书名：The Empress and the Dragon Throne: Imperial Women of the Early Ming Dynasty / 皇后与龙椅：明初皇室家族女性的故事

作者：Ellen Soulliere

出版：Hong Kong University Press，2025

装帧：精装，324页

语种：英文

尺寸：15.2 × 2.5 × 22.9 cm

How empresses and consorts were indispensable to the Ming dynasty and its politics and governance.

The rulers of the Ming dynasty enacted paradigms of hierarchical order. Like imperial families, households, and courts in earlier Chinese dynasties, they articulated patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal organizational principles as exemplars for families and institutions throughout the empire. Women made indispensable contributions to the development of these paradigms and principles and to the social, cultural, and political fabric of the family and the state. And yet, in the existing literature in Chinese and English women are often burdened with stereotypes, positioned as peripheral, or rendered almost invisible.

Reading available texts “against the grain,” and drawing on a trove of evidence from material culture, Soulliere shows how women defined a place for themselves in the multigenerational Ming imperial family, imperial household, and court. The Empress and the Dragon Throne spans the first Ming century from just before the founding of the dynasty in 1368 to the end of the Tianshun reign in 1465. This richly illustrated volume is a must-read for scholars, students, and anyone interested in learning about women’s lives during the Ming dynasty.

皇后与妃嫔对明朝及其政治与治理而言为何不可或缺。

明朝的统治者们构建了等级秩序的范式。如同中国早期朝代的皇室家族、家庭和宫廷一样，他们将父权制、父系制度和从父居的组织原则阐述为整个帝国范围内家庭和机构的典范。女性为这些范式和原则的发展，以及家庭与国家的社会、文化和政治结构做出了不可或缺的贡献。然而，在现有的中英文文献中，女性往往被刻板印象所束缚，被置于边缘地位，或者几乎变得隐形。

通过“反其道而行之”地解读现有文本，并利用大量物质文化方面的证据，苏利耶尔展示了女性如何在多代同堂的明朝皇室家族、皇室家庭和宫廷中为自己界定一席之地。《皇后与龙椅》一书的时间跨度为明朝初期，从1368年王朝建立前夕一直到1465年天顺统治结束。这部插图丰富的著作是学者、学生以及任何有兴趣了解明朝女性生活的人必读之作。