China & Inner Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer and Chair: Grace S. Fong, McGill University
Discussant: Shuen-Fu Lin, University of Michigan
Critical commentaries on fiction, drama, and poetry constitute a significant discursive mode in late imperial China. This panel proposes to explore the particular thematic of self-reflexivity that often informs the commentarial mode in the late Ming and Qing periods. In their emphasis on self-representation, such commentaries often exceed the boundaries of normative generic expectations and problematize notions of both self and genre.
Laura Wu’s paper focuses on the miscellaneous, irrelevant, and personal elements in Jin Shengtan’s commentary to the Shuihu which she reads as Jin’s production of an author-effect in his influential version of the novel. Complicating any idea of unitary self-representation, Sally Church will examine Jin Shengtan’s critical moves between text and self in his commentary to the drama Xixiangji, in which are embedded much self-referential discourse and cross-generic excesses, and from which an author-commentator emerges. In analyzing Li Yu’s use of a subjective narratorial mode in short stories, Wang Ying will argue for Li’s contribution to the rise of an autobiographical sensibility in fiction. Finally, Grace Fong explores the autobiographical excesses of the commentaries in the poetry and poetry criticism of the 19th-century woman poet Shen Shanbao, as exemplary of women’s writing practices which challenge and subvert the normative functions of both genres.
Together these papers aim to investigate issues and practices, concerning conceptions and constructions of selves and genres by both genders in the commentarial mode. Our readings of this discursive mode will further unravel the mutually implicating complexities of literary discourse in late imperial China.
Hua Laura Wu, Huron College
Although Jin Shengtan is now acclaimed as the most influential and central figure in the pingdian or commentary tradition of Chinese fiction criticism, some of his commentarial habits remain puzzling and disturbing to modern scholars, especially in what is perceived to be his tendency to make frivolous and irrelevant remarks and to include miscellaneous material in his commentary.
This paper will address the issue of the relevance of the irrelevant elements in Jin Shengtan’s Shuihu zhuan commentary. It proposes to examine the various digressions—childhood memories, conversations with friends, anecdotes about past experiences, and reflections on other matters of interest—and classify them according to the context from which they arise, the references they make, and, most importantly, the functions they perform. The paper will consider what constitutes the parameters of the critical discourse, or the issue of what is relevant or irrelevant to the commentary.
The examination will demonstrate that such "digressions" actually delve into the critic’s own personal, emotional, psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic experiences. Hence they serve to draw a vivid and multi-faceted portrait of the critic. This self-projected image in the commentarial discourse shows the critic functioning as mediator between the author and the reader: he is the author’s zhiyin ("one who knows the tone") who alone can fully understand the real authorial intent and appreciate his talent. At the same time the critic poses as the reader’s mentor, guiding the reader to reach out for the true and often hidden meaning in the text.
Sally K. Church, University of Cambridge
Jin Shengtan often begins his comments on the drama Xixiangji by talking about the text but he ends by talking about himself. In addition to lengthy digressive comments, shorter comments also abound whose initial focus is the characters or the plot, but they shift to other subjects such as composition methods or techniques, the author’s genius, and even seemingly extraneous matters before concluding with a comment about the critic himself.
In this paper I shall investigate the process of commentarial transition from focus on the text to focus on the self, and attempt to articulate possible effects of these shifts in focus. I intend to show that the progression is paradigmatic of Jin’s interaction with the Xixiangji as a whole. In making such transitions from text to self, Jin breaks out of the world of the text into a wider world that intersects with his own experience. He moves from the perspective of the characters developed in the text to an imagined perspective of the author, and finally to his own perspective of relative detachment from the confines of the text. From that position of freedom, he returns to the text again to repeat the reading/commentarial process until the drama’s end. The fluidity or permeability between the boundaries of text and self in Jin’s critical moves suggests the overarching power of the commentator to construct new readings.
Ying Wang, Princeton University
In Chinese vernacular fiction, the mode of commentary often involves the mediating activities of the author—his intervention into the narrative proper. The conventional functions of such authorial intrusion are both narratorial and critical: summarizing or advancing the narrative events and providing meaningful commentary on the story. Although obtrusive, it remains impersonal and self-effacing, providing the reader with the storyteller’s stock-in-trade rather than with the author’s personal feelings and experiences.
This paper will focus on how this commentarial convention is subverted by the seventeenth-century writer Li Yu. In numerous prologues, and opening poems included in his fiction, Li Yu is more interested in writing about or expressing himself than playing the role of the traditional storyteller. Four of his short stories from the Shi’er lou, for instance, contain Li Yu’s own poems that reflect his personal world: his life experiences, personal feelings, and moral beliefs. Other autobiographical elements Li Yu embedded in his narratorial commentaries include personal memories, life style, aesthetic taste, and opinions on various subjects.
This paper will argue that in so doing, Li Yu purposely shifts his narrative from an objective mode to a subjective and self-representational mode. This shift of mode contributed to the rise of what has been called "subjectivism" or autobiographical sensibility which appears in later Chinese fiction.
Grace S. Fong, McGill University
For many literati women during the Qing, the most significant means of self-representation was their own writings, which most commonly took the form of poetry. This paper addresses the powerful autobiographical impulse in women’s poetic practice as exemplified by the self-referential excesses in Shen Shanbao’s poetry collection and poetic commentary: the Hongxuelou chuji and Mingyuan shihua.
In her poetry collection, Shen challenges and revises fundamental generic boundaries to construct an autobiographical self by supplementing her chronologically arranged poems with long prefaces and extensive inter-lineal prose annotations. I will show how such excessive self-commentary questions the adequacy of the conventional self-expressive function of poetry.
The primary, stated aim of the Mingyuan shihua is to record the disparate efforts of hundreds of Qing women to inscribe themselves through the medium of poetry. Yet Shen also includes her own personal experiences and recollections, interspersing these among her more objective remarks on other women’s lives and poetry such that substantial sections of the text contain autobiographical details about her own life and poetry, and those of her mother and other female kin. Thus, Shen combines the two genres of poetic commentary and autobiography into a hybrid mode of self-revelation.
By examining the form and function of commentarial excesses which disrupt/subvert generic conventions established within dominant male literary practices, the paper will show how Shen succeeds in constructing an intra-textual autobiography and a female poetic genealogy through the multiple subject position of woman-poet-commentator.