Ameliorative Satire and the Seventeenth-Century Chinese Novel: Xingshi yinyuan zhuan--Marriage as Retribution, Awakening the World.

• Author: IDEMA, WILT L.
• Position: Review

Ameliorative Satire and the Seventeenth-Century Chinese Novel: Xingshi yinyuan zhuan--Marriage as Retribution, Awakening the World. By YENNA Wu. Chinese Studies, vol. 9. Lewiston, N.Y.: EDWIN MELLEN PRESS, 1999. Pp. 407. $109.95.

This study is the first English-language monograph devoted to the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, an anonymous seventeenth-century novel in one hundred chapters. As the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan is one of the masterworks of traditional Chinese fiction and provides a wealth of materials on almost any aspect of traditional life, this publication is to be welcomed very much. As a service to prospective readers, Prof. Wu has included a detailed, chapter-by-chapter summary of the contents of this novel (pp. 303-55).

This study is divided into two parts. The first. "Towards a Definition of the Ameliorative Satiric Novel" (pp. 9-60), consists of three short chapters. The first chapter, "The Mode of Satire in Chinese Literature--A Selective Overview" (pp. 9-22) takes a brief look at the various Chinese terms for satire and notes the occurrence of satirical elements in many genres of classical and vernacular literature. I must confess that I found the term "non-serious satire" (used to refer to vernacular satire) an unfortunate coinage in view of the rage at social injustice that inspires many satirists. The second chapter, "The Ming-Qing Satiric Novel as a Genre" (pp. 23-42), takes issue with Lu Xun's A Brief History of Chinese Fiction of 1924, in which only Wu Jingzi's Rulin waishi was classified as a satiric novel, while the critical novels of the last decade of the Qing were labeled "novels of exposure." Wu argues that satire is an element that is found in varying degree in many other novels as well. If such novels not only satirize sin, folly, and stupidity at great length but also their dire consequences, while reserving room for the depiction of virtue and its rewards too, such works should not be denied the epithet of "satire' but might be called "ameliorative satire" to bring out their characteristics (in his preface to this volume, Patrick Hanan suggests the alternative of "cationary fiction"). The final chapter of part one, "The Ameliorative Satric Novel" (pp. 43-60), notes the prevalence of this type of fiction during the final decades of the Ming and provides very short discussions of a number of illustrative works.

Wu, while arguing for "less rigid schemes of classification" (p. 41), questions Lu Xun's normative use of the...