"In 1737, An Obscure Painter, Poet, and scholar, Shi Zhenlin, published a dreamy rambling memoir in which he described a talented and persecuted peasant woman poet named Shuangqing. Because of her exquisite beauty, people assumed she was a banished immortal, a divine being expelled from Heaven for one incarnation in the human realm. Shi Zhenlin quoted many of Shuangqing's poems and song lyrics, and in the following two centuries, she became famous as China's only great peasant woman poet.".

"Using Shi Zhenlin's memoir as a window on Chinese literary culture in the eighteenth century, Paul Ropp traces the evolution of Shuangqing's place in Chinese culture from the eighteenth century to the present. By way of extensive translations and analysis of Shi Zhenlin's memoir and of Shuangqing's poetry, Ropp demonstrates how changing interpretations of Shuangqing and her poetry reflect changing cultural concerns and preoccupations."--BOOK JACKET.