Andrew Schonebaum

Classifying the Unseen examines “epistemic” literature, including medical texts, encyclopedias, almanacs, and guidebooks that describe or hint at early scientific inquiry; local and court histories, gazetteers, and newspapers that recorded natural disasters, omens and unexplained phenomena; and “entertainment” literature – novels, anecdotes, and jottings created primarily to amuse and beguile but which also conveyed information. Existing histories of Chinese science concern themselves primarily with officials at court and their response to western science. Classifying the Unseen expands on these histories by examining debates on the margins of that elite discourse, often found in commentary, appendices, sequels, and supplements. By drawing previously unexplored connections between epistemic and entertainment texts, elite and more marginal literature including newspapers, medical manuscripts, coroner’s manuals and family instructions, this work advances a more robust understanding of how an increasingly literate early modern China perceived and experienced the natural world. Classifying the Unseen examines the curious in context – revealing fears of people and practices (magical poison, secret medical practices) along the borders of an expanding empire, and foreign curiosities that penetrated its urban centers. It also seeks to understand how things were investigated and envisioned when they lacked visual context – either because they were everywhere (water, wind, life) or nowhere (dragons, the future).

The Plum in the Golden Vase (also known as The Golden Lotus) was published in the early seventeenth century and may be the first long work of Chinese fiction written by a single (though anonymous) author. Featuring both complex structural elements and psychological and emotional realism, the novel centers on the rich merchant Ximen Qing and his household and describes the physical surroundings and material objects of a Ming dynasty city. In part a social, political, and moral critique, the novel reflects on hierarchical power relations of family and state and the materialism of life at the time.

The essays in this volume provide ideas for teaching the novel using a variety of approaches, from questions of genre, intertextuality, and the novel’s reception to material culture, family and social dynamics, and power structures in sexual relations. Insights into the novel’s representation of Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, legal culture, class, slavery, and obscenity are offered throughout the volume.

By examining the dynamic interplay between discourses of fiction and medicine, Novel Medicine demonstrates how fiction incorporated, created, and disseminated medical knowledge in China, beginning in the sixteenth century. Critical readings of fictional and medical texts provide a counterpoint to prevailing narratives that focus only on the “literati” aspects of the novel, showing that these texts were not merely read, but were used by a wide variety of readers for a range of purposes. The intersection of knowledge—fictional and real, elite and vernacular—illuminates the history of reading and daily life and challenges us to rethink the nature of Chinese literature.