HARVARD EAST ASIAN MONOGRAPHS
Cover: Orthodox Passions: Narrating Filial Love during the High Qing, from Harvard University PressCover: Orthodox Passions in HARDCOVER

Harvard East Asian Monographs 425

Orthodox Passions

Narrating Filial Love during the High Qing

Product Details

HARDCOVER

$68.00 • £59.95 • €61.95

ISBN 9780674241176

Publication Date: 12/17/2019

Text

384 pages

6 x 9 inches

6 illus., 3 tables

Harvard University Asia Center > Harvard East Asian Monographs

World

Add to Cart

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Maram Epstein identifies filial piety as the dominant expression of love in Qing dynasty texts. At a time when Manchu regulations made chastity the primary metaphor for obedience and social duty, filial discourse increasingly embraced the dramatic and passionate excesses associated with late-Ming chastity narratives.

Qing texts, especially those from the Jiangnan region, celebrate modes of filial piety that conflicted with the interests of the patriarchal family and the state. Analyzing filial narratives from a wide range of primary texts, including local gazetteers, autobiographical and biographical nianpu records, and fiction, Epstein shows the diversity of acts constituting exemplary filial piety. This context, Orthodox Passions argues, enables a radical rereading of the great novel of manners The Story of the Stone (ca. 1760), whose absence of filial affections and themes make it an outlier in the eighteenth-century sentimental landscape. By decentering romantic feeling as the dominant expression of love during the High Qing, Orthodox Passions calls for a new understanding of the affective landscape of late imperial China.

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Photograph of the book Fearless Women against red/white striped background

A Conversation with Elizabeth Cobbs about Fearless Women

For Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the work of Elizabeth Cobbs, whose new book Fearless Women shows how the movement for women’s rights has been deeply entwined with the history of the United States since its founding. Cobbs traces the lives of pathbreaking women who, inspired by American ideals, fought for the cause in their own ways