This dissertation examines the longstanding and widespread convention of writing poetry in the voice of an abandoned woman, in early ci (or song lyrics) of the late Tang and Five Dynasties periods (roughly ninth and tenth centuries) in China. The first study of voice in abandonment complaints among early examples of this so-called "feminine" genre, the dissertation brings to bear the indeterminate character of traditional Chinese poetic language on recent discussions of gender, persona and poetic voice among scholars of Chinese and Western literatures.;After tracing the history of the abandoned woman convention and considering the rise of the ci against this background, the dissertation undertakes a study of voice as a figure in early popular and literati ci, through close readings of poems, many translated here for the first time, with attention to the images and devices that create the sense of a speaking subject. These readings form the foundation for considerations of gender, persona and voice, using the concepts of literary cross-dressing and ventriloquism.;The dissertation argues that the indeterminate character of Chinese poetic language allows a plurality of voice to be perceived in the poems---sometimes as an alternation of voices, sometimes as several voices overlaying one another---while never allowing the boundaries of these voices to be clearly drawn. It argues further that elements of the abandonment topos, already in the Huajian ji anthology, had begun to be separable from a female persona, and to appear in male-voiced poems on love, homesickness and nostalgia. The study concludes by revisiting the issues of indeterminacy of poetic language, representation and persona in the context of a parable of "overhearing."
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