Urbanization, individualism, and the circulation of pornography in the late Ming period

Abstract

The late Ming period (1522-1644) witnessed a vigorous interest in bodily sensuality unprecedented in Chinese history. While previous periods had produced expressions of licentiousness centered on the power of the elite it is clear that the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a period of more widespread and far reaching interest in the body. Through discussion of select late Ming pornographic albums and fiction, this paper aims to present new perspectives on the intersection of economic change, publishing innovation and the boundaries of private and public values. In this argument the cultural significance of the late Ming interest in sensuality can be understood within a trajectory of cultural development comparable to the Enlightenment and the rise of modernity in Western Europe. While the content and motivation of pornographic works tended to be culturally conservative, their place within a wider set of social changes reveals the part they played in questioning the power of moralism as well as in the advent of new styles of literary communication. The purpose of cross-cultural historical comparison is therefore not to reframe Chinese history in terms of Western cultural trajectories—rather, within this heuristic frame, the focus will be on the late Ming and the case for a “corporeal modernity” unlike any that took shape elsewhere.