Stories to Caution the World is the first complete translation of Jingshi tongyan, the second of Feng Menglong's three collections of stories which were pivotal in the development of Chinese vernacular fiction. These tales, whose importance in the Chinese literary canon and in world literature is without question, have been compared to Boccaccio's Decameron and the stories of A Thousand and One Nights. Peopled with scholars, emperors, ministers, generals, and a gallery of ordinary men and women in their everyday surroundings -- merchants and artisans, prostitutes and courtesans, matchmakers and fortune-tellers, monks and nuns, servants and maids, thieves and imposters -- the stories in this collection provide a vivid panorama of the bustling world of imperial China before the end of the Ming dynasty. Feng Menglong collected popular stories from a variety of sources (some dating back centuries) and circulated them via the flourishing seventeenth-century publishing industry. He not only saved them from oblivion but elevated the status of vernacular literature and provided material for authors of the great late-Ming and Qing novels to draw upon. As in their translation of the first collection of Feng's trilogy, Stories Old and New, Shuhui and Yunqin Yang include all forty stories as well as Feng's interlinear and marginal comments and all of the verse woven throughout the stories.

Stories to Caution the World (A Ming Dynasty Collection)

Literature & Fiction

Feng Menglong

Yang, Shuhui

Yang, Yunqin

United States

Univ of Washington Pr

<p>Feng Menglong (1574–1646) was recognized as the most knowledgeable connoisseur of popular literature of his time. He is known today for compiling three famous collections of vernacular short stories, each containing forty stories, collectively known as Sanyan.\nAppropriation and Representation adapts concepts of ventriloquism and dialogism from Bakhtin and Holquist to explore Feng’s methods of selecting source materials. Shuhui Yang develops a model of development in which Feng’s approach to selecting and working with his source materials becomes clear.\nMore broadly, Appropriation and Representation locates Feng Menglong’s Sanyan in the cultural milieu of the late Ming, including the archaist movement in literature, literati marginality and anxieties, the subversive use of folk works, and the meiren xiangcao tradition―appropriating a female identity to express male frustration. Against this background, a rationale emerges for Feng’s choice to elevate and promote the vernacular story while stepping back form an overt authorial role.</p>

Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story (Michigan Monographs In Chinese Studies)

History & Criticism

U OF M CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

This study of Feng Menglong's formulation and promotion of vernacular literature focuses on his Sanyan works (Yushi mingyan, Jingshi tongyan, and Xingshi hengyan), first published in the 1620s. Adapting the perspectives of ventriloquism and dialogism from Bakhtin and Holquist, Yang proposes a model of development into which he places Feng's works and uses this model to explain Feng's approach to selecting and working with his source materials.Yang locates Feng Menglong's Sanyan in the broader cultural milieu of the late Ming and discusses the then-dominant archaist movement in literature, literati marginality and anxieties, the subversive use of folk works, and the meiren xiangcao tradition--appropriating a female identity to express male frustration.Shuhui Yang is Associate Professor of Chinese, Bates College.

Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story (Volume 79) (Michigan Monographs In Chinese Studies)

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