![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Obscene Things: Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei by Naifei Ding
金瓶梅 is probably the most famous pornographic novel from the Ming dynasty. Its been a source of scholarly debate and commentary since it was originally published, despite (or perhaps because of) its detailed descriptions of a lot of sex its been used as a historical source to look at social life, even religious life, during that period. Ding in her book looks at the history of commentary about the book, 20th century literary criticism of it and her own reading of the work. Ding's approach is that of literary criticism rather than as a historian and as such her writing style can be hard to get through at times as she uses lots of jargon. An example from page 11, Post structuralist deconstructive and new historicist studies have sought to and perhaps have succeeded in toppling the myth of a universal transcendental humanist subject of modernist discourses; regrouping this subject and formation process, showing "his" embeddedness and inextricability from particular (neither universal nor transcendental) historical, social, political, and economic milieus, as well as "his" gender , sexuality, race and class specificities. Fortunately not all the book was such a mouthful!
The chapter on Jin-ology, from which the above quote was taken, looked at twentieth century study of the book. Rather than look at how the book had been used as a literary or historical source Ding focused entirely on the different approaches used to discussing the sexual parts of the book. She then went on to look at the use of commentary during Ming times, both in the case of this book and that of shuihu zhuan 水浒传. This was interesting as the start of Jinping mei comes out of shuihu zhuan and it was interesting to see the different comparisons between the two versions. And the different commentary between them.
The most interesting part of the book for me was actually a digression from the discussion of jinping mei where Ding looked specifically at the print culture of 17th century China. It was interesting to see the attitudes towards mass marketing by the scholars of the time, and the changing attitude towards books. The attitudes of the literati seemed to be strongly against the reprinting of works for a mass audience, they complained that the editions were inaccurate and would not be able to be appreciated by the common people. They also complained about the greed of the book printers and the hunger of the people to read the cheap versions. There were repeated references to Qinshi huangdi's burning of the books. "Today it is profit that causes ancient books to be incomplete" (53). This was transformed later to an attack on the popularisation of literature. Jin Shengtang (in his commentary on shuihu zhuan) wrote how only the sage should be allowed to write, "The one who is not a sage and writes this man ought to be killed and his books burned" (69). He goes on to write that as he is not a sage he is not in tune with the way and will write only perverted discourse.
This led on to an interesting discussion from the time when why people wrote became important. It was discussed how people wrote out of anger, such as the case of the Grand Historian Sima Qian, and how great literature could be a cure for melancholy. In this case "illness is valued because it guarantees the emotion of the writer" (89). Ding quotes from the introduction to the Qifa Seven Stimuli which were, "the saddest music in the world, the most delicious food, the finest horses, the most extravagant sight-seeing and luxurious banqueting with live entertainment, the most spirited hunting, viewing the miraculous bore of the Winding River and finally, the wise and magical words of experts in philosophy and the occult arts." (95). The Prince's illness, depression, is seen as the result of comfortable living that have enfeebled him.
Ding then returns to her discussion of the text and her own analysis, or reading, of the text. She offers an interesting and insightful look comparing different events within the text. She gives background to the events and characters though I'm not sure if they would be enough for someone who had not read the original book. I'm afraid that the version of the text I read was translated by, Franz Kuhn into German and then translated into English by Bernard Miall and was only 850 odd pages. Needless to say there was a lot of the sexual descriptions that had been edited out of my version, all the references to anal sex and oral sex were missing. Fortunately it still retained enough of the events that I knew the parts which were being referred too, in particular I knew enough to shudder when I saw the mention of "the swing". Her analysis focuses on the sexual aspects of domination and submission within the text, she also looks at the different representations of cats and dogs. It provided a rich background and social commentary on life and attitudes of the time.
The end of Ding's book looked at modern pornography in Taiwan. I think I would have preferred a more direct conclusion to the book. But overall I was very pleased with it and enjoyed it once I was able to get my head around her style!
金瓶梅 is probably the most famous pornographic novel from the Ming dynasty. Its been a source of scholarly debate and commentary since it was originally published, despite (or perhaps because of) its detailed descriptions of a lot of sex its been used as a historical source to look at social life, even religious life, during that period. Ding in her book looks at the history of commentary about the book, 20th century literary criticism of it and her own reading of the work. Ding's approach is that of literary criticism rather than as a historian and as such her writing style can be hard to get through at times as she uses lots of jargon. An example from page 11, Post structuralist deconstructive and new historicist studies have sought to and perhaps have succeeded in toppling the myth of a universal transcendental humanist subject of modernist discourses; regrouping this subject and formation process, showing "his" embeddedness and inextricability from particular (neither universal nor transcendental) historical, social, political, and economic milieus, as well as "his" gender , sexuality, race and class specificities. Fortunately not all the book was such a mouthful!
The chapter on Jin-ology, from which the above quote was taken, looked at twentieth century study of the book. Rather than look at how the book had been used as a literary or historical source Ding focused entirely on the different approaches used to discussing the sexual parts of the book. She then went on to look at the use of commentary during Ming times, both in the case of this book and that of shuihu zhuan 水浒传. This was interesting as the start of Jinping mei comes out of shuihu zhuan and it was interesting to see the different comparisons between the two versions. And the different commentary between them.
The most interesting part of the book for me was actually a digression from the discussion of jinping mei where Ding looked specifically at the print culture of 17th century China. It was interesting to see the attitudes towards mass marketing by the scholars of the time, and the changing attitude towards books. The attitudes of the literati seemed to be strongly against the reprinting of works for a mass audience, they complained that the editions were inaccurate and would not be able to be appreciated by the common people. They also complained about the greed of the book printers and the hunger of the people to read the cheap versions. There were repeated references to Qinshi huangdi's burning of the books. "Today it is profit that causes ancient books to be incomplete" (53). This was transformed later to an attack on the popularisation of literature. Jin Shengtang (in his commentary on shuihu zhuan) wrote how only the sage should be allowed to write, "The one who is not a sage and writes this man ought to be killed and his books burned" (69). He goes on to write that as he is not a sage he is not in tune with the way and will write only perverted discourse.
This led on to an interesting discussion from the time when why people wrote became important. It was discussed how people wrote out of anger, such as the case of the Grand Historian Sima Qian, and how great literature could be a cure for melancholy. In this case "illness is valued because it guarantees the emotion of the writer" (89). Ding quotes from the introduction to the Qifa Seven Stimuli which were, "the saddest music in the world, the most delicious food, the finest horses, the most extravagant sight-seeing and luxurious banqueting with live entertainment, the most spirited hunting, viewing the miraculous bore of the Winding River and finally, the wise and magical words of experts in philosophy and the occult arts." (95). The Prince's illness, depression, is seen as the result of comfortable living that have enfeebled him.
Ding then returns to her discussion of the text and her own analysis, or reading, of the text. She offers an interesting and insightful look comparing different events within the text. She gives background to the events and characters though I'm not sure if they would be enough for someone who had not read the original book. I'm afraid that the version of the text I read was translated by, Franz Kuhn into German and then translated into English by Bernard Miall and was only 850 odd pages. Needless to say there was a lot of the sexual descriptions that had been edited out of my version, all the references to anal sex and oral sex were missing. Fortunately it still retained enough of the events that I knew the parts which were being referred too, in particular I knew enough to shudder when I saw the mention of "the swing". Her analysis focuses on the sexual aspects of domination and submission within the text, she also looks at the different representations of cats and dogs. It provided a rich background and social commentary on life and attitudes of the time.
The end of Ding's book looked at modern pornography in Taiwan. I think I would have preferred a more direct conclusion to the book. But overall I was very pleased with it and enjoyed it once I was able to get my head around her style!