Bøger af Feng Menglong

"Olivia Milburn has given us a delicious romp through history, this time in her sprightly translation of selections from the romance by the late Ming moralist Feng Menglong. The intrigues retold by Feng became the stuff of edifying proverbs in China and they became so celebrated in Europe that Voltaire adapted one for the Parisian theater. Now, at last, readers can feel the magic in this marvelous translation of an acclaimed book."--Michael Nylan, Sather Professor of History, UC Berkeley "Written by the great master of vernacular literature Feng Menglong, Xin Leiguozhi is one of the finest examples of China's tradition of historical fiction. In this abridged edition, Milburn has selected the vast novel's most exciting episodes and presents them in a rollicking translation that does full justice to the original work."--Wilt L. Idema, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Literature, Harvard University

The popularity of the Chinese storyteller goes back to the marketplace of the T''ang dynasty, but the familiar figure came into its own in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This selection of stories from Feng Menglong''s collection, Stories Old and New (originally published in 1624), includes representative types of the storyteller''s traditional art. "The Pearl-Sewn Shirt" is a cautionary romance describing the tragedy of a broken marriage; the heroic biography, which depicts a neglected man of high worth gradually receiving recognition, is represented by "Wine and Dumplings"; an authentic twelfth-century forerunner of the detective story is found in "The Canary Murders." The other tales concern traffic in the supernatural, didactic admonitions to observe morality in sex and loyalty in friendship, and realistic accounts of the meanness and corruption of official life. Also includes "The Lady Who Was a Beggar," "The Journey of the Corpse," "The Story of Wu Pao-an," and "The Fairy''s Rescue."