Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary : Reading and Writing Between the Lines / David L. Rolston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rolston, David L., Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (444 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the Ming and Qing periods, the Chinese read fiction in editions with extensive commentary printed on the same page as the fiction itself. This commentary was concerned less with helping the reader understand the “letter” of the text than with drawing the reader’s attention to its more notable aspects through emphatic punctuation (similar to our underlining, italics, or highlighting) and evaluative comments. Authors developed four different approaches to the challenges this type of commentary presented: they wrote their own commentary, they modeled aspects of their narrators on fiction commentators, they left space in their texts for readers to compose their own commentaries, or they combined these approaches. This book is the first concerted effort to see how the existence of the commentary tradition affected the development of Chinese fiction. It aims to answer several questions, including: How prevalent were commentary editions of fiction? How important was the commentary in them? Were the comments actually read? What effect did they have on readers and future writers?

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: Traditional Chinese Fiction Commentary in Context

Part I A Brief History of Chinese Fiction Commentary

1. Mr. Pingdian: Jin Shengtan and the Shuihu zhuan

2. Dealing with Jin Shengtan and the Rest of the "Four Masterworks

3. Decline and Revival

Part II· Making Room for Fiction

4. Creating Implied Authors and Readers

5. Liberating Fiction from History

6. Liberating Fiction from "Reality"

Part III From What to Who: The Turn Away from Plot

7. From Plot-Centered to Character-Centered Narratives

8. Relational Characterization and Ambiguous Characters

Part IV: How to Write the Chinese Novel

9. Fiction Criticism and How the Story Is Told

10. Articulating the Parts

Part V.· Four Solutions to the Challenge of Commentary

11. Auto-commentary: The Xiyou bu and the Shuihu houzhuan

12. Commentator-Narrators: Li Yu, Ding Yaokang, and Wen Kang

13. Latent Commentary: The Rulin waishi

14. Everything All at Once: The Honglou meng

Works Cited

Glossary-Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

0-8047-6495-6

OCLC:

1294423333