Sú shuō 俗說
Common Sayings by 沈約 (撰)
About the work
A late Qí / Liáng zhìrén 志人 anecdote-collection by Shěn Yuē 沈約 (沈約, 441–513) — the senior statesman, Sòngshū historian, prosodist, and literary impresario who served three dynasties (Sòng, Qí, Liáng) and presided over the early-Liáng court letters. The Sú shuō preserves WèiJìn–LiùCháo anecdotal material in the same characterological-anecdote register as the Shìshuō xīnyǔ KR3l0002, with which it overlaps substantially. The work is one of the latest representatives of the Shìshuō / Yǔlín tradition before that tradition is partially eclipsed by the Táng biji; together with Liú Yìqìng’s Shìshuō, the Guōzǐ KR3l0155 and Péi Qǐ’s Yǔlín KR3l0135, it forms the foundational corpus of the Chinese characterological-anecdote tradition.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 lists “Sú shuō 3 juàn, by Shěn Yuē of the Liáng” under zǐbù xiǎoshuō. Both Táng catalogs preserve the entry, in some recensions at 5 juàn. The work was lost as a transmitted unitary text by no later than the late Sòng. Surviving fragments are preserved in Yú Shìnán’s 虞世南 Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔 (early Táng), in Ōuyáng Xún’s 歐陽詢 Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚, in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 and Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記, and scattered in other TángSòng léishū. Lǔ Xùn’s Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 collects the surviving citations.
The dating bracket adopted here (488–513) is the standard window for Shěn Yuē’s mature career as scholar-statesman: the terminus a quo is his early-Qí floruit (his completion of the Sòng shū in 488), the terminus ad quem is his death in 513. The work was likely compiled in the closing years of the Qí and the opening years of the Liáng, in parallel with his historiographical labour on the Sòng shū and his prosodic theorising.
Among the surviving fragments the most striking are: (i) the Xiè Jǐngrén anecdote — Xiè Jǐngrén playing the zhēng for Huán Xuán 桓玄 and singing “Qiūfēng”, his bearing so distinguished that Huán Xuán recognises his quality (preserved in Běitáng shūchāo 73, 110, Yìwén lèijù 44, Tàipíng yùlǎn 165); (ii) the Wáng Qiáo / shuāngfú anecdote — the magistrate of Yè 鄴, Wáng Qiáo 王喬, mysteriously arriving at court each month on twin geese (a foundational miracle-tale also preserved in the Hòu Hàn shū); (iii) and many other anecdotes of WèiJìn and LiúSòng courtly conduct overlapping with material in the Shìshuō. The Sú shuō shows a slightly more popular and proverbial register than the Shìshuō — its title “Common Sayings” signaling material with circulation outside the strictest qīngtán elite. Several anecdotes that did not enter the Shìshuō (perhaps because of this looser register) survive here only.
The work is one of the principal late-Liù-Cháo witnesses to the way the Shìshuō tradition cycle continued to recruit material into the 5th–6th centuries; its loss is a significant gap in the source-base for the courtly anecdote.
Translations and research
- Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938). Principal modern reconstruction.
- Mather, Richard B., trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü (Minnesota, 1976; rev. Hawai’i, 2002). Treats the Sú shuō in the source-discussion of the Shìshuō tradition.
- Wáng Néng-xiàn 王能憲. Shìshuō xīnyǔ yán-jiū 世說新語研究 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1992).
- Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (rev. 2005).
- Mather, Richard B. The Poet Shen Yüeh (441–513): The Reticent Marquis (PUP, 1988). Standard English biography of Shěn Yuē.
Other points of interest
Shěn Yuē’s Sú shuō and his Shěn Yīnzhī biàn 沈隱之辨 (a treatise on the eight prosodic faults) are the two products of his late literary scholarship that survive only in fragments; the loss of both deprives modern scholarship of Shěn Yuē’s matured aesthetic theory in its complete form. The Sú shuō shares enough material with the Shìshuō and Wáng Yǎn’s Tān biàn 探玄 (now lost) to suggest a vigorous late-5th- / early-6th-century scholarly traffic in the anecdotal-characterological corpus of which it is part.
Links
- Lǔ Xùn, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén.
- Mather 1988.
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/俗說