Nanxiu Qian

Abstract

The genre of the Biographies of Exemplary Women, initiated by the Han Confucian Scholar Liu Xiang （77–6 BCE）, consisted of the texts and illustrations from the very beginning. Thus, a study of its transmission and transformation in the Sinosphere requires examination of both. Throughout the two thousand years, this genre has gone through constant changes of forms, media, and connotations in its interactions with different spatial and temporal contexts. This article intends to summarize this process, first on its evolution through painting screens, murals, stone carvings, and hand scrolls from the Han to the Tang, and then its woodblock versions after the invention of the printing technique in the Song. The spread of the illustrated Ming editions of the Biographies of Exemplary Women into Korea and Japan further inspired its imitative works in these areas. Through a comparative study of excavated materials, this article expects to understand how the sociopolitical, cultural, and economic environments influenced the textual and imagery construction of women’s moral space in the Sinosphere.

Keywords：The genre of the Biographies of Exemplary Women, Women’s moral space, textual and imagery expressions, the Sinosphere, writing of women’s history.