Do the portrayals of objects in literary texts represent historical
evidence about the material culture of the past? Or are things in books
more than things in the world? Sophie Volpp considers fictional objects
of the late Ming and Qing that defy being read as illustrative of
historical things. Instead, she argues, fictional objects are often
signs of fictionality themselves, calling attention to the nature of the
relationship between literature and materiality.
Volpp examines a series of objects--a robe, a box and a shell, a
telescope, a plate-glass mirror, and a painting--drawn from the
canonical works frequently mined for information about late imperial
material culture, including the novels The Plum in the Golden Vase and
The Story of the Stone as well as the short fiction of Feng Menglong,
Ling Mengchu, and Li Yu. She argues that although fictional objects
invite readers to think of them as illustrative, in fact, inconsistent
and discontinuous representation disconnects the literary object from
potential historical analogues. The historical resonances of literary
objects illuminate the rhetorical strategies of individual works of
fiction and, more broadly, conceptions of fictionality in the Ming and
Qing. Rather than offering a transparent lens on the past, fictional
objects train the reader to be aware of the fallibility of perception. A
deeply insightful analysis of late Ming and Qing texts and reading
practices, The Substance of Fiction has important implications for
Chinese literary studies, history, and art history, as well as the
material turn in the humanities.
