The Interplay of the Oral and the Written in Chinese Popular Literature ed. by Vibeke Børdahl, Margaret B. Wan (review)

CHINOPERL Papers No. 30 276 cultural and ethnographic documents. That significantly augments the usefulness of this anthology. While it certainly merits a prominent place on the bookshelf of every scholar or student of Chinese literature, it should have a strong appeal to people in some other disciplines as well, particularly ethnology and cultural anthropology. The section of back matter includes a seven-page bibliography of further readings, a list of the large number of contributors and translators for the anthology, and a list of sources of previously published selections in Chinese folk and popular literature. Obviously, the information provided in these lists can be enormously useful to any scholarly research in the field, and adds to the value of the anthology as a reference book. In the meantime, one would wish to see the usefulness of the anthology further enhanced with the addition of an index when the time comes for its second edition. Liangyan Ge University of Notre Dame The Interplay of the Oral and the Written in Chinese Popular Literature. Edited by Vibeke Børdahl and Margaret B. Wan. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010. NIAS Studies in Asian Topics, n. 46. xvii + 269 pp. 44 Illustrations. Cloth $80.00; Paper $32.00. This book is the outcome of a conference held in Oslo in the winter of 2007. I published a report on the papers given at the conference in volume 28 of this journal. Readers should consult that report for summaries of the papers.4 Here, ,ZLOOIRFXVRQWKHVXEMHFWRIWKHERRNWKH³LQWHUSOD\RIRUDO and written traditions in China from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary SHUVSHFWLYHV´ S , as it is addressed in the final forms of the papers as they appear in this volume. The book consists of six chapters prefaced by an introduction by the editors. 4 Besides the six conference presentations that appear in this volume in revised form, Jens-Christian Sørensen also gave an oral introduction to the Chinese Storytelling Research Database (www.shuoshu.org) to conference attendees. BOOK REVIEWS 277 The first chapter is by André Lévy, to whom the book is also dedicated. It discusses the bourgeoning field of Jin Ping Mei 䠁⬦ẵ (hereafter JPM) studies and, in particular, the questions of the origin and authorship of the novel and the role of/connection to oral storytelling that have been so prominent in that field of scholarship. /pY\¶VFKDSWHUEHJLQVE\EULHIO\UHYLHZLQJWKHH[treme polarization in modern attitudes towards the value of the JPM as a literary work. On the one hand, early modern scholars like Qian Xuantong 䥒⦴਼ (1887±1939) and Sun Kaidi ᆛᾧㅜ (1898±1986) hailed it as a literary masterpiece, praising the novel for its richness of language and sharp social criticism. At the other side of the spectrum, other early modern scholars saw no value in the work and either dismissed it, like Hu Shi 㜑䚙 (1891±1962), for its inability to produce aesthetic pleasure (p. 15) or because, according to C.T. Hsia (1921±  LW ZDV D ³ERRN RI ORZ FXOWXUH DQG RUGLQDU\ PHQWDOLW\´ S  While Lévy grants that both negative and positive evaluations of this kind on the quality of the JPM have their legitimacy, he argues that they are too often EDVHG RQ ³H[WUDQHRXV FULWHULD´ S   7KHVH SRODUL]HG attitudes over the literary value of the JPM and its origin and composition KDYHLQ/pY\¶VRSLQLRQVKLIWHGDWWHQWLRQDZD\IURPWKHUROHWKHDUWRIRUDO storytelling played in the development of the work. He notes that this is particularly true when evaluations drift to extremes. On the one hand, Lévy cites the example of veteran scholar, Liu Shide ࢹцᗧ (1932± ), ZKRPKHSUHVHQWVDVFDUU\LQJRQ+X6KL¶VGHQLDORIWKHYDOXHRIWKHQRYHO (p. 16). Liu believes that any great work of art has to come out of the mind of a single great artist and the novel does not meet that criterion. On the opposing extreme, Lévy sees an equally questionable tendency to overvalue the JPM by proclaiming it a literati novel that reflects the cultural values and intellectual concerns of the literati elite, as Andrew Plaks has (p. 18), or as the...