ABSTRACT
This project attempts a new reading of traditional Chinese fiction, taking into consideration the indigenous characteristics of Chinese xiaoshuo texts and the Chinese concept of fiction. I It critically evaluates the scope of applying concepts offered by the new historicism, an approach developed by English Renaissance specialists, to the Chinese context. This study illustrates a new approach to Chinese fiction by using the example of the seventeenth-century novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (A Tale of Marriage Destinies That Will Bring Society to Its Senses; hereafter: Yinyuan zhuan, or YY2)2 which previously has been read mainly as a comic story on the theme of a Chinese virago. Analysis focuses on the dynamics of the text, tracing the flow of social energy and the permeability of boundaries between the literary and non-literary discourses. This approach enables us to identify and analyse the voices and perceptions of the world in seventeenthcentury Chinese discourse. It contributes to an interdisciplinary enquiry into fiction and its cultural context, which will be of interest to both the modern literary critic and the historian of late imperial China.
