Dìng Qíngrén 定情人
The One Who Fixes My Heart Anonymous (不詳撰人)
About the work
Dìng Qíngrén 定情人 (The One Who Fixes My Heart or The One Who Settles Affection) is an anonymous Qīng vernacular romance (cáizǐ jiārén xiǎoshuō 才子佳人小說). The preface — a rhapsodic philosophical essay on the nature of emotion (qíng 情) — argues that emotion is unstable by nature (triggered by beautiful objects, scattered by competing beauties) and can be truly “settled” (dìng 定) only by the encounter with a uniquely perfect person. The preface then announces the novel’s project: to portray such a pair, whose mutual perfection renders their emotional bond immovable. The work thus participates in the Qīng-dynasty literary-intellectual debate about qíng 情 (emotion, desire) and its relationship to Confucian self-cultivation — a debate inaugurated by the late-Míng writer Tāng Xiānzǔ 湯顯祖 and continued through the Qīng cáizǐ jiārén tradition.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The cáizǐ jiārén (scholar-beauty) romance is among the most prolific Qīng fictional genres. Dìng Qíngrén exemplifies the genre’s ideological project: to posit an emotionally and morally perfect love-match that transcends the instability of mere physical desire. The opening preface invokes classical romantic precedents (Sīmǎ Xiāngrú and Zhuō Wénjūn 文君; Emperor Hàn Chéng and Fēiyàn/Hédé) only to argue that their love failed to “settle” because neither partner was sufficient. The implied claim is that the novel’s protagonists will succeed where historical lovers failed.
The text is anonymous and undated. Its literary style — the flowery parallelism of the preface, the philosophical treatment of qíng — is consistent with Qīng composition, probably 17th to 18th century. The work is not listed in the Sìkù quánshū or its tiyao catalog, confirming that it circulated outside official literary culture. It belongs to the same broad category as Píng Shān Lěng Yàn 平山冷燕, Hǎo Qiú Zhuàn 好逑傳, and similar Qīng scholar-beauty romances. No secure attribution to a named author has been established.
Translations and research
Hanan, Patrick. 1981. The Chinese vernacular story. Harvard UP. (General context for Qīng vernacular romance.)
No substantial secondary literature on this specific text located.