Previous translations and descriptions of Li Qingzhao are molded by an image of her as lonely
wife and bereft widow formed by centuries of manipulation of her work and legacy by scholars
and critics (all of them male) to fit their idea of a what a talented woman writer would sound
like. The true voice of Li Qingzhao is very different. A new translation and presentation of
her is needed to appreciate her genius and to account for the sense that Chinese readers have
always had despite what scholars and critics were saying about the boldness and originality
of her work. The introduction will lay out the problems of critical refashioning and
conventionalization of her carried out in the centuries after her death thus preparing the
reader for a new reading. Her songs and poetry will then be presented in a way that breaks free
of a narrow autobiographical reading of them distinguishes between reliable and unreliable
attributions and also shows the great range of her talent by including important prose pieces
and seldom read poems. In this way the standard image of Li Qingzhao exemplied by a handful
of her best known and largely misunderstood works will be challenged and replaced by a new
understanding. The volume will present a literary portrait of Li Qingzhao radically unlike the
one in conventional anthologies and literary histories allowing English readers for the first
time to appreciate her distinctiveness as a writer and to properly gauge her achievement as a
female alternative as poet and essayist to the male literary culture of her day.
