Division of Languages and Literature and Dean of the College Present
Ruins and Imaginary Lands in Early Qing Literature
Space is existential; existence is spatial. The experience of space defines the essential structure of our being. Today in China country folks defy the system of registered permanent residence by flocking to the city, regardless of the fate of struggling on the lowest social stratum of the city as migrant workers. Meanwhile city dwellers are desperate to own a town house, only to find them becoming the slaves of their private property. One needs space to assert one’s existence. This modern phenomenon of the symbiosis of space and existence has its mirror images in the other periods of Chinese history. For the Chinese literati whose lives and works crossed the Ming-Qing divide in the mid and late 17th century, creating, possessing, and identifying with their ideal space was an equally urgent issue. Then as now, many lacked the sociopolitical privilege and wealth to guarantee them an ideal space of their own. The Ming-Qing transition added political connotations to the depiction of space in the writings of early Qing literati, which centers on ruins (literally broken mountains and remains of waters) and imaginary lands, two complementary tropes that explore the dialectic relation between destruction and construction in an age of devastation. My preliminary research of the spatial imagination of the early Qing literati focuses on Zhang Dai and Dong Yue, two representatives of the so-called remnant subjects, who expressed their commitment to or nostalgia for the fallen Ming dynasty and were willing to be the outsiders of the sociopolitical order of the Qing dynasty.
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Location: Olin LC, 210