This essay considers how early modern Chinese romance novels conceive of female agency and how this conception was received by prominent cultural elites in eighteenth-century England. In his notes to Hau Kiou Choaan, the first English translation of a full-length Chinese novel, Thomas Percy referred to the novel’s heroine as a “masculine woman”, displaying a peculiar misreading of its trope of female cross-dressing. The essay argues that the increasing association of women with the private sphere in eighteenth-century English culture is a crucial context to consider when we study the initial spread of Chinese fiction in England.
East China Normal University, China - ORCID: 0000-0001-5569-1791
Titolo del capitolo
Emotion and Female Authority: A Comparison of Chinese and English Fiction in the Eighteenth Century
Autori
Wen Jin
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0242-8.06
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
East and West Entangled (17th-21st Centuries)
Curatori
Rolando Minuti, Giovanni Tarantino
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
228
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0242-8
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0241-1
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0242-8
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0243-5
Collana
Connessioni. Studies in Transcultural History
ISSN della collana
2975-0393
e-ISSN della collana
2975-0261