Abstract
Qu Dajun (1630-1696) spent the better part of 1659 in Nanjing where he produced some twenty poems on plum trees. The plum emerges as Ming loyalism incarnate, and Qu encourages the reader to see him as a Ming loyalist. This paper examines how Qu shapes the Ming memory and his intended image in the poems. Analyzing the structure and symbolism of the verses, we discover three interrelated motifs: loyalty, seclusion, and rebirth. Qu's message is that even though the loyalists are marginalized figures of the day, they still see themselves as historical agents to revive the fallen Ming house. What engages Qu is a poetic representation of the historical memory of the Ming-Qing transition and the Ming loyalist subjectivity. Qu's poems are written in the mode of ”poetry on objects.” This entails a theoretical investigation into Qu's poetic formulations. To probe the loyalist condition that Qu is faced with, a comparison of the experiences of the Ming and the Song loyalists is conducted.