Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo Xinyu

Abstract

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance is a study of the Shishuo Xinyu, the most important anecdotal collection of medieval China-and arguably of the entire traditional era. In a set of interconnected essays, Jack W. Chen, associate professor of Chinese Literature of the University of Virginia, offers new readings of the Shishuo Xinyu that draw upon social network analysis, performance studies, theories of ritual and mourning, and concepts of gossip and reputation to illuminate how the anecdotes of the collection imagine and represent a political and cultural elite. Whereas most accounts of the Shishuo Xinyu have taken a historical approach, Chen argues that the work should be understood in literary terms. At its center,Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance is an extended meditation on the very nature of the anecdote form, both what the anecdote affords in terms of representing a social community and how it provides a space for the rehearsal of certain longstanding philosophical and cultural arguments. Although each of the chapters may be read separately as an essay in its own right, when taken together, they present a comprehensive account of the Shishuo in all of its literary complexity. “Shishuo Xinyu” is a classical masterpiece that has had a profound impact on Chinese literature, ideology and culture, and the spirit of scholars. The author of Shishuo Xinyu, the catalogue works of the past dynasties were recorded as Liu Yiqing, the Linchuan King of Southern Song Dynasty. With vivid descriptions and beautiful and refined language, it records the anecdotes of the characters in the late Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms, and the Western and Eastern Jin Dynasties in different categories, ranging from emperors, generals and ministers, to scholars, monks, and Taoists, especially the gentry class, which broadly reflected theWei and Jin Dynasties. The political struggles, academic thoughts, and social customs over the past two hundred years were the epitome of an era. Yuan Xingpei commented that the book “although it is a novelist’s language, it cannot be regarded directly as a novel. It has a true record of its social politics, philosophy, religion, literature, and the lifestyle and psychological state of scholars in the Wei and Jin Dynasties.” Zong Baihua even used Shishuo Xinyu to refer to the era of the Wei, Jin, and Six Dynasties at the end of Han Dynasty, and called it the “Shishuo Xinyu Era.” A book is used to represent an era, except for Confucius’ “Spring and Autumn,” which is an extremely rare phenomenon in Chinese history or Chinese cultural history. Therefore, since its publication for more than 1,500 years, “Shishuo Xinyu” has been very popular in the world, especially for scholars, and it is a mustread book in life. The Chinese Historical Review, 29. 1, 56–69, May 2022