Jīngmèng Tí 驚夢啼
Startling Dream, Weeping by 天花主人 (撰)
About the work
Jīngmèng Tí 驚夢啼 (“Startling Dream, Weeping”) is a short vernacular novel or collection of linked moral tales in 6 huí, attributed to 天花主人 (Tiānhuā Zhǔrén, “Master of the Heavenly Flowers”), a Qīng popular fiction pseudonym. The work is set in the Jiāngnan 江南 cultural sphere (the preface notes the title was “long celebrated in Wúmén 吳門,” i.e., the Sūzhōu area). Each chapter narrates a self-contained story with a moralizing conclusion, dealing with themes such as unexpected marriages, deceptions, monastic schemes, greed, and karmic retribution. The work belongs to the quànshàn 勸善 tradition of popular moral fiction.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The preface (xù 序) to Jīngmèng Tí is written by a third party who states that the work “has long been celebrated in the Wúmén area” and was completed in a yǐmǎo 乙卯 autumn, at which point the author requested a preface. The yǐmǎo year could correspond to 1795, 1855, or (less likely) 1915 given the genre and the explicit mention of a Qīng-dynasty context; a mid-Qīng date (1795 or 1855) is most probable. The preface praises the work’s “lavish literary thought” (zǎosī yángyì 藻思洋溢) and its “strange and winding” narrative (yì zhì líqí 意致離奇), comparing it to the famous informal prose of Jìn-dynasty qīngtán 清談 literati and the Tang-Song miscellany writers.
The six chapters cover:
- Ch. 1: Obtaining wild food at a flower-viewing gathering; a man’s desire to court a neighbor’s daughter
- Ch. 2: An auspicious but mismatched marriage; miraculous preservation of a child
- Ch. 3: A fraudulent monk who deceives to obtain money and wins access to a beautiful woman
- Ch. 4: A foolish man who abandons beauty for gold
- Ch. 5: A Buddhist monk’s scheme and its undoing
- Ch. 6: A bad scheme rebounds on the schemer; unexpected births and resolutions
The pseudonym 天花主人 天花主人 (“Master of the Heavenly Flowers”) appears on multiple works in the Kanripo corpus; the relationship between this usage and the related pen name 天花才子 (Tiānhuā Cáizǐ) is contested and unresolved in scholarship. No independent biography has been found.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Wikipedia (zh): 才子佳人小說