Literature and the local in late imperial China: Glimpses from rural Shandong

Conférence de Lu Zhenzhen 陸珍楨 (Bates College, USA).

The study of Chinese vernacular literature brings to mind a rich tradition of elite-authored fiction and drama from the Ming and Qing, yet there also existed diverse other realms of colloquial-style writing with varied attachments to local language and place. Drawing on my forthcoming book, this talk examines the manuscripts of rural scholars in Qing Shandong, collected from the vicinity of Zichuan county, hometown of the famed writer Pu Songling (1640-1715). From a primer and ballads attributed to Pu to other vernacular texts from the region, I ask what we might learn from a local corpus about speech and script, manuscript and print, and the textual worlds of ordinary rural scholars. I conclude with reflections on the place of vernacular writing within a larger realm of texts located on the peripheries of wen (associated with literature, learning, and refinement) that formed an important part of what people read and wrote in late imperial times.

Zhenzhen Lu is the author of The Vernacular World of Pu Songling: Popular Literature and Manuscript Culture in Late Imperial China (Brill 2025). Previously, as a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg, she has published articles on the literature of zidishu (bannermen tales) and commercial scribal publishers of late Qing Beijing, which she plans to further explore in a broader study on the scribal circulation of Chinese vernacular literature in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Date : 7 mai 2025
Horaires : 11h-13h
Lieu : EPHE - Sorbonne - Escalier E, 1^er étage, salle D054 - 17, rue de la Sorbonne, Paris 5°