The Textual Research On Some Talks Of Friends

Some Talks of Friends, which was written by Fan-Shu in later Tang Dynasty, is a storybook about bits of news in that period; it take the anecdotes of literati as its main part. This paper is a philological study that generally consists of two parts: one is textual research on the historical materials; the other is textual research on the system of edition. Except the preface and epilogue, this paper was divided into five parts. Part One briefly describes the author's personal details. The author Fan-Shu lived in Gui-Ji County of ancient Yue areas. When he grew up, he roved through many areas such as Qin, Wu, Chu, Song, Shu etc. and made friends with aristocrats, however, the destiny didn't give him a post as a officer but a frustrated lifetime. On supposition, he died after Guang-Ming period (A.D.880-881) during the ruling time of Emperor Li-Xuan. From part two to part four the theme of this paper is textual research on the historical materials. The contents of Some Talks of Friends partly stemmed from what the author saw and heard in travel and partly based upon other writings. In general, this book is not a creation but a collection,therefore,its materials source will be explored in part two. The book's collection of anecdotes particularly emphasizes on literary talent and amorous feelings of poets, and from these fragments readers can see the visage of society in later Tang Dynasty. However, storyteller inclines to pursue the novel and the strange, and his writing is always full of fabricated records. If we place the study of poet's personal details and the exploration of truths on the basis of it, we must refer to other writings and distinguish some forgeries from the genuine. So in part three the value of historical materials of this book will be discussed from three aspects, namely, historical materials of literature, original facts and poetry, inscription and fiction, correction of name. The nature of this book is of ambiguous, which has three faces: historical materials, poetry criticism and fiction, as such the influence of this book on later ages can be illustrated from three aspects. Firstly, historical books collect its records that approximate the historical fact. Secondly, poetry criticism excerpts its fragments that depict the circumstance in which poem was born. Thirdly, drama and fiction develop those stories whose romance style is very evident. In part four the book's influence will be discussed. In part five this paper will do textual research on the system of edition. There are two editions of the book, i.e. the three-volumes and the twelve-volumes, which were handed down from ancient times. In later Tang Dynasty and early Song Dynasty, only the three-volumes edition was circulated; the twelve-volumes, which was recorded initially by Chen-Zhensun's Booklist and Synopsis, was separated from three-volumes. The Song Dynasty editions of this book had been lost completely and the editions circulated widely up to now are the block-printed edition of Ming Dynasty (three-volumes) and Bai-Hai Library edition (twelve-volumes). Of which the three-volumes edition was divided into sixty-five pieces and every piece had a title compressed in three words, moreover, author's preface was placed in front of the text; the twelve-volumes edition had author's preface, pieces and titles just like the three-volumes except that Bai-Hai Library edition was divided into eighty-four pieces and in which preface and titles were cancelled. Some story corpuses or libraries that had far-reaching influence also excerpted Some Talks of Friends. But these books often interpolate the original text and even mistake other texts as this book's, of which Tai-Ping-Guang-Ji is an obvious example.