"Roulin Wai Shi" and the Life of Jiangnan Gentry

Author: Gu Mingtang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: For any specific work, the task of literary criticism is to reveal its aesthetic and historical value through interpreting the text. Therefore, the accuracy and depth of textual interpretation determine the quality of literary criticism. Textual interpretation can be approached from various angles: either by analyzing the stylistic features, life concerns, emotional attitudes, and creative methods of the author; or by exploring the various aspects of life embodied in the artistic representation, as well as the multiple layers of reality and history. Although the approaches are diverse, they can be broadly summarized into two methods: one is the "understanding the author's intentions" method mentioned by Mencius, which involves tracing the author's beloved life issues and the objective world they face; the other is the "searching for the horse according to the picture" method described in Bo Le's On Appraising Horses, which involves arguing how the author transforms life into art based on the social and cultural environment in which the work was created. These two approaches naturally overlap, but their critical constructions and fundamental tendencies are clearly distinct. The author of this book, Gu Mingtang, adopts the latter method. This approach requires a thorough understanding of the social conditions that produced the work and relies on a substantial amount of material, even precise statistical indices, to elucidate the institutional and operational aspects of the social and cultural ecosystem. This enables the evaluation of the rationality, authenticity, and aesthetic proportion of the subject matter. The advantage of this method is that it can avoid unfounded speculation and baseless conjecture; however, it is also prone to pitfalls if not handled carefully, such as excessive reliance on data, leading to tedious textual research and tangential arguments. Alternatively, one may become overly engrossed in uncovering hidden meanings from the data, thus diverging into another path that converges with unfounded speculation. In the field of Dream of the Red Chamber research, this distorted phenomenon has been observed far too often. It is heartening that the author of this book avoids tediousness and tangents, as well as the tendency to make forced comparisons or seek hidden meanings. The material presented in this book revolves around The Story of the Stone and its author, Wu Jingzi. The entire book remains tightly focused on the novel's characters, delineating their activities and spaces, thereby clarifying the connections and resonances between the novel's imagery and real-life circumstances. It not only substantiates the reasons behind the characters and plot of the novel but also, through the actions and words of the characters, provides counterarguments to illustrate the institutional and operational aspects of the social and cultural landscape, allowing art and life to complement each other and shine through. Due to the completeness and richness of the social and cultural environment provided in this book, it serves not only as a significant aid in interpreting The Story of the Stone but also becomes an encyclopedic treatise on the social nature of early to mid-Qing society. The focus of the book's argument aligns with the themes of Wu Jingzi's novel. The third chapter, which discusses the formal and operational aspects of the imperial examination system, as well as the mindset of scholars competing within it, constitutes the most extensive and comprehensive part of the book. Even taken alone, this chapter could form a standalone monograph on the imperial examination system. Wu Jingzi detested the imperial examinations and the literary essays required for them more than any other social evils, clearly because the scholarly elite, as the bearers of cultural responsibility, were all trapped and poisoned by this system, with their personalities twisted and leading to cultural stagnation and decline. Wu Jingzi saw this as the root of all cultural and social ills and satirized it with sharp wit. It was the decay of the scholarly elite, and far beyond them, that made Wu Jingzi keenly aware of the profound crisis of traditional culture. The deeper meaning of The Story of the Stone lies in the social and cultural crisis revealed behind the activities of this large group of laughable and pitiable characters. Wu Jingzi was a wise figure of the late feudal era who recognized the crisis of traditional culture. Compared to outstanding figures worldwide, his historical role was akin to Dante, the Italian poet of the European Middle Ages, who early called for the Renaissance. A century before the later figure Gong Zizhen, Wu Jingzi lamented the "silence of a thousand horses" with a heavy heart. Yet, as Wu Jingzi earnestly and publicly critiqued society, the scholars, officials, gentry, literati, and all the common people across China—just as depicted in The Story of the Stone—were, as usual, bustling about, striving for fame, power, fleeting reputation, and all manner of interests. Society was sinking into decline, yet it continued to operate as before, unchanged from the past. What this book presents is this social landscape—its customs, practices, and the various institutional and operational manifestations.