THE SONG EMPEROR HUIZONG IN POPULAR HISTORY AND ROMANCE: THE EARLY CHINESE VERNACULAR NOVEL, 'XUANHE YISHI'

This paper is a critical study and complete translation of the anonymous vernacular novel, Xuanhe Yishi . This work has always been treated by traditional Chinese critics as a piece of "unreliable history" and severely criticized because of the heterodox nature of its subject matter and the vulgarity of its language. This study is an attempt to read the work as the product of a storytellers' tradition instead of a historians'. The social milieu of the professional storyteller in the Song and Yuan period reveals certain conventions which can also be seen in this novel. At the same time, however, the overriding dependence of these storytellers upon the written histories for material cannot be overlooked. The central focus of this study is an examination of the artistic deformation of historical materials which takes place when the traditional histories are adopted for use by the storyteller.;The work is tentatively dated around the year 1300, shortly after the fall of the Southern Song dynasty to the Mongols. It is the story of the last emperor of the Northern Song dynasty, Huizong, and the events surrounding the collapse of his court at the hands of the Jurchen tribe which called themselves the Jin. A preponderance of the authors upon which the compiler of Xuanhe Yishi seems to have relied are noted to have come from the Fujian area of southeastern China; and it is proposed that the novel was also written and printed in one of the publishing centers of that area--perhaps in the city of Jian'an or its environs.