As a form of traditional Chinese literary criticism, pingdian 評點 or "commentary and marking," like shihua 詩話 (poetry talks) and lun shi shi-ju 論詩 詩句 (poems on poetry), has played an important role in Chinese literary history. In relation to traditional Chinese fiction, it is generally known that pingdian has the function of commenting on and adding punctuations and markings to the text. But when commentary was applied to vernacular fiction, the texts were often also modified, for some commentators would make changes on the text as well. A commentator not only punctuated the text and provided commentaries as an editor or textual critic, but also became involved in the re-writing of the text as an "author", or "collaborator" in creation. Such acts of re-writing and alteration of texts we...[ Read more ]

As a form of traditional Chinese literary criticism, pingdian 評點 or "commentary and marking," like shihua 詩話 (poetry talks) and lun shi shi-ju 論詩 詩句 (poems on poetry), has played an important role in Chinese literary history. In relation to traditional Chinese fiction, it is generally known that pingdian has the function of commenting on and adding punctuations and markings to the text. But when commentary was applied to vernacular fiction, the texts were often also modified, for some commentators would make changes on the text as well. A commentator not only punctuated the text and provided commentaries as an editor or textual critic, but also became involved in the re-writing of the text as an "author", or "collaborator" in creation. Such acts of re-writing and alteration of texts were not limited to a few cases, but ran through the period of Ming and Qing Dynasties in relation to many texts.

This thesis tries to deal with three specific questions found in this phenomenon of commentary combined with re-writing. Firstly, it deals with the question of the status of the commentators in terms of their relationship with the text or with the"original author"--that is, did a commentator violate the "authorial rights," or did he "usurp" such "rights," as some modern critics have claimed, when he made changes to the texts? Secondly, the thesis considers the relationship between commentaries and the proliferation of versions or editions of a novel--that is, in what way the commentators might have helped in the circulation of a novel by creating various editions or recessions of a novel? And thirdly, it studies the literary qualities of the "commentated texts" (pingdianben 評點本) themselves--what characteristics and artistic merits are seen in some commentated and modified novelist texts?

This thesis studies the above questions mainly as they are seen in relations to-the popular novel Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 (Water Margin) of the Ming Dynasty. In dealing with the first question--whether a commentator "violates" or "usurps" the "authorial rights," the thesis first looks into the concept of "authorship" in Chinese literary tradition. The concept of individual authorship started to appear in the Han Dynasty. But with respect to "popular literature," or tongsu wenxue 通俗文學, to which the Shuihu zhuan has been generally considered to belong, the concept is complex. Scholars generally consider the extant editions/ recensions of such works as having a collective authorship. The formation of the Shuihu zhuan text showed this process, its "authorship" is "collective" even though at a certain stage some particularly talented writer or wenren 文人 may have given the novel its "basic" form upon which later commentators may make further changes. Any kind of textual modifications to different versions of Shuihu zhuan, therefore, cannot be considered to have committed a taboo or have "violated" or "usurped" the "authorial right."

With regard to the second question, the commentators' role in the proliferation of textual versions, the thesis considers that issuing of new commentated editions was a primary promotional strategy and it was responsible for the multiplication of different versions of a vernacular novel. It also explains the well-known phenomenon of the existence of a great number of extant versions of Shuihu zhuan.

Finally, regarding the literary merits of different commentated versions, the thesis does a close comparison of three versions of Shuihu zhuan--namely, those of Yu Xiangdou 余象斗 , Yuan Wuya 袁無涯 and Jing Shgentan 金聖嘆. It finds that these versions have different artistic characteristics, that Yu Xiangdou's version is of a mixed artistic quality and Yuan Wuya's most "comprehensive" in its full recension of the Shuihu stories. Jin Shengtan's version greatly alters the received story by cutting off its last part, but it has many innovative artistic features which probably contributed to its popularity and allowed it to become the dominant or sole version in circulation for about three hundred years after its publication.