

'This volume addresses cultural and literary transformation in the late Ming (1550–1644) and late Qing (1851–1911) eras. Although conventionally associated with a devastating sociopolitical crisis, each of these periods was also a time when Chinese culture was rejuvenated. Focusing on the twin themes of crisis and innovation, the seventeen chapters in this book aim to illuminate the late Ming and late Qing as eras of literary-cultural innovation during periods of imperial disintegration; to analyze linkages between the two periods and the radical heritage they bequeathed to the modern imagination; and to rethink the “premodernity” of the late Ming and late Qing in the context of the end of the age of modernism. The chapters touch on a remarkably wide spectrum of works, some never before discussed in English, such as poetry, drama, full-length novels, short stories, tanci narratives, newspaper articles, miscellanies, sketches, familiar essays, and public and private historical accounts. More important, they intersect on issues ranging from testimony about dynastic decline to the negotiation of authorial subjectivity, from the introduction of cultural technology to the renewal of literary convention.' Front Matter 1 Contents 5 Introduction 13 Part I 35 Texts, Tutors, and Fathers 37 The Making of the Everyday World 75 Women as Emblems of Dynastic Fall in Qing Literature 105 The Return of the Palace Lady 163 The Daughter's Vision of National Crisis 212 Part II 245 Ethics of Form 247 Jinghua yuan 276 Part III 307 The Coin of Gender in Pinhua baojian 309 The Fall of the God of Money 337 The Newspaper, zhiguai, and the Sorcery Epidemic of 1876 367 A New Mode of Literary Production in the Late Qing 400 The Narrator's Voice Before the "Fiction Revolution" 432 Part IV 461 Creating Subjectivity in Wu Jianren's The Sea of Regret 463 The Subject of Pain 490 Women's Poetic Witnessing 516 Conclusions 535 Second Haunting 561 Index 605 Harvard East Asia Center,Harvard East Asian Monographs 249 Focusing on themes of crisis and innovation, this book illuminates the late Ming and late Qing as eras of literary-cultural innovation during periods of imperial disintegration; analyzes links between the two periods and the radical heritage they bequeathed to the modern imagination; and rethinks the "premodernity" of the eras. 'Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation' addresses cultural and literary transformation in the late Ming (1550-1644) and late Qing (1851-1911) eras David Der-wei Wang And Shang Wei, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.