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CHAPTER FOUR: The Poetic Nature of Chinese Fiction
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97 CHAPTER FOUR The Poetic Nature of Chinese Fiction In traditional Chinese literature, there is no doubt that lyrical poetry occupies an exalted position and that fiction is only its handmaiden. In the study of Chinese literature, scholars have generally separated the study of fiction from that of poetry. While this separation is justified in view of the traditional separation of poetry and prose from fiction and drama and the necessary specialization in literary scholarship in classical and modern times, it neglects the inherent relationship between poetry and fiction in xiaoshuo’s evolution toward a form of verbal art. Certainly, it has blinded us to the internal driving force that moved Chinese xiaoshuo from its earliest form of snippets of street talk to the modern form of fiction. In existent scholarship on Chinese xiaoshuo, scholars have explored in detail the history-to-fiction pattern of development of xiaoshuo. While fully recognizing the significance of this process, I venture to argue that the most significant and far-reaching process in xiaoshuo’s development is what I wish to call a process of “aestheticization.” The process of aestheticization involves many branches of Chinese art: poetry, poetics, drama, classical prose, calligraphy, painting, and so on. Andrew Plaks provides a fascinating account of how classical prose, especially bagu wen (the eight-legged essay), drama criticism, and painting theories exerted a formative impact on the rise of the Chinese novel.1 I would like to emphasize the impact of lyric poetry on the aesthetic turn of xiaoshuo into a verbal art. Scholarly studies of xiaoshuo have generally concurred that historical writings exerted a salutary influence on the development of Chinese fiction, whereas the dominance of lyric poetry stunted its growth. While duly recognizing the correctness of this consensus, I believe this commonly accepted view should not be pushed too far for two reasons. First, as I have argued, the initial dependence on history was not entirely a positive factor in xiaoshuo’s development , because it gradually evolved into a historical inertia that impeded the full development of Chinese fictional art. Second, although the dominance of the lyric has generally been blamed for the belated rise and underdevelopment of Chinese xiaoshuo, it has exerted an unexpected positive impact that 98 CHINESE THEORIES OF FICTION has been completely overlooked. It forced xiaoshuo to compete with its oppressor , sharpened its aesthetic sensibility, and eventually helped it develop into a verbal art. Thus, while xiaoshuo’s friendly and cooperative relation to history is not entirely positive, its uneasy and often tense relation to lyrical poetry is not all negative. I argue that a significant part of xiaoshuo’s aestheticization is a movement driven by (un)conscious impulses to emulate and rival lyric poetry. In the development from storytelling to fictional art, the poetic impulse in xiaoshuo played a decisive role in effecting the fundamental shift. Without the lyrical impulse to imitate or emulate lyrical poetry, which is the predominant form of literature in Chinese history, Chinese xiaoshuo would not have been able to develop into a verbal art. In a way, that which made the shift possible is what I wish to call a process of poeticization, a movement to aestheticize Chinese xiaoshuo in terms of lyric poetry. It not only changed the course of development for Chinese xiaoshuo but also altered its essence. The poeticization is the key development that allowed xiaoshuo to extricate itself from its dependence on history and the conventions of storytelling and to evolve into a mature form of verbal art. Poeticization gave rise to poetic fiction, which is the core of pure fiction. The apex of poeticization is the appearance of the poetic novel, a representative of which is the Hongloumeng. Investigation of the impact of lyricism upon the historical development and aesthetic form of Chinese fiction is a fertile ground. It seems, however, that only a few scholars have done some research in this area. In a short study of the impact of the lyric tradition upon the creative vision of Chinese fiction , Yu-Kung Kao explores how a “lyric vision” underlies the conception of the Hongloumeng and the Rulin waishi.2 In another study of the Hongloumeng, Wong Kam-ming briefly mentions that the novel’s structure “has as much affinity with lyrical poetry as with conventional novels.”3 Had more scholars done work in this direction, they might have opened up an interesting field. In this chapter, I will comprehensively explore how...