Divine, Demonic, and Disordered: Women Without Men in Song Dynasty China - Brossura

Cheng, Hsiao-wen

 
9780295748320: Divine, Demonic, and Disordered: Women Without Men in Song Dynasty China
Brossura
ISBN 10: 029574832X ISBN 13: 9780295748320
Casa editrice: Univ of Washington Pr, 2021

Sinossi

Female chastity stirs trouble in medieval China

A variety of Chinese writings from the Song period (960–1279)—medical texts, religious treatises, fiction, and anecdotes—depict women who were considered peculiar because their sexual bodies did not belong to men. These were women who refused to marry, were considered unmarriageable, or were married but denied their husbands sexual access, thereby removing themselves from social constructs of female sexuality defined in relation to men. As elite male authors attempted to make sense of these women whose sexual bodies were unavailable to them, they were forced to contemplate the purpose of women’s bodies and lives apart from wifehood and motherhood. This raised troubling new questions about normalcy, desire, sexuality, and identity.

In Divine, Demonic, and Disordered, Hsiao-wen Cheng considers accounts of “manless women,” many of which depict women who suffered from “enchantment disorder” or who engaged in “intercourse with ghosts”—conditions with specific symptoms and behavioral patterns. Cheng questions conventional binary gender analyses and shifts attention away from women’s reproductive bodies and familial roles. Her innovative study offers historians of China and readers interested in women, gender, sexuality, medicine, and religion a fresh look at the unstable meanings attached to women’s behaviors and lives even in a time of codified patriarchy.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Hsiao-wen Cheng is associate professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Editore
Univ of Washington Pr
Data di pubblicazione
2021
Lingua
Inglese
ISBN 10 
029574832X
ISBN 13 
9780295748320
Rilegatura
Copertina flessibile
Numero di pagine
233
Contatto del produttore
non disponibile
Persona responsabile
non disponibile

Altre edizioni note dello stesso titolo

9780295748313: Divine, Demonic, and Disordered: Women Without Men in Song Dynasty China

Edizione in evidenza

ISBN 10:  0295748311 ISBN 13:  9780295748313
Casa editrice: Univ of Washington Pr, 2021
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