Abstract:

“Genre Overlapping with the Shuobu (fictional and anecdotal writings)” constitutes one of the five subcategories of “literary criticism” in General Catalogue of the Four Treasuries. Represented by the works such as Six One Poetic Discourses and Central Mountain Poetic Discourses, its historical formation involved three key stages. It was initiated in Ouyang Xiu’s Six One Poetic Discourses in the Song Dynasty. Deliberately under the guise of “leisure chat”, Ouyang Xiu created this representative work integrating the form of fiction, the talent of a good historian and the words of a literary writer. It was developed in the Ming Dynasty. Wang Shizhen, with the cultural and factional stance in Wuzhong, united a group to demonstrate their cultural capital and academic individuality in the competition for literary authority, and included Miscellaneous Notes on the Arts in the Shuobu in his own collection of works. Finally, it was established in the Qing Dynasty. Some of the fictional works in the original version of General Catalogue were reclassified in “literary criticism” in the last version of General Catalogue. Emperor Qianlong and his minister Ji Yun affirmed the academic value of the Shuobu, and “genre overlapping with the Shuobu” was thus established. These three stages, which are respectively characterized by individual creation, group operation, and official establishment, demonstrate that the “genre overlapping with the Shuobu” is a poetic paradigm that was rationally designed and historically selected. Possessing legitimacy, effectiveness and daily relevance, this genre is worthy of exchange and mutual learning with the mainstream paradigms of systematic theories in Western poetics.

Key words: General Catalogue of the Four Treasuries, literary criticism, genre overlapping with the Shuobu, history of formation, self-developed discourse