Writing Self and Writing Lives: Shen Shanbao's (1808-1862) Gendered Auto/Biographical Practices

Abstract

AbstractThis study examines the dual strategies of auto/biographical production in the immensely rich corpus of writings by the nineteenth-century woman literata Shen Shanbao recently rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China. The focus of the analysis is on the conditions of production of self-writing, including the processes of textual organization, genre manipulation, and self-editing. The study demonstrates an exemplary instance of gendered intervention in late imperial China that attempts to change the terms of writing practices and generic conventions to accommodate the desire to write the gendered self and gendered subjects into history.