Orthodox Passions

About the Book

<p>In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Maram Epstein identifies filial piety as the dominant expression of love in Qing dynasty texts. At a time when Manchu regulations made chastity the primary metaphor for obedience and social duty, filial discourse increasingly embraced the dramatic and passionate excesses associated with late-Ming chastity narratives. </p><p></p>Qing texts, especially those from the Jiangnan region, celebrate modes of filial piety that conflicted with the interests of the patriarchal family and the state. Analyzing filial narratives from a wide range of primary texts, including local gazetteers, autobiographical and biographical <i>nianpu</i> records, and fiction, Epstein shows the diversity of acts constituting exemplary filial piety. This context, <i>Orthodox Passions</i> argues, enables a radical rereading of the great novel of manners <i>The Story of the Stone</i> (ca. 1760), whose absence of filial affections and themes make it an outlier in the eighteenth-century sentimental landscape. By decentering romantic feeling as the dominant expression of love during the High Qing, <i>Orthodox Passions</i> calls for a new understanding of the affective landscape of late imperial China.