ABSTRACT
HANHAN ZHANG. Attitude and Act: Recontextualizing Li Qingzhao’s poetry
(Under the direction of Professor Thomas David Lisk.)
Li Qingzhao (1084 – ca. 1151), one of the most prominent female poets in the
history of Chinese literature, lived during both the Northern and Southern Song
Dynasties in ancient China. Contemporary scholarship suggests that Li Qingzhao
found no contentment in her poetic achievement, and longed for political
achievement or escape to another and better world. This paper attempts to
challenge the long-held view that Li Qingzhao came to be unsatisfied with the
results of a life of writing poetry. Contextualizing Li’s Ci poem “To the Tune of
Free-spirited Fisherman” by examining the historical meaning of a significant
word and its textual variants, as well as revisiting the cultural context in which
the poem was written, I argue that Li Qingzhao values poetry writing as a
significant means to her spiritual fulfillment including a sense of balance and
inner peace. This reexamination prompts a series of essential questions: why
does contemporary scholarship interpret Li Qignzhao’s attitude toward poetry in
a negative way? Does gender play a role in image construction? Do social and
literary biases contribute to such an understanding? This new study of Li
Qingzhao’s poetry adds another layer to an already multi-layered interpretation,
and may suggest fresh approaches to interpreting and translating Chinese and
English poetry.