SOURCE: Hessney, Robert. “Themes.” In Beautiful, Talented, and Brave: Seventeenth-Century Chinese Scholar-Beauty Romances,, pp. 158-96. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1979.

In this excerpt, Hessney considers the themes of love and courtship, poetry and wine, and Confucian morality in the novel genre of scholar-beauty romances. Works studied include Western Chamber Romance, The Green Peonies, Yü chiao li, and Haoch'iu chuan. Note that Chinese characters in this essay have been silently removed.

In this chapter I propose to discuss the themes of scholar-beauty romances. Although the following chapter is devoted to characterization, one should realize that this arbitrary division between themes and characters is somewhat artificial in regard to these romances. This is because the characters are generally ideal types merely serving to reinforce the themes through their thoughts, speeches, and deeds. Thus the subsequent passages of translation are frequently illustrative of both themes and characters at the same...