Verse Performance and Textual Absorption: Literary Form Integration and Construction for Huaben Stories of the Song and Yuan Dynasties

Abstract

The huaben 话本 stories of the Song and Yuan dynasties contain a huge amount of verse performances. If jiju 集句 provides an organized form for connecting verses of different origins to construct a complete verse performance, a story can also perform this function. Following this vein, it is possible to get a clearer idea about the relationship between ruhua 入话 and touhui 头回: Ruhua is a non-narrative introduction, while touhui is a narrative introduction, and touhui is derived from ruhua. Fundamentally, the evolution from the non narrative ruhua to the narrative touhui is driven by fully expanding the explanations of the introductory verse(s). From the perspective of verse narration, latent characters and pseudo characters are common in verse performances. An important function for them is to stitch the verses together and present them to the audience rather than tell stories. Verse performances initially come from other forms of folk arts and are finally absorbed by and integrated into huaben stories. During this process, huaben stories gradually establish a more delicate literary form feature in terms of verse narration.

Keywords

verse performance, huaben stories, textual absorption, literary form integration

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