From Singing Ghosts to Docile Concubines Elite Domestication of the Local in the Wu Songs

Abstract

This article examines the fascination of émigré elite literati with southern local songs known as the “Wu songs” in the early Southern dynasties. I argue that, through their cultivation of these songs, the émigré elite in the Eastern Jin and Liu-Song dynasties created an image of a “cultural other” and attempted to domesticate this other, experienced as southern, local, and feminine. A gender discourse—the ascription of femininity to the local—was employed as a crucial approach in this domestication. I also explore the unexpected outcome of this cultural encounter in the subsequent centuries, i.e., the merging of the northern elite and southern local music and cultural traditions.