Antonia Levi

Oral Presentation on: "Rethinking Van Gulik"

I. Author's Thesis: Furth charges that although Robert Van Gulik's Sexual Life in Ancient China is valuable in terms of content, its author's analyses are colored by orientalism which causes him to analyze Han dynasty medical texts from a 20^th century Western point of view. In particular, Furth points out that Van Gulik sees sexuality as a unique component of human life, separate from reproductivity or any other social function, deals with China itself in an ahistorical fashion, and seeks to find in China positive aspects of sexuality that he feels are lacking in the West.

My Opinion⁽¹⁾: Furth makes a good case as regards Sexual Life in Ancient China, but her failure to consider the rest of Van Gulik's writings, especially his novels, causes her to overstate her case.

II. Furth's examples:

a. Excerpts from "Within the Bedchamber" a Han dynasty text [221 B.C.E.-220 C.E.] are used by Furth to show that these were not discussions of sexual pleasure but the Taoist view which tried to balance practices to assure longevity with those to assure offspring; these were seen as opposites. Her quoted excerpts prove her points about Van Gulik's misrepresentations well, although they don't necessarily tie into her later assertion that this gives women value in terms of their reproductive functions or repudiate the assumption that the Chinese patriarchy was misogynist in its emphasis on yang.

b. Excerpts from Wan Quan, a Ming dynasty poet and scholar [1368-1644], are used to show how this emphasis changed to focus more and more on reproduction and to view the earlier obsession with semen retention and longevity as selfish, unhealthy and self-defeating. These certainly do reveal historical changes, but since Van Gulik never focused on this aspect of the Han dynasty texts, they are less effective than they might have been. It would also have helped if Furth had been more explicit about how the new emphasis on fertility affected other views on yin and women.

c. The short discussion of Ye Dehui [1864-1927], the scholar whose reconstruction of ancient bedchamber manuals provided Van Gulik with his main Chinese sources is used to show how even in this "modernizing" age, sexuality not viewed as a unique aspect of human existence, but as a holistic part of society. Furth says that Ye connected the arguments he found in these manual to the development of nationalism, but provides no real examples to support this contention.

d. Absent or too few examples from Van Gulik's novels or Sexual Life in Ancient China greatly weaken an otherwise interesting argument.

III. Sources used:

Van de Wetering, Janwillem. Robert Van Gulik: His Life, His Work, Soho Press, 1998.

Van Gulik, Robert Hans. Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from Ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644.

Van Gulik, Robert Hans. The Judge Dee novels including:⁽²⁾

The Chinese Gold Murders

The Willow Pattern

The Red Pavilion

The Chinese Bell Murder

The Chinese Nail Murders

The Haunted Monastery

1. Optional. I did not include this in my specifications but it's a good idea and may feed into your grade especially if it's not clear in your oral presentation.

2. Non-traditional format. I did this because these have had many different printings. If you do anything like this, be sure to add an explanation of why you did it.