The reception of Chinese vernacular narrative in Korea and Japa

This thesis, written under the direction of Professors Edwin Cranston and Stephen Owen with the guidance of Professors Patrick Hanan and David McCann, traces the reception of Chinese vernacular narrative in Korea and Japan with regard to its implications for native writing and theories of literature. I contrast the influence of Chinese vernacular narrative on indigenous fiction in both Japan and Korea. The Japanese chapters examine the reception of Chinese vernacular literature from 1700 to 1750 in detail. Due to the paucity of material that survives in Korea, however, the Korean chapters form a broader survey covering the seventeenth through the early-twentieth century.;The importation of narratives from China not written in the literary Chinese familiar to intellectuals, but rather in a language incorporating vernacular usages, was a watershed in the understanding of China. As a result of exposure to such texts, Koreans and Japanese discovered a quotidian Chinese society apart from the classical tradition. Such a view both made China appear alien in that its specific practices were unfamiliar, and at the same time familiar in that, perhaps for the first time, Chinese society was seen to be composed of ordinary people.;Chinese vernacular narrative was read but not taken seriously in Korea, where it circulated with little comment throughout the premodern period in the original and in Korean translation. The conservative cultural environment of Korea did not allow serious consideration of Chinese vernacular fiction, and its importation was banned in the eighteenth century. When Koreans commented on Chinese vernacular fiction in the nineteenth century, the writings often included a literary reevaluation of Korean narrative.;In Japan, by contrast, Chinese vernacular fiction was translated, published and commented upon as soon as it was introduced. By the eighteenth century major intellectuals such as Ogyu Sorai made the argument that a knowledge of the spoken Chinese language was critical to understanding China. Thus began a serious attempt to read Chinese vernacular narrative in Japan that resulted in Chinese vernacular narrative becoming a subject of involved intellectual discussion. Chinese vernacular fiction led to a serious reappraisal of vernacular narrative in Japan.