Banished immortal : searching for Shuangqing, china's peasant woman poet
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Banished immortal : searching for Shuangqing, china's peasant woman poet
The University of Michigan Press, 2002, c2001
- :pbk.
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
"First paperback edition 2002" -- T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-288) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In 1737, an obscure painter, poet, and scholar, Shi Zhenlin, published a dreamy rambling memoir in which he described a talented and persecuted peasant woman poet named Shuang-qing. Because of her exquisite beauty, people assumed she was a banished immortal, a divine being who had been expelled from Heaven for one incarnation in the human realm. Shi Zhenlin quoted many of Shuangqing's poems and song lyrics, and in the following two centuries, she became famous as China's only great peasant woman poet.
Using Shi Zhenlin's memoir as a window on Chinese literary culture in the eighteenth century, Paul S. Ropp traces the evolution of Shuangqing's place in Chinese culture from the eighteenth century to the present. By way of extensive translations and analysis of Shi Zhelin's memoir and of Shuangqing's poetry, Ropp demonstrates how changing interpretations of Shuangqing and her poetry reflect changing cultural concerns and preoccupations. In the nineteenth century, she was cited and praised to illustrate the accomplishments of women authors and the high cultural level of her region. In the early twentieth century, some Chinese scholars admired Shi Zhenlin's Shuangqing narrative for exemplifying modern romantic and aesthetic values, while others dismissed Shi as a fabricator whose peasant woman poet was no more than a fictional reflection of his own narcissism and self pity. Scholars in Mao Zedong's China hailed Shuangqing as a female peasant genius who triumphed against the gender and class persecution of a repressive feudal system.
Ropp also takes account of his own journey of discovery, exploring how one historian goes about reconstructing China's past and breathing life into it. Several chapters and many illustrations feature his 1997 investigative trip to Jintan and Danyang, the rural counties in Jiangsu Province where Shuangqing supposedly lived.
This highly personal account is designed to introduce a general audience to the pleasures, pitfalls, rigors, and surprises involved in the exploration of China's rich cultural heritage. Readers themselves will become full participants in this most intriguing search for China's peasant woman poet.
Paul S. Ropp is Professor of History, Clark University.
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