University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies Yuanfei Wang University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Wang, Yuanfei, "Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 938. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/938 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/938 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies Abstract Chinese historical romance blossomed and matured in the sixteenth century when the Ming empire was increasingly vulnerable at its borders and its people increasingly curious about exotic cultures. The project analyzes three types of historical romances, i.e., military romances Romance of Northern Song and Romance of the Yang Family Generals on northern Song's campaigns with the Khitans, magic-travel romance Journey to the West about Tang monk Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India, and a hybrid romance Eunuch Sanbao's Voyages on the Indian Ocean relating to Zheng He's maritime journeys and Japanese piracy. The project focuses on the trope of exogamous desire of foreign princesses and undomestic women to marry Chinese and social elite men, and the trope of cannibalism to discuss how the expansionist and fluid imagined community created by the fiction shared between the narrator and the reader convey sentiments of proto-nationalism, imperialism, and pleasure. Contextualizing the fiction in its contemporary political discourses and its literary evolution in history, the dissertation concentrates on fictional images, i.e., eligiousr practitioners, women, demons, and categories of barbarians. It argues that the historical romances have self-healing and self-assuring characteristics. They sublimate history into tales of triumphs, jokes, games, references, and historical reversions, and thus allow readers to imagine an invincible imperial history. This study brings into light the importance literature plays as a cultural response to China's long history of cross-border military and cultural encounters with her Eurasian neighbors. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group East Asian Languages & Civilizations First Advisor Victor H. Mair Keywords empire, genre, romance, sixteenth century, tropes Subject Categories English Language and Literature | History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/938 GENRE AND EMPIRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE AND SIXTEENTH- CENTURY CHINESE CULTURAL FANTASIES Yuanfei Wang A DISSERTATION in East Asian Languages and Civilizations Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation: ______________________ Victor H. Mair, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________ Linda H. Chance, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Dissertation Committee: Xiaojue Wang, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Ania Loomba, Professor of English Tina Lu, Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University GENRE AND EMPIRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE AND SIXTEENTH- CENTURY CHINESE CULTURAL FANTASIES COPYRIGHT © 2013 Yuanfei Wang In Memory of my beloved maternal grandmother, a Hakka woman and a genius storyteller, Cai Fengjiao 蔡鳳嬌 (1921-2007) iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My thank first goes to my advisor Victor H. Mair who has supported my graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania without reservation. His diligence and enthusiasm in academia, his unparalleled insights and foresights, his profound understanding of Chinese linguistics, religion, and culture, and most of all, his deep concerns for his advisees, have in every way convinced me that I am indeed blessed to have met such a great advisor. Tina Lu is the inspiration of my study at Pennsylvania. I thank her for inviting me to study at Yale for one year as an exchange scholar and for our hours of conversations on English writing, methods of working on literature, and hundreds of details of my paper writing. I have benefited a great deal from them. Her sharp and highly useful advices have for many times saved me from going wrong directions and being lost in impractical goals. She also pushed me to think harder about the nature of my work, however stressful this process may be. I should also thank Ania Loomba. Her seminar on early modern English literature and global imagination sets the foundation for this dissertation. Without her passion to think globally about cultural connections and her urging me to reflect upon the clarity of my language and my thoughts, this dissertation would not have been possible. I thank Xiaojue Wang as well, for her willingness to be on my committee and for her example as a young professor for me to emulate. My great appreciation goes to Si-yen Fei, for her friendship, warm and encouraging advice, and for her organization of the dissertation workshop where I met more friends. Without her presence at Pennsylvania, I would have felt very lonely. I feel that I am indebted to Robert Hegel whose patience, understanding, and kindness during my stay at the Washington University in St. Louis are still cherished in iv my heart. Along the way, Haun Saussy kindly provided me theoretical references, and Wilt Idema gave me rich historical and narrative materials. Paul Goldin answered all my questions, and Nancy Steinhardt supervised the timeline of my dissertation writing. I thank them. Geoff Wade, a great friend and scholar, offered all kinds of help, big and small, to which I cannot appreciate enough. I thank Tansen Sen for giving me the opportunity to go to Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore for field research. Linda Greene also deserves my thanks for her extremely efficient and helpful administrative skills. I thank my fellow classmates and friends for their suggestions on my work, for our digressions, pointless talks, jokes, and conferences and parties that we managed to attend together. They made my everyday life at Penn and Yale worthwhile. They are Jessica Dvorak Moyer, Nagatomi Hirayama, Wang Guojun, Sidney Xu Lu, Eileen Le Han, Ye Minlei, Madeline Wilcox. I should thank my mother Feng Rongyin and my father Wang Yixian, who have immersed me with fascinating stories since I was a child, and who have used their beautiful lives as examples to continuously goad me into pursuing further and living smarter and humbler. I should thank Kai, for his persuasions and assurance, for his offering a place of comfort. I thank my maternal grandmother Cai Fengjiao, a diligent and smart Hakka woman who brought me up, and we enjoyed our time together telling and listening to stories. It is to her that this dissertation is dedicated. Finally, I thank Olivia. Her smile, giggles, and babbles made me realize that life is a happy journey, and I should tell her fun stories in no time. v ABSTRACT GENRE AND EMPIRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE AND SIXTEENTH- CENTURY CHINESE CULTURAL FANTASIES Yuanfei Wang Victor H. Mair Historical romance blossomed and matured in the sixteenth century when the Ming empire was increasingly vulnerable at its borders and its people increasingly curious about exotic cultures. The project analyzes three types of historical romances, i.e., military romances Romance of Northern Song and Romance of the Yang Family Generals on northern Song’s campaigns with the Khitans, magic-travel romance Journey to the West about Tang monk Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to India, and a hybrid romance Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyages on the Indian Ocean relating to Zheng He’s maritime journeys and Japanese piracy. The project focuses on the trope of exogamous desire of foreign princesses and undomestic women to marry Chinese and social elite men, and the trope of cannibalism to discuss how the expansionist and fluid imagined community created by the fiction shared between the narrator and the reader convey sentiments of proto- nationalism, imperialism, and pleasure. Contextualizing the fiction in its contemporary political discourses and its literary evolution in history, the dissertation concentrates on fictional images, i.e., religious practitioners, women, demons, and categories of barbarians. It argues that the historical romances have self-healing and self-assuring characteristics. They sublimate history into tales of triumphs, jokes, games, references, and historical reversions, and thus allow readers to imagine an invincible imperial history. vi This study brings into light the importance literature plays as a cultural response to China’s long history of cross-border military and cultural encounters with her Eurasian neighbors. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations viii Chapter 1 Introduction: Romance, Marriage, Gender in Sixteenth-Century Ming Empire 1 Chapter 2 Games of the Chinese Empire: Family, Frontier, and the Politics of Military Romance Romance of Northern Song and Romance of Yang Family Generals 27 Chapter 3 Geography and Literary Genealogy: Mythology,