Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story.

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

Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story. By SHUHUI YANG. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, vol. 79. Ann Arbor: CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1998. Pp. 187. $50.

When Feng Menglong (1574-1646) published the three collections, known as the Sanyan, of forty vernacular stories each, he not only included pre-existing stories but also wrote or rewrote a number of them himself and extensively edited his materials. In view of his contribution to the final shape the stories took, he may well be regarded as their author, even though "he appropriated meaning to his own purposes not so much by 'creative writing' (in its narrow sense) but by revising pre-existing source materials, by speaking through others' words" (p. 153). Shuhui Yang concludes at the end of his study of some of Feng Menglong's authorial interventions that "Feng deliberately manipulated and subverted elements of popular literature as part of the narrative strategy he devised to elevate the Sanyan stories to a higher level of literary sophistication" (p. 153).

Yang starts out by taking a closer look at the preface to the first of the three collections, Gujin xiaoshuo (also known as Yushi mingyan). In this preface, which may be by Feng Menglong, the status of vernacular short fiction is broached by making two claims. On the one hand, the author of this preface traces the history of the genre to the imperial court of the twelfth century, where, according to him, written tales were presented for reading to the retired emperor Gaozong and subsequently also were distributed outside the palace. In view of the importance Yang attaches to the "anxiety of service" he later attributes to Feng Menglong (in chapter four), he might perhaps have paid more attention to this highly remarkable and, for all we know, unhistorical claim. He prefers, however, to stress the second claim in the preface that identifies the vernacular tale as text, as far as the power to move one's audience is concerned, with the oral performance of the professional storyteller. This, in turn, is linked w ith the cult of authenticity in certain circles of late Ming literati. "For Feng, the vernacular story's most important aspect was its folk origin. Because it was believed to come from the people, it carried, as did its sister genre the folk song, the legitimating aura of general sentiment. So that it looked like folk literature, the vernacular story had to...