Causality and Containment in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Fiction |
|
| Author:
| McMahon, Keith |
| Series title: | T'oung Pao. Monographies Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-90-04-08545-9 |
| Publication Date: | Jun 1988 |
| Publisher: | BRILL
|
| Book Format: | Paperback |
| List Price: | USD $69.00 |
Book Description:
|
A number of features characterize late Ming vernacular fiction as part of the general cultural expansion of that period. These features centrally include the exposition of sexual transgression and the function of containment, by which is meant the ideology of the control of desires. The late Ming writers are studiously devoted to illustrating minute, obscene, or erotic details that belief the decorum of the orthodox surface. However, this subversiveness of detail decreases in intensity...
More DescriptionA number of features characterize late Ming vernacular fiction as part of the general cultural expansion of that period. These features centrally include the exposition of sexual transgression and the function of containment, by which is meant the ideology of the control of desires. The late Ming writers are studiously devoted to illustrating minute, obscene, or erotic details that belief the decorum of the orthodox surface. However, this subversiveness of detail decreases in intensity from the late Ming to the early Qing, when values of containment are reinvoked.Related topics are: the theme of causality and its role in the storys mapping of the logic of adultery; adultery as an emblem of the womans escape from containment and the use of the narrative topos of the gap in the wall as a locus of sexual transgression.