The Popular Chinese Novel

Abstract

The popular novel was one of the most widely available forms of reading material in China in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. This chapter defines “popular” in terms of accessibility (measured in numbers of editions) and surveys the thematic genres of the Chinese popular novel, including historical novels, military romances, scholar‐beauty romances, court case novels, tales of deities and eccentric monks, and martial arts novels. As the culmination of many older strands of oral storytelling and literature in China, these novels presented stories that were an integral part of the fabric of the culture. For these reasons, as well as the early availability of many of these works in translation outside China (in both Asia and Europe), popular Chinese novels deserve more attention as world literature.