When I headed to the Number One Historical Archives in Beijing almost twenty years ago with a copy of Natalie Zemon Davis’s Fiction in the Archives under my arm, I thought I was beginning a quick project that would trace the impact of the cult of qing on Qing court case memorials. Instead of finding a more tolerant attitude toward romantic love, I discovered a trove of first-person narratives that referenced filial devotions to justify domestic homicides. Until then, I had tended to ignore the many references to filial piety in fiction as formulaic conventions. The two terms I spent in the archives forced me to rethink many of my earlier assumptions about the place of filial piety in late imperial culture. I am fortunate to have stumbled onto a topic that was much more rewarding than anything I had anticipated.
There are many other genres I could have—and no doubt should have—included in this study, particularly poetry and collections of bereavement notices (rong’ai lu 榮哀錄). To have added these materials responsibly, however, reading extensively in order to familiarize myself with the conventions of the genres, would have meant delaying this book even further. I can only hope that this project will inspire others to take up the study of filial emotions in these and other sources.
Orthodox Passions is broadly interdisciplinary, and the research has taken me far outside of my research specialization in late imperial literature. I am grateful for the help and critical interventions of many friends, colleagues, and students who have been extraordinarily generous in offering feedback and corrections, and answering questions from a neophyte to their fields. Among those to whom I am most grateful for timely advice along the way are Janet Theiss, Blaine Gaustad, Hu Ying, Robert Hegel, Norman Kutcher, Ted Huters, Wai-yee Li, Yuri Pines, and Susan Mann. The level of attention given the manuscript by the two anonymous readers for the Harvard University Asia Center was nothing short of humbling, and I have taken them as my models going forward. Among my many supportive colleagues at the University of Oregon,
Finally, as so many of my friends delight in pointing out, my academic projects often mirror the preoccupations of my personal life. It was the final illnesses and deaths of my parents while I was researching and writing this book that enabled me to appreciate the anguish of the filial sons and daughters recorded in late imperial texts who did everything they could to ease the pain of ailing parents. When my oldest brother offered one of his kidneys to my eighty-three-year-old father, I realized that the much maligned practice of gegu, the offering of a child’s flesh to extend a parent’s life, is not really so outlandish after all. It is to my parents, Alexander and Florence Epstein, that this book is dedicated. My greatest regret is that neither lived long enough to meet my life partner, Justine Lovinger. Even though she claims she won, all of my friends agree with me that I am the true winner of the jackpot. To Justine, and her parents Nena Lovinger and Ron Lovinger, thank you for the enduring bonds of family.
—Maram Epstein, Eugene, OR