Lara Blanchard, "Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry," (Brill, 2018)

This book is the winner of the 2020 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize, awarded by the Association for Asian Studies.In Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire, Lara Blanchard analyzes images of women in painting and poetry of China’s middle imperial period, focusing on works that represent female figures as preoccupied with romance. She discusses examples of visual and literary culture in regard to their authorship and audience, examining the role of interiority in constructions of gender, exploring the rhetorical functions of romantic images, and considering connections between subjectivity and representation. The paintings in particular have sometimes been interpreted as simple representations of the daily lives of women, or as straightforward artifacts of heteroerotic desire; Blanchard proposes that such works could additionally be interpreted as political allegories, representations of the artist’s or patron’s interiorities, or models of idealized femininity. Song Dynasty Art and Literature Lara Blanchard, Figures of Longing and Desire Women in Chinese Painting and Poetry Gender Representation in Song Dynasty Romantic Imagery in Chinese Art Heteroerotic Desire in Chinese Culture Female Subjectivity in Chinese Art Middle Imperial Period China Political Allegories in Song Dynasty Art Idealized Femininity in Chinese Paintings Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize Chinese Romantic Art and Interiority Visual and Literary Culture in China Representations of Women in Song Dynasty East Asian Studies Podcasts Chinese History Podcasts Gender Studies