The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China

360 Pages·1981·7.532 MB·English

by  Robert E. Hegel

The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China
流 成
The cover of the kuei-yu II edition of The Prayer Mat of Flesh, dated 1693 (?)•
丁he vertical inscription on the right gives the author’s pseudonym,
Ch’ing-yin Hsien-sheng (“Mr. Feelings Concealed”)； on the left
is an advertisement: “Even though the function of fiction is to exhort
and to chastise, if it is not spicy and unrestrained, it will not delight
the eye of the reader...
T H E N O V E L
I N
S E V E N T E E N T H
C E N T U R Y
C H I N A
R O B E R T E . H E G E L
New York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS i98i
Copyright © 1981 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
Columbia University Press
New York Guildford, Surrey
Calligraphy for the chapter openings courtesy of
Richard H. Yang, Washington University.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hegel, Robert E 1943-
The novel in seventeenth-century China.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Chinese fiction—Ming dynasty, 1368-1644—
History and criticism. 2, Chinese fiction—
Ch’ing dynasty, 1644-1912—History and criticism.
I. Title.
PL2436.H4 895.1’3409 80-24105
ISBN 0-231-04928-5
To Jane and Elizabeth，
who helped to make my life meaningful
and enjoyable during extended periods
of tension and concentrated effort,
this book is most affectionately dedicated

Contents
Preface ix
Divisions of Chinese History by Dynastic Rule xvii
Conversion Table of Wade-Giles and Pinyin Systems for
Romanizing Chinese xix
1 The World Behind the Novel: China in the
Seventeenth Century
2 The Novelists’ World: Tradition and Innovation
3 Political Realities in Fictional Garb: Past as Metaphor
for the Present 67
4 Man as Responsible Being: The Individual, Social
Role, and Heaven 105
5 Self as Mind or as Body: Fictional Examinations
of Identity 141
6 Disaster and Renewal in an Ordered Universe 189
7 Literary Innovation and the Legacy of
Seventeenth-Century Novels 219
Appendix I Literary Source Materials for Several
Seventeenth-Century Novels 23 5
Appendix II Textual Histories of Various
Seventeenth-Century Novels 24 1
Glossary 2 5 5
Notes 2 6o'3
Bibliography 3 3 9
Index 3 1

Preface
On the first day of the lunar new year in the year 1589, an earth­
quake of serious proportions shook Peking, the Ming capital. He too
may have been frightened or perhaps he merely was looking for an
excuse, but the Chinese Wan-li emperor, a young man named Chu
I-chiin, refused to meet his assembled ministers in open court, as
custom dictated for that day. Throughout the next thirty years of his
reign, he never again met any of his ministers on a regular basis and
steadfastly ignored the business of governing. Lacking any stable
leadership, competing factions vied for power in incessant bloody
struggles. Simultaneously, economic conditions for the masses of
common people grew worse; when finally China collapsed into wide­
spread peasant rebellion, the Chinese Ming imperial house fell with
it. In its place emerged a line of Manchu rulers who forged a new
state, the Ch’ing，on the Chinese model, but with positions of highest
authority reserved for members of their own ethnic group. This new
dynasty kept Chinese intellectuals and bureaucrats under firm con­
trol; wholesale destruction of life through war，famine, and natural
disasters reduced population pressure on the economic base. Despite
its political fragility, the late Ming had been a period of intense cul­
tural activity; with limited opportunities to serve in the state
bureaucratic structure, many intellectuals devoted their talents tc/lit­
erature and the arts, with the result that culture continued to
flourish into the early Ch’ing.
Within a few years of the Peking earthquake, major literary
events occurred—the appearance of two major novels, Chin P’ing
Mei (also known in translation as The Golden Lotus) and Hsi-yu chi
(Journey to the West or Monkey). The first, an anonymous expose
of the internal conflicts between the several wives in the household
of a lecherous and wealthy merchant, has as its raison d'etre a stern
condemnation of licentious living—which was seen as a major social
problem during the last decades of the Ming. The other is a rollick­
X Preface
ing fantasy adventure based on legends and stories already popular
for centuries in which a timid monk makes a pilgrimage to India
looking for Buddhist scriptures; in a lighthearted way it also casti­
gates the foibles of its age, particularly those of the clergy. Journey to
the West also marks the first serious use of allegory in the Chinese
novel.
In 1699 K’ung Shang-jen (1648—1718) was to present a lengthy
retrospective of the seventeenth century in an elegant dramatic
form. His Tao-hua shan (Peach Blossom Fan) in forty-odd scenes
chronicles the end of the Ming dynasty and the end of an era. For
the most part, then, it is a tragedy. By K’ung’s time, Manchu control
was firmly established; the Ch’ing K’ang-hsi emperor was strong,
capable, and decisive. China’5 population had regained its previous
peak—before the calamitous events of midcentury—and the country
as a whole was becoming more prosperous. In 1701 Wu Ching-tzu
(d. 1754) was born; fifty years later he would complete another
landmark of Chinese f i c t i o n , wai-shih (The Scholars), a scath­
ing satire of contemporary values. Reminiscent of Gulliver’s Travels
in its vacillation between comic parody and bitter condemnation,
Wu’s novel focuses on China’s bureaucracy, that privileged group at
the pinnacle of power and prestige. His work was followed by Hung-
lou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), also entitled Shih-t*ou chi
(The Story of the Stone), unquestionably China’s finest novel; at
once a mythical search for blessed oblivion beyond mortal
selfishness, a penetrating exposure of China’s wealthiest bureaucrat
clans, and a series of romantic stories about adolescent lovers. These
two great novels mark the greatest achievement of’Ch’ing fiction in
the same way that Journey to the West and Chin P’ing Mei are widely
considered the apogee of Ming novels. This study, however, will
focus not on these well-known narratives, but on several outstanding
novels that appeared during the seventeenth century, between these
pairs of masterpieces.
The seventeenth century, or more specifically the tumultuous
period flanked by the earthquake of 1589 and the final consolidation
of Ch’ing control by the K’ang-hsi emperor in the 1690s, saw
Chinese vernacular fiction come of age on the foundation laid by
Chin P’ing Mei and Journey to the West. It was during this period that
the short story form was brought to perfection by Feng Meng-lung
(1574-1646); his three collections of tales (called hua-pen) present in