TWIB-III: 12
Jan. 4th, 2009 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanFive books this week; the two that were written in English are here:
1) Aching for Beauty - Wang Ping
I'm not sure what to make of this book. I definitely enjoyed the read, but not only was the theme promised by its subtitle--Footbinding in China--only tangentially related to the majority of its content, I found myself disagreeing with many of the author’s conclusions as well.
Wang's brief history of footbinding soon gives way to a psychoanalytic analysis of its meaning. Her arguments are tightly constructed, but like most psychoanalytic theory I can't help but feel they have little applicability to the phenomenon they purport to explain. That is, while I appreciate the elegance of her arguments, I remain unconvinced that footbinding had more to do with the desire to blur the boundaries of the Other than with curtailing women's freedom and with men's conspicuous consumption of women as a means of displaying their material wealth.
Luckily, Wang's focus often drifts from footbinding into broader explorations of femininity (and occasionally masculinity) in Song, Ming, and Qing dynasty China. She discusses famous female characters in Chinese literature, female poets, the female writing of nu shu (a pivotal element in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan), and lingchi and eunuchs; the final third of the book is devoted to an in-depth discussion of an epic tanci play by Chen Duansheng. Wang (who holds a PhD. in comparative literature) draws interesting conclusions throughout these discussions; however, they're far from the only possible interpretation.
Final verdict: an interesting and entertaining read, but one that should be approached as literary criticism, not historical study.
2) A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong
I'd heard good things about this author and decided to jump in with this short book. I mention this because its faults may be due to its brevity and not Armstrong's skills as a writer. Be that as it may, she commits several glaring errors in the execution of this volume.
It's far too narrow in scope to claim to be a history of anything: Armstrong's discussion is extremely Eurocentric and almost as restricted chronologically. The majority of her claims are not backed up with documentation, and what little documentation she does provide is overwhelmingly drawn from two books, essentially turning the first 80 pages into a Cliff's Notes of those volumes. Armstrong also makes the (false) claim that classical Greek myth can be used to accurately illustrate the thinking of Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples, yet for some reason claims that other religious systems were a break from a Paleo- and Neolithic past, without any apparent awareness of the inherent contradiction of these arguments. She furthermore cherry picks her sources on classical myth in order to fit her argument.
Finally, the second half of the book reeks strongly of Stealth!Christianity (and Stealth!Roman Catholicism at that); many of Armstrong's conclusions in this section are as dubious as those in the earlier portion of the book, if not patently false. (For instance, Armstrong inexplicably claims that science, not religion, was behind the witch hunts of 16th century Europe.)
Or to put things more briefly, while A Short History of Mythology makes an interesting reading as an editorial or essay, it's a far, far cry from an academic work, and any reader hoping for a serious, factual examination of myth should look elsewhere.
That will be all.
1) Aching for Beauty - Wang Ping
I'm not sure what to make of this book. I definitely enjoyed the read, but not only was the theme promised by its subtitle--Footbinding in China--only tangentially related to the majority of its content, I found myself disagreeing with many of the author’s conclusions as well.
Wang's brief history of footbinding soon gives way to a psychoanalytic analysis of its meaning. Her arguments are tightly constructed, but like most psychoanalytic theory I can't help but feel they have little applicability to the phenomenon they purport to explain. That is, while I appreciate the elegance of her arguments, I remain unconvinced that footbinding had more to do with the desire to blur the boundaries of the Other than with curtailing women's freedom and with men's conspicuous consumption of women as a means of displaying their material wealth.
Luckily, Wang's focus often drifts from footbinding into broader explorations of femininity (and occasionally masculinity) in Song, Ming, and Qing dynasty China. She discusses famous female characters in Chinese literature, female poets, the female writing of nu shu (a pivotal element in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan), and lingchi and eunuchs; the final third of the book is devoted to an in-depth discussion of an epic tanci play by Chen Duansheng. Wang (who holds a PhD. in comparative literature) draws interesting conclusions throughout these discussions; however, they're far from the only possible interpretation.
Final verdict: an interesting and entertaining read, but one that should be approached as literary criticism, not historical study.
2) A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong
I'd heard good things about this author and decided to jump in with this short book. I mention this because its faults may be due to its brevity and not Armstrong's skills as a writer. Be that as it may, she commits several glaring errors in the execution of this volume.
It's far too narrow in scope to claim to be a history of anything: Armstrong's discussion is extremely Eurocentric and almost as restricted chronologically. The majority of her claims are not backed up with documentation, and what little documentation she does provide is overwhelmingly drawn from two books, essentially turning the first 80 pages into a Cliff's Notes of those volumes. Armstrong also makes the (false) claim that classical Greek myth can be used to accurately illustrate the thinking of Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples, yet for some reason claims that other religious systems were a break from a Paleo- and Neolithic past, without any apparent awareness of the inherent contradiction of these arguments. She furthermore cherry picks her sources on classical myth in order to fit her argument.
Finally, the second half of the book reeks strongly of Stealth!Christianity (and Stealth!Roman Catholicism at that); many of Armstrong's conclusions in this section are as dubious as those in the earlier portion of the book, if not patently false. (For instance, Armstrong inexplicably claims that science, not religion, was behind the witch hunts of 16th century Europe.)
Or to put things more briefly, while A Short History of Mythology makes an interesting reading as an editorial or essay, it's a far, far cry from an academic work, and any reader hoping for a serious, factual examination of myth should look elsewhere.
That will be all.