Wu Song Fights the Tiger: The Interaction of Oral and Written Traditions in the Chinese Novel, Drama and Storytelling

The focus of Chinese literary studies has long been on the written word even though Chinese fiction and drama have strong oral roots and have been shaped by an interplay between oral and written traditions. The culmination of decades working on this issue—and using as its lens the story about how the legendary hero Wu Song killed a tiger with his bare hands—this volume explores Chinese oral professional storytelling and its relations with literary culture in the past and present.

• Vibeke Børdahl, Author

  Dr Vibeke Børdahl, a senior researcher at NIAS, has been described as one of the most accomplished scholars in the study of Chinese oral literature. As well as doing much research on the interplay of oral and written traditions in Chinese popular literature and performance culture, over the past decade she has translated the full work of Jin Ping Mei into Danish.