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Translated by the author and Jie Guo.
Among the various personae that late imperial Chinese literati adopted for themselves, no metaphor is more suitable than the image of a crane soaring among the clouds (yunjian he ...). This image, which has incurred praise, doubt, and ridicule, originated with Chen Jiru (1558-1639), a late Ming author who played an active role in the multiple arenas of politics, economy, society, and culture. Chinese literati often sought political power and moral authority, which usually came with fame and renown - and with the desire to inscribe their names into official histories. Chen, who once burnt his scholar's robes as a gesture meant to reject a political career, never held any official post, and throughout his life confined his activities to the Jiangnan region. However, taking advantage of the flourishing late Ming publishing industry, Chen became a rising literary celebrity through writing and editing. Importantly, instead of restricting himself to traditional ways of winning fame and renown, he crossed boundaries of class, reaching out to a wider, more lasting audience, which included officials, local gentry, merchants, literati, aboriginal leaders, restaurant and teahouse runners, bakers, and even the illiterate. Like a soaring crane, Chen roamed with ease in a social world that was largely a vanity fair. Author Jamie Greenbaum ponders the question of a Chinese literatus's literary reputation by drawing on Western revisionist scholarship on William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. By focusing on Chen's identity as a professional writer striving to meet the needs of a commercial reading market, Greenbaum reexamines and offers a clear overview of the contesting critical interpretations of Chen from the past four centuries, and in the end successfully "reinvents" Chen Jiru.
Greenbaum's project is based on a solid study of the biographies of...