Law, Deities, and Beyond: From the Sanyan Stories to Xingshi yinyuan zhuan

Abstract

Xiaoqiao Ling compares several Sanyan stories with the full-length novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan , especially in the context of seventeenth-century print culture and the social practice of merit-accumulation, to show how the two genres differ in their representation of law. The Sanyan stories target both an imagined, illiterate mass audience and the sophisticated literatus reader; they thus adopt the storyteller’s voice to educate the former and provide marginal commentary to address the literate elite. Set in everyday reality, the courtroom stands out as a fictional space where retributive calculations are carried out to fulfill the mandate of Heaven. By contrast, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan removes the storyteller’s voice and invokes multiple moral discourses to explore the limitations of law as a human institution. Morality, Ling concludes, is a fluid field shaped not only by the contemporary intellectual debates but also by the audience that the author anticipates.

Feminist Translation of Six Records of a Floating Life

“…Mine); the metaphorical meaning, however, is derived from 破瓜 pogua '(of a maiden) to lose one's virginity; to deflower a virgin girl' (Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary 2015). The expression initially appears in a narrative 杜十娘怒沉百宝箱 Du Shiniang Nuchen Baibaoxiang 'Du Shiniang Sinks Her Jewel Box in Anger' (Example ( 22)), which is collected in a vernacular fiction anthology 警世 通言 Jingshi Tongyan 'Comprehensive Words to Admonish the World' in 1624 (Hanan 1973, Yang 2000, Wang 2013) by a novelist, poet and historian 冯梦龙Feng Menglong (1574-1646) (McLaren 2012, Ling 2014. In stark contrast to pogua that has been translated plainly into 'had lost her virginity' in the novel (Example ( 22)), guaqi wei po in Records has been rendered into 'not yet fully mature' in an implicit manner (Example (21)).…”