Following Lu Xun’s taxonomy and claim, many modern literary historians have regarded The Scholars (Rulin waishi, c. 1750) as China's first and only satiric novel. This paper broadens the definition of satiric novel by reconsidering the appropriate parameters and making them more flexible. I argue for the inclusion of a number of novels hitherto excluded from this genre; I include some novels of “admonition,” some novels formerly classified under other categories, and some novels written in the classical language. I also demonstrate that The Scholars is neither the first nor the sole traditional Chinese satiric novel, but is rather one of the many in this genre. Viewed from this fresh perspective, the birth of the Chinese satiric novel should be placed in the Ming (1368-1644). Questioning the rigid generic categories found in so many histories of Chinese fiction, I suggest that multiple listing could conceivably be allowed for some of the novels that are “medley” in subject matter and treatment. A reconsideration of the rationale behind genremaking and a relaxation of rigid classification would allow future critics to broaden their scope to examine more sadly ignored novels, “rediscover” familiar works, trace more influences among novels, and better map out the history of Chinese fiction.

This paper locates the famous Tang poets Li Bai/Bo and Du Fu within the larger context of world literature by considering the values they place upon the universal theme of ‘family’ in their poems. There are not many prominent traditional poets Eastern or Western who have written extensively about their own families, and such information is often sought within other biographical sources. Li Bai and Du Fu are among a select company who give an important place to their wives and children in their poems. The value they place upon the family in their autobiographical shi poems is extended to include other families in the Empire through the yuefu genre.

This paper surveys Western elements in modern Chinese utopian and dystopian literature. The discussion emphasizes the origination of East-West utopias from the Westernizing sociopolitical climate around the last decade of the Qing Dynasty (清) and their absorption of Western forms of expression, which initiated a literary Westernization in Chinese literature. The second part of the study looks at East-West dystopian thought, which represents an attitude distinct from but affiliated with the East-West utopian imagination. It observes the dystopian imagination in late Qing fantasies (1900-1911) which carry on the literary convention established by “blame-criticism fiction” (譴責小說). It further argues that cultural dystopias in the Republican era (1912-1949) extended the same attitude in social criticism, while technological and ecological dystopias after 1950 shifted their major concerns to post-industrial calamities.

Modern readers tend to assume that He Bang’e’s (fl. 1736- ca. 1779) Yetan suilu (Casual Records of Night Talks) are fictional—the products of an author's creative imagination. However, a close reading of the stories in this collection, with reference to other collections of such supernatural stories, demonstrates that such stories were believable for their audience, and that the anthologists wrote down the stories they heard from others. In other words, the stories are in fact legends—stories heard from others, which the narrator and his audience nevertheless believe are factual. Indeed, the content of several stories demonstrates that, judged by Chinese standards of the day, the material was generally believable. At the same time, many a legend mentions the narrator who recounted the story to He Bang’e, and a few of the legends even appear in a contemporary’s book. Moreover, Bang’e repeatedly cites by name a friend of his who tells some of the stories to him, comments upon others, and apparently even presented some of his own in writing. Similarly, at the end of many legends describing unusual phenomena, he often appends explanations or reactions to the given phenomenon, generally demonstrating his belief in it. Others he explicitly identifies as legends. In his own preface to this book, he says that he has talked about such topics while drinking at night with his friends, and what he says in several stories further corroborates that telling such stories at night was a common program of evening entertainment. In fact, the book seems to be just what he calls it—Casual Records of Night Talks.

This paper explores the imbrication of fetishization and commodification on the representation of female bodies and bound feet in Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, in light of the Freudian psychic fetishism and the Marxian commodity fetishism. The confluence of these two fetishisms lies in their abstracting and inscribing corporeal reality and material objects with psychosexual and sociopolitical values and in their truncation of the signified desire by the fetish-signifier. It is this floating nature of the signifier, devoid of its referentiality, that I relate to the representation of female bodies and bound feet in Jin Ping Mei. The conflation of fetishization and commodification is especially meaningful when we situate it in the historical late Ming society, which witnessed a rise of commercialism and a dissolution of political order. The delimitation as well as the usurpation of corporeal meanings by psychosexual and sociopolitical values, I will argue, reflect the anxiety and fear of late Ming literati about the collapse of the self-sufficient system of the agricultural society, the corruption of the political system, and the blurring of male-female boundaries that buttressed the patriarchal system.

The construction of masculinity is a fascinating topic which as yet has been little explored in the context of traditional Chinese literature. The effeminate image of the caizi in the popular representations of the caizi-jiaren theme has been regarded as a symbol of the “lack of masculinity” in traditional Chinese culture by today’s audience. This paper explores how the discourse of caizi came into being by focusing on the image of Student Zhang in the Yuan zaju drama Xixiang ji, the work that popularized the caizi-jiaren pattern. In light of the Foucauldian realization that gender and sexuality are culturally constructed and politically invested, the paper not only identifies certain distinguishing characteristics of the gentry-class notion of masculinity in the discourse of caizi, but attempts a political and historical reading of them. Reading the text as a site of power negotiation and situating it historically, it is argued that the frivolity and amorousness of the caizi shows the dialectical relations between subversion and containment, while his fragility and anxiety signify the cultural and political tensions of the Mongol Yuan period.