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Rulin waishi,The Scholars or Unofficial History of the Scholars,is a Chinese novel written by Wu Jingzi and published in 1750 during the Qing dynasty. It is considered one of the "Classic Chinese Novels".[1]
Set in the Ming period,The Scholars describes and often satirizes academic scholars. The first and last chapters portray recluses,but most of the loosely connected stories that form the bulk of the novel are didactic and satiric stories,on the one hand holding up exemplary Confucian behavior,but on the other ridiculing over-ambitious scholars and criticizing the imperial examination system.
Promoting naturalistic attitudes over belief in the supernatural,the author rejects the popular belief in retribution:his bad characters suffer no punishment. The characters in these stories are intellectuals,perhaps based on the author's friends and contemporaries. Wu also portrays women sympathetically:the chief character Du Shaoqing treats his wife as a companion instead of as an inferior. Although it is a satiric novel,a major incident in the novel is Du's attempt to renovate his family's ancestral temple,suggesting the author shared with Du a belief in the importance of Confucianism in life in spite of his criticism.
The Scholars was the first major novel to use a vernacular style now called baihua. Classical phrases (wényán) appear occasionally,but only in the speech of elite characters. Language reformers in the early 20th century New Culture Movement used the novel to support their view that wenyan was a form of snobbery.[2]
The Scholars is a satirical novel that describes the life activities of various Chinese Confucian scholars,prudently set mostly in the early Ming dynasty (i.e. the early 16th century AD). Addressing the ruling Qing dynasty could lead to capital punishment;it was safer to depict Ming intellectual life. Characters are obsessed by the fame and glory of civil service to the point of losing sanity. Some of them are philosophically dogmatic,rigidly following the old ways and denying all flexibility and innovation. Some are hypocrites,spending days talking about morality and ethics but actually living despicable and useless lives. Some are so corrupted that they eagerly sacrifice friends,relatives and family for ever more fame and glory. Via these scholars,Wu Jingzi indirectly criticized the civil service examination and education system under the Qing dynasty.
The historian F.W. Mote cautioned that there are other sides to the intellectual life of the dynasty. He praises the "essential rightness" of The Scholar's "mercilessly sardonic exposure of hollow moralizing and ritualized hypocrisy",but these Confucian scholars also reworked high culture's written heritage. It is easy,Mote went on,to parody minute textual and specialized studies,but they are now essential resources even today for any serious historical study.[3] Wu Jingzi did create several "good" characters as model for an ideal Confucian scholar;they cannot be corrupted by fame or money and they despise the contemporary civil service. One of them,the main character Du Shaoqing,bears strong similarity to the author:descended from a well-to-do family,spent all of the family assets and later became poverty-stricken,hated the civil officials,expressed progressive ideas and was strongly critical of the popular Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism. Wu Jingzi also addresses feminism by portraying Du's kindly treatment of his wife at a time when women were considered inferior to men.
Structure
Chinese commentators have traditionally seen The Scholars as having a loose structure. The famous author Lu Xun wrote that "the novel has no central linking element" and is more like "a group of short stories". Hu Shih echoed this view,writing that the novel "lacks a general structural basis". The same opinion has been put forth by Western scholars. James R. Hightower described the work as "amorphous and plotless".
However,more recent scholarship by Zbigniew Slupski detects organization in The Scholars on three levels. The first is the anecdotal level,in which the work can be divided into various "units" centered around a comical fact or occurrence. The second level is that of biography,in which the author constructs a multifaceted view of main characters in the work. An example is the portrayal of Zhou Jin,the elderly examination candidate. The final level is that of autobiography,the author's attitude toward the events of the story. This is revealed in chapter titles,poems,and occasional narrative interludes.[4]
Chapter 37 depicts a ceremony honoring a legendary Confucian sage,Wu Taibo. Both modern and Qing dynasty commentators have noted that this chapter constitutes the "high point" and "structural apex" of the novel. The literary scholar Shang Wei believes that the chapter highlights Wu Jingzi's simultaneous desire to follow Confucian ritual and to critique it.[5]
Stephen Roddy argues that the novel is divided into four sections,which correspond to successive eras of the Ming. The introductory chapters refer to the transition from the Yuan to the Ming,chapters 2-7 to the years up to 1517,chapters 21-35 the Jiajing reign,and chapter 55 the final years,the Wanli reign. The progression from civic activism to salon life in the novel,Roddy continues,is parallel to the withdrawal into scholastic dillentantism in the late reigns of the Ming.[6]
The earliest editions of the novel do not survive,and some critics have raised questions about the entire reliability of later editions. [7] The earliest extant edition of The Scholars is the 1803 Wo Xian Caotang edition,commonly referred to as the "Wo" edition. This was followed in 1816 by the Qingjiang Pu Zhu Li Ge ("Qing") and Yi Gu Tang ("Yi") editions,which are both essentially copies of the Wo edition. The Suzhou Fan Shi Chao ("Chao") edition was the personal reading edition of a Qing official. While this edition was quite rare,the following Suzhou Qun Yu Ji ("Su") edition was quite popular,and there are many extant versions of it in circulation. The first Shen Bao Guan ("Shen One") edition corrected the mistakes of previous editions,and the second Shen Bao Guan edition ("Shen Two") carried these corrections further.[8]
In addition to further corrections,the Ji edition greatly shortened the text,by for example deleting characters' titles. The Zeng Bu Ji Sheng Tang ("Zeng Bu Ji") edition added four additional chapters of text to the novel. The Commercial Press edition of the novel was arranged according to the Shen Two edition,and made further corrections to the text. The Yadong edition was first published in 1920,and reissued a number of times in subsequent years. The 16th edition was released in 1948. This version of the text has greatly influenced modern printings of the novel.[8]
The Scholars (tr. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang). Columbia University Press,1992. ISBN0-231-08153-7
The Scholars, tr. Yang Hsein-yi, Gladys Yang. Foreign Language Press, Beijing: 2004. ISBN7-119-01213-4.
Chronique indiscrète des mandarins tr. Tchang Fou-jouei, Préface by André Lévy, Paris, Gallimard, 1976 (ISBN 2-07-070746-6)
Rúlín Wáishi: historia indiscreta del bosque de letrados. Beijing: Ediciones en Lenguas Extranjeras, 1993.
Der Weg zu den weißen Wolken: Geschichten aus dem Gelehrtenwald (The Way to the White Clouds: Stories from the Forest of Scholars), tr. Yang Enlin and Gerhard Schmitt; Weimar, Germany: G. Kiepenheuer, 1962; rpr. with an afterword by Irma Peters, Leipzig 1989.
(Russian) уноффициал historie оф те конфукинцы (unoffitial historie of te konfukintsy) Translation, comments by D. Voskresensky. Moscow, 1959, reprints 1999, 2008.
↑ Frederick W. Mote. Imperial China, 900-1800. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 ISBN 0674445155), p. 930.
↑ Slupski, Zbigniew (June 1989). "Three Levels of Composition of the Rulin Waishi". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. Harvard-Yenching Institute. 49 (1): 5–53. doi:10.2307/2719297. JSTOR2719297.
↑ Shang, Wei (December 1998). "Ritual, Ritual Manuals, and the Crisis of the Confucian World: An Interpretation of Rulin waishi". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. Harvard-Yenching Institute. 58 (2): 373–377. doi:10.2307/2652665. JSTOR2652665.
Hsia, Chih-tsing (1968), "The Scholars", The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction, New York: Columbia University Press, pp.203–244; reprinted Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 ISBN 9780253202581; Ithaca, New York, East Asia Program, 1996 ISBN 1885445741. ONLINE at InternetArchive.
Paul S. Ropp, Dissent in Early Modern China: Ju-Lin Wai-Shih and Ch'ing Social Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981). ONLINE at InternetArchive.
Shang Wei and Beiwen Yan. Li yu shiba shiji de wenhua zhuanzhe: "Ru Lin Wai Shi" Yanjiu. (Beijing Shi: Shenghuo, dushu, xin zhisan lian shudian, Beijing, 2012). ISBN 9787108041395.
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