英文摘要
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Explorations into writers' families and communities shed important new light on the works and the writers' inner selves. Traditional biographical studies, however, are concerned mostly with the details of the writers' lives, and seldom delve into the spectrum of their families and communities. No man is an island entire of itself-one's experiences and momentous life events are often represented in the words of one's friends and families. These materials enrich our understanding of the works, the inner life of the writer, and the outer world, and should be brought into consideration in any attempt at a comprehensive account. This paper examines the familial connections and relationships between the Yu, Yang, Gu, and Ding families of the late Qing period. I will demonstrate that these four families constituted a tight network in which Yu Yiao was a centripetal figure. Yu was a late-Qing ci poet whose works are not generally available. For many years, I have labored to collect Yu's writings, and some twenty, hitherto unexamined, manuscripts of his shi and ci poetry, among other biographical materials, are now in my collection. Taken together, these materials allow me to conduct a comprehensive study of the connections and relationships between the Yu, Yang, Gu, and Ding families, which in turn will hopefully break new ground in ci studies.
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