Able official or comedian? How was Feng Menglong perceived through the eyes of his contemporaries?

Abstract

Feng Menglong (1574–1646) was a late-Ming Suzhou scholar (文人) who wrote and published a variety of books. Nowadays, he has become renowned as the compiler of (1) the Sanyan, three collections of vernacular short stories and (2) the Shan’ge, a collection of Suzhou folk songs. Feng Menglong was actively involved in the world of popular literature, at a time when most literati looked down upon the genre as worthless and vulgar. So how, then, did his contemporaries view him? Having collected the impressions of Feng Menglong’s contemporaries and juxtaposed them with his own writings, I am going to use this paper to describe Feng’s life, character, and more generally, the age in which he lived. Feng Menglong had an ‘unrestrained’, ‘odd’, and ‘crazy’ side. These aspects of his personality led him to immerse himself in popular literature such as drama, vernacular fiction, and popular songs. In the eyes of some orthodox intellectuals he may have seemed ‘unrestrained’ or ‘crazy’, but he was a learnt and talented intellectual in the literary circle.