MCLC: huaben xiaoshuo (6,7)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Sabina Knight <sabinaknight at gmail.com>
Subject: huaben xiaoshuo (6)
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I thought a lot about this question in writing _Chinese Literature: A
Very Short Introduction_ (Oxford UP, 2012). I used "vernacular tales"
and "vernacular stories" but also mentioned the terms “'promptbook'
tales" and "'spoken text' tales":
	
". . . 'spoken text' 話本 tales frequently borrowed storytelling’s
conventions and set phrases (e.g., “the tale divides into two
directions” indicates a change of setting). . . .  Long believed to be
scripts for such earlier oral tales, the 'spoken text' genre has
generally been translated as 'promptbook.' Yet since another term (底子)
names storytellers’ crib sheets, writers more likely invented the
'spoken text' genre to sell to a growing reading public" (p. 83).

Sabina

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From: Joseph Allen <jrallen at umn.edu>
Subject: huaben xiaoshuo (7)

Robert Hegel sent me this note of clarification:

'prompt book' was a politically motivated term from the beginning, an
effort to make it seem like 'the masses' had provided the creative effort
behind those stories.  Chinese scholars still use the term 'ni-huaben' to
refer to the Sanyan collections as if they were 'imitations' of the prompt
books used by the storytellers.  But from the 1950s onward the eminent
scholars Sun Kaidi and Tan Zhengbi demonstrated conclusively that
virtually all are adaptations of classical language narratives, whether
fictional or historical.  Why the term persists I can't really fathom; I
suppose it is to honor Lu Xun's uses of such terms. But he was
ill-informed, not having the information that later scholars have.
'Vernacular short story' is not a perfect term, but Pat Hanan firmly
enshrined it with his excellent book with that title.

Joe