Reviews for Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction

The average rating for Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-22 00:00:00 Fredericka Cobey I should have loved this book, he's writing about the zhiguai and chunqi tales of the Tang dynasty which are what I was wanting to do my phd about.But I found I just disagreed with most of his conclusions. It seemed that he had a strong literature background as most of the stories he kept comparing with either Pu Songlind or Hongloumeng. Rather than the context and the traditions leading up to when they were written. I was disappointed that there was no textual context for the stories he was discussing. He would mention a story and say, this was written in the late Tang, but there was no discussion of the textual history. What version of the text he was consulting, when that version was written, in which collection it appeared or what changes it might have undergone. He talked a lot about the difference between folk stories and high literary traditions in the Tang. A lot of work has been done on later texts that shows that what have been perceived as "folk" texts are still works of the literarti culture, and I would expect this to be true of the older Tang texts as well. Unfortunately he doesn't discuss this at all. The rather odd conclusions he makes are things about how love in Chinese stories isn't as pure as in western stories as they don't often end in happy marriages but often there is separation and also a sexual element to the story. But despite this he tries and fits European ideas of folklore, such as the "swan maiden" into Chinese stories in a way I found quite awkward. He said he was ignoring one set of stories because they were hagiography and had a religious context, but then he went and looked at other stories that had Taoist elements and tried to interpret those without the religious elements which seemed to be missing the point. I was hoping for something as good as Campany's work on the earliest Zhiguai tales, but this wasn't nearly at that level of interpretation. I've read another book by this historian and enjoyed it but I found this one sorely lacking.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-09 00:00:00 Eugene Wilkerson This book was a phenomenal read. Very expansive and contextualised. A beautifully crafted collection of essays by some of the very best writers in the field. Probably one of the best pieces of work on this subject matter.