The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng

Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China

Alison Hardie

• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9789888805273
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: Literature

The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng: Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China is the first monograph in English on a controversial Ming dynasty literary figure. It examines and reassesses the life and work of Ruan Dacheng (1587–1646), a poet, dramatist, and politician in the late Ming period. Ruan Dacheng was in his own time a highly regarded poet, but is best known as a dramatist, and his poetry is now largely unknown. He is most notorious as a 'treacherous official' of the Ming–Qing transition, and as a result his literary work—his plays as well as his poetry—has been neglected and undervalued. Hardie argues that Ruan's literary work is of much greater significance in the history of Chinese literature than has generally been recognised since his own time. Ruan, rather than being a transgressive figure, is actually a very typical late Ming literatus, and as such his attitudes towards identity and authenticity can add to our understanding of these issues in late Ming intellectual history. These insights will impact on the cultural and intellectual history of late imperial China.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Synposis
• Author Biography
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Prologue
• 1. Ruan Dacheng in Context
• 2. ‘Inborn Abilities Burst Forth’
• 3. ‘Walking on Thin Ice’
• 4. ‘Out of the Profundity of His Heart’
• 5. ‘Expressing Himself in a Distinctive Way’
• 6. ‘Allowing the Business of Seclusion to Be My Friend’
• 7. ‘Outside the Walls’
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Proclamation of Nanjing
• Appendix 2: Synopses of Surviving Plays
• Appendix 3: List of Important Individuals
• Bibliography
• Index