Precis and Critique of a Secondary Source
Introduction
The essay provides and in-depth examination of the article Domesticating Romantic Love during the High Qing Classical Revival: The Poetic Exchanges between Wang Zhao yuan (1763-1851) and her Husband Hao Yixing. Both of these personalities were renowned during their lifetime as classical and evidential literature scholars. The essay presents a short précis of the article followed by a critique of the ideas that the author tries to present in the article. PrécisThe article presents Wang Zhao Yuan as a famous Chinese Confucian scholar and a writer mostly known for the poems she composed to her newly found love Hao Yixing (Xu, 2013).
Although she was widely revered for her contribution to poetry, she was a distinguished philosophical scholar who pioneered several classical Chinese philosophies and schools of reason. Most of her romantic poems were written in a period known as the classical revival (Xu, 2013). The classical revival was a period in the Chinese Eighteenth century known to have stimulated a lot of scholarly work and reexaminations of ancient scholarly writings and texts with a major aim of uncovering Chinese historical records (Xu, 2013). The article resonates on two major aspects; classical evidential literature and Confucianism as they were represented during the classical revival.
These are discussed with a sound focus on the roles and contributions of women towards the growth and development of poetic literature in the dynasty. The high Qing rule also referred to as the pinnacle of the Manchu rule defines the long Eighteenth-century China that extended through the periods of emperors like Kangxi, Yonzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing (Xu, 2013).The Qian-Jia era that followed it is highlighted as an outstanding period of classical scholarly renewal characterized by evidential research, political and intellectual movements that broke the nonconformist paradigm pioneering a restoration and reestablishment of Confucianism. The Confucianism movement often referred to as the “golden rule of the Qing women’s literature” describes a period when women’s contribution to literature was very evident based on the beauty of the literature and scholarly material that they produced. Due to Confucianism, women managed to come in the limelight through the numerous literature and scholarly materials that they authored. Such a transformation led to a decline in the previously known courtesan poetry. The popularity of some influential Women like Wang Zhao in the dynasty is heavily based on the magnificence of the literature material, for instance, poems that they authored. In fact, her relationship with Wang Zhao Yuan is strongly attributed to the poems that she wrote as a result of the Confucianism movement.The poetic exchanges between these two lovers formed the characteristic of most their love life since they exchanged them several times.
These poems and literature writings were a way of showcasing the female talent, the compassion as well as the cultural values that these women and other literature writers treasured a lot. Most of these values were strongly associated with the subversive nature of the literati …
