Tīng Yuè Lóu 聽月樓
The Moon-Listening Tower Anonymous (撰)
About the work
Tīng Yuè Lóu 聽月樓 (The Moon-Listening Tower) is an anonymous Qīng romantic novel in 20 huí 回. The text opens with a preface that frames the entire work as a meditation on the many varieties of qíng 情 (feeling, love, sentiment) — categorized as naïve devotion (chīqíng 癡情), tender feeling (róuqíng 柔情), heartless indifference (guǎqíng 寡情), deep stratagem (shēnqíng 深情), wronged feeling (qūqíng 屈情), illicit love (sīqíng 私情), elevated feeling (gāoqíng 高情), severed feeling (juéqíng 絕情), and so on — with each category illustrated by a character in the story. The plot centers on the romance between the scholar Xuān Dēngáo 宣登鼇 and the talented beauty Kē Bǎozhū 柯寶珠, set in the milieu of Hénán Kāifēng prefecture under the Song dynasty.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source. This text was not included in the Sìkù quánshū 四庫全書; no WYG edition exists and no tiyao is applicable.
Abstract
Tīng Yuè Lóu 聽月樓 belongs to the Qīng cáizǐ jiārén 才子佳人 (scholar-beauty) romantic novel tradition. The preface is signed with only the year: “suì zài Jiāqìng Rénshēn 歲在嘉慶壬申 guìyuè” (the eighth month of the Jiāqìng rénshēn year, i.e., 1812). This provides a firm terminus post quem for the preface; the novel itself may have been composed slightly earlier, but 1812 serves as the most defensible upper limit for the received text. No author name appears. The prefacer explains that he happened upon a seven-character regulated verse (qīlǜ) titled “Tīng Yuè” (Listening to the Moon) with “infinite deep feeling” in it, and was moved to write this novel as a commentary on emotion.
The novel’s principal characters include Péi Chángqīng 裴長卿 (a principled senior official), his daughter, the hero Xuān Dēngáo 宣登鼇 (whose infatuation with Kē Bǎozhū 柯寶珠 motivates the plot), and a cast of supporting figures that includes a “wicked minister” (jiānxiàng 奸相) who attempts to force Kē into marriage, a loyal maid, and a celestial figure who descends to the titular Moon-Listening Tower at the novel’s conclusion. The novel ends with the circle of emotion fulfilled (qíngyuán 情圓) as all conflicts resolve and the tower’s supernatural aura is explained.
The work exemplifies the large category of anonymous, woodblock-printed Qīng popular fiction in the cáizǐ jiārén vein that circulated from the Qiánlóng through the Dàoguāng reigns (roughly 1736–1850). The preface’s elaborate typology of qíng is philosophically sophisticated and recalls the prefaces to earlier examples of the genre. The setting is nominally the Song dynasty (the fictional official Péi Chángqīng is described as a Xíngbù Shìláng 刑部侍郎, a Vice-Minister of Justice), though the social detail is effectively timeless Qīng. No biographical information on the anonymous author or prefacer has been identified.
Translations and research
McMahon, Keith. 1995. Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists: Sexuality and Male-Female Relations in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Fiction. Duke University Press. Surveys the cáizǐ jiārén genre tradition in which this text participates.
No translation of this text into European languages has been located. No specialized monographic study of this text has been identified.