The Anatomy of Eroticism: Reimagining Sex and Sexuality in the Late Ming Novel Xiuta Yeshi

NAN Nü ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-329
Author(s):  
Ka Wong
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sexual Content ◽  
Material World ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Relationships ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Sex And Sexuality ◽  
New Interpretation

AbstractDue to its explicit and outrageous sexual content, Xiuta yeshi is often deemed an "obscene book" that lacks literary sophistication. Precisely because of its obscenity, however, the novel provides a unique perspective from which to study the discourse of sex and sexuality in the late Ming period. By examining Xiuta yeshi on its own terms as pornography, one can explore more fully the dynamics of gender, desire, and male-female relationships in this supposedly decadent era. In its construct of eroticism, the novel hinges as much on the detailed recounting of the material world and, in particular, a new interpretation of the human body, as on sex itself. Using foul language to exploit most of the modern pornographic tropes—from rape to orgy to both male and female homosexual acts—this late sixteenth-century work not only redefines a popular genre but also reveals the exhilarating, extravagant, and even grotesque aspects of a libertine culture captivated by and capitalizing on sex.

scholarly journals Military Service in Early Sixteenth-Century Lithuania: A New Interpretation and Its Implications

Slavic Review ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-256
Author(s):  
Karl von Loewe
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Structure And Dynamics ◽  
Compulsory Military Service ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Relationship

The existence of compulsory military service has become a major theme in recent attempts to explain the development of Lithuanian society and politics in the early sixteenth century. Much of the discussion has centered on the relationship between military service and feudalism. This article concentrates not on that question but on the nature of military service and the understanding it can provide of the structure and dynamics of the economy of Lithuania in the sixteenth century.

scholarly journals Social Factors Influence Behavior in the Novel Object Recognition Task in a Mouse Model of Down Syndrome

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesar Sierra ◽  
Ilario De Toma ◽  
Lorenzo Lo Cascio ◽  
Esteban Vegas ◽  
Mara Dierssen
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Object Recognition ◽  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Mouse Models ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Novel Object Recognition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wild Type ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Novel Object

The use of mouse models has revolutionized the field of Down syndrome (DS), increasing our knowledge about neuropathology and helping to propose new therapies for cognitive impairment. However, concerns about the reproducibility of results in mice and their translatability to humans have become a major issue, and controlling for moderators of behavior is essential. Social and environmental factors, the experience of the researcher, and the sex and strain of the animals can all have effects on behavior, and their impact on DS mouse models has not been explored. Here we analyzed the influence of a number of social and environmental factors, usually not taken into consideration, on the behavior of male and female wild-type and trisomic mice (the Ts65Dn model) in one of the most used tests for proving drug effects on memory, the novel object recognition (NOR) test. Using principal component analysis and correlation matrices, we show that the ratio of trisomic mice in the cage, the experience of the experimenter, and the timing of the test have a differential impact on male and female and on wild-type and trisomic behavior. We conclude that although the NOR test is quite robust and less susceptible to environmental influences than expected, to obtain useful results, the phenotype expression must be contrasted against the influences of social and environmental factors.

scholarly journals A MARXIST READING OF LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE (2017) BY CELESTE NG

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwi Mayang Sagita ◽  
Delvi Wahyuni
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Surrogate Mother ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Species Being

This thesis is an analysis of a novel written by Celeste Ng entitled Little Fires Everywhere (2017). This analysis looks at the commodification and alienation that is experienced by women who involved in surrogacy and adoption. This analysis employes Marxist literary theory to explain the phenomena in the novel. The analysis focuses on two issues of commodification and alienation that are proposed by Karl Marx as seen through two female protagonists which are Mia Warren and Bebe Chow. This analysis also depends a lot on the narrator to determine which parts of the novel are used as the data. The result of the study shows that Mia Warren experienced commodification of the human body and four kinds of alienation such as alienation from the product of labor, alienation from the act of production, alienation from the species being, and alienation from other people bacause she becomes a surrogate mother. The other protagonist, Bebe Chow, also experienced four kinds of alienation because her child is adopted.

Face

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-90
Author(s):  
Marissa K. López
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Brown Body ◽  
The City

In Cecile Pineda’s novel Face (1985), protagonist Helio Cara loses his face in a tragic accident. The novel documents the aftermath of his misfortune, as Helio grapples with his changing social world and strives to remake himself, piecing together both his face and the story of his life. In Face, Pineda works through the complex nexus of visible and invisible, focusing on the present absence of the human body and how Helio is variously seen and obscured as he moves through the city after his accident. In tracing Helio’s path from seen to unseen and back again, Face documents how community gathers around and through the human body, how Helio’s face galvanizes different groups into action. In this chapter, the author argues that contemporary photographers Stefan Ruiz and Ken Gonzales-Day deploy the body similarly to emphasize not the unique histories attached to individual bodies but rather the communal networks gathered around the bodies featured in their photographs. Like Face, the two photographers’ work can be seen as an extended project of reintegrating the brown body into historical memory and rescripting its political future away from subjectivity and rights and toward networks, institutions, and issues.

Wartime

Keep the Days ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 47-69
Author(s):  
Steven M. Stowe
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Men ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Moment

This chapter looks at women diarists from the southern slave-owning class looking at civil war. Some wrote a great deal about the battles and politics, while others wrote only occasionally about the far-reaching conflict. But all of the diarists comment on the sheer, local craziness of war—the reversals, weird occurrences, and outright destruction of lives and the material world. War demanded that they write in their diaries, but war also made writing inadequate. War shook up everything normal, and so the diarist found herself writing how normal time turned into something else—wartime. Women found themselves writing about cannonades and enemy soldiers at the door, about strange mutations in everything “every-day,” in the routines of home, the choice of clothing and food, and in the novel presence of working-class white men in the shape of Confederate soldiers. Wartime challenged women’s inventiveness as diarists, and it shows how the diary as a text—open, changeable, tied to the moment—brings wartime close to readers today.

The Brokenness of Caesar's Things

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251
Author(s):  
Sharon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Material World ◽  
Christian Conversion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Narrative Structures

Caesar's Things is a semi-autobiographical novel combining modernist literary experimentation with narrative structures derived from the Bible. This unfinished work is seldom analyzed by literary scholars, in part because Fitzgerald's Christian conversion in the 1930s coincided with a mental breakdown, which made her faith and writing both suspect. Criticized as “incoherent,” the novel nonetheless becomes legible when Fitzgerald's religion is disentangled from madness and its contributions examined. The novel confesses the spiritual impoverishment of the Jazz Age protagonist, then seeks her redemption, healing the divide between the self and her soul, between the material world and the kingdom of God.

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