346 Reviews / Nan Nü 15 (2013) 333-371

Xiaorong Li. Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China: Transforming the Inner Cham- bers. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. 264 pp. US$ 70 cloth, ISBN 978-02-95-99205-1; US$ 30 paper, ISBN 978-02-95-99229-7.

Gui 閨, often translated as the "inner chambers" or "inner quarters," is the catch- word of Teacher of the Inner Chambers, Dorothy Ko’s historical study of women’s culture in the seventeenth century, as well as The Inner Quarters and Beyond, an anthology of essays on Ming-Qing women’s writings edited by Grace Fong and Ellen Widmer. The term also serves as the primary focus of Xiaorong Li’sWomen’s Poetry of Late Imperial China: Transforming the Inner Chambers, which is a signifi- cant contribution to literary studies of Ming and Qing women’s writing. In her comprehensive and thoughtful investigation of the concept of gui, Li scrutinizes the role of the boudoir in the literati’s poetic tradition, and analyses how women writers in late imperial China participated in reconstructing discourses on gui, appropriating the notion to voice their own thoughts and concerns. Li’s study of Ming and Qing women’s poetry through the lens of gui draws upon her examination of women writers’ interaction with the literati’s poetic convention. Gui is first of all a social and cultural construct highly contingent on sex segrega- tion. As a gendered spatial metaphor, the inner quarters are the loci where femi- ninities are imagined, prescribed, and contested. In her book, Li analyses the depiction of gui in shi 詩 (poem in regular meter) and 詞 (lyric) poems by women writers, and argues that these authors "reconceived the spatial topos as a textual territory encoded with their subjective perspectives and experiences" through appropriating traditional poetic themes, imagery, and symbols associated with the boudoir (p. 179). Li's critical analysis of gui is structured in part chronologically, and in part thematically. The book begins with a delineation of the boudoir as a poetic conven- tion in Chinese literary tradition. Li examines the boudoir as a poetic motif estab- lished and developed in three important sources: Yutai xin yong 玉台新詠 (New songs from a jade terrace), a collection of shi poems composed from the second century BCE to the early sixth century; Hua jian ji 花間集 (Anthology of poems written among the flowers), a collection of ci poetry dating from the tenth cen- tury; and ci poems by 歐陽修 (1007-72), 李清照 (1084- 1151), and Yan Shu 晏殊 (991-1055) of the . The compilers ofYutai xin yong established a poetic aesthetics of the boudoir as evidenced by the recurrent use of female lamentation and the appreciation of feminine beauty, which were themes in Palace Style poems, a new poetic style that Anne Birrell in the introduc- tion to her translation of an anthology of these writings terms “the love poetry of Southern Dynasties court poets.”1 Theci poems in Hua jian ji develop the poetics of the boudoir by consistently constructing a private feminine space with dense

1) Anne Birrell, trans., New Songs from a Jade Terrace: An Anthology of Early Chinese Love Poetry (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 1.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685268-0152P0008 Reviews / Nan Nü 15 (2013) 333-371 347 imagery and sensual language. In ci poems of the Song dynasty, especially those composed by women writers exemplified by Li Qingzhao, the boudoir topos was further expanded, allowing the writers to explore the breadth and depth of femi- nine experiences. Li’s examination of Ming and Qing women writers’ self-reinscrip- tion in the following chapters is thus based on a solid investigation of the historically constructed poetic convention in, and against which women poets of later generations wrote. Li probes women writers’ reconception of gui in their poetry by investigating three topics: Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji 國朝閨秀正始集 (The anthology of cor- rect beginnings) compiled by Yun Zhu 惲珠 (1771-1833), Gu Zhenli’s 顧貞立 (1623-99) lyric poetry, and women writers' poetic depiction of the boudoir during various wars in late imperial China, including the Manchu conquest of China, the Opium War (1840)and the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64). The three carefully ­chosen topics provide dimension to Li's exploration of gui as an ideological con- struct which women writers of these historical periods actively participated in shaping. Li contextualizes her reading of poems included in Yun Zhu’s monumen- tal anthology by exploring the editors’ anthologizing strategies and rhetoric at the same time. Editors and authors of the anthology appropriated the conventional boudoir motif, and recoded images in the poetic tradition to re-inscribe a self with ideal qualities required and valued by the dominant discourses of the age. Li’s inter- rogation of how Yun Zhu’s anthology conforms to the orthodox poetics is followed by her reading of the ci poems by Gu Zhenli whose depiction of the boudoir ­deviates from gender norms and socially recognized models. Gu Zhenli forcefully describes gui as physically and mentally confining, and strives for a subversive poetic representation of a self radically different from those in dominant discours- es on the boudoir. Li further complicates her critical examination of the boudoir by inquiring into women writers’ representation of the inner chambers in their poems on their ­experiences during this time of war and chaos. The crumbling walls of the inner chambers, on the one hand, deprived gentry women of their shelter, and exposed them to dangers and chaos during the various times of upheaval. On the other hand, however, these women were given opportunities to see the outside world with their own eyes and, for better or for worse, obtained experiences which were otherwise inaccessible to them. Their poetry, therefore, demonstrates an ­expanded horizon beyond the inner quarters. In the last chapter, Li investigates how the concept of the gui was questioned and rewritten in poems by women writers in late Qing and early republic era. Li juxtaposes her reading of the poetic representation of the inner chambers in Qiu Jin’s 秋瑾 (1875-1907) and Lü Bicheng's 呂碧城 (1884-1943) works with her inquiry into how reforms in women's education and literature in general during this era impacted the gender and social norms of femininity. The poetic narrative of the inner chambers was under constant rewriting in this historic moment, pre- ceding, preparing, and ushering in renovated self-representation and subjectivities of modern women writers.