Madethi novles is an open text, but if we want to talk about if there's a consistent moral of the story, i would say, yes, maybe, never abide by only one set of teachings. The novel incorporated discourses of buddhism, daism and confucianism. Is a way of interrogating all thes teachings. Soas as craig, it's a bit like esereal or a series. There are a series of challenges and demons. And for the most part, characters or situations or stories which are encountered, they come up once, and they don't come up later. Another real challenge was with the language oy. This
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great novels of China’s Ming era, and perhaps the most loved. Written in 1592, it draws on the celebrated travels of a real monk from China to India a thousand years before, and on a thousand years of retellings of that story, especially the addition of a monkey as companion who, in the novel, becomes supersimian. For most readers the monk, Tripitaka, is upstaged by this irrepressible Monkey with his extraordinary powers, accompanied by the fallen but recovering deities, Pigsy and Sandy.
The image above, from the caricature series Yoshitoshi ryakuga or Sketches by Yoshitoshi, is of Monkey creating an army by plucking out his fur and blowing it into the air, and each hair becomes a monkey-warrior.
With
Julia Lovell
Professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London
Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu
Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
And
Craig Clunas
Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson