"Recluses in the arms of women" : the emergent non-official literati and their discourse in the late Ming -- "Phantom clouds and rain": Wang Cihui's sensualist poetry as an alternative route to self-realization -- Sensualism or sensationalism? : the textual politics of poems on beautiful women -- "Food and sex are the principal desires" : the elevation of sensuality during the late Qing -- "One thousand beauties" and "five hundred poets" : making monumental sensualist anthologies -- "I love beautiful women as much as my country" : the political agenda of Fragrant and bedazzling magazine.
Summary:
""Fragrant and bedazzling" (xiangyan) is a Chinese phrase synonymous with sensual and bewitching feminine beauty and, in literature, eroticism. Sensual literature, even to many scholars today, is morally suspect. Situated in China's recent past from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century, this study has brought to light a literary tradition and underscored intellectual trends that have been neglected, marginalized, misunderstood, and even condemned. This book will be of value to scholars of literary and intellectual movements in late imperial and modern China, sexuality, gender, literary decadence, modernism, countercultures, and erotic literature"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.