Abstract A little-studied aspect of the Monkey character 孫悟空 (Sun Wukong) in Wu Cheng'en's 吳承恩 Xiyou ji 西遊記 (Journey to the West) is his identity in terms of category of being, that is, how he fits into and rebels against the cosmic system of the ranking and classifying of beings that governs the novel. He is a human-like monkey, who is also an aspiring immortal, who was once a miscreant demon, who moreover never completely sheds his demon-like behavior. Journey to the West pays particular attention to the taxonomy of beings, which therefore needs a more detailed examination than has appeared so far, including a look at the lists of categories that Journey to the West applies. A deep sense of category envy and species rivalry courses through the novel, which underlies both the conflicts that Monkey initiates and the ones he meets head on. Two types of being, immortal (xian 仙) and demon (yao 妖), are in special need of unfolding. Originating in ancient times, they remain as expansive and malleable as ever in Journey to the West, in which Monkey alternates between the two even after his subjugation.

Abstract Lovesickness (xiangsi bing), a disease of qing (sentiment, passion, feeling, desire, and love), emerged as a literary topos in China's medieval lyrical tradition and was developed through late imperial drama and fiction. This article examines narratives of lovesickness in popular literature—both fiction and drama—from the Song (960–1279) to the Qing (1644–1912), including some texts rarely discussed in English scholarship from the perspective of love writing. With thorough documentation, we present two classic plot patterns of the literary malady: one involving mutual affection of separated lovers, the other the one-sided passion, whether of unrequited (usually male) love or of one part of a couple longing for reunion. We argue that the notorious lovelorn figures in late Ming (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) legal cases and Qing scholar-beauty xiaoshuo novels made lovesickness a target for criticism by literati and prompted reflection and revision of traditional narratives. With the modernization and westernization of Chinese literature, this classical literary malady was finally “cured.” The disappearance of lovesickness reflects the gradual replacement of classical ways of thinking with a modern cognitive style and, simultaneously, the transition of Chinese literature from classical to modern.

Abstract The loyalist painter Gong Kai (1222–1307) utilized the historical literary trope of the ji 驥 horse, the fine steed capable of covering one thousand li in a day, as an essential part of his artistic rhetoric in response to the violent Song-Yuan dynastic turn. Drawing literary forebears of Gong's equine art into the field of investigation reveals the mechanics of his utilization of the equine trope and his stance within the broad spectrum of Song loyalism. Standing against passive sympathizers of the loyalist cause, Gong embraced the poetics of Daoxue (Learning of the Way) to uphold moral rigor and masculine heroics, couched metaphorically in the suffering ji horse, which was at once physiognomically ideal and metaphysically meaningful. The polysemy and ambiguity of Gong's art invited his colleagues to interiorize equine imagery, thus helping reconstitute an ideal moral image of themselves. Gong's equine art brought forth interactive responses from its viewers and thus served as an improvised memorial to Song loyalists, both living and deceased.

Abstract Translating an ancient work entails not only rewriting a work in a new language but also reorienting it for a contemporary audience. The Shanhai jing 山海經 is a particularly interesting case because of the rich paratextual tradition associated with it, including both commentary and illustrations; at the same time, its fantastical content poses special challenges to translators. Topics of particular concern in this review are the use of paratextual elements, excerpting, and titles to reshape and present the text, and the ways in which various translators have used (or eschewed) transliteration and other strategies to convey the strangeness of the imaginary places and fantastical beings of the Shanhai jing. This essay engages in a retrospective review of four Anglophone translations of the Shanhai jing and also reviews two recent publications, a modern Chinese rendition of the Shanhai jing and a translation of this work.

Abstract “A Piercing Glance Elevates the Mind” is a philosophical proposition offered by Zhou Yong (?–493) in his debate with Zhang Rong (444–497) over the similarities and differences between Daoism and Buddhism. The appearance of this previously unknown proposition shows that as early as the Liu-Song dynasty (420–479) writers already went beyond the limitations of the native Chinese conception of “image” (xiang) and consciously applied Buddhist concepts to come to new understandings of the objects, methods, and effects of the visual sense and to probe their transcendental religious significance. Utilizing this proposition as a framework of analysis, this article rereads Zong Bing's (375–443) “Preface to the Painting of Landscape” in terms of the visual sense, to show how the terms, concepts, propositions, and discourse of the text's five sections form a logically coherent, fully systematic Buddhist exposition on painting. Support for the validity of Buddhist interpretations of all its terms and concepts is provided by intertextual readings of Zong Bing's “Elucidating Buddhism” and the poetry and prose by the Buddhist monks of Mt. Lu. We also demonstrate how Zong's consistently Buddhist theory of painting served as a firm foundation over which the Tang poet Wang Changling (698–757) built his Buddhist theory of the world of physical objects (wujing shuo).

Abstract A vast array of “vernacular” novels from late imperial and modern China feature well-edited official documents such as decrees, edicts, and memorials. The present study argues that these long-overlooked official documents offer unique access to creative political ideas that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. Using Xiyou ji 西遊記 (The Journey to the West) as a case study, this article initiates a critical dialogue between histories of documents, print culture, knowledge dissemination, vernacular novels, and political thought. The study begins with an exposition of the Ming regulations governing the formatting and representation of official documents. Tracing how the civil service examinations familiarized the reading public with documentary formatting, it then details how anonymous producers of various editions of the novel problematized the emperor's two bodies on documentary margins. It concludes by providing examples from Manchu manuscripts and Lu Xun's novels, suggesting that the methods explored here may be applied to further studies beyond Sinitic texts and the late imperial period.

Abstract Generally disfavored from a modern aesthetic perspective, Emperor Qianlong's poetry was systematically aggrandized in the eighteenth century. Through commentaries on his own work, Qianlong managed to amplify his voice, especially as he adopted textual and evidential research to establish authority over the literary field. Copies of his poems were creatively produced and circulated through various official channels to reach the largest audience. During his reign, Qianlong's writings were elevated to a high position by himself and his officials. However, this elevation was not reflected in the compilation of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries because the emperor was more concerned about protecting his impartial image as a Han Chinese cultural arbiter.

Abstract This article investigates how sons in the scholar-literati class in late imperial China promoted their mothers as Confucian exemplars. From the position and perspectives of a son, what were the strategies of promotion, and how might these strategies be related to the different social roles Confucian literati were expected to play? Through an examination of sons' written tributes to their mothers in a variety of biographical and commemorative genres, this article argues that these writings show an increasing enthusiasm to promote mothers as Confucian exemplars during this historical period, and that this phenomenon was related to these writers' endeavors to promote themselves as members of the Confucian cultural elite and to raise their own social profiles. Some of these writings also expose sons' potential conflicting obligations in the context of polygamy, in which the mother's status as wife or concubine of the father could complicate the son's commemoration and raise questions about the proper ways in which the son could show respect to his different mothers (whether formal mother or concubine mother), especially when his own birth mother happened to be his father's concubine.

Abstract Recent studies of Chinese history and literature have revealed the important role of violence—actual and representational—in constructing gendered subjectivities in late imperial China. This article investigates the relationship between violence and female agency through a case study of literary representations of a concubine who was cannibalized during the defense of Suiyang amid the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) in the Tang dynasty. As a result of that event, the ethically questionable act of cannibalism engendered an assortment of writings down through late imperial China. Although historical writings before the Ming dynasty frequently praise the concubine's husband for sacrificing her, a series of dramatic works starting in the Ming feature the concubine character in contention with her husband. This paper parses those materials to reveal vastly different characterizations of the cannibalized woman—as a loyal concubine, a female knight-errant, an independent state subject, and a maternal deity. We suggest that authorship, generic traditions, family-state dynamics, ethnic relations, and religions together influenced the representations of the concubine. In particular, moving further away from the literati writing tradition, literature and performance derived from the story ascribed increasingly potent agency to the concubine character in late imperial China.

Abstract This article focuses on Zaisheng yuan as an intertextual work of creative fiction that draws from male-authored xiaoshuo fiction as well as earlier literary tanci novels. This case study discusses Zaisheng yuan as a key text in an affective archive of narrative works written by women that provides insights into how elite women mentally negotiated the social and ideological expectations that informed their lives. In addition to looking at how women authors rewrote the conventions associated with scholar-beauty romances, the chastity cult, and the gendered symbols associated with proper order, this article discusses tanci novels as a unique outlet for women's explorations of autonomous will (zhi 志) and imaginings of emotional justice.