Dame Wang's Dumplings: Mediating the Obscene in Manchu Translations of Erotic Literature at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century.
This article examines the surprising attention to taboo works of Chinese erotic literature within the corpus of early Manchu literary translations, focusing on the Manchu interpretations of Jinpingmei (The plum in the golden vase), Xixiang ji (The story of the western wing), and Rouputuan (The carna...
| Published in: | NAN NU -- Men, Women & Gender in Early & Imperial China Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 263 - 296 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Brill Academic Publishers
2022
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=160203584&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 160203584 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13876805 C4B jtl: NAN NU -- Men, Women & Gender in Early & Imperial China issn: 13876805 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: 2022 vid: 24 iid: 2 pid: 639 pub: Brill Academic Publishers artinfo: ui: 160203584 10.1163/15685268-02410048 ppf: 263 ppct: 33 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.6MB tig: atl: Dame Wang's Dumplings: Mediating the Obscene in Manchu Translations of Erotic Literature at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century. aug: au: Vedal, Nathan affil: University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada su: Erotic literature Literature translations Libraries & publishers Political persecution Hypersexuality sug: subj: Erotic literature Literature translations Libraries & publishers Political persecution Hypersexuality keyword: early Qing book culture erotic literature Manchu translation obscenity taboos ab: This article examines the surprising attention to taboo works of Chinese erotic literature within the corpus of early Manchu literary translations, focusing on the Manchu interpretations of Jinpingmei (The plum in the golden vase), Xixiang ji (The story of the western wing), and Rouputuan (The carnal prayer mat). The Qing court is well known to have sponsored translations of core works of the Chinese classical and historical tradition, while simultaneously banning texts perceived as heterodox, lascivious, or politically sensitive. A lively engagement among Manchu commercial publishers with the literary tradition, including vernacular novels and plays, highlights the broader reading habits of the early Qing Manchu reader in practice. In mediating erotic material for this new audience, translators employed a variety of interpretive choices, ranging from expurgation to the opposite extreme of hyper-sexualization. This study situates these translation practices within the broader Manchu justifications of reading this material, shifting our attention from the conventional representation of Manchu literary repression. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of NAN NU -- Men, Women & Gender in Early & Imperial China is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: NAN NU -- Men, Women & Gender in Early & Imperial China holder: Brill Academic Publishers dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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