Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story

This study of Feng Menglong's formulation and promotion of vernacular literature focuses on his Sanyan works (Yushi mingyan, Jingshi tongyan, and Xingshi hengyan), first published in the 1620s. Adapting the perspectives of ventriloquism and dialogism from Bakhtin and Holquist, Yang proposes a model of development into which he places Feng's works and uses this model to explain Feng's approach to selecting and working with his source materials. Yang locates Feng Menglong's Sanyan in the broader cultural milieu of the late Ming and discusses the then-dominant archaist movement in literature, literati marginality and anxieties, the subversive use of folk works, and the meiren xiangcao tradition--appropriating a female identity to express male frustration. Shuhui Yang is Associate Professor of Chinese, Bates College.