Chinese factors in the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory

1 Foreword

Storytelling entails the universal human ability of self-expression. Over the course of the evolution of human civilizations, storytelling has evolved in myriad forms in regional and national narrative traditions and thoughts. However, the academic discipline of narratology was formally instituted in France in the 1960s and has since become a globally studied discipline. Currently, there exist three broad academic orientations with respect to “narratology and China.” The first orientation approaches the comparative study of Chinese and Western narrative traditions with an emphasis on the conjunction “and,” regarding both as self-sufficient knowledge systems such as Dan Shen’s “Narratology in China and in the West” (Shen 2005). The second orientation involves the study of influence, which stresses the “from … to” relationship, viewing narratology as a new trend of Western learning; this approach emphasizes Chinese narratology and its academic autonomy in the process of reception. Xiuyan Fu’s “From Western narratology to Chinese narratology” (Fu 2014) is an exemplar of this methodology. The third orientation may be labeled the study of outward transmission and internalization, which underscores the preposition “of.” Guoqiang Qiao’s “Problems and methods: Western scholars’ studies of Chinese narrative” (Qiao 2019), for example, is a review of Chinese narrative within the study of Western narratology. This paper adopts the third orientation to explore how Western scholars deal with non-Western narrative traditions and ideas within the knowledge systems of Western narratology and further attempts to accomplish a textual analysis of the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory to determine how Chinese narrative traditions are presented.

The Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory (Herman et al. 2005) is the first published encyclopedia of narrative theory. It is not a typical academic monograph but rather a dictionary of narrative theory presented in the form of an encyclopedia. It aims to classify and organize the development of narratology over half a century and reviews the narrative traditions that have been handed down since the beginning of human civilization. In addition, the encyclopedia outlines diverse concepts, categories, propositions, and significant consequences that have grown up around the study of structuralist narratology, and also incorporates narratological elements in film, television, opera, gossip, sports broadcasts, comics, graphic novels, obituaries, and digital environments within its purview. Therefore, the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory may be regarded as the most authoritative volume of the current scholarship on narrative theory and as a comprehensive compilation of the latest advancements in narratological research. Further, as an encyclopedia, it is an embodiment of the collective intelligence of narrative theory research. The editors in chief, the contributors for entries, the scholars and their prophase achievements mentioned in the entry, and the references and further reading have all been carefully selected. Thus, the encyclopedia serves as a map of the knowledge system of narrative theory, plotting and positioning its representative scholars, identified concepts, and consensus propositions.

In this context, this paper deploys a three-pronged approach to explore Chinese factors observed within Western narrative. First, it seeks to identify the Chinese elements that may be noted in the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory. Second, it scrutinizes the image of Chinese narrative imparted by the definition of the Chinese features in an attempt to discover the undisclosed perspectives of Western scholars and discuss their insights or lack of awareness of the finer aspects of Chinese narrative. Third, this paper seeks to identify the causes behind the problematic Western perceptions of Chinese narrative traditions, thus reflecting on the attributes and shortcomings of the knowledge system of Western narrative theory.

2 Ancient non-Western traditions: issues pertaining to the ancient and the contemporary and the Chinese and the Western in the knowledge system of narratology

In the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, the entries related to the tag “Chinese” can be divided into two categories. One focuses on regional narrative traditions, such as “Chinese narrative,” “African narrative,” “Australian Aboriginal narrative,” “Japanese narrative,” and “Native American narratives.” The other focuses on regional narrative theory, such as “ancient theories of narrative (non-Western)” and “ancient theories of narrative (Western).” Chinese narrative theory is classified as an entry within “ancient theories of narrative (non-Western),” a group that also includes the narrative theories of India, Japan, and the Middle East.

In both categories of the encyclopedia, the entries pertaining to China reflect certain editorial standpoints on the relationships between the ancient and the contemporary and between the Chinese and the Western in the construction of the knowledge system of narrative theory. This paper therefore emphasizes the following:

It seems to me that the basic context of literary theory research is “ancient and contemporary, Chinese and Western.” Here is not only the temporal dimension of “ancient–contemporary” and the spatial dimension of “Chinese–Western” but also the spatiotemporal interweaving of “ancient Chinese,” “contemporary Chinese,” “ancient Western,” and “contemporary Western.” At the same time, in these complicated contexts, “contemporary Chinese” remains the rallying point of all contradictions, and the most productive field in ideology and academic thoughts (Zeng 2017: 122–123).

This academic rule is also available to the Western literary theory. Contemporary Western scholars treat various academic resources and construct the knowledge system of narrative theory from the standpoint and perspective of the “contemporary Western.”

According to Barthes, “narrative is present at all times, in all places, in all societies,” and “it is international, transhistorical, transcultural” (Barthes 1975: 237). The academic ambition of narratology is to construct a universal and effective theory of text analysis. However, the theory of narratology is rooted in Western structuralism of the 20th century and developed with the evolution of poststructuralism and various cultural theories. “Western” here specifically refers to the developed capitalist countries in Europe and America, i.e. Britain, France, Germany, and the USA, which establish a cognitive framework based on the Western/non-Western dichotomy.

First, the Western/non-Western dichotomy becomes a spatial scale of the distinction between narrative theories. In the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, the non-Western space is divided into two levels: non-European or external to Europe and non-Western or outside the ambit of the developed capitalist countries of Europe and North America.

For instance, the last section of the entry on the “ancient theories of narrative (non-Western),” the term “non-European theories today” is used alternately with “non-Western narrative theories” (Hogan and Pandit 2005: 18), terminology that implies that the Western world is not conceived as a monolith block. Moreover, a distinction is drawn between the terms “Europe” and “non-Europe” within the context of the Western world. To cite another example, the author of the entry labeled “novel, the” adheres to the principal theories of the Western novel, focusing on the changes in creative ideas beginning with the Renaissance and continuing through romanticism, realism and naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism on the basis of the established distinction between the “novel” and the “romance.” Further, the author states the following:

The novel will be treated primarily as a Western genre, with no attempt made to incorporate, for example, indigenous Japanese (Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh-century Tale of Genji), Chinese (the sixteenth-century Journey to the West), or Arabic works (the tradition of The Thousand and One Nights). These rich non-Western narrative traditions fall outside the scope of this brief introduction (Mancing 2005: 399).

Second, “non-Western” is not just a spatial concept; it incorporates temporal elements that allude to ancient and traditional significations such as “pre-modern” or “pre-literate.” In the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, the most typical categorization involves the division of “ancient theories of narrative” into two sub-categories: Western and non-Western. Additionally, the author of the entry on “hero” emphasizes that “non-Western cultures” are usually “pre-literate cultures” (Miller 2005: 212). From the perspective of the four quadrants of “ancient, contemporary, Chinese and Western,” the concept of the “ancient non-Western” is matched with the “ancient Western,” distinguishing other narrative traditions from the perspective of the “ancient Western.” However, discussions about contemporary non-Western narrative theory are rather rare in comparison to the discourse on contemporary Western narrative theory. In fact, contemporary non-Western narrative theory can only be found in the encyclopedia under the section titled “non-European theories today” and is summarized in a little more than a hundred words. This compilation clearly indicates a marked discrepancy in the priority accorded to Western and non-Western societies in the study of narratology, especially in discussions of modern narrative theories.

Third, the conception of the term “Eastern” becomes relatively autonomous from the envisioning of the term “non-Western.” The Eastern can engage in dialogues and interchanges with the “Western” within the knowledge system. Further, the editors evince a hierarchical cognition of the “non-Western” narrative. Irrespective of whether the entry pertains to the “African narrative,” “Australian Aboriginal narrative,” or “Indian narrative,” the “indigenous” identity of their narrators is emphasized, indicating an editorial motivation to strip away the impact of colonialism. For instance, the editors focus on the oral storytelling traditions in the long history of the African, Australian, and North American native peoples before they were colonized, thus analyzing the structural characteristics of oral narratives and satisfying the needs of interdisciplinary studies involving anthropology, psychology, sociology, and literature. At the same time, they note the problematic aspect of the recording, reporting, and editing of these oral narratives by Caucasian authors after the indigenous people were colonized. Yet, the editors seem to be more interested in the anthropological significance of these narratives than in recognizing their uniqueness as narratological forms. The entry on “African narrative” includes a discussion of “Africanness”: “is there a unique, ontological essence that marks African narrative as African? The answer quite simply is no. The ‘Africanness’ of African narrative resides only in the specific contexts of the cultures and histories of the production of narrative in Africa” (Garuba 2005: 9).

However, the editors evince a different attitude with respect to “Eastern” narratives belonging to China, Japan, and India. The editors render the continents of Africa, Australia, and North America as conceptual constructs of geographical regions; however, they regard the narrative traditions of modern Asian nations such as China, Japan, and India as being relatively independent and complete with identifiable national attributes and civilization forms. Moreover, all the editors pay attention to the significance of the writing system of ideography in the narrative. For example, the logical starting point of Chinese narrative theory is wen, which is a general concept in Chinese literature and art. Similarly, the author of the entry on “Japanese narrative” also emphasizes written characters as carriers of the narrative tradition and estimates that “lyric poetry and songs were the first genres to be set down in writing in Japan” (Watson 2005: 265). The editors use the term “Sanskrit narrative” instead of “Indian narrative” to denote the Indian narrative tradition because the former is analogous to ancient India, whereas the latter is bound to India’s relatively recent colonial past. By this logic, it would be more appropriate to rename “Chinese narrative” as “Hanyu narrative.” A similar case could also be considered for “Japanese narrative.” The editors are not only cognizant of the influence of the West in the modernization of China, Japan, and India but also note the powerful impact of the historical and cultural inheritance of these nations. They observe the continuities in the narrative traditions of modern China, Japan, and India and acknowledge the dual influence of Western and native narrative traditions.

Lastly, consciously or unconsciously, the authors of the entries have established a “contemporary Western” perspective in their exploration of the narrative theory system, thus paying more attention to the “characteristics” of “non-narrativity” in “ancient non-Western” narrative resources. The conceptualization of narrative, as represented by structuralist narratology, has established two core foundations for the analysis of texts: the first is represented by scholars such as Tzvetan Todorov and Roland Barthes, who inherited and developed Propp’s morphology of the folktale, establishing “function” as the essence of the narrative analysis method, and the second is embodied by Gérard Genette, who developed a narrative discourse theory that focused on the “narrator” and “narrating act” based on Plato’s dichotomy of “showing” and “telling.” However, the authors do not apply these contemporary narrative theories to discover or invent an ancient non-Western narrative theory. Instead, they substitute the aspects of the established narrative theory with aesthetic categories and literary notions that fulfill distinctive national characteristics. For example, the authors of the entry “ancient theories of narrative (non-Western)” focus on the aesthetics of “rasa” and “dhvani” in the interpretation of “India” and highlight the term “monogatari” in the discourse about “Japan.” They also pay close attention to the ethical issues of literature in their discussion about the Middle East, thus highlighting the emotions of “piety” and “compassion,” which are different from the “pity” and “fear” noted in Aristotle’s Poetics. Similarly, the authors of the segment on China emphatically analyze the classical ideas of wen and Tao in ancient Chinese narratives and assess their influences on modern Chinese narratology.

3 Chinese narrative traditions from the perspective of Sinology

In the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, the entry on “Chinese narrative” is arranged in an independent form. The author begins with a comparison between the Chinese and Western narrative traditions and proposes that the Chinese narrative tradition is dominated by written narrative. In the author’s view, wenyan (literary language) is the preserve of the elites, and it thus emphasizes history, truth, and serious moral concerns; in contrast, the vernacular tends to meet people’s needs for entertainment, and it is hence more suitable for the imagination, fiction, and “romance.” The author’s understanding of the development of Chinese narrative from written to oral (vernacular) narrative is based on these assumptions. Zuo Commentary is considered the first true narrative in Chinese history with wenyan as a carrier. It emphasizes the significant role of the concept of li in the historical narrative. Records of the Grand Historian, written by Sima Qian, has noted that “Chinese narrative took a huge step in the direction of fictionalization” (Wong 2005: 62). Subsequently, pre-Qin wenyan was transformed into the bianwen (transformation texts) of the Tang Dynasty, and then became the huaben (oral storytelling) of the Song Dynasty, and finally turned into the xiaoshuo (novels) of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Moreover, in the 20th century, the “vernacular narrative” became a tool of modern revolution. The author traces the transfiguration of the Chinese narrative tradition in this context, from wenyan to vernacular, from history to imagination, from moral discipline to personal emotion, and from the literati elites to the common citizenry. The author displays extraordinary academic capabilities in presenting the variegated richness of the Chinese narrative tradition in such a short textual format.

The compilation of every entry mandates an objectivity of knowledge, but such impartialities cannot circumvent a scholar’s academic preferences or horizons. The disclosure and deconstruction of the Western theories that inform the intellectualized narrative and a scrutiny of the author’s antecedents and academic preferences facilitates the analysis of the manner in which Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory fashions Chinese narrative traditions, the questions it raises, the insights it offers, and the problems that exist.

Chinese-American sinologist Timothy C. Wong is the author of the concerned entry on the Chinese narrative tradition. His research has primarily attended to the study of popular novels from the late Qing Dynasty to the 20th century, such as Wu Ching-tzu, Stories for Saturday: Twentieth-century Chinese popular fiction and Sherlock in Shanghai: Stories of crime and detection by Cheng Xiaoqing. Only four references are listed for further reading: the first is “Buddhism and the rise of the written vernacular in East Asia: the making of national languages” by American sinologist Victor H. Mair; the second reference turns to a book, Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word by Walter J. Ong, who is the second-generation representative of the Media Ecology School of American communication studies; the third is “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative” by American sinologist Andrew H. Plaks, who is also the editor of Chinese narrative: critical and theoretical essay, the book in which the article appears; and the last recommended by the author is Early Chinese literature by American sinologist Burton Watson. By and large, the author’s academic background and the references provided in this entry allow the apprehension of the research direction taken by the encyclopedia’s section on “Chinese narrative.” Additionally, Wong’s references are all Western Sinology studies, and he does not allude to or examine the studies conducted by Chinese scholars on the topic of Chinese narrative. This exclusion imposes limits to his research horizon, which is obviously biased.

Wong begins with the particularity of the Chinese language on which “Chinese narrative” is dependent. He then analyzes the paradoxes in the development of “oral culture/written culture” in Chinese and Western contexts. In his view, “in terms of fundamental respect for the literate word, China can be said to be the ultimate of all ancient civilizations” (Wong 2015: 1). He believes that a respect for writing in Chinese culture has also influenced the attitudes of people toward history: “the written history is also a process of cultural history. The historical value attached to Chinese writing directly reflects the special respect of Chinese people for a long history” (Wang and Wong 2009: 71). Therefore, Wong’s analysis of “Chinese narrative” unfolds in two dimensions: the first involves the narrative media, and the particularity of the Chinese language in the history of Chinese culture, which is crucial in the evolutionary trends evinced by Chinese narrative; and the second concerns narrative content and highlights the tradition of “historiography” in Chinese narrative and traces its changes from ancient to modern times.

From the perspective of narrative media, the analysis of Chinese ideology and culture through the lens of language has always been a major aspect of Western Sinology studies. This perspective has even critically influenced French poststructuralism^[1] (Zeng 2018: 8). In this academic environment, Wong’s research on Chinese narrative is more influenced by Victor H. Mair and Walter J. Ong^[2] (Wong 2015: 5), given his interest in Chinese folk narratives of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.

Mair is a well-known Tun-huang scholar and the author of works such as T’ang transformation texts: A study of the Buddhist contribution to the rise of vernacular fiction and drama in China and Tun-huang popular narratives. He believes that the penetration of Buddhist ideas could indicate “a virtual discontinuity in the narrative tradition” that could have encouraged “the narrative revolution in Chinese literature,” thus explaining the transformative positioning of Tun-huang texts (Mair 1983: 1). His view can be traced back to Jaroslav Prusek, a sinologist from Czechoslovakia. In his article “The contributions of T’ang and Five Dynasties transformation texts (pien-wen) to later Chinese popular literature,” Victor H. Mair quotes Prusek’s viewpoint: “therefore we may say that the history of the popular narrative and novel, as it existed in China up to quite recent times, commenced no earlier than during the T’ang dynasty” (Mair 1989: 1). He then elucidates that “the purpose of this paper is to bring together some of the findings, made by scholars who are expert in various genres of Chinese popular literature, that support Prusek’s observations” (Mair 1989: 2). In the entry on “Chinese narrative,” Wong’s evaluation of the status of transformation texts appears largely to echo the opinions from Prusek to Mair. Wong asserts that transformation texts “confirm the role of Buddhism in freeing the narrative imagination from the restrictions of factuality and in developing the written vernacular” (Wong 2005: 62). However, his outlook has not formed a consensus in the academic world. It has been questioned by Kenneth J. DeWoskin and other scholars in the United States. DeWoskin has suggested that Wong has a biased understanding of Chinese history and Chinese narrative (DeWoskin 1983: 30). Wong also concurs with Mair’s viewpoint that wenyan “never came close to reflecting any contemporary living variety of Sinitic speech” (Wong 2005: 62), which actually exaggerates the gap between wenyan and the lives of ordinary people.

The reference to Ong is of special significance. As a media ecologist, Ong is devoted to the study of the different roles performed by language media such as sound and words in the development of human culture. Ong greatly emphasizes “the oral character of language” in his book Orality and literacy, and this viewpoint has substantially affected the envisioning of Chinese literature by the Western scholarly world. In the view of Ong, the invention of writing is necessary for the evolution of language, but “written words are residue” (Ong 1982: 11). Thus, for Ong, orality takes precedence over literacy in a manner that equates to phonocentrism. Ong underscores the “primary orality, that of persons totally unfamiliar with writing” (Ong 1982: 6). In addition, Ong contrasts “primary orality” with “secondary orality,” a term he coins to describe the new orality sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices. Using this theoretical framework, Wong takes wenyan and “vernacular” as two opposing concepts and constructs a historical narrative about the transformation from the written culture of wenyan to the oral culture of the “vernacular.” However, the “wenyan/vernacular” dichotomy in the Chinese narrative and Ong’s stated dichotomy between the written/oral culture cannot be positioned at the same logical level.

From the macroscopic perspective of “written/oral culture,” all human civilizations have experienced a transformation from an oral to a written form. The Chinese narrative has also experienced a movement from the “recording through writing” in The Book of Songs and Yuefu Poems to “articulation carried by words” in The Songs of Chu and Confucian Analects. What is behind it is the transformation from the oral culture of “speaking” and “listening” to the written culture of “writing” and “reading.” From the “wenyan/vernacular” standpoint, the colloquial style of transformation texts does not amount to “abandoning the words and embracing the sound.” It only represents the popularization and secularization of the written culture. According to this entry, the transformation of the Chinese narrative is not a process of modification from the “written” narrative to the “oral or vernacular” narrative; it is rather a change of the written narrative from the wenyan to the “vernacular.” “Using vernacular Chinese (I write what I say)” by Zunxian Huang (Huang 1930: 14) and the “Vernacular Movement” inspired by the May Fourth New Culture Movement are both indicative of the changes within Chinese written culture. Additionally, the “Vernacular Movement” has added writing with Europeanized words on the basis of colloquial style, which was influenced by Western language. “Using vernacular with the mode of Western language discourse is the expression of Guoyu, that is, modern Chinese” (Gao 2003: 72–73). Therefore, it is obvious that Wong conflates the relationship between “wenyan/vernacular” and “written/oral” culture and also appears to be unaware of the complexity of the language modifications inspired by the Vernacular Movement.

Chinese and Western scholars have evinced a shared understanding of the tradition of “historiography” in Chinese narrative from the perspective of its narrative content. Therefore, Wong interprets historiography to represent the intellectualization of the Chinese narrative tradition, starting with the “historical narrative” noted in Zuo Commentary and Records of the Grand Historian. Apart from the clue of wenyan to “vernacular” as started above, Wong cites two other pointers in the shift from “history biography” to “romance” and the movement from “ritual propriety” (li) to “lyric” (emotion). The former deals with the association between history and narrative, while the latter entails the relationship between narrative and lyrical expression, both of which correspond to the crucial facets of the Chinese narrative tradition. The three indications noted above interweave to shape the historical narrative conceived by Wong. In an article titled “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative,” Andrew H. Plaks points out that the first two of the three difficulties of studying Chinese narrative pertain to “narrative and lyric” and “historiography and fiction” (Plaks 1977: 311–312). Although Wong does not explicitly cite Plaks’ theoretical view in the writing of the encyclopedia entry, his references suggest that he has employed Plaks’ narrative theory.

However, Wong’s outline of the Chinese narrative tradition evinces some omissions and simplifications, which may be attributed to limitations of space. For example, he certainly highlights Plaks’s viewpoint on “a sense of the inherent commensurability of its two major forms: historiography and fiction” (Plaks 1977: 311), but he ignores “allegory,” which came before “historiography,” “legend,” which emerged simultaneously with the “transformation texts,” the evolution of “fiction” from “oral storytelling” to the “serial chapter narrative,” and the long history of literary sketches and folk operas. These omissions and redactions make “Chinese narrative” appear a great deal more inadequate. To cite another example, in Wong’s view, Water Margin “was categorized as xiaoshuo, or a minor narrative, and kept very much apart from truthful history for its evident flights of fancy commonly found in oral storytelling” (Wong 2005: 62). His analysis is obviously based on the dichotomy between the transmission and storytelling function, an opposition established on the contrast between reality and fiction, history and imagination in the Western narratology. However, “romance” is not merely a representation of an unconstrained imagination in the development of the Chinese narrative tradition; it must rely on specific historical facts and major related events. Therefore, whether “historiography” or “fiction” is actually a comprehensive form of transmitting historical reality and telling fictional imagination, the divergence between them is just a matter of proportion. A similar situation can be discovered in the connection between the “narrative” and the “lyric” in the Chinese narrative tradition. In ancient China, the concept of a “narrative” was akin to a “lyric.” Therefore, almost no pure lyric or absolute narrative can be found in ancient Chinese literature; “it is always the mixing of the primary modes.” “Part of the problem of zeroing in on the narrative category in the Chinese context lies in the subtle interrelation between narrative and lyric approaches to the representation of the human condition in that tradition” (Plaks 1977: 310–311). Therefore, both narrative and lyric are unified under the concept of wen without further stylistic distinction. Although Wong does not deal with the genre of the “lyric” in the encyclopedia entry on the “Chinese narrative,” his position is reflected in his other writing. For instance, he observes that Records of the Grand Historian is filled “with genuine passion,” and recognizes the role of fantasy and hallucination in the narration of fiction in his evaluation of Water Margin and A Dream of Red Mansions. Overall, however, the relationship between the “narrative” and the “lyric” is not discussed as a major aspect of the “Chinese narrative” in Wong’s analysis.

In conclusion, the introduction to the Chinese narrative tradition in the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory is mainly based on the Western narrative tradition. Thus, the entries essentially reflect the overall understanding of Western sinologists on ancient Chinese literature, including the personal preferences and limited horizon of the authors.

4 Non-Western narrative theory: Chinese characteristics and Chinese contributions

In addition to the entry of “Chinese narrative” with its specific focus on the Chinese narrative tradition, there are other entries that refer to Chinese narrative theory in the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory. These texts include the introduction to China in the entry on “ancient theories of narrative (non-Western)” and the analysis of Chinese literature in the entries on “ergodic literature,” “framed narrative,” “ontological poetics,” and the item “the twentieth century: postmodernism” evinced in the entry of “novel, the.” Moreover, Chinese scholar Dan Shen has also contributed some entries. Therefore, Chinese characteristics and contributions to the narrative theory in Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory may be evaluated from three perspectives: (1) the introduction of ancient Chinese narrative theory from the perspective of the ancient non-Western narrative; (2) the discovery of the characteristics of Chinese narrative from the perspective of contemporary Western narratology; and (3) the contributions of Chinese scholars to the construction of the knowledge system of contemporary narrative theory.

5 Conclusion: standpoint and approach constructed by the knowledge system of narratology

The academic discipline of narratology was largely conceived and developed in the contemporary Western world. Therefore, the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory demonstrates a very distinctive “Western-oriented” quality in its construction of the knowledge system of narrative theory. Does this Western orientation also amount to a tendency toward Western centrism? Are studies on Chinese narrative traditions and theory conducted by Western-oriented scholars tainted by Orientalism? Hogan and Pandit clearly elucidate in the last section of “non-European theories today” that non-Western narrative theory is a regional intellectual resource receiving much attention by Western narratology researchers. This area of study has benefited immensely from the rise of post-colonial studies and cognitive science: “The rise of post-colonial studies has spurred interest in some of these ideas as well. Finally, writers such as Hogan and Oatley have drawn on non-European theories in the context of cognitive science” (Hogan and Pandit 2005: 18). This comment reveals that Western narratology has produced two distinct academic perspectives and motivations for the understanding of non-Western narrative traditions and theories in the construction of knowledge. The question to be asked is: Which standpoint dominates the compilation of the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory?

Interestingly, the three editors in chief are all scholars dedicated to cognitive narratology. “Hypothetical focalization” in 1994, Story logic: problems and possibilities of narrative in 2004, and Narrative theory and the cognitive sciences in 2003, all written by David Herman, have made major contributions to cognitive narratology. Manfred Jahn’s article “Frame, preferences, and the reading of third-person narratives: Towards a cognitive narratology,” published in 1997, is regarded as the starting point of cognitive narratology. Marie-Laure Ryan’s proficiency in computer science and software engineering has allowed her to effectively establish a connection between narratology and cognitive linguistics and computational linguistics in her books such as Possible worlds, artificial intelligence, and narrative theory (1992) and Narrative as virtual reality: immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media (2003). The predominant feature of cognitive narratology is its amalgamation with cognitive science, and the discipline evinces a distinct scientific tendency. As Herman points out, “as an interdisciplinary program for research, cognitive narratology blends concepts and methods from narratology with ideas originating from psychology, artificial intelligence, the philosophy of mind, and other approaches to issues of cognition” (Herman 2003: 20). In the entry on “cognitive narratology” in the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, Manfred Jahn says, “cognitive theory investigates the relations between perception, language, knowledge, memory, and the world; cognitive narratology is interested in the roles of stories within the ranges and intersections of these phenomena” (Jahn 2005: 67). Particularly, cognitive narratology was born in the era of the new digital media. Hence, the analysis of the cognitive narrative of cross-media and the intentional import of new technologies and new approaches such as artificial intelligence and digital humanities have become major characteristics of cognitive narratology. Therefore, if classical narratology focuses on the narrative mainly in terms of the structural level of a text composed of signs and unfolds the analysis of a narrative as a spiritual-cultural activity significant to culture, cognitive narratology attempts to include the psychology and even the physiology of the subject. It studies the ways in which discrete narrative subjects make cognition on narrative by media technology and reveals the secret of the narrative experience from emotion, mind, and thinking. Cognitive narratology presupposes a type of undifferentiated reader and holds that the acceptance and criticism of all literature and culture follow the same model and law. Therefore, when cognitive narratologists attend to non-Western narrative traditions and narrative thought, their research goal is not to determine the differences in the cognitive narratives of different regions, nations, and historical periods; rather, they investigate the universal effectiveness of cognitive narrative. In fact, cognitive narratology embraces the pitfalls of interpreting non-Western samples from the viewpoint of Western models and samples, which has the characteristics of implicit Western centrism.

Although the authors of the Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory pay conscious attention to the existence of non-Western narrative resources, two limitations are still noted. Firstly, the references deployed to apprehend non-Western narrative resources are relatively limited. For instance, some works by Hogan engage with issues related to Chinese literature and culture. He analyzes Guan Hanqing’s Yüan drama in Affective narratology: the emotional structure of stories in 2011a, the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu in What literature teaches us about emotion in 2011b. Keith Oatley has also observed the emotional problems in Chinese Confucianism in organizing emotional resources.^[7] Secondly, the acceptance and analysis of non-Western narrative resources by the editors has a tendency toward implicit Western centrism. For example, they find that non-Western narrative traditions, whether in India, China, or Japan, all focus on the emotional articulation of authors in their works, the relationship between narrative and morality, and the reading effect of the narrative on the readers. They believe the extant resources of narrative traditions and theories can offer research perspectives and theoretical supports for the cognitive analysis of narratology. Therefore, Chinese narratology must still travel a long distance and evolve continuously to exert a worldwide impact.