Research Catalog

Title

Personal matters : women's autobiographical practice in twentieth-century China / Lingzhen Wang.

Author

Wang, Lingzhen.

Publication

Standford : Stanford University Press, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 280 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to women's autobiographical writing in twentieth-century China. The author applies feminist insights to works by such well-known authors as Qiu Jin, Bing Xin, Ding Ling, and Wang Anyi and to works by other, lesser-known writers. Throughout, these writings are analyzed in relation to the discourses of modernity - nationalism, revolution, socialism, and market commodification - that have dominated modern China. The book emphasizes aspects of women's experience, especially their subjective, emotional, psychic, and bodily activities, that tend to be dismissed in mainstream discourses and orthodox studies of history and literature. The result is a new understanding of how women have negotiated their lives through autobiographical writing and struggled to carve out a place of their own in modern China. In turn, this study generates new insights into the gendered version of modern history, writing, and self."--Publisher's description.

Alternative Title

Women's autobiographical practice in twentieth-century China

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Autobiography > Women authors
• Chinese literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• Women and literature > China > History > 20th century
• 18.86 Chinese language and literature
• Chinese literature
• Women and literature
• Autobiografie
• Schriftstellerin
• Autobiografieën
• Vrouwelijke auteurs
• Geschichte 1900-2000
• China
• China

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-256) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Theorizing the personal in Modern Chinese Women's Autiobiographical Practice -- Woman, writer, martyr: Qiu Jin's Life and Autobiographical Work at the end of the Qing Dynasty -- Mother's Love: Representing the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Early Modern China -- Mother-Daughter Relationships in Revolutionary Literature -- A Chinese Gender Morality Tale: Politics, Personal Voice, and Public Space in the Early Post-Mao Era -- Consumption, Shame, and the Imaginary in Contemporary Autobiographical Practice -- Epilogue -- Index.

ISBN

• 080475005X
• 9780804750059

LCCN

2004006010

OCLC

• ocm56112005
• 56112005
• SCSB-1344385

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library