The Use of Music as a Narrative Device in the Medley, Song: The Courtesan's Jewel Box

Abstract

In his study of two pairs of 'Stories from the late Ming period, I Patrick Hanan made a detailed comparison between the classical tale, The Faithless Lover, and the vernacular short story of the same theme, The Courtesan's Jewel Box. According to him, one of the most outstanding differences between the two is the use of what he calls lyrical style in several places in the classical tale version, which is much less found in the short story form. By lyrical style, he means those passages of high emotional moments which use such devices as a jumble of compressed images, strong parallelism, elliptical syntax and elevated diction. These are of course some of the features one finds in song texts, even though they may not always be of similar literary quality. In fact, Hanan himself suggests that the writer of the classical tale may have been influenced by drama, which is entirely plausible, since much of Chinese traditional drama consists of lyrical singing. To this, one could add another possible influence, that is, the musical narrative genres. Of course, this does not mean that behind the classical tale there was necessarily an actual narrative version of this story (just as I do not take it that Hanan is suggesting a specific dramatic form of it). It is simply that the kind of lyricism described here seems to have something in common with an aspect of musicality in performing literature which may have inspired the author of the classical tale. At present there is in existence a Medley Song version of this story (recorded in 1962) which I have transcribed (in CHINOPERL PAPERS No.8) because of its musical interest. 2 It illustrates various kinds of musical devices used to help the narrative. Structurally it shows some interesting contrasts with