Dreams as Life and Life as Dreams in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century xiaoshuo Narratives

In the depiction and analysis of various transtextual sources and rewritings, this article discusses narratives of Chinese late imperial xiaoshuo that dealt with dreams perceived as equally important if not more valuable than waking life itself. The discourse of these dream stories aimed at underlining the significance of the value granted to dreams, and consequently how this perspective on dreams could affect one’s stance towards life itself. With an emphasis on the eighteenth century, examples comprise narratives from lesser-known collections, such as Xieduo 諧鐸 by Shen Qifeng (1740?–?), but the author also highlights earlier texts—Daoist classics, chuanqi 傳奇 of the Tang, and chuanqi of the Ming—which served as sources for these late imperial tales. Although the theme of life-long dreams is found across the centuries and literary genres, this article points to its various treatments, that differed according to time periods and authors’ personal concerns. It highlights a shift in “life-long dream” stories of the late imperial period towards a concern for private matters, depicted in a detached and/or light-hearted tone.

Jealousy and Domestic Violence by Women in Early and Medieval China

Beginning in the early imperial era, Chinese texts recorded instances of domestic violence perpetrated by women living in polygynous households. These acts of abuse were commonly understood to be the result of sexual jealousy. Marital disharmony was a cause of great concern to the elite, as a result of which legal and historical texts, as well as the literature of the period, provide a rich vein of evidence concerning domestic violence perpetrated by women. Furthermore, there are some surprisingly sympathetic accounts of the psychological pressures that led to such abuse by wives. As the importance of this material in the history of marital relationships and domestic life in China has been neglected, this study provides an overview of some of the key sources, particularly the recently discovered Han dynasty narrative poem, Wang Ji 妄稽.

La figure divine de Wei Huacun 魏華存 dans le taoïsme Shangqing au VIIIe siècle : la place du culte et la question du genre dans la pratique spirituelle

Résumé Selon la tradition, Wei Huacun (251-334), ou plutôt sa figure déifiée, la Dame Wei du pic du Sud, est la matriarche fondatrice du courant taoïste de la Pureté supérieure, ou Shangqing, apparu au cours de la seconde moitié du IVe siècle de notre ère. Si l’ historicité de ce mouvement à la fin des Six Dynasties (220-589) a été abondamment étudiée, son évolution postérieure, en particulier sous les Tang (618-907), laisse encore apparaître des zones d’ ombre. L’ étude de la figure divine de la Dame Wei, à la fois sur le plan de son culte et sur celui des exercices spirituels auxquels elle était associée, contribue à mieux cerner les contours de cette tradition vivante. Elle permet également d’ affiner notre vision de sa praxis telle que les taoïstes, hommes et femmes, pouvaient se l’ approprier dans leur propre religiosité vis-à-vis de la religion instituée.

Against the Monist Model of Tang Poetics

In recent decades, a significant amount of Western scholarship on traditional Chinese poetry and poetics has either proposed or assumed a vision of the art underwritten by the supposed “monism,” “nonduality,” and “immanence” of traditional Chinese worldviews. This essay argues that although these were important ideas in certain periods and contexts, they cannot be taken as unproblematically defining the world of thought in which poetry operated during the Tang dynasty. Instead, Tang writers more routinely drew in their discussions of art upon the epistemological tensions and discontinuities posited by medieval intellectual and religious traditions. For this reason, they often outlined models of poetry very different from those most common in contemporary criticism.

The Construction of Territories in the Qin Empire

This essay revisits the territoriality of the Qin empire by examining the spatial division underneath its commandery-county system. With the universal implementation of centralized administration, scholars usually believe that the Qin empire exerted strong control across its territories. But new Qin sources suggest otherwise. It is evident that the Qin regime devised multiple schemes to structure its empire into three concentric zones with asymmetrical political relations. The respective features and functions of these zones were consonant with those of the center, semiperiphery, and periphery in the “core-periphery” model. The regime’s spatial strategy can be understood as a compromise made to accommodate the diverse landscape in different parts of its vast empire, especially in the newly conquered regions. This reminds us that despite having installed the unitary commandery-county system, the territorial control wielded by the Qin regime in its new territories was tenuous at best.

Opportunism in Foreign Affairs in First Century BCE China: Chen Tang, His Fellows, and Their Patrons

By examining the career of a contingent of action-prone mid-level military officers and diplomats, this article aims to explore how opportunism functioned in foreign affairs during the last decades of the Former Han dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE). To safeguard and advance the empire’s interests, especially in Central Asia, these characters would carry out their missions with expediency, usually by the means of assassination and surprise attacks, and sometimes without formal authorization. Yet their successful operations always earned, if retrospectively, the endorsement of the imperial court, which in turn encouraged further ventures. The investigation of the front-line opportunists and their patrons presents a lively picture of the politics and political culture of the time.