馮夢龍의 ≪古今譚概≫ 一考

Abstract

Gu jin tan gai is Feng Menglong’s work written in the late Ming Dynasty. It is a collection of anecdotes from ancient Chinese books, especially history, unofficial history, and Biji(筆記), and so on. He took a fragmentary story, processed and edited it, and then compiled it into Gu jin tan gai. It is composed of 36 parts, each chapter contains works that fit the subject, along with the critique of Feng Menglong. Gu jin tan gai has various names such as Gu jin xiao(古今笑), Gu xiao shi(古笑史), Tan gai(譚概), Gu jin xiao shi(古今笑史). In summary, Gu jin tan gai and Gu jin xiao(古今笑) are the same text, and Gu xiao shi(古笑史) was compiled again in the early Qing Dynasty, with some contents removed based on Gu jin xiao(古今笑). In this paper, I analyzed the thesis of each argument and suggested which problems were derived from it. And I tried to figure out how the various book names came into being. In addition, by arranging the arguments of various scholars related to the name of this book, I drew up problems that need to be considered. Gu jin tan gai has all the features of various literary styles such as Xiaohua(笑話), Biji(筆記), novels, and Xiaopin(小品), etc. Therefore, the literary style of Gu jin tan gai was defined by people based on their own understanding. I revealed that this book was compiled with laughter as the underlying idea through a preface written by Feng Menglong. It can be seen that this book was compiled with the same compilation idea as Xiao fu(笑府). This is an important clue to understanding the literary style of Gu jin tan gai and can be understood as Feng Menglong contribution to the study of Chinese Xiaohua.