Examines and reassesses the life and work of Mingera poet Ruan Dacheng. The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng is the first monograph in English on a controversial Ming dynasty literary figure. It examines and reassesses the life and work of Ruan Dacheng 15871646 a poet dramatist and politician in the late Ming period. Ruan Dacheng was in his own time a highly regarded poet although he is now better known as a dramatist. He was notorious as a treacherous official of the MingQing transition and as a result his literary work has been neglected and undervalued. Hardie argues that Ruans literary work is of much greater significance in the history of Chinese literature than has generally been recognized since his own time. Ruan rather than being a transgressive figure is actually a very typical late Ming literatus and as such his attitudes towards identity and authenticity can add to our understanding of these issues in late Ming intellectual history. These insights will impact the cultural and intellectual history of late imperial China.