Shan'ge, the 'Mountain Songs': Love Songs in Ming China (Emotions and States of Mind in East Asia #2)

Shan'ge, the 'Mountain Songs': Love Songs in Ming China (Emotions and States of Mind in East Asia #2)

Yasushi Oki, Paolo Santangelo
$308.20
Publication Date: February 17th, 2011
Publisher:
Brill
ISBN:
9789004189003
Pages:
616

Description

Mountain Songs is a collection of folk songs edited by the famous writer Feng Menglong (1574-1646). By this innovative work - mainly written in the Suzhou dialect - he aimed to revitalize poetry through the power of popular songs. This collection is very significant to the understanding of the characters of the mobile society of Jiangnan and the vitality of its intellectual world. The songs deal with the lives of common people: women, often prostitutes, boatmen, peasants, hunters, fishers and paddlers. Their spirit is far from the orthodox moral intents that Zhu Xi advocated for interpreting the Shijing, and their language is often vulgar and full of crude expressions or salacious double meanings and contains allusions to sexual and erotic behaviour.

About the Author

Paolo Santangelo Professor of East Asian History at Rome "Sapienza" University. He has published extensively on the social, intellectual and anthropological history of Late Imperial China. His Materials for an Anatomy of Personality in Late Imperial China has appeared in 2010 in this series, and in the same year Ming Qing Studies 2010 (Scriptaweb).Yasushi Oki (Ph.D. 1998, The University of Tokyo) is Professor of Chinese Literature at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo. He has published articles on late Imperial Chinese society and culture, as well as a monograph entitled A Study of Mao Xiang and his Reminiscences of the Convent of Shadowy Plum-blossoms (Kyuko-shoin, 2010).

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