Xǐng Míng Huā 醒名花
Awakening the Famous Flower attributed to 墨憨齋主人
About the work
Xǐng Míng Huā 醒名花 is a Qīng-dynasty vernacular romance novel in sixteen huí 回 chapters. It is attributed on its title page to “Mòhán Zhāi Zhǔrén 墨憨齋主人 biān 編” (compiled by the Master of the Ink-Drenched Studio), a pen name associated with the late-Míng fiction anthologist 馮夢龍 (1574–1646). Scholarship is unanimous, however, that this attribution is pseudonymous: the novel’s internal references to events as occurring “at the end of the Míng” (明末年間) are phrased in a retrospective manner consistent with early-Qīng authorship, and the Japanese bibliographic compendium Xiǎoshuō Zìhuì 小說字彙 (Tenmei 4, 1784 = Qiánlóng 49), which already cites the text, establishes a terminus ante quem of 1784. Most modern scholars date the composition to the Yōngzhèng–Qiánlóng period (ca. 1723–1750). Copies survive at the Dàlián 大連 Library and the Harvard-Yenching Library (Harvard University).
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The novel relates the romance between the scholar Zhàn Guóruì 湛國瑞 (also named Zhàn Guóyīng 湛國英 in the text) of Shuāngliú County 雙流縣, Sìchuān, and the beautiful Méi Xìngniáng 梅杏娘, whose soubriquet “Xǐng Míng Huā” 醒名花 (“Famous-Flower Awakened”) supplies the title. Méi’s elder brother resents the match and repeatedly interferes, but the lovers are eventually united by a combination of their own virtue, military merit achieved by Zhàn, and providential intervention. The protagonist ultimately takes six additional concubines, several of whom are Daoist nuns — a motif that locates the work in the broader late-Míng and early-Qīng tradition of cáizǐ jiārén 才子佳人 romances with religious and supernatural overtones.
The ascription to 墨憨齋主人 capitalises on the enormous prestige that Féng Mènglóng’s editorial persona continued to enjoy among Qīng popular publishers. The work itself has no demonstrated connection to any text by Féng. The preface signed “Mòhán Zhāi Zhǔrén màn shí 墨憨齋主人漫識” is likewise considered spurious by the scholar Wú Xiǎolíng 吳曉鈴. The edition in the Kanripo corpus reproduces a 清初刻本 (early-Qīng woodblock print). The standard modern reprint is based on the text in the Míng-Qīng xījiàn xiǎoshuō cóngkān 明清稀見小說叢刊 series.
Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, §31.2.1) lists the Zhōngguó tōngsú xiǎoshuō zǒngmù tíyào 中国通俗小说总目提要 (1990) as the standard annotated bibliography for Qīng popular fiction, which contains an entry for Xǐng Míng Huā.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Books (Qi Rushan Collection): https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/chinese-rare-books
- Baidu Baike entry: https://baike.baidu.com (search 醒名花)