Fables for the Patriarchs: Gender Politics in Tang DiscourseExploring issues of gender in Tang-dynasty literature and culture, Jowen R.Tung draws on a comprehensive range of historical, literary, and social texts to unravel the complex mechanisms of one of the world's oldest patriarchal systems. The author reveals the profound damage inflicted by the masculine state ideology on its subjects by illuminating the problematics of male sexuality under the hovering phallus of the emperor, the construct of male and female psyches within the pseudo-monogamous household, the logic of the collective unconscious in the literati's writings, and a female tradition desperately trapped inside the law of the father. Tung poses urgent questions about a civilization that builds itself upon the sacrifice of human lives and arrives at a rather dark interpretation of the Tang_for many the epitome of the Chinese empire. As such, the book moves beyond the confines of gender studies to propose a heightened agenda for feminist studies, which the author argues now stand at a critical conjecture. |
Contents
The Tang Paradoxes | 1 |
The Dragons Ministers | 25 |
Fate of the Imperial Daughters | 45 |
Copyright | |
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amorous androgyny beauty biographies boudoir lament Buddhist chastity China Chinese Chu Suiliang clans codes complex concubines Confucian consciousness consorts court courtesans courtiers cultural daughters death discourse dreams Dunhuang elite emotional empire entertainers erotic ethical exiled exposed expression female desires female jealousy feminine fox-woman Gaozong gaze gender goddess husband ideologies imperial late Tang Li Shangyin Li's literati Liu Zongyuan lover lyrical male desires marriage masculine metaphor ministers monarch moon moral mourning Muzong obsession official palace women patriarchal poems poetic poetry poets political allegory presents princesses psychological Qu Yuan role scholars sense sensual sexual Shangyin Six Dynasties social Song status supernatural Taizong talent Tang History Tang narrative Tang women Taoist TDCS tion tradition transformed unconscious virtue voice Wang Wei Zheng Wen Tingyun wife wives woman emperor words writings Wu Zhao Wu's Xuanzong Xue Tao Xue's Yu Xuanji Yu's Yuan Zetian Zhang Zheng ZZTJ