Download The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei (Volume Two, The Rivals) AudioBook Free
On this second of a planned five-volume series, David Roy provides a complete and annotated translation of the famous Chin P'ing Mei, an private sixteenth-century Chinese book that targets the domestic life of His-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile product owner in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This work, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the introduction of narrative art--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical framework.Using the possible exclusion of The Tale of Genji (1010) and Don Quixote (1615), there is absolutely no previous work of prose fiction of similar style in world books. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the specialized virtuosity of the writer, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens of Bleak House, the Joyce of Ulysses, or the Nabokov of Lolita than anything in the last Chinese fiction traditions, has not yet received satisfactory recognition. That is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or predicated on an inferior recension of the text. This translation and its own annotation aim to faithfully signify and elucidate all the rhetorical top features of the original in its most traditional form and in doing so enable the European reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its value.
