Qiu Jin: the poetics of revolt of a Chinese Antigone?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34624/fb.v0i21.41572Keywords:
Revolutionary woman, Feminism in China, Qiu Jin, Poetics of revolt, Antigone, National martyrAbstract
Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875-1907) was a Chinese revolutionary poet and feminist. Beheaded after a failed attempt to overthrow the imperial power of the Qing, she is now considered a national martyr, having sacrificed her life for the freedom of the Chinese people and for equality between men and women. This article examines the poetics of revolt in Qiu Jin’s work by comparing it to the figure of Antigone, both heroines sacrificing their lives to protest against tyrannical power. Like Antigone, Qiu Jin adopts an ambivalent position within the family structure, abandoning husband and children while defending filial piety and sisterhood, and seeks to redefine the place of women in Chinese society. Although she dips her pen into the oppression of the Chinese people by condemning the Qing dynasty and the Western powers, Qiu Jin’s poetics of revolt is not confined to a descriptive function: it has a performative function, aiming to unify the nation while working towards the emancipation of women. This poetics draws on baihua, the Chinese vernacular, while appropriating literary forms traditionally associated with women, such as tanci, and defining new female models. Handling both pen and sword, Qiu Jin projects herself as a modern nüxia, while following in the footsteps of legendary heroines she has met through her reading. Nevertheless, it seems that the poetic ethos that Qiu Jin forges for herself influences her own destiny by taking on a programmatic function. This article sheds new light on Qiu Jin’s poetics, showing that the poetess is gradually invaded by the sacrificial ethos she has constructed in her poems.
Downloads
References
Altenburger, R. (2009). The Sword or the Needle : The Female Knight-errant (xia) in Traditional Chinese Narrative. Bern: Peter Lang.
Ayscough, F. (1937). Chinese Women: Yesterday and Today. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Beahan, C. (1975). Feminism and Nationalism in the Chinese Women’s Press, 1902-1911. Modern China, 1(4), 379416. https://doi.org/10.1177/009770047500100402
Bernard, S. (2006). Qiu Jin, Féministe, poète et révolutionnaire. Montreuil: Le temps des cerises.
Chang, K. S., & Saussy, H. (1999). Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Demiéville, P. (1984). Poèmes chinois d’avant la mort. Paris: L’Asiathèque.
Derrida, J. (1974), Glas, Paris: Éditions Galilée.
Estran, J. (2022). Modernité et langue vernaculaire : Les premières revendications féminines pour l’emploi du Baihua dans la presse chinoise (1898-1904). Diogène, 12(277278), 6582. https://doi.org/10.3917/dio.277.0065
Gipoulon, C. (1976). Pierres de l’Oiseau Jingwei, Qiu Jin, femme et révolutionnaire en Chine, au XIXe siècle. Paris: Ed. des femmes.
Gipoulon, C. (1984). L’“intellectuel” au féminin : Féminisme et révolution en Chine au début du XXe siècle. Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, 4, 159173. https://doi.org/10.3406/oroc.1984.909
Hershatter, G. (2019), Women and China’s Revolutions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hong, F. (1997). Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women’s Bodies in Modern China. Portland: Frank Cass.
Hong, F., & Mangan, J. A. (2010). A Martyr for Modernity: Qui Jin-Feminist, Warrior and Revolutionary. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 1(18), 2754. https://doi.org/10.1080/714001489
Hu, Y. (2004). Writing Qiu Jin’s Life: Wu Zhiying and Her Family Learning. Late Imperial China, 25(2), 119160. https://doi.org/10.1353/late.2005.0005
Hu, Y. (2007). Qiu Jin’s Nine Burials: The Making of Historical Monuments and Public Memory. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 19(1), 138-139.
Hu, Y. (2009). How Can a Daughter Glorify the Family Name?” Filiality and Women’s Rights in the Late Qing. Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China, 2(11), 234269. https://doi.org/10.1163/138768009X12586661923027
Idema, W., & Grant, B. (2004). The Beheaded Feminist : Qiu Jin. In The Red Brush. Writing Women of Imperial China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kazuko, O., & Fogel, J. A. (1989). Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kucharski, J. (2016). Qiu Jin : An Exemplar of Chinese Feminism, Revolution, and Nationalism at the End of the Qing Dynasty. New Views on Gender, 17, 94109.
Li, X. (2013). Women’s Poetry of Late Imperial China. Transforming the Inner Chambers. Washington: University of Washington Press.
Qiu, J., Chevalier, O. (trad.), & Zhang, Q. (trad.). (2024). Anthologie poétique de la Chevalière du Lac miroir (Laureillard, M.). Clermont-Ferrand: Pandore quantique.
Saussy, H. (2022). The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Smith, B. G. (2010). Les femmes dans l’histoire mondiale. Clio, 32, 165188. https://doi.org/10.4000/clio.9894
Sophocle, Leconte de Lisle (trad.). (1877). Antigonè. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre.
