Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice

Maija Bell Samei received her Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from the University of Michigan.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Voice, Persona, and Gendered Convention: Who is Speaking?Chapter 2 "A thousand, ten thousand resentments": The Story of a ConventionChapter 3 Magpies, Waterclocks, and Lies: "Images" of VoiceChapter 4 The Abandoned Woman as Object, Topos, and Ventriloquist's PuppetChapter 5 Conclusion

Maija Bell Samei goes beyond recent feminist readings of ci to seriously consider the ambiguity of gender in these poems. This book frees us from the assumption of a univocal persona in the lyric poetry of China and opens up new ways of reading not only ci but also other genres. Future work in the field must take this study into account.