Theory and practice: Fiction, fiction criticism, and the writing of the 'Ju-lin wai-shih'

This dissertation attempts to show how an eighteenth-century Chinese novel, the Ju-lin wai-shih (The Scholars) by Wu Ching-tzu (1701-1754), is related to the aesthetics of the traditional Chinese novel. The main sources for reconstructing that system of aesthetics are works of criticism on fiction (including commentary editions), the examples of earlier influential novels (many of which were reinterpreted and revised by later fiction critics), and interpretations of historical works. The goal of the dissertation is to explain certain unusual (from a Western point of view) features of the Ju-lin wai-shih by reference to this system of aesthetics. To achieve this, it is necessary to outline the development of traditional fiction practice and criticism. It is hoped that the entire process will show the kind of distance traveled between the earliest novels published in the sixteenth-century and the novels of the eighteenth-century, commonly held to be the age in which the traditional novel came to maturity.;After an introductory chapter (treating the author, text, and modern interpretations of the Ju-lin wai-shih), chapters two and three treat the development of traditional Chinese fiction criticism, with a focus on Chin Sheng-t'an (1608-1661) and his project of constructing a consistent implied author in the Shui-hu chuan (The Water Margin), an early novel. In chapter four, against the background of intertextual relations in the traditional Chinese novel in general, the influence of the Shui-hu chuan on the Ju-lin wai-shih is examined. Chapter five investigates the influence of historiography on Chinese fiction and the use of historiographical models by fiction critics. Chapter six traces the development of the concept of fiction and the gradual development of its independence from both history and literal truth. Chapter seven shows how traditional Chinese novels changed in orientation from plot to characterization and examines the techniques developed to handle the large numbers of characters in them. Chapters eight and nine show the influence of fiction criticism on narrative stance and structure, while the final chapter summarizes many of the themes of the entire dissertation by concentrating on the role of the implied author in the text.