"Excellent and insightful" --Asian Folklore Studies LXIII (2004)

"A work of admirable scholarship, in which the discussions testify to the author's versatility. Apart from illuminating the Shuihu zhuan, the book offers a new perspective on other works." --China Review International, Spring 2003

"In this very impressive first book, Liangyan Ge has thrown into question conventional explanations of the interface between oral and written traditions and their respective roles in the development of vernacular fiction in China." --Robert E. Hegel, Washington University, St. Louis

The novel Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), China's earliest full-length narrative in vernacular prose, first appeared in print in the sixteenth century. The tale of one hundred and eight bandit heroes evolved from a long oral tradition; in its novelized form, it played a pivotal role in the rise of Chinese vernacular fiction, which flourished during the late Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) periods. Liangyan Ge's multidimensional study considers the evolution of Water Margin and the rise of vernacular fiction against the background of the vernacularization of premodern Chinese literature as a whole. This gradual and arduous process, as the book convincingly shows, was driven by sustained contact and interaction between written culture and popular orality.

Ge examines the stylistic and linguistic features of the novel against those of other works of early Chinese vernacular literature (stories, in particular), revealing an accretion of features typical of different historical periods and a prolonged and cumulative process of textualization. In addition to providing a meticulous philological study, his work offers a new reading of the novel that interprets some of its salient characteristics in terms of the interplay between audience, storytellers, and men of letters associated with popular orality.

Liangyan Ge is assistant professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame.

Read the introduction (PDF).