Short Stories by 馮夢龍: “Judge Bao Solves a Case through a Ghost That…”

The celebrated Ming dynasty Sanyan (三言) collection of vernacular short stories were written, compiled, refined, and expanded by Feng Menglong / 馮夢龍 (1574–1646), the most knowledgeable connoisseur of popular literature of his time in China. The stories were pivotal to the development of Chinese vernacular fiction, and their importance in the Chinese literary canon and world literature has been compared to that of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. Feng not only saved the stories from oblivion but elevated the status of vernacular literature in China and provided material for authors of the great Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasty novels to draw upon.

Peopled with scholars, emperors, ministers, generals, pirates, and a gallery of ordinary men and women in their everyday surroundings — merchants and artisans, prostitutes and courtesans, matchmakers and fortune-tellers, monks and nuns, servants and maids, thieves and imposters, even spirits and ghosts — the stories provide a vivid and entertaining panorama of the bustling world of imperial China before the end of the Ming dynasty.

The stories are rich in themes that reflect the complexities of Ming society and human nature. These themes — often tied to moral and philosophical lessons drawing from Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, and folk religious traditions — address topics like justice, love, loyalty, morality, corruption, social inequality, gender roles, sexuality, and fate. Unlike classical Chinese literature that often centered on elites, many of these stories focus on the struggles, aspirations, and experiences of commoners.

The three volumes constituting the Sanyan set — Stories Old and New, Stories to Caution the World, and Stories to Awaken the World, each containing forty tales — have been translated in their entirety by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. These unabridged translations include all the poetry that is scattered throughout the original stories, as well as Feng Menglong’s interlinear and marginal comments, which point out what seventeenth-century readers of the stories were being asked to appreciate in the writer's art, and reveal Feng's moral engagement with the social problems of his day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a series of occasional meetups to discuss short stories by various authors. We started in 2023 and generally meet on Sunday evenings. Authors we have read include Haruki Murakami, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and James Joyce.

This time we will discuss the story pairing "Judge Bao Solves a Case through a Ghost That Appeared Thrice" and "A Mangy Priest Exorcises a Den of Ghosts" by Feng Menglong (馮夢龍, 1574–1646) who wrote, preserved, refined, and expanded on stories from the Chinese oral storytelling tradition, popular folktales, and earlier literary works. His compilation of 120 Ming dynasty stories, known as Sanyan (三言), is considered a literary masterpiece and a cornerstone of Chinese literature.

Please read the 2 stories in advance (~30 pages in total) and bring your thoughts, reactions, queries, and favourite passages to share with us at the discussion. A pdf of an English translation is available here with footnotes are on the last page. (Alternately you can purchase the full set of Sanyan stories here. We'll be reading selections from across all three volumes.)

Stories by Feng Menglong we've previously discussed in this group:

• Yu Boya Smashes His Zither in Gratitude to an Appreciative Friend
• Zhuang Zhou Drums on a Bowl and Attains the Great Dao
• Han the Fifth Sells Her Charms in New Bridge Town
• Ruan San Redeems His Debt in Leisurely Clouds Nunnery
• Li the Banished Immortal Writes in Drunkenness to Impress the Barbarians
• Secretary Qian Leaves Poems on the Swallow Tower

The stories in the collection were originally arranged into pairs meant to be read together (though some scholars think this was merely a parody of the conventions of classical Chinese poetry and writing) so we will usually read and discuss two stories at a time.