Literati Bandits and For-Profit Scholars: Early Vernacular Fiction in Li Kaixian’s Circles

• In Event: Preparing Readable Spaces: Body, Performance, and Community in Printed Books of Early Modern China

Abstract

Vernacular fiction commentary has played an important role in shaping scholarly understanding of traditional fiction reading practices. Commercial imprints from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have provided ample material for analysis. However, the lack of extant earlier editions, known to have been printed by private or official actors, has caused the circulation and reception of vernacular fiction in earlier eras to remain relatively overlooked.

In the absence of commentary, this paper reconstructs literati reception of vernacular fiction decades before the late sixteenth century commercial “printing boom” by turning to other forms of writing. It focuses on the writings of the official, poet, and dramatist Li Kaixian (1502–1568), and their intertextual relationships to the novel Shuihu zhuan (The Water Margin). It also traces out the communities formed by Li and private and official publishers of the work.

Through casual remarks, poetry about his friends, and dramatic work, Li demonstrated several stances toward the Shuihu zhuan that contrast sharply with familiar commentary-influenced readings: While later commentators tended to romanticize or at least justify the work’s outlaw protagonists, Li emphasizes the work’s intricacy and literary innovation. In his drama Baojian ji (The Precious Sword), he also recasts one episode into a tale of a wronged official’s reinstatement. Fragments of this drama were later incorporated into the Jin Ping Mei, suggesting ways Li’s readings were injected back into the fiction genre. Examining these writings and the communities around them reveals an important, understudied strand in the development of the vernacular fiction genre.

Author

• Scott W. Gregory, University of Arizona