ASIA 441 A T1W 2024: Masterworks of Chinese Literature
This course will focus on close and extensive readings of short vernacular fiction from the 1620s Sanyan (三言 Three Words) collections edited by Feng Menglong 馮夢龍
(1574-1646). (Stories Old and New 古今小說, (GJ) ca. 1620 (later republished as Clear Words to Instruct the World 喻世明言); Stories to Caution the World 警世通言,(TY) ,
1624; and Stories to Awaken the World 醒世恆言, (HY), 1627. We will explore literary antecedents, authorship, language, style, contexts, and themes, as well as narratorial, structuring and rhetorical devices. Using the “Four Vices of Excess” (wine, sex, wealth, and wrath) and the concept of qing 情 (passion, desire, genuine feeling) as loose
discursive frameworks, we will discuss representations of the self and the emotions, late Ming social phenomena and anxieties, gender, violence, and conceptions of order and disorder within and outside the texts.
Note:
This course involves a lot of reading BUT the stories are fascinating and fast-moving! We will be entering the busy, noisy, sometimes crude and sometimes funny, and often moving world of late imperial China – meeting merchants, detectives, passionate men and women, greedy and violent villains, upright and corrupt officials, and supernatural creatures both good and bad … Not always happy endings, but the bad guys never win! It is important to pace yourself if you are to keep up with the reading, but the load is not onerous (because the stories will draw you in). Reading literature offers us all opportunities to explore other worlds and other ways of being and helps us empathize with people both different and the same as us as they struggle, cope, fail, learn, succeed and live their lives. Literature offers escape, safe harbours, intellectual and emotional challenges, and, most importantly, windows into the lives of others which help us understand them and ourselves. Required texts:
Required Texts (all available online to download via the UBC Library): Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection. Compiled by Feng Menglong. Translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. University of Washington Press, 2000. (GJ). Stories to Caution the World: A Ming Dynasty Collection. As above, 2005. (TY). Stories to Awaken the World. As Above, 2009. (HY). In addition to the stories listed week by week please also read the introductions to each collection and Robert Hegel’s Foreword to HY. Those of you who wish to read the stories in Chinese as well are of course welcome to do so, but please be familiar with the English translations too since class lectures and class assignments will refer to the translated texts and all will be conducted in English.
Some highly recommended secondary readings:
Timothy Brook. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Patrick Hanan. The Chinese Vernacular Story. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981; Patrick Hanan. “The Making of the Pearl-sewn Shirt and the Courtesan’s Jewel Box.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 33 (1973).124-53. W.L. Idema. Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974. Keith McMahon. Causality and Containment in Seventeenth-Century Fiction. Brill, 1988. Shuhui Yang. Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998.
Course Directions, Assignments and Requirements:
1. This year the course will be taught in the classroom. I will also post PDFs of my lecture PPTs on Canvas. Please note that these are meant as extra clarification and information and not substitutes for attending classes, listening to the lectures, and participating in class discussions.
2. Canvas: Further course information can be found on the course Canvas website, which you can access with your CWL. This can be found at https://canvas.ubc.ca
3. Assignment information will be given in class and you will be asked to upload onto Turnitin. Details / rubrics for assignments will be given through instructions posted on Canvas and in lectures. Please feel free to email me and / or attend office hours if you have questions or concerns. (See email etiquette below.)
4. Assignments:
A) Two individual reading responses (400 - 600 words approx., each) to certain stories, scenes, events, characters, or themes. Deadlines: October 6th, and November 25th. Details will be given in class and posted on Canvas. Submit to Turnitin. 20% each. Total: 40%
B) Two short analytical essays or think pieces or projects (one due October 20th on Turnitin and one due December 14th on Turnitin): topics and guidelines to be given later. (1200 – 1500 words each, plus annotated bibliography and required individual essay consultations.) Submit to Turnitin. 25% each (Total 50%)
C) Engaged participation in in-class and on-line discussions showing familiarity with the required readings: 10%