The storyteller's manner in Chinese storytelling (Vernacular novel and short story)

This study examines the concept of 'the storyteller's manner' in the Chinese vernacular novel and short story from the perspective of contemporary and premodern storytelling in China. The episode of 'Wu Song Fights the Tiger' from the Ming novel Shuiku zhuan is analysed with a view to its narrative form as exemplified in the novel, in oral performance by the famous Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang (1889-1968) and his disciples, in a book edition of Wang Shaotang's repertoire, and in some selected examples of other oral-related storytelling genres in written form, so-called 'tell-sing' (shuochang) literature. Against this background a set of narrative features is discussed, such as division into chapters, type of narrator, narrator's comment and simulated dialogue with the audience, alternation of prose and verse, and stock phrases of introduction, connection, and conclusions. The author emphasizes the importance of studying the living oral traditions as performed orally in order to develop our understanding of the interplay of oral and literary elements in the existing oral traditions as well as in the vernacular literature from the medieval to the modern period.