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Emotion and Female Authority: A Comparison of Chinese and English Fiction in the Eighteenth Century

  • Wen Jin

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.

  • Keywords:
  • England; China; Eighteenth Century; Fiction,
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Wen Jin

East China Normal University, China - ORCID: 0000-0001-5569-1791

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  3. Carrai, Maria Adele. 2019. “Secularizing a Sacred Empire.” In Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840, edited by Maria Adele Carrai, 47-81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108564861.003 (last accessed 08/01/2023). DOI: 10.1017/9781108564861.003
  4. Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. 1998. “Cross-dressing and the Novel: Women Warriors and Domestic Femininity.” Eighteenth-century Fiction 10, 2: 171-202. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecf.1998.0007 (last accessed 08/01/2023). DOI: 10.1353/ecf.1998.0007
  5. Doody, Margaret Anne. 1980. “George Eliot and the Eighteenth-Century Novel.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35, 3: 260-91. https://doi.org/10.2307/3044863 (last accessed 08/01/2023). DOI: 10.2307/3044863
  6. Gray, Catherine. 2007. Women Writers and Public Debate in 17th-century Britain. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
  7. Hau Kiou Choaan: or The Pleasing History. 1761. Translated by Thomas Percy. 4 vols. London: printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall.
  8. Jin, Wen. 2020. “Emotion and Female Authority: Cross-Dressing Women in Early Modern English and Chinese Fiction.” Comparative Literature Studies 57, 3: 509-519. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.57.3.0509 (last accessed 08/01/2023). DOI: 10.5325/complitstudies.57.3.0509
  9. Li, Wai-yee. 2014. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
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  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Pages: 61-70
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Emotion and Female Authority: A Comparison of Chinese and English Fiction in the Eighteenth Century

Authors

Wen Jin

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0242-8.06

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

East and West Entangled (17th-21st Centuries)

Editors

Rolando Minuti, Giovanni Tarantino

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

228

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

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

Series Title

Connessioni. Studies in Transcultural History

Series ISSN

2975-0393

Series E-ISSN

2975-0261

149

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