Lienü zhuan

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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 105 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.

Chapter	Chinese	Translation
1	母儀傳	Matronly Models
2	賢明傳	The Worthy and Enlightened
3	仁智傳	The Benevolent and Wise
4	貞順傳	The Chaste and Obedient
5	節義傳	The Principled and Righteous
6	辯通傳	The Accomplished Speakers
7	孽嬖傳	Depraved Favorites
8	續列女傳	Supplemental Biographies

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.

[edit] 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.