評Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Huan Saussy, eds.,The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China

Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Huan Saussy, eds.,The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China

So, a reader may ask, why is Li Zhi 李贄 (1527-1602) objectionable? And why would a group of scholars writing on him choose to foreground his objectionable qualities? I’d like to suggest (in a playful, if not quite objectionable, way) that it is a kind of homage to Li Zhi. The persona he created relished its objectionableness. He himself wrote (about himself) in his quasi-autobiographical essay “A Sketch of Zhuowu” 卓吾論略 (Zhuowu being one of his pseudonyms).