Reflections on a Braised Pig's Head

Food and Vernacular Storytelling in Jin Ping Mei

Bibliographic Data

ID3966456
AuthorsYan Liang (0000-0003-0072-7536, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume134
Issue1
Pages51-68
Publication date2021-12-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherAmerican Oriental Society (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7817/jameroriesoci.134.1.0051
OpenAlexW2498758149
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

The sixteenth-century Chinese vernacular novel Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 was a groundbreaking work for its vivid presentation of the domestic life of women in an affluent merchant household, a topic seldom touched upon by previous works in the genre. The rich descriptions of food and dining in the novel have attracted various socio-historical studies. This paper offers a different critical approach and studies the rhetorical and narrative functions of food and dining scenes in the novel with a particular focus on the female participants. Taking a dining party episode from chapter 23 of the novel as an example, the essay looks at how food and dining are used as a narratological device to reveal the female characters' psychology and their interpersonal power dynamics. The essay argues that this use of food for revealing the female characters' inner worlds is a narrative strategy for coping with the historical limitations of Chinese vernacular storytelling in describing female characters' private lives and interior thoughts. Its successful implementation in Jin Ping Mei set an important precedent for a literary genre that had previously been dominated by a public and male-dominated mode of storytelling

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Narrative · Ping (video games · Power (physics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Storytelling · Vernacular · Culinary Culture and Tourism · History · Philippine History and Culture

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