Description
Qingyun Wu’s work is a unique discovery in literary studies in the West. Chinese utopian literature paired with its English counterparts form an original and valuable contribution to world literature. In widely varying historical and cultural texts that span the last five centuries, Wu analyzes the theme of female rule, including a critique of patriarchy and emphasizing a vision for women. To date, Chinese utopias have been insufficiently explored and unavailable to Western scholars.
Wu’s theories of the politics of female rule, as seen in Chinese and English literature since the end of the sixteenth century, are predicated on three significant changes that have taken place during those periods. These include an outright rejection of rule by women to rule by women in the guise of men, from individual to collective
female rule, and from an idealized matrilineality to anarchism by the female principle.
Works examined include Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, Luo Maodeng’s Sanbao’s Expedition to the Western Ocean, Florence Dixie’s Gloriana, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, Chen Duansheng’s The Destiny of the Next Life, Li Ruzhen’s The Flowers in the Mirror, and Bai Hua’s The Remote Country of Women.
This critical view of the development of feminist utopias in both the East and West will be of interest to scholars of women’s studies, political science, and anthropology as well as to those in literature for both the classical and modern periods.
Table of Contents
1. Feminism in Literary Utopias
2. Monstrous or Natural: The Faerie Queene and Sanbao's Expedition to the Western Ocean
3. As Women's Destiny: The Destiny of the Next Life and Gloriana; Or, The Revolution of 1900
4. Separation from the Patriarchal World: The Destiny of the Flowers in the Mirror and Herland
5. From Matrilineality to Anarchism: The Remote Country of Women and The Dispossessed
6. Influence, Decline, and Hope
About the Author
Qingyun Wu is assistant professor of Chinese and director of the Chinese Studies Center at California State University, Los Angeles. She has translated four novels, including Bai Hua's The Remote Country of Women.