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5 - The Bouquet of Eros

from Part Three - A Whiff of Alterity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2023

Xuelei Huang
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

The link between aroma and eros is a time-honoured theme across cultures, and yet in the 1920s Chinese literary repertoire of amour, what mesmerize the modernizing men and women is not cultured scents of perfume, but biological odours of libido. Chapter 5 investigates the phenomenon of olfactophilia emerging in modern Chinese literature. Considered ‘perverted’ in late nineteenth-century Europe, olfactophilia was symptomatic of the discourse of emancipation in May Fourth China. The Chinese modernists discovered in the primitive sense of smell the true essence of being human, a gesture of defiance against Confucian culture. Embedded in their pursuits was the aporia of modernity, a parable about the porous boundary between purity and contamination. I analyse three sets of texts: early works by members of the Creation Society, which functioned as a trendsetter for olfactory expressions; Lu Xun’s 1924 short story ‘Soap’, an artful anatomy of the ambivalent modern psyche wrapped in an ambiguous whiff of olive aroma; and Mao Dun’s early fictional oeuvre of the late 1920s teeming with libidinal odours and revolutionary vigour.

Type
Chapter
Information
Scents of China
A Modern History of Smell
, pp. 189 - 218
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • The Bouquet of Eros
  • Xuelei Huang, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Scents of China
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009207065.009
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  • The Bouquet of Eros
  • Xuelei Huang, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Scents of China
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009207065.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Bouquet of Eros
  • Xuelei Huang, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Scents of China
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009207065.009
Available formats
×