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Ronald Egan. The Burden of Female Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series. Non-fiction. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Asiatic Center. 2013. 432 pages. $59.95 USD. ISBN 9780674726697
Ronald Egan's landmark monograph on the legacy of the reputed Song dynasty female poet Li Qingzhao offers a thorough and meticulous historical appraisal of the background of women's writings in the Song dynasty; Li's life experiences and the seminal historical events that shaped the Ming and Qing canonization of Li; debates on her widowhood, remarriage, divorce; and a nuanced analysis of Li's poems as song lyrics and her other writings. With an extensive discussion of the reception and impact of Li's works from the dynastic period to contemporary era, Egan seeks to "give Li Qingzhao her place in literary history in light of her own times as well as later waves of women's writing and scholarly efforts to evaluate her legacy," including the Ming and Qing cultural idealization of Li as a talented woman writer and discussions of the significance of Li in light of modern feminist studies.
Underlying Egan's richly contextualized and scrupulously researched study is the central contentious question of voice related to women's literary endeavors in dynastic China. Egan addresses the important issue of male authors' imitation of female voice in poetry writing during Li Qingzhao's time (as was also showcased in imitated writings and paintings by Zhu Shuzhen), and probes into the challenges that Li was possibly confronted with when she ventured "to compose in a form in which men had long before appropriated the female voice and placed the focus on women." Whereas literati poets' impersonation of the female poetic personae was prevalent before and during Li's times, Egan offers thorough interpretations of the precarious, shifting, and sometimes political "voice" in Li Qingzhao's writings in shi poetry, song lyrics form, letters, essays, prose narratives, and poetic comments, and argues that the heterogeneous and sometimes unreliable writings attributed to Li Qingzhao resist an autobiographical interpretation. In analyzing the limitations of such autobiographical approaches, which reduced Li's poems to merely speaking of her mourning of her deceased husband or of the forlornness of widowhood, Egan appeals to the distinction of poetic personae and the female author herself in...