In this second of two podcasts on the Journey to the West, Lee discusses his work on a very strange, and very understudied, addendum to the original Journey to the West, written some time later. It turns the original’s focus inward, presenting multiple layers of reality. http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Xi_You_Bu.mp3
The 100 chapter picaresque novel Journey to the West (西游记) is one of the “four classic works” of Chinese literature. It is also one of the most popular pieces of writing in the Chinese language. With guest Brandon Folse, we talk about its enduring popularity, curious structure, and baroque approach to names. […]
One of the earliest, and certainly fullest, examples of the frame story is the collection Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor. Through a series of stories told by a group of people sheltering from the heat under a bean arbor, everything from karmic justice to the end of the world is discussed. We welcome a guest, Lindsey […]
On today’s podcast, Rob and Lee discuss a story that is relevant to today’s America as much as it is to China: Male Mencius’ Mother, a sort of medieval Chinese version My Two Dads. In the story of A Male Mencius’ Mother, we find ourselves in Fujian, on the edge of Chinese civilization, purportedly an […]
One of the most acclaimed 话本 (hua ben – vernacular short stories) in Feng Menglong’s 1620 collection Stories Old and New (tr. Yang Shuhui and Yang Yunqin). We discuss the question of irony in a story about both marital and extramarital bliss, and explore the reasons behind the story’s famously racy details. […]
Want a shortcut to immortality? Get a telescope! Or at least that’s the scenario posed by Li Yu’s classic 1657 story Tower for the Summer Heat《夏宜樓》. We’ll also take a closer look at the notions of cultural “inside” and “outside” spaces that inform Chinese social discourse to this day. http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Tower_for_the_Summer_Heat.mp3