WU SONG FIGHTS THE TIGER

The focus of Chinese literary studies has long been on the written word even though Chinese fiction and drama have strong oral roots and have been shaped by an interplay between oral and written traditions. The culmination of decades working on this issue--and using as its lens the story about how the legendary hero Wu Song killed a tiger with his bare hands--this volume explores Chinese oral professional storytelling and its relations with literary culture in the past and present.