000 02792cam a2200301 i 4500
001 on1152052625
003 OCoLC
007 ta
008 210512s2021 wau b 001 0 eng
010 _a 2020020422
020 _a9780295748320 (pbk.)
020 _a029574832X (pbk.)
020 _a9780295748313 (hbk.)
020 _a0295748311 (hbk.)
035 _a(OCoLC)1152052625
_z(OCoLC)1152063664
050 _aHQ29
_b.C43 2021
100 1 _aCheng, Hsiao-wen.
245 1 0 _aDivine, demonic, and disordered :
_bwomen without men in Song Dynasty China /
_cHsiao-wen Cheng.
260 _aSeattle :
_bUniversity of Washington Press,
_c2021.
300 _ax, 233 p.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 0 _aPart I. Reconfiguring gender, sexuality, and illness -- 1. "Husbandless women" in medicine -- 2. Ghost intercourse in medical and daoist contexts -- Part II. Inconvenient female sexuality and multivocal narratives -- 3. Enchantment disorder and pre-song tales -- 4. Enchanted women in song anecdotes -- Part III. Gendered identities and female celibacy -- 5. Gendered practice and renunciant identity -- 6. Meanings of female celibacy -- Conclusion.
520 _a"A variety of Chinese writings-medical texts, religious treatises, fiction, and anecdotes-from the Song period (960-1279) depict women who were considered peculiar because their sexual bodies did not belong to men. These were women who refused to marry, were considered unmarriageable, or were married but denied their husbands sexual access, thereby removing themselves from social constructs of female sexuality defined in relation to men. As elite male authors attempted to make sense of these incomprehensible women whose sexual bodies were unavailable to them, they were forced to contemplate the purpose of women's bodies and lives apart from wifehood and motherhood. This raised troubling new questions about normalcy, desire, sexuality, and identity. In Divine, Demonic, and Disordered Hsiao-wen Cheng considers accounts of "manless women," many of which depict women who suffered from "enchantment disorder" or who engaged in "intercourse with ghosts"-conditions with specific symptoms and behavioral patterns. Through her questioning of conventional binary gender analyses and heteronormative assumptions, she shifts attention away from women's reproductive bodies and familial roles and offers historians of China and readers interested in women, gender, sexuality, medicine, and religion a fresh look at the unstable meanings attached to women's behaviors and lives even in a time of codified patriarchy"--
650 4 _aWomen
_xSexual behavior
_zChina.
650 4 _aCelibacy
_zChina.
651 4 _aChina
_yHistory Song dynasty, 960-1279
_xAnecdotes.
942 _2lcc
_cBK
999 _c2043
_d2043