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E-book Bandits in Print : "The Water Margin" and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel

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Penilaian

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The traditional long-form novel, as devel-oped in late Ming China, could be endlessly reshaped and repackaged. Its text could be freely altered. Commentaries could be added to its chapters, whether at their beginnings, at their ends, or even interpo-lated into the text itself, in order to assist less-experienced readers or to provide interpretations. Prefaces could be appended in order to orient readers’ expectations and understandings from the outset. Illustrations could be added, whether to the chapters themselves or in a folio at the front of the work. Decisions about what shape the novel would take—its text, paratext, and physical form—were made by editors and publishers of print editions in anticipation of their target readerships’ needs and desires. As such, the Ming novel was a genre intimately tied to the me-dium of print. The novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), which appears to have been first printed in the early sixteenth century, exemplifies the rela-tions between the genre and the dynamic print culture of the era. It was among the earliest such works, and among the most influential. It appeared—and continues to appear—in a wide range of forms, for different readerships, with different implied meanings. It created a sensation among its earliest readers and was the inspiration for many works that followed. This book follows the transformations of the Ming novel genre in print by tracing print editions of The Water Margin, a pathbreaking example.The process by which a novel such as The Water Margin could be reshaped by editor-publishers is perhaps best illustrated by a note included in the front matter of a commercial edition printed by the Fujian publisher Yu Xiangdou, one of the most renowned such editor-publishers of the Ming. In the note, Yu distinguished his edition of the novel from the many others available on the market. He warned potential customers of the many shortcomings of his competitors’ edi-tions: many of them were only partially illustrated, or their texts lacked shi poems and ci lyrics and were therefore less suitable for recitation aloud. They were printed from woodblocks that had worn with age, creating images and text that were indistinct and difficult to make out. Only the edition of his own Shuangfeng tang publishing house, Yu de-clared, was fully illustrated and featured commentary in its margins. Yu went on to note that he had edited the text, removing all impediments to leisurely browsing and ensuring that all of the characters used were correct. “From front to back,” he concluded, “in all twenty volumes of the book, there is not a single mistake in a single sentence. Gentlemen customers can recognize the mark of the Shuangfeng tang house.”

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

931 GRE b

Penerbit

New York : Cornell University Press., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

192 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781501769214

Klasifikasi

931

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Ancinet History of China to 420

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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