This book is about Liang-Zhu, a Chinese folktale that can be traced back many centuries. It has spread to other countries in Asia (most importantly, for the purposes of this book, to Korea) and has crossed genres. It is found in local histories and legends as well as in ballads and, in Korea, in shamanic rituals. It has been incorporated into popular culture, in the form of plays, no later than the 1200s, and has also inspired operas, ballets, and movies. The basic plot of the story in the current modern form is that a young girl, Zhu Yingtai, disguises herself as a boy and goes to live and study at a school. There she meets and falls in love with a young man, Liang Shanbo, who in most versions remains unaware while they are studying together that Zhu is a woman. They part when Zhu returns home. Eventually Liang dies and Zhu dies also, often at her own volition. They then both turn into butterflies. Although this story is assumed to have existed mostly in oral tradition, versions of it made their way into the written record no later than the 1100s and there are references to it before then. The Korean versions use other names for the characters and have somewhat different plots.
The introduction describes the story’s range in time and space and the genres into which it has been incorporated, as well as the scholarship on it. Sookja Cho reports that this scholarship, while extensive, is overbalanced in the direction of collecting and archiving the story. She also reports that scholarship has focused primarily on the past to the detriment of attention to the recent past and present. Conversely, scholars have tended to project the concerns of the present onto the past with the result that the religious themes of some versions have been overlooked, as has the function of the story as entertainment. This book provides some balance through its in-depth analysis, its acknowledgement of modern versions of the story, its discussion of the ways in which the story was used, and its focus on religious uses of the story.
Cho’s main argument is that people are drawn to this story by the intersection of the themes of emotion, gender, and relationships. She argues that the many versions of this story have been a way for people to explore these themes (as well as religious themes and a variety of other topics) from different angles. Her analysis relies largely on the exploration of the different themes and emphases expressed by different versions.
The first chapter gives an overview of the basic story, its development over time (including the addition of some elements not present in the earliest known versions), and some of the thematic and geographic differences in the story. The subsequent chapters focus in on specific elements in the story as a way of approaching different themes. For instance, the second chapter, “Adventures in a Male Space: Troubled Gender and Sexuality,” looks at the beginning of the story, when Zhu is introduced and prepares to set out for the school, and examines the themes of cross-dressing and passing as someone of the opposite sex, as well as the nature of desire, whether for another person or for knowledge. The third chapter, “Women and Men: Friendship vs. Love,” focuses on the developing friendship between Zhu and Liang at school, as well as on the difficulties Zhu must negotiate in her role as a male student. Chapter 4, “From Sorrowful Separation to Carnival Excursion: The Aesthetics and Poetics of a Parting Journey,” looks at the parting of Zhu and Liang and at the tensions and desires that it provokes. Chapter 5, “Translation and Deification: Butterflies, Souls, and Cross-cultural Incarnations,” looks at the story’s end, where the characters turn into butterflies and, in some versions, return to heaven, only to reincarnate again. Here, Cho examines the religious aspects with which this story is often imbued. This is something of a digression from the main thrust of Cho’s argument, but when she looks closely at Korean versions with significant religious content, she is able to refocus her argument, of the different approaches to gender issues in the Korean versions.
Cho’s approach is interdisciplinary. According to her website at the School of International Letters and Culture at Arizona State University, her doctorates are in Chinese and Korean Comparative Literature and in Premodern Chinese Literature, rather than in folklore or one of its close disciplinary allies. Whether or not she has ever had formal training in the field, however, Cho displays excellent knowledge of the genres of folklore and seems comfortable and knowledgeable while discussing them. The only real quibble I have about her handling of the material from a folklore point of view is the occasional expression of a condescending attitude about the folk versions of the story and the beliefs expressed in them. Overall, this is a rather small part of the book. She has clearly done considerable research on the tale. If she has incorporated information from other relevant disciplines as successfully as she has incorporated her understanding of folklore, this is a very good book indeed.
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[Review length: 863 words • Review posted on October 24, 2019]