Literati Identity and its Fictional Representations in Late Imperial China.

• Author: Idema, Wilt L.
• Position: Review

By STEPHEN J. RODDY. Stanford: STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1998. Pp. 315. $49.50.

Even though vernacular fiction enjoyed a lower status with the Chinese literati of the eighteenth century than those of the seventeenth century up to the 1680s, its subject matter was increasingly dominated by the self-image of the literati, especially in the longer novels. Many of the issues raised in the novels of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras reflect issues that also were discussed in literati circles at large, and these novels may therefore be studied as sources documenting the intellectual history of the period. This is what Stephen J. Roddy sets out to do in the volume under review. Roddy focuses on Wu Jingzi's Rulin waishi, but also discusses at length Xia Jingqu's Yesou puyan and Li Ruzhen's Jinghua yuan. "For the writers of these three novels, the literati were afflicted by a malaise serious enough to demand a rethinking of their social and intellectual tasks" (p. 226).

Roddy's monograph is made up of three parts. "Part I: The Image of Literati in Qing Discourse" (pp. 9-83) is a general survey of the main intellectual currents of the High Qing. It consists of three chapters. The first, "Literati Identity and the Qing Epistemological Crisis" (pp. 11-25), retraces the well-known eighteenth-century shift from philosophy to philology, from a belief in a single transcendent principle to painstaking attention to textual detail, from Song learning to Han learning, from Ii to wen. The more extensive second chapter, "Discourses of the Literati and the Literati in Discourse" (pp. 26-62), again deals with this shift, but now as it may be observed in various branches of literati activity. In his discussion of High Qing scholarship, Roddy focuses on Dai Zhen and his insistence on the gradual accumulation of knowledge; in his discussion of literature he notes a growing interest in an individual creator in the writings of Ye Xie and Yao Nai; in his discussion of painting he contrasts Zheng Xie with Dong Qichang and notes Zheng's emphasis on technique; and in his discussion of baguwen studies he traces a development from scholars who championed the examination essay as a vehicle of ethical perfection (represented by Lu Liuliang) to scholars who stressed its formal features (represented by Jiao Xun). This chapter is concluded by a discussion of Zhang Xuecheng's reaction to the increasing prevalence of kaozheng scholarship. In the concluding chapter of part I, "The...