ABSTRACT
This book has endeavoured to reconstruct perceptions of literary women in early modern China by analysing the works of both observers and women writers. It offers a new synthesis of such perceptions drawn from literary and non-literary source materials — including classical-medium poetry, vernacular fiction, letters, prefaces, colophons, commentaries, paintings, inscriptions on paintings, and historical source materials such as works of both official and private historiography and magistrates' handbooks. The analysis of fictional narratives alongside classical literary compositions and paintings provides insights into the unofficial and private lives of men and women in ways that other sources rarely do, opening new windows onto perceptions of the world and the landscape of emotions in traditional China.
