| In Middle Qing Dynasty,a phenomenal growth in women's poem writings were advocated by a few important male poets.Previous researchers concentrated on either women's writings or male promoters,but few concerned the link in-between.This paper calls for scholarly attention on the interaction between male-promoter and women's writing in this historical period,by close examining on three influential women's literature practice groups leading by male poets,Yuan Mei's Suiyuan women writers group,Ren Zhaolin's Xinzhai women poem-writing group,and Chen Wenshu's Bichen Xianguan women students group.There are three main focuses of this research.First,I try to understand these leading male mentors' motives on advocating women's writing,their methods on tutoring women students,and their influences on the growth of women's writing.Second,I hope to show a more complete picture of women writers' writing lives,by analyzing these women writers' practice within the group activities.Last but not lease,I am also interested in finding the answer to the question how the growth of women's writing relate to and impact on their male mentors,such as their own writing style and their status as a poet in Middle Qing Dynasty.Introduction of this paper offers answers to the question "why the prosperous of female literary writing appeared in the Middle Qing Dynasty while the culture censorship was extremely high".Based on existing scholar common understandings,this paper provides another perspective,which is the influence by the male scholars to this phenomenon.In another words,the interaction between women writers and their male mentors is an important answer to this discussion.Therefore,the characteristics of three female students groups in Lower Yangzi Delta will be investigated.Chapter 1 mainly contributes to the analysis of the relationship between appearance of women writers groups and men writers' attitudes towards to women literary practices during that era.Chinese elites experienced an intellects revolution at the end of Ming dynasty.Therefore,they were ready to accept female creative writing sincerely,even under the highly censored cultural circumstance.Evidenced by large statistics of literature,I will argue that mother's role in family education and men writers' political dilemma were two main reasons men supported women writing.Chapter 2 to 4,one by one,focus on three women groups' writing practices,including examining the enrollment of membership,exploring their poets' parties and classes,and categorizing the characteristics of these customs of each group.For example,Ren Zholin unified ten women writers'style of writing under his view of creative writing by face-to-face tutorial,while Yuan Mei,one of the most influential writers' leaders among that age,edited and published several important collections of his female students'poems,in order to advertise his "xingling" theory,and he was successful.Slightly later than Ren and Yuan,Chen Wenshu became a role model among poets by broadcasting women's poems.I attempt to break the boundary between different groups in Chapter 5.In fact,most of these women writers did not limit themselves as a student to a group,but consider their writings in real life circle,in a clan or a community.Accordingly,this part of paper looks into the life and practice of individual writer.The purpose of Chapter 6,the last chapter,is to find out the position of female writings in Middle Qing Dynasty in the framework of the history of Chinese literature.By studying their works closely and carefully,we learnt their methodology of creative writings.For instance,how they managed to illustrate their understandings of Chan in their pieces of poetry,how they used simile,metaphor,synaesthesia and other Chinese rhetorics in their poems,and how they practiced "Xingling" theory by honestly describe their lives and emotions.Meanwhile,their work,although top of their era,reflected the tight corner of poem writing in Middle Qing Dynasty. |
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