Beyond Eroticism: A Historian's Reading of Humor in Feng Menglong's Child's Folly

Lanham: University Press of America, 2006. ix, 268 pages; 23 cm Fine; as new. Paperback. ISBN: 9780761833536, 0761833536

"Beyond Eroticism translates and analyzes over forty songs and ninety jokes from Child's Folly, a trilogy of popular songs (Hanging Twigs), folksongs (Hill Songs), and jokes (Treasury of Laughs) compiled by Feng Menglong (1574-1646), a giant in late Ming (1368-1644) popular literature. Focusing on humor as the predominant characteristic of the "tactically forgotten" collections, the book offers a delightful study of the foibles, eccentricities, and anxieties of a broad cross section of late Ming society. The study also probes the inner world of the compiler as he reveals, unwittingly, the tensions in his own gender and class conceptions."--Publisher