Memory Making in Folk Epics of China is a new contribution to the fields of Chinese literature, folklore studies, and Chinese performance arts. The book deploys an extensive repertoire of shan'ge (“mountain songs,” or folk songs) from the lower Yangtze delta region to trace what the author calls the “local” and the “intimate” in the rice-cultivating regions of southern China. Utilizing a cross-disciplinary methodology, McLaren investigates both the oral and the written transmissions of folk songs mainly performed in the Wu dialects, charting the historical metamorphosis of regional folk voices that express romantic, sexual, gendered, and social sentiments across significant historical eras. The book contributes to Chinese literary and cultural studies by bringing scholarly attention to the traditionally neglected topic of ethnic Han folk epics. McLaren argues that “folk epics served as an aesthetic medium to commemorate distant ancestors and noted individuals from the local community” (xix). In studying both...
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