Three Sui Subdues the Demon

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The Legend of the Three Sages Subduing the Demons is a long fantasy novel in the history of Chinese fiction, marking the dawn of the influential genre of fantasy fiction. The central event of the novel is the Wáng Zé uprising during the Song Dynasty. Luo Guanzhong compiled the story based on folk legends and popular tales from historical records and street performances. By the Wanli era, the renowned popular writer Feng Menglong acquired Luo Guanzhong's twenty-chapter version from Chang'an and personally adapted and supplemented it, extensively drawing on stories to enrich the novel's content, creating The New Legend of the Three Sages Subduing the Demons. The Legend of the Three Sages Subduing the Demons focuses more on human-world anomalies than on celestial deities, ghosts, and monsters. What we see in the book is not the heavens or the underworld, but a vivid society, allowing us to learn much about the customs and social conditions of the Yuan and Ming dynasties. The characters in the novel are not cold and uninteresting gods, ghosts, and monsters, but fleshed-out, humanized figures with rich emotions. Their joys, sorrows, and passions are no different from ordinary people, though they may use magic when necessary. The novel inherits the narrative techniques of storytellers from the Song and Yuan dynasties, with a lively and unrestrained writing style, full of urban vitality and expressive power.