''Chipozi zhuan'' (), translated into English as ''The Story of the Foolish Woman'', ''Biography of a Foolish Woman'' or ''A Tale of an Infatuated Woman'', is a Chinese erotic

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

written in the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

Plot

Told through

first-person narration A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from their own point of view using the first person It may be narrated by a first-person protagonist (or other focal character), first-person re-teller, ...

, the novella recounts the sexual exploits of a septuagenarian named Shangguan E'Nuo (; "Graceful"), who at various points in her life has sex with twelve men including her cousin, her male servants, her husband, her two brothers-in-law, her father-in-law, as well as a pair of

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

monks; after being expelled from her husband's residence at age 39, she becomes a pariah and claims to have not had sex for three decades.

Publication history

''Chipozi zhuan'' was "compiled" or written by an anonymous writer using the pseudonym "Lotus Lord" () and edited by "Passion-Infatuated Philosopher" (). It was composed in

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

during the mid- to late sixteenth century, at about the same time that ''

Jin Ping Mei ''Jin Ping Mei'' () — translated into English as ''The Plum in the Golden Vase'' or ''The Golden Lotus'' — is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the latter half of the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty ...

'' was published. At just over 10,000 Chinese characters, ''Chipozi zhuan'' is technically a

. ''Chipozi zhuan'' was evidently in circulation before 1612, because it is mentioned in a preface to the novel '' Dong Xi Jin yanyi'' (; ''The Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin'') that was published in that year. It was constantly banned after its publication for being a "lascivious and obscene work", and the earliest existing edition of the text dates to 1764.

Literary significance and reception

According to Paola Zamperini, ''Chipozi zhuan'' is "seen as one of the first pornographic sources within the history of Chinese literature". Alongside '' Ruyijun zhuan'' (; ''The Lord of Perfect Satisfaction'') and '' Xiuta yeshi'' (; ''The Embroidered Couch''), ''Chipozi zhuan'' is one of the three erotic works referenced in ''

The Carnal Prayer Mat ''Rouputuan'', also known as ''Huiquanbao'' and ''Juehouchan'', and translated as ''The Carnal Prayer Mat'' or ''The Before Midnight Scholar'', is a 17th-century Chinese erotic novel published under a pseudonym but usually attributed to Li Yu. ...

'' believed to have been written by

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

writer Li Yu. Wu Cuncun states that ''Chipozi zhuan'' "can be regarded as an early representative work in narrating a series of sexual adventures of a woman from an unexceptional and relatively modest urban household." The novella also uses a first-person female narrator, which is described by Zamperini as "a very rare event ... (that) breaks strikingly with both previous and later narrative modes and models." Martin W. Huang writes that the novella should be considered as one of the earliest fictional works published in China to champion "feminine authority", in that the protagonist E'Nuo is "not only a desiring subject but ... also a speaking subject, who had the

discursive power Discursive dominance or discursive power is the ultimate emergence of one discourse as dominant among competing ones in their struggle for dominance. Ultimately, one of the discourses emerges as dominant. The word ‘discursive’ is related to the ...

to define and interpret her own subjectivity." In dissent, Hoi Yan Chu argues that ''Chipozi zhuan'' "is illusory and constructed based on a male perspective" and whose "patriarchy implications are mainly shown in its triple denial to female desire through showing female unsuccessful attempts to actively pursue sexual pleasure, emphasizing passivity as the only way for female sexual pleasure and punishing females."

References

Citations

Bibliography