Textual Research on Jin Ping Mei
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
© 2010 Junjie Luo DESIRE AND REDEMPTION: THE TWO WORLDS IN JIN PING MEI BY JUNJIE LUO DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Nancy Blake, Chair and Director of Research Associate Professor Rania Huntington, Co-Director of Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison Associate Professor Waïl Hassan Professor Zong-qi Cai Associate Professor Laurence Mall Abstract Jin Ping Mei was completed in the late 16th century, and is considered one of the masterpieces of classical Chinese fiction. Recent scholarship on Jin Ping Mei has focused on the novel‘s representation of desire. Some critics believe that desire is depicted in this novel as originating from one or two key characters such as Ximen Qing and Pan Jinlian. I differ with these critics, and contend that desire, as represented in Jin Ping Mei, is not sustained in a simple, linear relationship. Desire instead manifests itself in complex relationships between many of the individual characters. With the help of the literary theories of desire and of network, I argue that Jin Ping Mei represents desire as having a network structure. Almost no one depicted in this novel can escape from this network, and the network reproduces itself repeatedly. Using this literary model of a ―network of desires,‖ I attempt to offer new perspectives of some of the topics that are frequently discussed in the Jin Ping Mei scholarship. These topics include the relationship between Ximen Qing and his women, the nature of the fates of individual characters, and the messages conveyed by the conclusion of Jin Ping Mei. ii Acknowledgements I very much enjoyed my graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I am lucky enough to have the best dissertation committee that I could imagine. First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Nancy Blake, the chair of my dissertation committee and the director of my dissertation, for her generous help and unfailing support. She offered many insightful comments on my dissertation and devoted a great deal of time to helping me understand the psychoanalytical theories and the gender theories that are essential to my dissertation project. I am also grateful to Professor Rania Huntington, the co-director of my dissertation. Her vast knowledge of classical Chinese fiction is always an inspirational source for me. I have benefited in numerous ways from my conversations and correspondence with her and from her constructive comments on my dissertation. I would like to thank my dissertation committee members for their constant support. I am grateful to Professor Waïl Hassan for the generous help that he gave to me during my graduate studies, for his valuable advice on my dissertation, and for making me realize the importance of close reading. My thanks also go to Professor Zong-qi Cai. His seminar on the formalistic features of classical Chinese poetry and his syntactic approach to classical Chinese poetry offered me new perspectives in reading the poems of Jin Ping Mei. Furthermore, I am grateful to Professor Laurence Mall who gave many valuable suggestions regarding my dissertation and discussed with me ideas such as the ―mimetic desire‖ and ―l‘amour de loin‖ that I used in my dissertation. iii Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to Professors Jean-Philippe Mathy, Michael Palencia-Roth, Jerome Packard, and Rini Bhattacharya Mehta for their help during my graduate studies. I also would like to thank my friends at the University of Illinois, and in particular, Mei-Hsuan Chiang, Eric Dalle, Yanjie Wang, Eric Dodson-Robinson, Hui Xiao, Sevinc Turrkan, Pei-lin Wu, and Mineo Takamura for their support. An earlier version of the section on Pan Jinlian‘s masochism in chapter one appeared in The International Journal of the Humanities (2009, Volume 7, Issue 1: 149-156) under the title ―Masochism, Desire and Death: A Deleuzian Reading of Pan Jinlian‖. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. Several summer fellowships from the Program in Comparative and World Literature and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics allowed me to concentrate on my dissertation research and writing. I would also like to thank my parents and my grandmother for their support and care. Thanks may not be enough for my wife who read Jin Ping Mei with me and shared my moments of happiness and of frustration during the process of completing my dissertation. Last, but not the least, I am immensely grateful to my late grandfather, Luo Jianxun, who instilled in me a love for literature. This dissertation is dedicated to his memory. iv Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Desires ........................................................................................................ 21 Chapter 2: Network ...................................................................................................... 72 Chapter 3: Desire and Redemption: The Conclusion of Jin Ping Mei ...................... 112 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 141 Appendix A: Annotated Translation of Early Criticisms on Jin Ping Mei ................ 146 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 175 v Introduction Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (also known as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus) 1 is not an elegant novel in certain aspects, if we regard ―elegant‖ as being ―characterized by refinement and polish of style‖, using the definition found in the Oxford English Dictionary2. The novel is notorious for its extensive and graphic descriptions of sexuality and violence. In addition, the author of Jin Ping Mei uses a lot of ink describing the minute details of the characters‘ daily lives: the appearances of the characters, the clothes and the jewelry these characters wear, the food and the wine that they drink, their daily conversations, and the social activities in which they engage. Some critics believe that these descriptions are sometimes too fussy and repetitious3. However, many people value these exuberant depictions and consider them to be a primary strength of the novel. In one of the earliest criticisms on Jin Ping Mei, Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568-1610), a renowned literary scholar, praises these exuberant descriptions and compares them to rosy clouds: ―I browsed [Jin Ping Mei] while leaning in bed. The novel is filled with gorgeous descriptions that are comparable to rosy clouds. The quality of these depictions far exceeds that in Mei Sheng‘s 1 The Plum in the Golden Vase is the title David Roy used for his translation of the cihua recension of Jin Ping Mei. As of 2010, Roy has published his translation of the first sixty chapters of this one-hundred-chapter novel. The Golden Lotus is the title Clement Egerton used for his translation of the xiuxiang recension of Jin Ping Mei. 2 I use the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Second Edition. URL: http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy2.library.uiuc.edu/cgi/entry/50073071?single=1&query_type=word&query word=elegant&first=1&max_to_show=10. Accessed on May 21, 2010. 3 For example, A Ding 阿丁 argues: ―if a renowned writer could delete as many trivial stories as possible and keep only those parts which excel in the depiction of human relationships, Jin Ping Mei would be counted as an excellent work of Chinese vernacular fiction 如果有名手能將《金瓶梅》瑣屑的故事儘量 刪削，單留下善寫人情的部分，也可算是中國近代語的文學作品中的出色著作‖ (170, my translation) 1 Qifa 伏枕略觀，雲霞滿紙，勝於枚生《七發》多矣‖4 (220, my translation). Lu Xun 魯迅, probably the best-known Chinese literary figure of the 20th century, argues that these minute descriptions reflect the author‘s deep understanding of society and human nature. Lu says in an oft-quoted passage in his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction 中國小說史略, ―[t]he writer shows the most profound understanding of the life his time, his descriptions are clear yet subtle, penetrating yet highly suggestive, and for the sake of contrast he sometimes portrays two quite different aspects of life. His writing holds such as variety of human interest that no novel of that period could surpass it 作者之于世情，蓋誠極洞達，凡所形容，或條暢，或 曲折，或刻露而盡相，或幽伏而含譏，或一時並寫兩面，使之相形，變幻之情，隨在顯 見，同時說部，無以上之‖ (222, translated by Xianyi Yang 楊憲益 and Gladys Yang 戴乃 疊). Andrew Plaks, a contemporary critic, sees the acute attention that the author gives to detail as being key to understanding the artistry of Jin Ping Mei (87-88). I fully agree with these critics. I chose Jin Ping Mei as the topic of my dissertation primarily because I love its ―textual density‖(80)—to use Andrew Plak‘s words. This dissertation will explore how desire, a primary theme of Jin Ping Mei, is represented in the novel‘s detailed portrayals of the daily lives of the characters. The novel Jin Ping Mei What is Jin Ping Mei about? Before I summarize the storyline of Jin Ping Mei, I will say a few words about the completion date and the author of the novel. It is generally agreed that 4 All of the classical commentaries on Jin Ping Mei are taken from A Collection of Jin Ping Mei Materials 金瓶梅材料彙編, unless otherwise noted. Qifa (translated as Seven Stimuli by Naifei Ding) is a prosaic fu 賦 written by Mei Sheng 枚乘 who lived during the second century B.C. For an extended discussion of the relationship between Jin Ping Mei and Qifa, see Ding 81-115. For a discussion of the literary genre fu, see Knechtges 59-83. 2 the novel was completed during the second half of the 16th century, although the exact year of completion has not been conclusively established. Many scholars have attempted to establish the identity of the author who used the pseudonym Lanling xiaoxiaosheng 蘭陵笑笑生 (Scoffing Scholar of Lanling) for Jin Ping Mei. There are over sixty candidates for Lanling xiaoxiaosheng (Wu 16).