Beginning the Chinese Novel

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course will look at four of the most famous novels of premodern China: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Plum in the Golden Vase. Deeply self-conscious about the process of their own creation and their place within the larger literary canon, these novels deploy multiple frames, philosophical disquisitions, invented histories, and false starts before the story can properly begin. By focusing on the first twelve chapters each novel, this course will serve as both an introduction to the masterworks of Chinese vernacular literature and an exploration of the fraught beginnings of a new genre that took shape over the course of the sixteenth century. All readings will be in English, though students with reading ability in Chinese are encouraged to also read the original.