![]() | The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature Subjects: Chinese literature -- Ming dynasty 1368–1644 -- History and criticism; Chinese literature -- Qing dynasty 1644–1912 -- History and criticism; Ghosts in literature; Gender identity in literature; The "phantom heroine"--in particular the fantasy of her resurrection through sex with a living man--is one of the most striking features of traditional Chinese literature. Even today the hypersexual female ghost continues to be a source of fascination in East Asian media, much like the sexually predatory vampire in American and European movies, TV, and novels. But while vampires can be of either gender, erotic Chinese ghosts are almost exclusively female. The significance of this gender asymmetry in Chinese literary history is the subject of Judith Zeitlin's elegantly written and meticulously researched new book. Zeitlin Judith T. : Judith T. Zeitlin is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture (2014) and Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History (2007), as well as other writings. |
![hidden image for function call](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/1x1.png)