Images of Women in Chinese Thought & Culture

. . . this work is a monumental effort on the part of the editor and contributors and can be used in many different ways and for many different purposes. The most rewarding, but also the most demanding, is to read it from cover to cover; this will afford diligent readers a wide perspective and enable them to gain a more profound understanding of the wide variety of ideologies and practices that existed in ancient China regarding women and gender, and the changes and developments in these ideas and practices through the ages. Alternatively, it can be used as a reference to locate specific texts with their translation. Not least, it can be used as a sourcebook for teaching gender in a particular dynasty, school of thought, or literary genre. --Lily Xiao Hong Lee, China Review International

Wang''s comprehensive anthology, utilizing the expertise of contemporary sinologists, historians, and philosophers, is an impressive collection of translated classical writings that provides scholars an invaluable tool for surveying the images of women across the literary landscape of China. . . . Particularly suitable as a source book not just for scholarly research but for classroom teaching as well. --Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy

This rich collection of writings--many translated especially for this volume and some available in English for the first time--provides a journey through the history of Chinese culture, tracing the Chinese understanding of women as elucidated in writings spanning more than two thousand years. From the earliest oracle bone inscriptions of the Pre-Qin period through the poems and stories of the Song Dynasty, these works shed light on Chinese images of women and their roles in society in terms of such topics as human nature, cosmology, gender, and virtue.