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125 CHAPTER FIVE The Art of the Jin Ping Mei: Poetics of Pure Fiction Scholars of traditional Chinese fiction generally agree that the Jin Ping Mei 金 瓶梅 is a most important milestone in the transition of Chinese narrative from historicity to fictionality. One of the so-called Four Wonder Books of Ming fiction, it has been viewed as fitting into the same category of fiction to which the Sanguo yanyi 三國演義, Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳, and Xiyouji 西遊記 belong, and as the continuation and culmination of the novelistic tradition perfected by the other three novels. I venture to suggest, however, that except for being written in the same historical period and having some similar thematic concerns and the same zhanghui style of fiction writing, the Jin Ping Mei does not have much in common with the other three novels in the domains of subject matter, creative impulse, artistic vision, and techniques of self-conscious fictionalization. This chapter will address these differences and examine the original contributions the novel has made to the transition of Chinese fiction to pure fiction and verbal art. If I argue that the Jin Ping Mei does not have a great deal in common with the other three novels, scholars may agree with me about the comparison with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Journey to the West. As for its comparison with the Water Margin, scholars may not be easily persuaded, for the accepted critical opinion is that the Jin Ping Mei is heavily indebted to the Water Margin and that its difference from the latter is one of degree rather than of kind. While duly recognizing the Jin Ping Mei’s indebtedness to its predecessors, I venture to argue that the greatness of the novel precisely lies in its radical break with the novelistic tradition established by the other great masterpieces of Ming fiction in the areas of subject matter, creative impulse, artistic vision, and techniques of writing. It was conceived as a new form of novel and pioneered for the Chinese tradition a conception of fiction that does not rely on artistic extension of history, legends, or extant story lines. 126 CHINESE THEORIES OF FICTION The reader may ask: if you claim that the Jin Ping Mei does not have much in common with the other three novels, how can you explain the fact that the novel itself is an elaboration of an episode from the Shuihu zhuan? Well, it is true that the Jin Ping Mei is indebted to the Shuihu zhuan, just as the latter is indebted to the previous legends and stories about outlaws. One may even accept the widely circulated claim that without the Shuihu zhuan, the Jin Ping Mei could not have come into existence. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference.While all the major characters and their actions in the Shuihu zhuan had already existed in official history (Songshi 宋史), historical stories (Da Song Xuanhe yishi 大宋宣和遺事), and Yuan plays,1 the Jin Ping Mei employs a few characters from the Shuihu zhuan merely as a point of departure. Quantitatively , the subject matter of the Jin Ping Mei differs from that of the Shuihu zhuan not just in degree but in kind. Moreover, the novel was conceived as a new form of extended narrative with a novelistic conception that conforms to the modern notion of the novel and even anticipates some postmodern fictional techniques of fiction writing. In this chapter, I am going to explore these issues: Was the novel written with a conception of fiction different from that of its predecessors? If so, what new conception underlies the novel’s construction ? How did the new conception affect the way of fiction writing? Does the new conception help us construct a Chinese system of fiction theory? A S ELF  CO N S C I O U S T U R N T O P U R E F I C T I O N In his seminal study of Chinese fiction, Lu Xun considers consciously writing fiction as a hallmark of the maturity of Chinese fiction. His view applies to the novel in the Chinese tradition as well as other traditions. In a history of the English novel, Walter Allen emphasizes conscious making as an important prerequisite for the development of the English novel as an art: “The notion of the novel as a literary form having something to do with art in the sense of being consciously made and shaped to an aesthetic end...

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