#  “Fragrant Flora: Gendered Aspirations and the Gui Tree in Medieval Chinese Art” 

 



**Isabel McWilliams (PhD Candidate, Harvard University) - “Fragrant Flora: Gendered Aspirations and the Gui Tree in Medieval Chinese Art”**

This paper explores the blossoming of floral vocabulary in the visual arts of the Chinese Six Dynasties and Tang periods. In particular, this paper traces the development of the associations of the gui 桂 tree through a variety of sources. As the cinnamon cassia, the tree signals first and foremost the iconography of the moon, the remote and cold environment on which the tree grows and which is also home to the legendary goddess Chang’e. The metaphoric potential of the tree gained several nuances in the centuries following the Han dynasty, especially through homophones: known for being homophonous with the word gui 歸 meaning to “return,” this paper considers the full spectrum of associations of the gui 桂 tree, which go beyond the pun and rely on the qualities of the tree itself. In so doing, the gui is even revealed to possibly allude to two species at once– the cinnamon cassia and the sweet osmanthus tree. By probing a variety sources, in particular the poetry of the Tang period and epitaphs from preceding centuries, this paper demonstrates how the visual rhetoric of Tang bronze mirrors capitalizes on the full spectrum of the gui’s associations, revealing contemporaneous attitudes about the mortal female and the power of the mirror as a tool for interior exploration.