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郭子

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Text ID
KR3l0155
Date
380–420
Dynasty
東晉

Guō zǐ 郭子

Master Guō (Anecdotes Compiled by Guō Chéngzhī) by 郭澄之 (撰)

About the work

A late–Eastern-Jìn zhìrén 志人 (“records of persons”) collection of qīngtán 清談 anecdotes, compiled by Guō Chéngzhī 郭澄之 (郭澄之, fl. late 4th / early 5th c.). Together with Péi Qǐ’s 裴啟 Yǔlín 語林 (KR3l0135) and Fàn Tài’s 范泰 Gǔjīn shànyán 古今善言 (KR3l0133), the Guōzǐ is one of the three principal predecessors of Liú Yìqìng’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 (KR3l0002) — and is heavily drawn upon by Liú Jùn’s 劉峻 Shìshuō commentary, which is in fact the principal vehicle by which the work survives. The Guōzǐ is thus a foundational document of the early-medieval Chinese characterological-anecdote tradition.

Tiyao

Abstract

The Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 lists “Guōzǐ 3 juàn, by Guō Chéngzhī of the Jìn” under zǐbù xiǎoshuō. Both Táng catalogs preserve the entry. The work was lost as a transmitted unitary text by no later than the early Sòng. Substantial fragments — perhaps 80 anecdotes in total — are preserved chiefly in Liú Jùn 劉峻’s commentary to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ (early 6th c.), with further citations in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (juàn 447 and elsewhere), Tàipíng guǎngjì, Yìwén lèijù, and Běitáng shūchāo. The standard modern reconstruction is in Lǔ Xùn’s Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉.

The dating bracket adopted here (380–420) reflects the standard placement of Guō Chéngzhī in the late 4th to early 5th centuries. He served on the staffs of Liú Yù 劉裕 (founder of the LiúSòng dynasty) and others; his floruit is at the very end of the Eastern-Jìn period. The work was therefore composed during this period and is one of the earliest examples — perhaps the second earliest after the Yǔlín — of the formal anecdotal anthology that would crystallise as the Shìshuō tradition. The content overlaps very substantially with that of the Shìshuō: many of the most famous Shìshuō anecdotes (the “Méngjiā wàng móu” Hsia Hou Xuan “jade tree in reeds” simile, the “Xǔ Yǔn xiǎn fù” anecdote of Xǔ Yǔn examining his ugly bride and being shamed by her wit, etc.) are recoverable from the Guōzǐ corpus via Liú Jùn’s citations, often in older or more circumstantial form.

The Guōzǐ is thus the principal pre-Shìshuō source for the canonical WèiJìn qīngtán anecdotal corpus. Mather’s Shih-shuo Hsin-yü (1976; rev. 2002) traces the lineage explicitly in his source-discussion; Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國 in Tángqián zhìguài xiǎoshuō shǐ offers the most comprehensive Chinese-language treatment.

Translations and research

  • Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938). The principal modern reconstruction.
  • Mather, Richard B., trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World (Minnesota, 1976; rev. Hawai’i, 2002). Treats the Guō-zǐ as a key source for the Shìshuō and translates many anecdotes preserved through Liú Jùn’s commentary.
  • Wáng Néng-xiàn 王能憲. Shìshuō xīnyǔ yán-jiū 世說新語研究 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992). Detailed source-critical study.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (rev. 2005).
  • Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō yán-jiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究.
  • Knechtges, David R., and Chang, Taiping, eds. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide (Brill, 2010), entry on Guō Chéng-zhī.

Other points of interest

The Guōzǐ / Shìshuō relationship is one of the most thoroughly documented cases of literary descent in early-medieval Chinese narrative: Liú Yìqìng’s compilers clearly worked with the Guōzǐ (and the Yǔlín) open before them, and the Guōzǐ’s preservation in Liú Jùn’s Shìshuō commentary makes this dependence visible to modern scholarship. The work is also the primary source for the qīngtán characterological epithets (“lǎng rú míngyuè rù huái” 朗如明月入懷, “as bright as the moon entering the bosom”) that the Shìshuō canonised and that became standard biàntǐ 辨體 evaluative formulae in Six-Dynasties social-classification.

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