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The Substance of Fiction: Literary Objects in China, 1550 1775 (Premodern East Asia: New Horizons)
Do the portrayals of objects in literary texts represent historical evidence about the material culture of the past? Or are things in books more than things in the world? Sophie Volpp considers fictional objects of the late Ming and Qing that defy being read as illustrative of historical things. Instead, she argues, fictional objects are often signs of fictionality themselves, calling attention to the nature of the relationship between literature and materiality. Volpp examines a series of objectsa robe, a box and a shell, a telescope, a plate-glass mirror, and a paintingdrawn from the canonical works frequently mined for information about late imperial material culture, including the novels Read more