Vernacular and classical fiction in late imperial China
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A pathbreaking, new book from Brill:
The Vernacular World of Pu Songling
Popular Literature and Manuscript Culture in Late Imperial China
Series: Sinica Leidensia, Volume: 173 (2025). xix, 312 pp.
By Zhenzhen Lu
From the press:
This study presents a lively world of vernacular writing from Zichuan, Shandong, the home region of Pu Songling (1640–1715). Based on Keio University’s Liaozhai Collection, it examines a world of local reading and writing through the manuscripts of village scholars, including those of a topolectal primer and various song-narratives attributed to the author famed for his classical tales Liaozhai zhiyi.
The study sheds light on intertwined realms of local textual transmission, the place of manuscript culture in ordinary literary life, and the role of language and locality in shaping the plural literatures of late imperial China.
This extraordinary volume is distinguished by its numerous photographs of manuscripts, many in color and never published before, together with transcriptions and translations.
We must remember that Pu Songling 蒲松齡, the author of these vernacular tales — heretofore barely known even to scholars — was also the author of the immensely popular Strange Tales from Make-do Studio, tr. Denis C. & Victor H. Mair (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989), which were written in exquisite Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic. The colloquial, topolectal nature of the stories featured in this new tome by Zhenzhen Lu could hardly be more different from the elegant Strange Tales from Make-do Studio, for which he is one of the most famous authors in Chinese literary history.
A final note on the standing of these vernacular folk tales in the traditional hierarchy of literary genres — poetry, prose, drama, and fiction: bottom of the totem pole. Now, with Zhenzhen Lu's magnificent monograph, the misconception that the bottom of the literary totem pole is the lowest in value is corrected. Instead, she shows how these vernacular tales are foundational, closest to the ground and the reader.
Selected readings
- "Shandong Dialect Intelligibility" (5/24/09)
- "The Wall, a Folk Opera in Four Acts", by Pu Songling. Translated and annotated with an Introduction by Chang Li-ching and Victor H. Mair, Chinoperl Papers, 14.1 (1986), 97-152 | Published online: 20 Nov 2013. https://doi.org/10.1179/chi.1986.14.1.97
Tim Brook said,
October 3, 2025 @ 3:52 pm
Zhenzhen Lu, congratulations on your new book, which I look forward to reading.
Tim