An 11th century woodblock print of the Leinü Zhuan

The Lienü Zhuan (Chinese: 列女傳/列女传; pinyin: Liènǚ zhuàn; Wade-Giles: Lieh nü chuan; "Biographies of Exemplary Women") was a ca. 18 BCE book compiled by the famous Han Dynasty scholar Liu Xiang. It includes 125 biographical accounts of women exemplars in early China, taken from Chinese histories like the Chun Qiu, Zuo Zhuan, and Shiji. The Lienü Zhuan served as a standard Confucianist textbook for the moral education of women in traditional China for two millennia.

The idealized biographies are divided into eight juan (卷 "scrolls; chapters"), including the eighth addendum from an unknown editor, as shown below.

This book follows the lièzhuàn (列傳 "arrayed biographies") biographical format established by the Chinese historian Sima Qian. The word liènǚ (列女 "famous women in history") is cognate with liènǚ (烈女 " women martyrs"), which Neo-Confucianists used to mean "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; woman who dies defending her honor".

The online Chinese Text Initiative at the University of Virginia provides an outstanding e-text edition of the Lienu Zhuan, including both digitized Chinese content and images of a Song Dynasty woodblock edition with illustrations by Gu Kaizhi 顧凱之 (ca. 344-405 CE) of the Jin Dynasty. The English translation is forthcoming.

References

• Carlitz, Katherine. (1991). "The Social Uses of Female Virtue in Late Ming Editions of Lienu Zhuan." Late Imperial China 12.2: 117-48.

• O'Hara, Albert Richard, tr. (1945). The position of woman in early China: according to the Lieh nu chuan, "The biographies of Chinese women". Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 1955 reprint. Hong Kong: Orient Publishing Co. 1980 reprint. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press.

External links

• Lienu zhuan, University of Virginia E-text

• Lienuzhuan, ChinaKnowledge (mirror)

• Traditions of Exemplary Women: Liu Xiang's Lienü Zhuan, Anne Behnke Kinney

• Chapter 11: Women & Men in Society, Gregory Smits, Topics in Premodern Chinese History

See also

• Gender studies
• Historiography

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