Ling Mengchu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

Slaps Second Series,Chap.10

Ling Mengchu (Chinese: 凌濛初; Wade-Giles: Ling Meng-ch'u, (1580-1644) was a Chinese writer of the Ming Dynasty, best known for his vernacular short fiction collections Astonished Slaps Upon the Desktop, I and II.

[edit] Biography

Ling Mengchu was born into the Ling clan of Wucheng in northern Zhejiang. The Ling family had supplied numerous officials to the empire. No doubt the Ling family prospered on land rents and agriculture. In addition family members were actively engaged in the printing business with a local specialty of books in polychrome. The Wucheng area was adjacent to the commercial and cultural areas of Hangzhou and Suzhou where reading materials were in increasing demand. Ling Mengchu was certainly a merchant businessman and also certainly a traditional scholar with civil service ambitions.

The business motive of the Ling family was originally discussed by Ling Mengchu’s contemporary Xie Zhaozhe (1567-1624) in his Wu zazu (Five Assorted Offerings). Such were the times. Ling repeatedly failed at the examinations and did not take a government post until he was fifty-four. Ling would finally perish in fighting against rebels in 1644.

Ling’s short stories were a detailed study of his 17th century moral world. A new factor that Ling Mengchu insisted on was empiricism, an objective study of what existed before the eyes of the observer. In the prefatory material to his first short story collection he insisted it was infinitely more difficult to paint a likeness of a dog or horse one had actually seen than to render a ghost or goblin one had never observed. These refreshing new literary directions were still in the age of Wang Yangming philosophical idealism and Zhu Xi metaphysics.

[edit] References

James Scott, Rapp and Whiting trans., The Lecherous Academician,(1973), ISBN 0-85391-186-X
Wen Jingen trans., Amazing Tales (Volume One), Panda Books, 1998. ISBN 7507103986
Perry W. Ma trans., Amazing Tales (Volume Two), Panda Books, 1998. ISBN 750710401x

[edit] ARTICLES

Carpenter, Bruce E., 'The Ming Short Story Collection "P'ai-an ching-ch'i."' Tezukayama Daigaku Jinbunkagakubu Kiyo (Tezukayama University Journal of Humanities), Nara, Japan, 2000, pp.41-111.