A Body of Her Own PU Songling's "Chivalrous Woman" and the Tradition of the Strange

Kate Boeyen

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Zhang, Jing

Keywords

Literature, Chinese, China Studies, Comparative Literature, PU Songling, Gender Studies, Chinese Literature

Area of Concentration

Chinese Language and Culture

Abstract

This thesis studies the Liaozhai Zhiyi, a seventeenth century collection of strange tales written by Pu Songling, the self-titled Historian of the Strange. The collection was written with the perspective of the thousand-year tradition of strange writing, and specifically contains two classical genres: fictionalized tales of the marvelous and historical accounts of anomalies. While the collection highlights the strange tradition's ambiguous place between history and fiction, in many of his tales, Pu Songling explores and plays with its conventional themes, motifs, and storylines. As exemplified in �A Chivalrous Woman,� Pu's innovative writing is particularly noteworthy for how the female characters of his tales complicate the often one-dimensional image of women in traditional literature, and underscores problematic constructions of gender in the tradition of the strange.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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