Speaker: Xiaoqiao Ling, Associate Professor of Chinese, Arizona State University This paper investigates ways in which the proximity of texts in literary environments complicate our understanding of invention and creation in the late Ming narrative tradition. Early vernacular short stories (huaben) are typically dismissed as haphazard patchworks of disparate textual segments. Pioneering scholars such as …

China Humanities Seminar featuring Xiaoqiao Ling – Rethinking Early Huaben Stories: Miscellanies and Literary Ecologies