Reading Two Variant Erotic Stories in Jingyuan michuan dongfang chunyice as Examples of Commoner Values and Morality in Late Ming Popular Erotica

Abstract

The sudden flourishing of erotic literature and art in the late Ming period has long attracted academic interest, yet while the fruits of research over the last half century or so have been impressive, there has at the same time been a tendency to overlook one issue, which is that the authors, producers, readers, and distribution all included considerable variations in social stratification. Furthermore, such variations in social stratification can be said to be crucial for understanding the cultural historical significance of Ming erotica. Historically speaking, the appearance of popular erotica must generally imply a mindfulness among ordinary urbanites as to their own private lives and desires, and the entry of erotica into the marketplace must imply an expansion and rise in the importance of private life in social life. In this paper I conduct a textual analysis of “Yang Taizhen waizhuan” and “Zhao Feiyan waizhuan,” two reworked wenyan stories contained in the recently discovered late-Ming commoner “magazine” Jingyuan michuan dongfang chunyice, with the aim of identifying values and emphases specific to Ming commoner erotic literature, contrasting these with values and emphases more familiar to us in erotic works originating in the upper strata of late Ming society.