Given the immense importance of the Shishuo xinyu in Chinese and East Asian literary and intellectual history and historiography, not to mention the delights that the anecdotes gathered in this massive collection have in store for their readers, scholarship on Shishuo xinyu in English or other Western languages is surprisingly scant. Before Jack W. Chen's Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu, two decades had passed without a book dedicated to the collection, and articles have been few and far between. Chen's book constitutes a major contribution not only to the study of Shishuo xinyu but also to our understanding of early medieval Chinese literature, culture, and history, and as such it will surely provide further inspiration to scholars and students to turn to this text.
Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance consists of eight chapters, two of them serving as introduction and conclusion. Although the chapters pursue distinct inquiries,...
