Overview

Mountain Songs is a collection of folk songs edited by the famous writer Feng Menglong (1574-1646). By this innovative work - mainly written in the Suzhou dialect - he aimed to revitalize poetry through the power of popular songs. This collection is very significant to the understanding of the characters of the mobile society of Jiangnan and the vitality of its intellectual world. The songs deal with the lives of common people: women, often prostitutes, boatmen, peasants, hunters, fishers and paddlers. Their spirit is far from the orthodox moral intents that Zhu Xi advocated for interpreting the Shijing, and their language is often vulgar and full of crude expressions or salacious double meanings and contains allusions to sexual and erotic behaviour.

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9789004189003

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Reviews

'The translation reads well, and is well annotated.(...) a worthy addition to the English-language literature on Chinese folklore.' David Elton Gay, Indiana University, Journal of Folklore Research. Review posted on January 9, 2012. ' ...the volume is a tremendous contribution to the studies of Chinese literature,linguistics, history, gender, and sexology, as well as global anthropological history.(...) Translating and analyzing Shan'ge's tabooed language of tabooed subjects, with all its literary and historical intricacies, as well as the irregular and erroneous Chinese characters that dot the original, is truly a daunting task. Oki Yasushi and Paolo Santangelo should be congratulated for the tour de force. 1e introductory essays, modern typesetting of the original, translation, annotations, glossary, and illustrations are all of the highest quality, shedding light on the social, cultural, and biological meanings of the inner and outer realities of emotions and sexuality. this volume is of great value to scholars seriously interested in the study of Chinese popular literature, linguistics and philology, social and cultural history, sexology, and emotionology, as well as the history of mentality or anthropological history in general.' Pi-ching Hsu, San Francisco State University, China Review International Vol. 17/4 (2010) 'Shan'ge, the Mountain Songs is a work of remarkable erudition. The authors have availed themselves of the latest scholarship on Wu language to render the Shan'ge collection in clear and often poetic English. The provision of Chinese text, together with relevant woodblock prints, makes reading this book a delectable experience. Scholars of the literature and history of the late Ming period, and anyone with an interest in the expression of love and sexuality in Chinese culture, will owe a debt of gratitude to Oki Yasushi and Paolo Santangelo in opening up these Suzhou erotic songs for further analysis and exploration.' Anne E. McLaren, University of Melbourne, International Journal of Asian Studies, 9, 2 (2012)

Author Information

Paolo Santangelo Professor of East Asian History at Rome “Sapienza” University. He has published extensively on the social, intellectual and anthropological history of Late Imperial China. His Materials for an Anatomy of Personality in Late Imperial China has appeared in 2010 in this series, and in the same year Ming Qing Studies 2010 (Scriptaweb). Yasushi Oki (Ph.D. 1998, The University of Tokyo) is Professor of Chinese Literature at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo. He has published articles on late Imperial Chinese society and culture, as well as a monograph entitled A Study of Mao Xiang and his Reminiscences of the Convent of Shadowy Plum-blossoms (Kyuko-shoin, 2010).

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