Stories from a Ming collection : translations of Chinese short stories published in the seventeenth century
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Bibliographic Information
Stories from a Ming collection : translations of Chinese short stories published in the seventeenth century
(Unesco collection of representative works, Chinese series)
Grove Press, c1958
- Other Title
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Stories from a Ming collection : the art of the Chinese storyteller
Ku chin hsiao shuo
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Description and Table of Contents
Description
The popularity of the Chinese storyteller goes back to the marketplace of the T'ang dynasty, but the familiar figure came into its own in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This selection of stories from Feng Menglong's collection, Stories Old and New (originally published in 1624), includes representative types of the storyteller's traditional art. "The Pearl-Sewn Shirt" is a cautionary romance describing the tragedy of a broken marriage; the heroic biography, which depicts a neglected man of high worth gradually receiving recognition, is represented by "Wine and Dumplings"; an authentic twelfth-century forerunner of the detective story is found in "The Canary Murders." The other tales concern traffic in the supernatural, didactic admonitions to observe morality in sex and loyalty in friendship, and realistic accounts of the meanness and corruption of official life. Also includes "The Lady Who Was a Beggar," "The Journey of the Corpse," "The Story of Wu Pao-an," and "The Fairy's Rescue."
by "Nielsen BookData"