Short Prose Forms in a Global Sixteenth-Century Context

Abstract

This paper explores analogies between three varieties of short non-fiction prose that flourished in sixteenth-century China – the xiaopin, the sanwen, and the suibi – and the Western essay genre as exemplified by Michel de Montaigne's Essais. These several genres resemble one another in their rambling, scattered quality, their encyclopedic scope, and their inconclusiveness, features that combine to produce a situation in which readers must actively wrest elusive meaning from slippery texts. Through etymological readings of the terms “essay,” “xiaopin,” “sanwen,” and “suibi,” this paper suggests that these short non-fiction prose forms and the responses they stimulated in readers resonate with large-scale social and economic changes occurring in sixteenth-century China and France.