Poets in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties continued to em-
ploy the major poetic genres of shi, ci, and qu. These two dynasties, commonly re-
ferred to as the late imperial period, witnessed the unprecedented spread of poetry
writing among men and, for the first time in Chinese history, women. Numerous
volumes of poetry were published, and many of them are extant. Poetry collections
by women alone are recorded to be more than 3,000.1 The quantity of shi poetry
that has survived greatly surpasses the some 200,000 poems from the Song (chap.
15), amounting to more than 1 million poems. No attempt has yet been made at the
seemingly impossible task of compiling a complete collection, as has been done
for the Tang and Song and earlier dynasties.2
The affluent period from the sixteenth century to the fall of the Ming in 1644
saw remarkable developments in commercial print culture and the spread of liter-
acy and education to a wider public that crossed the previously stricter limitations
of class and gender.3 This increase in literacy and the pervasive practice of writing
poetry among an expanded community of men and women transformed the craft
of poetry into a supple discursive medium for recording an extraordinary range
of subjects and articulating autobiographical and everyday dimensions of experi-
ence. The continued, even increased vitality of the poetic medium in the Qing was
an effect of the fervor with which individual women and men took up poetry as
a technology of self-representation and as a tool of communication and social ex-
change. The majority of these writers necessarily have not been part of the received
poetic canon. However, for the first time, the voices of individual women were no
longer isolated instances, nor could women be ignored as they wrote themselves
into history by means of poetry.4
Although no new prosodic forms were created in this period of extensive par-
ticipation, the Ming and Qing are distinguished by dynamic developments in lit-
erary theory and criticism. Poetic theories ranged from those with formalistic con-
cerns advocating Tang or Song poetic models for emulation, to those emphasizing
spontaneous, natural expression in style and emotion. The theoretical writings
and poetic practice of the most important poet-critics constituted influential lit-
erary trends both in their own time and in later periods, and these poets have, in
turn, been constructed as canonical figures in literary history.5 While there may
be some consensus regarding outstanding poets of the period, the sheer volume
and variety of poetry militate against a common list of “masterpieces.” Difficult
as it is to do justice to this relatively unexplored but extremely immense and rich
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