Saying All That Can Be Said
The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei
简介
In Saying All That Can Be Said, Keith McMahon presents the first full analysis of the sexually explicit portrayals in the Ming novel Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (The Plum in the Golden Vase). Countering common views of those portrayals as “just sex” or as “bad sex,” he shows that they are rich in thematic meaning and loaded with social and aesthetic purpose.
McMahon places the novel in the historical context of Chinese sexual culture, from which Jin Ping Mei inherits the style of the elegant, metaphorical description of erotic pleasure, but which the anonymous author extends in an exploration of the explicit, the obscene, and the graphic. The novel uses explicit description to evaluate and comment on characters, situations, and sexual and psychic states of being. Echoing the novel’s way of taking sex as a vehicle for reading the world, McMahon celebrates the richness and exuberance of Jin Ping Mei’s language of sex, which refuses imprisonment within the boundaries of orthodox culture’s cleanly authoritative style, and which continues to inspire admiration from readers around the world. Saying All That Can Be Said will change the way we think about sexual culture in premodern China.
目录
List of Illustrations
Preface
A Note on Textual Conventions
1. Saying All That Can Be Said
Creative Obscenity
Dissolute Voice, Moral Voice
Defining Jin Ping Mei’s Pornography
Conclusion: A Disruptive Text
2. Jin Ping Mei and the Art of the Bedchamber
Commonalities between Jin Ping Mei and the Art of the Bedchamber
The Art of the Bedchamber and Ming and Qing Fiction
Elements of the Art of the Bedchamber in Jin Ping Mei
Positions of Intercourse
Drugs and Devices
The Monk and the Aphrodisiac
Conclusion: Describing Pleasure
3. The Language of Sex in Jin Ping Mei
A Borderline Text
Jin Ping Mei’s Art of Describing Sex
The Uses of the High Erotic
The Contexts of the High Erotic
High Erotic Artifice: Sex with Courtesan Zheng
High Erotic Passion: The Affair between Pan Jinlian and Chen Jingji
Conclusion: Idealized Lovers
4. Sex as Battle
An Alternative High Erotic
“Fighting to the Death”
“Clamping on Him with a Grip as Tight as a Vice”
“Bobbing Its Head and Fluttering Its Tongue Like a Snake”
Conclusion: Ambushing Him from All Sides
5. Graphic Description in Jin Ping Mei
The Raw Sights and Sounds
The Monstrous Penis and the Woman’s Flood
The Sounds of Sex
The Woman’s Gate
Conclusion: Going to Excess
6. Different Sex with Different Women
Keeping Him Sexual, Keeping Him Listening
The Lot of Pan Jinlian, Core Sexual Companion
A Main Wife and Two Alternative Main Wives
Song Huilian, Rival Opportunist
Wang Liu’er, Polyandrous Sexual Warrior Woman
Lady Lin, Wanton Bodhisattva
Ruyi, Wet Nurse and Surrogate Li Ping’er
Li Guijie, Courtesan and Always Sexual
Conclusion: The Real Man
7. Jin Ping Mei and Ming and Qing Pornography
The More Purely Pornographic Novel
Entertainment, Shock, and Titillation
“Your Spirit Floats Away”
The Libertine and His “Dragon Boy”
Issues and Conundrums
Conclusion: The Wanton Woman and Her Friends
8. The Ways of Being Pornographic
Pornography without Being Pornographic
Shenlou zhi: A Moderate Case
Conclusion: Three Types of Endings
Bibliography
Index