The Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao from Forgotten Tales of the Sui
The Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao from Forgotten Tales of the Sui
A Chinese Historical Novel by Yuan Yuling
Translated by Robert E. Hegel
2024
xxxii + 588 pages
ISBN 978-962-7255-50-5
Winner of the MLA’s 21st Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work
A historical novel by Yuan Yuling, Forgotten Tales of the Sui (Sui shi yiwen, 1633), has indeed been long forgotten in China. This unique coming-of-age tale in classical Chinese literature portrays the chivalrous Qin Shubao, the scion of a line of righteous generals, as he tries to establish himself in a perilous world and, through military prowess, earn the weapons inherited from his famous forebears. Rendered masterfully by Robert E. Hegel, this abridged translation vividly recounts Shubao’s adventures and misadventures amidst the fall of the Sui dynasty and the rise of the Tang.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Review(s)
Review(s)
‘Robert E. Hegel’s graceful, funny, precise translation of The Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao brings into vivid English an abridgement of Yuan Yuling’s important historical novel, Forgotten Tales of the Sui, an expansive seventeenth-century work about the eponymous seventh-century military hero. The translation brilliantly transposes the original’s detailed, technical language, preserving Yuan Yuling’s ironies and authorial autocommentary. Helpful introductory materials, notes, and an appendix guide the reader along Shubao’s path; Hegel’s “Translator’s Afterthoughts” carefully place the work in a rich cultural context that will be largely unfamiliar to nonspecialists. This superb translation renders into English a work marvelous in itself and bound to change how the history of the novel, long imagined a European form, is told.’
—MLA Selection Committee
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AUTHOR(s)
Yuan Yuling 袁于令 (1599–1674) was a Suzhou dramatist and writer whose circle of creative friends included Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1646), the editor of three collections of vernacular short stories. As did Qin Shubao, Yuan faced loyalty tests: whether to serve in the administration of the new Manchu Qing regime or to go into retirement. Initially, Yuan held several Qing official positions but retired to roam the lower Yangtze region in his later years, creating a multifarious reputation for himself.
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TRANSLATOR(s)
Robert E. Hegel is Liselotte Dieckmann Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Professor Emeritus of Chinese at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught for more than forty years. His primary field was Ming–Qing vernacular fiction, novels in particular, but in recent years he published studies of the narrative structures of archived homicide reports from the Qing and the developing print culture of the lower Yangtze region.