Creating artifacts: The Ming erotic novella in cultural practice (China)

For my dissertation, I take as the object of my study late Ming material culture, centering around the circulation of erotic fictional works. I focus on a group of mid-late Ming literary novellas.; After the introduction to the novellas, the scholarship, and the main approach of this study in Chapter I, Chapter II sketches the production and consumption of the works. I deal with the publishing history of the novellas and their popularity at a material level, such as the typographical format of the works, their publishing patterns, and the edition system in terms of the book industry and trade.; Chapter III explores the reading public by approaching reading practice and reader response during the late Ming period, arguing that the Ming erotic novella was intended for mass consumption. I also touch upon the issue of the cultural uses of the Ming erotic novella related to readership.; In order to analyze the eroticism in the Ming novella, Chapter IV canvasses the Ming discourse on qing and sexuality in popular culture as testified to by the materials packaged together with the novellas in fiction miscellanies.; In Chapter V, I first analyze the primacy of qing, its development, and problems in the novellas. Then I deal with the unfolding of sexual pleasure in the Ming novellas by examining how the issue is represented in these fictional works, and how these fictional works served social ideology.; Chapter VI touches upon the issue of the religious dimension in the Ming novella. I argue that the Ming novellas are characterized by the pursuit of Daoist transcendence within the presentation of sexuality. Thus, I believe, the central theme of the novellas is the manifestation of double desires.; Finally in Chapter VII, I conclude the thesis with a brief account of the influence of the Ming novellas on later fiction. The Ming novella also transmits its combination of sexual pleasure and religious salvation to later erotic novels. In this sense, the Ming novellas function as a cultural means and a religious alternative to the minds of common people.