Organizer: Margaret Baptist Wan, Harvard University
Chair and Discussant: Ellen Widmer, Wesleyan University
This panel focuses on modes of reading and writing in the Ming-Qing period—at what might be viewed as mis-readings. A range of materials, including household encyclopedias, anthologies on romance, martial arts fiction, and the late-Qing novel, draw texts from other sources and so "mistake" the genre. In the process of crossing generic boundaries, material which was intended for practical use is treated as fiction, and conversely fiction is presented as a model for practice.
The papers consider literary materials which were written or anthologized for profit. They were products of discrete printing booms, and targeted a new literate class. What is interesting is how authors and editors devised new ways of reading that resist generic boundaries. Passages from erotic novels appear as model letters; ‘Real’ love letters are read as fiction; martial arts heroes put traditional fiction into practice. The very understanding of reading as a "practice" undergoes significant change.
Richard Wang demonstrates the cross-fertilization of fiction and practice in letter manuals and household encyclopedias. Kathy Lowry shows how the love letters in these practical manuals were read as fiction, spelling out the aesthetic of the form. Margaret Baptist Wan charts how the martial arts novel reshaped the way popular fiction was read, from didactic models to meta-fiction. Alex Des Forges asks how the disappearance of fiction commentaries in the early twentieth century changes reading practices. Each panelist intends to rethink not only the boundaries between genres, but also the very distinction between fiction and practice.
Practicing Erotic Fiction and Romanticizing Writing Practice
Richard G. Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong
In this paper, I will examine the interaction between the Ming erotic novella and epistolary manuals. I focus on ten love letters in the letter-writing manual that copy passages from erotic novellas. The Ming erotic novella and the epistolary manual, as two sub-types of the Ming popular almanac, were both incorporated into popular almanac. Therefore, they may have shared similar concerns and readership. Whereas the erotic novella provides the letter-writing manual with model love letters, the latter changes the nuances of the love letters borrowed from the former. The compilers of the letter-writing manuals apparently intended to provide examples for those who wanted to compose their own love letters but did not know how to do it. Once repackaged, these ten letters get rid of the illicit affairs within the original context of the novellas, and serve wider purposes. In other words, erotic fiction was needed for social practice. In the meanwhile, the fact that the compilers of the epistolary manuals chose only erotic description or love letters, ignoring the rest of the erotic novellas, indicates that they tried to romanticize the practice of letter-writing for the purpose of mass consumption.
How to Read a Love Letter
Kathryn Lowry, University of California, Santa Barbara
One could look at love letters as correspondence gone astray. Seventeenth-century Chinese commercial publishers assembled love letters, qingshu, from "real" correspondence, fiction, and drama to compile miscellanies and letter-writing guides. The same letters are printed in miscellanies as products of a particular context, and in the epistolary manual as specimen to help people compose a letter. The growing tendency to read the love letter as fiction is a function of repetition. It is a factor of the Ming printing practice of duplicating materials from existing publications, which foregrounds the text. The letter’s appearance in different contexts focuses the reader’s attention on the style of the writing rather than its use as a model. In turn, duplication of the letters across genres underscores the formality of the letter. The late-Ming miscellany adds layers of commentary to bring out the letter’s significance as artifact of a ‘real’ exchange, as exemplar of the most intimate and harmonious relationships, as literary artifice, and as embodiment of sentiment that can bridge the distance between writer and recipient. The love letter can be read as fiction, with a plot, time frame, and characters, and formal and thematic links to the literature of love and friendship. On the other hand, the commentary opens up ways for the reader to make use of the letter as guide to composition or to personal conduct.
This paper examines what might be called the "literary" features of love letters, such as the form, themes, and preface, and I explore how the commentary might instruct a growing literate readership to put the models for writing into practice.
Living What You Read: Meta-Fiction in the 19th-Century Popular Novel
Margaret Baptist Wan, Harvard University
The nineteenth century witnessed a fundamental change in how popular fiction was written and read. While most popular fiction up to this point could be read as models for life upholding certain values, the early nineteenth century saw the publication of a number of meta-fictional novels. These novels derive their meaning and interest from how they interact with previous fictional models. In the process, they parody the very possibility that novels could serve as models for life.
This paper examines the turn toward metafiction in popular novels through the roles characters play. While the characters in these nineteenth-century popular novels are still created with reference to existing roles, they are distinguished by being aware of this and able to step outside the role in which they were cast. This also changes the process of reading. Highlighting intertextuality frees the novels from simple didacticism. Rather than the characters’ actions being evaluated by the narrator, they are left to be judged by the reader. The reader must actively evaluate the characters by comparing them to the figures in the great works of fiction such as Outlaws of the Marsh and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. These comparisons are necessitated by explicit intertextual references within the popular novels to the great works. Even the characters themselves will make reference to their "role models" before proceeding to parody that role. The particular pleasure of this popular fiction is its ability to thwart the reader’s expectations while remaining within a recognizable framework.
The Case of the Disappearing Reader: The Decline in Commentary and the Transformations of Address in Early Twentieth-Century Fiction
Alexander Des Forges, Harvard University
How do the commentaries to Chinese long vernacular fiction in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries relate to the discursive construction of fiction reading as a "practice" during this same period? What role does the "skilled reader" presumed by many of these commentaries play in the imagination of the many ordinary readers for whom the novels might be challenging cultural products which invite misreadings at all levels? This paper begins with these questions, and investigates the ways in which fiction and commentaries of the Qing formally anticipate and respond to their readers, defining in the process the practice of reading fiction, an occupation closely related to, but distinct from, the reading of "ancient-style prose" and civil service examination essays. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, however, fiction commentaries ceased to be written and printed (older novels were even reprinted without their commentaries); narrative asides within the texts also became much less frequent. What happened to the reader (skilled or otherwise) and reading practices without these powerful vehicles for their articulation? As the first person narrative grew in importance, what changes did the second person to whom it was ostensibly addressed undergo? This paper aims to answer to these questions through close readings of several texts central to the canon of modern Chinese fiction, including Lu Xun’s "Diary of a Madman" and Yu Dafu’s "Sinking." The aim throughout is to consider not only the practice of fiction, but also the fiction of practice.