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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell information and Leaming 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA UMJ 800-521-0600 SHÜIHU ZHUAtl (WATER MARGIN) AS ELITE CULTURAL DISCOURSE: READING, WRITING AND THE MAKING OF MEANING DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Hongyuan Yu, B.A., M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1999 Approved by Dissertation Committee: Kirk Denton (Adviser) Patricia Sieber (Co-Adviser) f— ? } Timothy Wong Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures UMI Number 9951751 UMI* UMI Microform9951751 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Artx)r, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Hongyuan Yu 1999 ABSTRACT This study seeks to evaluate the cultural significance involved in the writing and reading of traditional Chinese fiction (xiaoshuo) , with the sixteenth-centurÿ^ork Shuihu zhuan (The Water Margin) as a paradigmatic text. The focus is on how meaning is produced through the complex interactions between the text and its ever chainging contexts. I first survey the theorizing of fiction by literati critics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with focus on the strategies they used to not only promote fiction, but also enhance their own status as elites by manipulating the cultural roles associated with the writing and reading of fiction. By designating fiction as a popular discourse, the literati accorded the genre with a special license to be unorthodox and subversive, which legitimized their use of it to voice their own discontent. The main part of the study is devoted to an examination of the issues of kingship, loyalty and rebellion as delineated in the Shuihu zhuan, and as discussed in the commentaries written by literati commentators. Through the writing of 1 1 commentaries, tiie commentators produce a meta-discourse in which they discuss important cultural and ideological issues. My study also investigates the new significance iiiçosed upon the Shuihu zhuan in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and examine several historical moments at which the novel was re-evaluated and re-interpretated against the background of new ideologies and political agendas in the cultural and literary transformations in China's modernization. 1X1 Dedicated to my family IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S The labor of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of a number of people,- to whom I would like to express my sincere gratitude. I would like to thank my advisers. Professors Kirk Denton and Patricia Sieber, for their inspiration, encouragement and guidance. Both of them have devoted a great amount of time and effort to guiding my dissertation through its long period of evolution. Their high standards, intellectual insights and perceptive criticisms have made the writing of this dissertation a valuable learning experience for me. I am also profoundly indebted to Professor Timothy Wong, my adviser during the early years of my graduate studies at the Ohio State University. This dissertation was inspired by a few seminars and individual studies I took from him. Even after he left the Ohio State University, Professor Wong has continued to work with me through the entire period of the writing of this dissertation, carefully going over each, draft and providing invaluable instructions and thought-provoking comments. Others who have taught me a great deal during my graduate studes include Professors Xiaomei Chen, David Chen, Yan-shuan Lao, Galal Walker, Marjorie Chan and Hao Chang, whose various courses on Chinese language, literature, philosophy and history have benefited me tremendously. My thanks also go to my friends and fellow graduate students: Mark Bender, Nick Kaldis, Liao Rongrong, Wu Xiaoqi, Li Minru, Roxana Fung, Bai Di, He Dajiang, Xu Gang and Wang Jing, whose camaraderie has been a constant source of support in my graduate life. I am also grateful to Ms. Debbie Knicely for her help with many practical matters. Last but not least, my heart-felt gratitude and love goes to my family: my parents Yu Mengde and Wang Yanshu, who have always taken pride in me; my husband Pain Jiachun, whose constant understanding and support has sustained me throughout all these long years of my graduate studies; and my 2-year-old daughter Kaili, without whose "cooperation" this dissertation could not have been completed. VI VITA 1988 ....................... B.A. Fudan University, Shanghai, China 1992 ............ M.A. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1995-Present .... .......... Doctoral candidate. The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio FIELD OF STUDY Major Field; East Asian Languages and Literatures vri TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ................................................ ii Dedication. .............................................. iv Acknowledgements .................................. ..... v Vita .................................................... vii Table of Contents ...................................... viii Introduction ............................................ 1 Chapters : 1. Cultural Significance of Reading and Writing Fiction in the Late Ming and Early Qing P e r i o d .............. 23 2. Narrative Discourse: Multiplicity of Voices ........ 67 3. Context and Contention in the Discourse on Loyalty and Rebellion ............................ 124 4. Reconceptua1i zing Fiction in the Late Qing and Republican Periods ............ 183 5. Reinventing the Shuihu zhuan in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976 ...... 242 6. Conclusion .......................................... 271 G l o s s a r y ................................................ 277 Bibliography ............................................ 284 vxii INTRODUCTION In 1641, after completing an extensive commentary on the Shuihu zhuan, the commentator Jin Shengtan (1608-1661) gave the book to his ten-year-old son with the hope that after reading it, the boy would learn the hermeneutic methods which can then be applied to reading all the other books in the world.^ Over three hundred years later, Mao Zedong (1893- 1976), in a conversation with an instructor of Chinese literature from Beijing University, gave these remarks on the same book: "The merit of the Shuihu zhuan lies precisely in its depiction of capitulation. It can be used as negative teaching material to educate all the people about capitulationists." Mao's remarks, as usual, were written down and soon appeared as the latest "Maoist instructions," starting a political campaign in which all the people in ^ Jin Shengtan, "Xu San, " in Chen Xizhong, Hou Zhongyi and Lu Yuchuan, eds., Shuihu zhuan huiping ben (Beijing: Beijing daxue, 1981), pp. 8-11. China were expected to read the Shuihu zhuan in order to "raise their consciousness.'''^ Given above are just two examples of the diverse ways that the Shuihu zhuan has been read and used from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Be it its literary qualities and/or political content, the novel^ appealed to a broad readership for a variety of reasons, and was appropriated, manipulated, and re-adapted in different manners. The readers' many different readings of as well as ^ Ye Yonglie, Yao Pengzi yu Yao Wenyuan (Hong Kong: Nanyue, 1989), pp. 319-20. ” Here the term "novel," and later on "fiction," is used for convenience's sake to refer to premodern vernacular narratives called xiaoshuo in the Chinese original. I am fully aware of the inadequacy of these terms in rendering xiaoshuo, a phrase that had a much wider and more complicated coverage in traditional China. Xiaoshuo was originally associated with a category of writings which included philosophy and other discursive writings. From the Tang onward, the term was used more and more to refer to imaginative writings distinguishable from the more verifiable narratives of history. Those designated as xiaoshuo include classical tales of the Tang as well as vernacular narratives that began to appear in the Yusin. During the Qing, xiaoshuo also included play scripts which, at the time, came to be read more than performed.