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A Linguistic-Literary Approach to Ch'ien Chung-shu's Novel Wei-ch'eng
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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Wei-ch'eng; (hereafter referred to by the translated title Fortress Besieged) by Ch'ien Chung-shu (1910?—) has been hailed as the most “carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature” and “perhaps also its greatest.” Despite such distinction, however, neither this work nor any other of Ch'ien's creative writings has been widely studied. This paper is an initial exploration directed at investigating the above claims from the linguistic and stylistic points of view. One focus is figurative language, of which there is a substantial amount in this novel: some 680 uses in 340 pages, one page having as many as nine. (Approximately seventy-four percent of these figurative uses are similes.) Though in the absence of norms it is difficult to make a relative statement, in absolute terms this is rich usage.
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References
1 Written during an approximately two-year period toward the end of World War II, and first serialized in Wen-i fu-hsing (Renaissance), the work was published in book form in 1947 (Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang). Throughout this paper, page references to the novel are based on a reprint (Hong Kong: Chi-pen Shu-chü, 1969) of the 3rd edition (Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang, 1949). All quotations in English are my renderings. A complete translation by Jeanne Kelly is currently under consideration for publication; her first chapter appeared in Renditions, No. 2 (Spr. 1974), pp. 65–80, under the title The Besieged City. My own translation, begun in early 1973, is as yet unfinished.
2 Hsia, C. T., A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1971), p. 441Google Scholar. Hsia's quotations from the novel are based on the original 1947 edition, which was paginated differently from the one I used; see n. 1 above.
3 The most readily available treatment of Ch'ien Chung-shu is the chapter on him in Hsia (n. 2 above), pp. 432–60. Another source is Mu-jung Lungt'u, “Lun Ch'ien Chung-shu te hsiao-shuo” (On the fictional writings of Ch'ien Chung-shu), P'an-ku, No. 37 (1971), pp. 26–32. For supplementary biographical information, see Tsou Wenhai, “I Ch'ien Chung-shu” (Ch'ien Chung-shu remembered), Chuan-chi wen-hsüeh (Biographical literature), I, 1 (1962), pp. 23–24. Occasional mention of Ch'ien has occurred in non-scholarly contexts; this seems to indicate recognition at least in some quarters, but still does not explain why he has escaped serious critical attention until recently. Mai Ping-k'un's “Ch'ien Chung-shu te sheng-p'ing ho chu-shu” (Ch'ien Chung-shu's life and works), (Ming-pao yüeh-k'an, XI, 8 [1976], pp. 50–54) is the first two sections from his Master's thesis (Chinese University of Hong Kong) “Lun Ch'ien Chung-shu te san-wen ho hsiao-shuo” (On Ch'ien Chung-shu's essays and fictional writings); I have not had access to the rest of that study. Also, it has been reported that Theodore Huters is writing a dissertation at Stanford entitled “The Literary and Social Significance of Ch'ien Chung-shu's Weich'eng.” My Ph.D. dissertation (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dept. of E. Asian Languages and Literature, 1977), “A Linguistic-Literary Study of Ch'ien Chung-shu's Three Creative Works,” develops the themes of this present paper, as well as other topics.
In addition to the novel discussed in this paper, Ch'ien's published creative prose consists of the anthology of vignette-satires Hsieh tsai jen-sheng pien shangc (Marginalia of life) (1941; reprinted Hong Kong: Wen-ch'ang Shu-chü, n.d.); and the collection of short stories Jen shou kuetd (Men, beasts, ghosts) (Shanghai: K'ai-ming Shu-tien, 1946).
4 For the case for joint consideration of imagery and figures of speech, see inter alia Archibald A. Hill, “Analogies, Icons and Images in Relation to Semantic Content of Discourses,” Style, II (1968), pp. 203–27.
5 Particularly relevant and inspiring, among others, have been “Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies” in Freeman, Donald C. (ed.), Linguistics and Literary Style (N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970), pp. 57–72Google Scholar and “The Linguistic Study of Literary Texts” in Seymour Chatman & Samuel Levin (eds.), Essays on the Language of Literature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 217–23. Also Roger Fowler, “Linguistics, Stylistics; Criticism?”, Lingua, XVI (1966), pp. 153–65. Thus far, very little has been published on linguistic-literary criticism of Chinese literature. Exceptions in the Western world are the impressive examples set by Tsu-Lin Mei and Yu-kung Kao: “Tu Fu's “Autumn Meditations': An Exercise in Linguistic Criticism” (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XXVIII [1968], pp. 4–80) and “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T'ang Poetry” (HJAS, XXXI [1971], pp. 49–136).
6 Jen shou kuei (n. 3 above) p. i; translation by Hsia (n. 2 above), p. 437.
7 The irony of the finale is discussed in more detail in Hsia (ibid.), p. 459.
8 “Running-dog” may perhaps be more idiomatically rendered “lackey.” This passage is also translated in ibid., p. 453.
9 See ibid., for another translation.
10 See ibid., pp. 453f., for another translation.
11 In an attempt to reproduce the vulgarity and word-play of the original, minor liberties have been taken in the translation of this and the next quoted lines.
12 N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966; the following quotations are from pp. 181–83.
13 In the Chinese original, the term shou-shih p'u-tzu (a small shop selling cooked food) is followed by this French equivalent in parentheses.
14 The Nature of Narrative, p. 154.
15 Immediately in the original, though not in the translation.
16 This is an admittedly inadequate translation. The nonphysical associations of presence are not anywhere as strong and immediate as those called forth by ch'i; among the losses are the unpleasant connotations of ch'i in the context of jen-ch'i.
17 In Howard S. Babb (ed.), Essays in Stylistic Analysis (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), PP. 290f.
18 It is not clear how significant the amorous connotations of red are here.
19 The Chinese for “civil engineering” is “earthwood engineering”; thus its correspondence with earthiness is much more immediate in the original than can be conveyed in the translation.
20 The French phrase, which means “poor little thing,” is given within parentheses in the original.
21 For a brief treatment of context of situation, see, e.g., Spencer, John & Gregory, Michael J., “An Approach to the Study of Style” in Enkvist, Nils Erik et al. (eds.), Linguistics and Style (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 99–102Google Scholar; also in Freeman (n. 5 above), pp. 91–93.
22 In Babb (n. 17 above), p. 352.
23 ibid., pp. 351f.
24 ibid., p. 338.
25 Contemporary Essays on Style: Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Criticism (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1969), p. 266Google Scholar.
26 The passage is found in Wei-ch'eng, p. 8.