Layered Performativity in New Songs from the Jade Terrace (Yutai xinyong): A Discussion on the Compilation, Poems on Female Entertainers, and the Potential Female Readership of the Anthology

Abstract

The Yutai xinyong is traditionally thought of as a poetry anthology on women that w compiled by a male compiler and intended for male literati readers to read. This study proposes and examines another possibility: the Yutai xinyong was probably compiled for the Southern Dynasties palace ladies to read. Without foreseeing their poems on female entertainers would be selected into an anthology for palace ladies to read, the Yutai xinyong poets wrote these poems for a different purpose. While male poets, as spectators, composed poems depicting the performance that they had just watched, they did not seek an accurate portrayal of the female entertainers but rather a performative representation which presented poets themselves to their potential spectators — emperor and princes. After these poems on female entertainers recirculated back to the potential female readers in the Southern Dynasties, the compositions of the possible contemporary female reader-poets indicate that their poems on women are not only influenced by the works written by male poets but also attempt to present another poetic performance to reconstruct the female image created by male poets.