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Women’s Literary Exchange and Literary Recognition in the Ming Dynasty: Focusing on Women Anthologies and Letters

Cheong MinKyung 1

1이화여자대학교

ABSTRACT

Women in China have traditionally been considered to have suffered in silence under an ethic that was suffocating to them. However, a lot of literary works written by women were published in collections as printing technology developed in the Ming Dynasty and women writers as a group, not just as individuals, appeared. This phenomenon can give rise to a new trend in the history of Chinese literary studies, which has previously centered upon male writers, but the study of female Chinese writers is still few. This study therefore examines women’s literary activities and their literary philosophy through what the women writers directly wrote. First of all, I attempt to arrange prefaces and letters written by women in the collection of literary works Women’s Works in Recent History (歷代婦女著作考) and Collection of Letters Written by Women in History (歷代名媛文苑簡編), written by Ho Moon-gye, and The McGill-Harvard-Yenching Library’s Ming-Qing Women’s Writings (明 淸婦女著作) and examine the characteristics of female literary style in them, dividing these into three large parts. The first is female education and female writing. Comparatively many books were published due to the development of the printing industry in the Ming Dynasty, and the opportunity for education was expanded to women connected to education. Women read various books and wrote their works based on the knowledge gleaned. Second, I treatliterary exchange and literary recognition through private groups. Women in the Ming Dynasty exchanged literature with each other and raised their literary knowledge through their favorite groups, wrote about their daily lives in their works, and continued to form bonds of empathy while reading theirworks together. Third, I note the individual and insignificant writing. Women in the Ming Dynasty were very enthusiastic for literary writing that expressed their own experiences and emotions. Women could encounter their own inner life through individual works describing their busy daily life and exchange their emotions with other women. In this way, female literary activities acted as a means of spreading the thoughts and desires of the heart and women’s views on literature, which are revealed directly and candidly in their prefaces and letters.

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