Ritual and the shaping of narrative: The legend of the Han Emperor Wu. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

During the later Han and Six Dynasties era, the lives of Han Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 B.C.) and the members of his court inspired a vast body of legend. The narrative remnants of the legend, amounting to over 150 episodes, are now found mostly in six texts: Han Wudi gushi, Dongfang Shuo biezhuan, Han Wudi neizhuan, Han Wudi waizhuan, Shizhouji, and Han Wudi bieguo dongmingji. These texts are crucial for understanding the development of fiction in China, because they differ from the dominant zhiguai genre (records of diverse anomalies) in that they are unified compositions representing several prose genres. Their unknown authors, without entirely abandoning historiographic models, were already capable of treating very complex issues in more extended non-historical narratives, including allegory. The towering but controversial figure of Emperor Wu provided them with a convenient focus for their concerns, and his ritual activities provided the compositional framework. Two ritual structures are integral to the composition of these narratives. One centers on the quest for physical renewal or immortality and the other on certain divination practices. In tracing the development of the Emperor Wu legend, this study focuses chiefly on two broad sets of literary and intellectual concerns. First, it investigates the numerous textual problems in the six primary texts to establish their dates of origin, and it demonstrates the increasing sophistication of Chinese writers of the Six Dynasties. Second, it constructs an historical context for the texts, examining how changes in the depiction of the renewal and divination processes reflect larger changes in Chinese religious beliefs, and how each text addresses specific literati concerns of its time and debate about the role and significance of Dongfang Shuo. Appended are annotated translations of all the primary texts and additional fragments preserved in zhiguai collections.