Ming audiences and vernacular hermeneutics: The uses of the romance of the three kingdoms

Abstract

Chinese readers have long been accustomed to the notion that the canonical text required in terpretation by a recognized authority. This was particularly the case during the Ming period (1368-1644), when students of the Confucian classics were required to commit to memory the version of the classics annotated by the leading Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi (1130-1200). When vernacular texts began to be published in abundance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the venerated tradition of commentary was applied to emerging vernacular genres and influenced the development of a herm eneutics or dushu fa rM I® for Ming vernacular fiction. Western scholars have demonstrated that the most ..