The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295748389 ISBN 13: 9780295748382

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2021

Synopsis

Astute inquiries into the world of China’s most unconventional early modern intellectual Iconoclastic scholar Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a central figure in the cultural world of the late Ming dynasty. His provocative and controversial words and actions shaped print culture, literary practice, attitudes toward gender, and perspectives on Buddhism and the afterlife. Although banned, his writings were never fully suppressed, because they tapped into issues of vital significance to generations of readers. His incisive remarks, along with the emotional intensity and rhetorical power with which he delivered them, made him an icon of his cultural moment and an emblem of early modern Chinese intellectual dissent. In this volume, leading China scholars demonstrate the interrelatedness of seemingly discrete aspects of Li Zhi’s thought and emphasize his far-reaching impact on his contemporaries and successors. In doing so, they challenge the myth that there was no tradition of dissidence in premodern China. The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

About this title

About the Authors

Rivi Handler-Spitz professor of Asian languages and cultures at Macalester College. She is the author of Symptoms of an Unruly Age: Li Zhi and Cultures of Early Modernity (University of Washington Press, 2017); coeditor of The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China (University of Washington Press, 2021); and cotranslator of A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep Hidden (Columbia University Press, 2016).

Pauline C. Lee is associate professor of Chinese religions and cultures at Saint Louis University. She is the author of Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire (SUNY Press, 2011); and coeditor and cotranslator of A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep [Hidden]: Selected Writings of Li Zhi (Columbia University Press, 2016).

Haun Saussy is professor of comparative literature, social thought, and East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2001) and The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford University Press, 1993); editor of Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); and coeditor of Sinographies: Writing China (University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295748389
• ISBN 13: 9780295748382
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Handler-Spitz Rivi, Lee Pauline C., Saussy Haun