Bosom Friends in the Red Chamber: Women's Friendship Poetry in Late Imperial China

紅閨知己：明清時期的女性友誼詩歌

10.6184/TKR201406-9

Haihong Yang

友誼 ； 女性 ； 主體性 ； 明清 ； 古典詩歌 ； friendship ； femininity ； subjectivity ； late imperial China ； lyric poetry

Tamkang Review

44卷2期（2014 / 06 / 01）

169 - 189

英文

友誼在士大夫話語中歷來有著鮮明的性別色彩。在中國古典文學的長河裏，描寫男性友誼的詩歌、小說和戲劇比比皆是，而女性之間友誼，雖然在男性文人的筆下極為鮮見，在閨秀詩歌中卻得到了充分的描寫。本文對十七至十九世紀中葉的女性友誼詩歌進行了文本細讀和分析，並發現友誼詩歌不但鞏固了閨秀詩人對彼此之間詩人身份的認同，還在一定程度上幫助她們在詩歌語境中實現自我價值，改寫女性的社會性別定義，進而創造和發展出獨特的女性文學傳統。

Friendship is gendered in literati discourse in dynastic China. In contrast to the large repertoire of stories, poems, and plays about male friendship, depictions of female friendship are scarce in classical male-authored Chinese literature. The silence on the subject of women's friendship in literati tradition was loudly contradicted in gentry women's poetry. In this article, I examine lyric poems on friendship exchanged between gentry women writers in China from the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. I propose a reading of these poetic writings as a sub-genre of friendship poetry and argue that women writers used this poetic venue to consolidate mutual interests with like-minded writers, to achieve imaginative self-realization, to revise definitions of femininity, and to create and develop a distinct female literary tradition.

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