Negotiating masculinities in late imperial China

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Annotation "Why did traditional Chinese literati so often identify themselves with women in their writing? What can this tell us about how they viewed themselves as men and how they understood masculinity? How did their attitudes in turn shape the martial heroes and other masculine models they constructed? Martin Huang attempts to answer these questions in this valuable work on manhood in late imperial China. He focuses on the ambivalent and often paradoxical role played by women and the feminine in the intricate negotiating process of male gender identity in late imperial cultural discourses. On the one hand, women were shunned as a threat to manhood; on the other, they were celebrated as the natural exemplars of loyalty, an important Confucian virtue. Thus the image of the loyal minister was often problematized by the feminine implications of Confucian loyalty." "At the first book-length study of late imperial Chinese masculinities, this volume covers a wide range of primary texts, including Confucian classics, historical narratives, political treatises, poems, essays, dramas, fictional narratives, and conduct guides. It emphasizes the nuances and pluralistic nature of masculinities as they were being constantly contested and reinvented."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved  Read more...