5. Liberating Fiction from History

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Abbreviations xi
5. Introduction: Traditional Chinese Fiction Commentary in Context 1
6. Part I A Brief History of Chinese Fiction Commentary
7. 1. Mr. Pingdian: Jin Shengtan and the Shuihu zhuan 25
8. 2. Dealing with Jin Shengtan and the Rest of the "Four Masterworks 51
9. 3. Decline and Revival 85
10. Part II· Making Room for Fiction
11. 4. Creating Implied Authors and Readers 105
12. 5. Liberating Fiction from History 131
13. 6. Liberating Fiction from "Reality" 166
14. Part III From What to Who: The Turn Away from Plot
15. 7. From Plot-Centered to Character-Centered Narratives 191
16. 8. Relational Characterization and Ambiguous Characters 209
17. Part IV: How to Write the Chinese Novel
18. 9. Fiction Criticism and How the Story Is Told 229
19. 10. Articulating the Parts 243
20. Part V.· Four Solutions to the Challenge of Commentary
21. 11. Auto-commentary: The Xiyou bu and the Shuihu houzhuan 269
22. 12. Commentator-Narrators: Li Yu, Ding Yaokang, and Wen Kang 284
23. 13. Latent Commentary: The Rulin waishi 312
24. 14. Everything All at Once: The Honglou meng 329
25. Works Cited 351
26. Glossary-Index 383