“Jin Ping Mei” The scholar of laughter by Alicia Relinque

“Jin Ping Mei” The scholar of laughter. The approach to sexuality and humor is a special way of entering the lateral profiles of a people’s culture; Without a doubt, in this book, which is considered the first novel in Chinese literary history, we can experience that mischievousness that is born out of the strong Confucian label of the cultural DNA of the Chinese universe.

A book for those who are interested in classical Chinese literature, for those who investigate the history of its lyrics, for those who want to know, from a non-academic source, the manifestation of sexuality in China prior to the fourteenth century.

editorial review

Considered the first modern novel in the Chinese literary tradition, Jin Ping Mei is one of the most celebrated and cursed books in Asian culture. Its title plays with the names of three of the female characters – Pan Jinlian, Li Ping’er and Pang Chunmei – around whom the action of the novel revolves. The earliest mention of this work is from 1596 and is found in a letter written by the famous scholar Yuan Hongdao which says: “Reclining on the pillow, I have glanced at it, and its pages give off an erotic haze.”

Fascinated by reading, the lawyers circulated different manuscript chapters of the novel until its first edition in 1617. Of course, no author wanted to see his name associated with such an erotic, satirical and stark novel, so that we only know the singular pseudonym who composed it: the Scholar of Laughter from Lanling.

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Composed of 100 chapters, the story chronicles the splendor and decline of Ximen Qing’s house. It begins with the adulterous relationship between Pan Jinlian, wife of Wu Zhi, and Ximen Qing, a lecherous unscrupulous merchant, and the core of its plot focuses on the power and sexual relations between Ximen Qing himself and his wives and servants, along with other characters of all signs and conditions.

Unpublished until now in our language, this first translation from Chinese by Alicia Relinque is a milestone in the recovery of Asian novels, not only because of the importance of this work in its cultural context, but also because it is the most complete version available. a western language that currently exists in the world.

Alicia Relinque is a professor of Chinese literature at the University of Granada, where she did her doctorate. She has held teaching and research roles at Peking University, the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and the City University of Hong Kong. Apart from various academic publications, she is a translator of Chinese classics such as Liu Xie’s The Heart of Literature and Wan Shifu’s History of the West Wing.

There are 12 illustrations in color and 100 in black and white.

Link to get the book