Notes
Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Wan g Bia o (3ijS£) , i n Selections from the New Historical Fiction (0ffii/l N MS) , designates Qia o Liang' s (SrS. ) The Funeral Flags (MM) (1986 ) a s the precurso r of the NHF (Wan g Biao 1993 : 47). 2. Zhan g Qinghua teache s Chinese literature a t Shandong Normal University . 3. "Th e traditio n o f historiography " obviousl y refer s t o "Chines e traditiona l historiography." Zhan g trie s t o establis h th e connectio n betwee n Wester n "ne w historicism" an d Chines e traditiona l historiography , betwee n th e Chines e traditional historical fiction an d th e "new historical fiction." However, what Zhan g perceives to be a "small step" is to me a huge gap. For these superficial similaritie s between th e tw o sides, i.e. traditional historiography/traditiona l historica l fictio n on th e one hand an d th e new historicism/the ne w historical fiction o n th e other , do no t cover up thei r different conceptualization s o f history and fiction . 4. B y minjian discourse, Zhang means the pluralistic, neutral and primordial discours e as against th e politicize d monolithi c officia l discourse , especially official History . It has show n "simila r features" with traditiona l historica l fiction hel d t o be yeshi ( H i ) o r baishi ( # £ ), i.e . "unofficial histories " (Zhan g Qinghua 1997 : 189-90). 5. Joh n L . Bisho p observe s th e contradictio n betwee n didacticis m an d eroti c descriptions in Chinese traditional fiction. Se e John L . Bishop, "Some Limitation s of Chinese Fiction," in J. L. Bishop (ed.) , Studies in Chinese Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 237-45. David Der-wei Wang (3iW&) make s a simila r observatio n i n The Ways to Imagine China (Beijing : Sanlia n chubanshe , 1998), p. 89. 6. Jian g Daqi (^F^Cf?) , i n his preface t o Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ELMMWL$t S i l ) , write s that the novel "record s facts as they were and is almost like history " (9-fiiL^M ' ^ffiH^-A) . H u Shi (iKJfi), in his preface to the same novel, criticizes that the novel has followed histor y too strictly, lacking imagination an d creativity . Zhang Xuecheng (JILI^M) , in Binchen zhaji (MJRttJE), accuses the novel of being 70 percent factua l an d 3 0 percent fictitious , whic h cause s confusion s a s t o it s historical truth . 7. Rolan d Barthes , for instance , points out , "historica l discours e i s in it s essence a form o f ideologica l elaboration , o r t o pu t i t mor e precisely , a n imaginary 214 Notes to pages 2-7 elaboration, i f we can tak e the imaginar y t o be th e languag e throug h whic h th e utterer o f a discourse ( a purely linguistic entity) Til l out' th e plac e o f subject o f the utterance ( a psychological or ideological entity)" (Jenkins [ed.] , The Postmodern History Reader, p. 121). Patricia Waugh, in Metafiction: The Theory and Practice ofSelfConscious Fiction, writes: "Metafictio n suggest s tha t no t onl y writing history i s a fictional act, ranging events conceptually through language, to form a world-model, but that history itself is invested, like fiction, with interrelating plots which appea r to interact independently o f human design " (48-9) . 8. Fo r studie s o f thi s topic , see Charle s Gardner , Chinese Traditional Historiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); Jaroslave Prusek, "History and Epi c in Chin a an d th e West, " i n Chinese History and Literature (Prague : Academi a Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1970), pp. 17-34; Earl H. Pritchard, "Traditional Chinese Historiography and Local Histories," in Hayde n White (ed.) , The Uses of History: Essays in Intellectual and Social History (Detroit : Wayne Stat e Universit y Press , 1968) , pp. 187-220 ; Andrew Plaks, "The Proble m of Structure i n Chinese Narrative" in Tamkang Review, 6. 2 and 7.1 , 1976, pp. 42940 . 9. Fo r discussions on cyclica l view of time an d circula r history, see Gu Xiegang (I B MM) (ed.) , Gu shi bian, vol. V (~&iM ' # E) (Beiping : Jinshan shushe , 1935) , pp. 343...
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