小說

Xiǎoshuō 小說

Minor Discourses (Yīn Yún’s Collection) by 殷芸 (撰)

About the work

A Liáng-era court-commissioned anthology compiled by Yīn Yún 殷芸 (殷芸, 471–529) at the explicit order of Liáng Wǔdì 梁武帝. The work — usually cited as Yīn Yún xiǎoshuō 殷芸小說 to distinguish it from later works of the same generic title — gathers anecdotal material from Zhōu and Hàn through the Liù Cháo, organised by dynasty in 10 juàn. The work occupies a particular place in the history of the term xiǎoshuō: it is the earliest extant Chinese book to use xiǎoshuō as a self-conscious book-title denoting a collection of short narrative material, and is conventionally taken to mark a critical step in the consolidation of xiǎoshuō as a generic-literary designator. Lǔ Xùn’s Zhōngguó xiǎoshuō shǐ lüè 中國小說史略 gives the work a central place in the prehistory of the Chinese xiǎoshuō tradition.

Tiyao

Abstract

The Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 lists “Xiǎoshuō 10 juàn, by Yīn Yún of the Liáng” under zǐbù xiǎoshuō. Both Táng catalogs preserve the entry, in some recensions at 30 juàn. The work was lost as a transmitted unitary text by the early Sòng. Surviving fragments are preserved primarily in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (980s), in the Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記, in the Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚, in the Gànzhū jí 紺珠集 (Sòng), and in numerous smaller Sòng léishū. The QīngMín scholar Yú Jiāxī 余嘉錫 produced an important reconstructed Yīn Yún xiǎoshuō in 4 juàn (Shāngwù, 1937; rprt. Zhōnghuá, 1958), and Lǔ Xùn’s Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 collects the surviving fragments.

The dating bracket adopted here (519–529) is the standard window: the Liáng shū 41 biography of Yīn Yún records that the work was commissioned by Liáng Wǔdì at the time of the imperial production of the Tōngshǐ 通史 in the Tiānjiān 天監 era — Yīn Yún was to abstract the xiǎoshuō-type material that the Tōngshǐ compilers had screened out. The Tōngshǐ project ran from 502 onward, with the Xiǎoshuō commission falling around 519 (after Yīn Yún had finished the Sòng Qí Liáng zōngshì biǎo 宋齊梁宗室表). Yīn Yún died in 529. The work is thus tightly bracketed to the final decade of his life.

Surviving fragments — perhaps 200 anecdotes in total in Yú Jiāxī’s reconstruction — preserve a wealth of WèiJìn–LiùCháo material that overlaps in part with the Shìshuō and the Yǔlín, but also includes substantial Qín, Hàn, HòuHàn, and Three-Kingdoms material not in those works. The opening Qín-stratum material (the Pútái 蒲臺 of Qín Shǐhuáng on the eastern coast where, having tied his horse to the rushes, the rushes ever after grow with a curl — the “Shǐhuáng pú” 始皇蒲; the shénrén 神人 driving stones into the sea to build the Qín Shǐhuáng causeway, the bleeding stones still red, the stones of Yángchéngshān 陽城山 still leaning eastward as if following) is some of the richest surviving Qín-period legendary geography in Chinese literature.

The Xiǎoshuō’s organisation — strict chronological-dynastic — and its self-conscious title-naming as xiǎoshuō together place it at the genre’s institutional inflection point: after Yīn Yún, xiǎoshuō is a literary category one can write as; before him, it is at most a bibliographic-catalog rubric. The work is therefore one of the most important texts in the prehistory of Chinese fiction.

Translations and research

• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938). Standard early reconstruction.
• Yú Jiā-xī 余嘉錫, ed. Yīn Yún Xiǎoshuō 殷芸小說 (Shāngwù, 1937; rprt. Zhōng-huá, 1958; further annotated rpt. Shànghǎi gǔjí 1984). The standard reconstructed 4-juàn text.
• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Zhōngguó xiǎoshuō shǐ lüè 中國小說史略 (1923–25), ch. 5. The work is given a key transitional role.
• Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (rev. 2005).
• Knechtges, David R., and Chang, Taiping, eds. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide (Brill, 2010), entry on Yīn Yún.
• Mather, Richard B., trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü (Hawai’i, 2002) — comparative notes on Yīn Yún xiǎoshuō.

Other points of interest

The decisive importance of Yīn Yún’s Xiǎoshuō in the history of Chinese fiction lies in its title: it is the earliest free-standing book to call itself a xiǎoshuō. Liú Yìqìng’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ in some recensions is titled simply Shìshuō; Liú Yùn’s Yǔlín; the Sōushén jì and the like are titled by content, not by genre. The conscious self-titling of Yīn Yún’s work as Xiǎoshuō is the moment at which the Chinese term acquires book-title status — a transformation that prefigures the consolidation of xiǎoshuō as the dominant pre-modern Chinese fictional genre-term.

Links

• Lǔ Xùn, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén.
• Lǔ Xùn, Zhōngguó xiǎoshuō shǐ lüè ch. 5.
• Yú Jiāxī, Yīn Yún Xiǎoshuō.
• https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/殷芸小說