{"id":3030,"date":"2026-05-07T09:44:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T08:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/bodies-emotions-material-culture\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2026-05-07T09:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T08:44:04","slug":"two-new-articles-on-the-literary-exploration-of-emotions-in-ming-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/bemc\/2026\/05\/07\/two-new-articles-on-the-literary-exploration-of-emotions-in-ming-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Two new articles on the literary exploration of emotions in Ming China"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dr Zhaokun Xin<\/a> has recently published two articles on literary exploration of emotions in Ming dynasty (1368-1644) China. The first piece, titled \u201cDiagnosing, Misdiagnosing, and Rediagnosing Women\u2019s Anger in the Jin Ping Mei<\/em><\/a>,\u201d came out from the Journal of the American Society for Premodern China<\/em> in 2025. It seizes on the depiction of women\u2019s anger in this sixteenth-century full-length fiction, better known in English as The Plum in the Golden Vase<\/em>, to gauge the work\u2019s engagement with the contemporary medical milieux. By teasing out the rich layers of discursive contestation revolving around women\u2019s anger and their varied approaches to this emotion, the article\u00a0argues that the rendition of women\u2019s anger showcases the fictional work\u2019s stronger resonance with the etiological than the pathological strand of medical thinking. In the work, the physicians\u2019 pathological consideration of anger\u2019s corporeal impacts on female bodies initially appears to assume diagnostic authority. However, lay explanations in turn complement and complicate the pathological perspective, drawing the reader\u2019s attention more toward an etiological vision. Furthermore, the etiological consideration of women\u2019s anger solves the seeming paradox in the work\u00a0that certain physicians feature diagnostic authority, but provide inefficacious treatment. In this way, the article advances a more nuanced repositioning of the work with regard to its surrounding medical contexts. In the meantime, the focus on anger significantly broadens the emotional horizon of late imperial Chinese literature beyond romantic love and sexual desire. Research for this article has been supported by the British Academy\u2019s BA\/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Programme (Ref. No. SRG24\\241574), the Sino-British Fellowship Trust, and a Project Award from the Geiss Hsu Foundation.<\/p>\n

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The second article, written in Chinese, is entitled \u201cAnother Look at \u2018Yang Siwen Encounters Some Old Acquaintances in Yanshan\u2019 in Reference to Trauma Studies<\/a>\u201d and published in the open-access journal Chung Cheng Chinese Studies<\/em> in 2025 as well. It engages the titular colloquial short story from Feng Menglong\u2019s (1574-1646) collection Stories Old and New<\/em> in an interdisciplinary conversation with trauma studies. The story is set against the backdrop of the Song-Jin confrontation (1125-1127) and features abundant reflections on resonant experience with trauma that is related to war and displacement. This article not only teases out the story\u2019s intricate treatment of extreme experiences that are quasi-traumatic, but also enriches and broadens contemporary trauma theory through a non-Western and pre-modern text deeply invested in trauma writing. Juxtaposing both the total silence over and varied articulations of extreme experiences resulting from the dynastic confrontation, the story goes beyond the dominant dichotomy in contemporary theoretical construal of trauma as either unspeakable or not. The recurrent retellings of such extreme experiences as war, displacement, and death in the story further obscure the potentially traumatizing events themselves. Even though some recounts are putatively grounded in the act of witnessing, their ultimate unreliability ends up fundamentally questioning the act\u2019s possibility, even that of self-witnessing. The impossibility of (self-)witnessing in turn worsens the uncertainty of the extreme experiences\u2019 spokenness, a persistent uncertainty that situates them in what Jacque Lacan (1901-1981) terms \u201cthe Real.\u201d At the same time, the story also attempts to designate such experiences with the Confucian moral signifier of \u201crighteousness,\u201d inadvertently embedding them in what Lacan calls \u201cthe Symbolic.\u201d The extreme experiences\u2019 simultaneous situatedness in the two supposedly dualistic orders further reminds us of questioning another dichotomous conception, that is, of trauma as either signifiable or not.<\/p>\n

Both the Plum in the Golden Vase<\/em> and the Stories Old and New<\/em> have been fully translated and available online through the library catalogue. Those interested are highly encouraged to delve into these two fascinating works of world literature.<\/p>\n

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