Manling Luo's Literati Storytelling in Late Medieval China adopts a new approach to the study of tales and anecdotes collected by literati of the “late medieval” era, here defined as the mid-eighth to the mid-tenth century (p. 4). Luo argues that literati storytelling is best understood as “both a mode of discourse—encompassing casual conversations, narrative poems, and prose accounts—and as a medium of social culture formation” (p. 10). She compares tales and anecdotes across collections and time periods in order to show how this body of material “narrativiz[ed] the desires, anxieties, and perspectives of late medieval scholar-officials” (p. 11). One significant contribution of the book is that it incorporates many little-studied texts by a range of Tang literati; Luo argues that these varied texts can be read collectively as “unofficial, dialogic attempts to construct their shared identity” (p. 12). To delineate this identity, she focuses on what she sees as the four most prominent themes—sovereignty, literati sociality, sexuality, and cosmic mobility—in a series of chapters, concluding with a discussion of Tang narratives' impact on the later literary tradition.

Luo's choice of a thematic, synchronic approach to this heterogeneous body of texts has advantages and some limitations. One advantage is that by reading across different genres and time periods, she is able to demonstrate the persistence of her themes and the ways in which different writers transformed standard plots or stock characters. In chapter 1, for example, Luo examines the recurring figure of the old man who recounts stories about Tang emperor Xuanzong. By juxtaposing well-known works about Xuanzong and his Precious Consort Yang alongside lesser-studied texts, Luo illustrates the increasingly diverse meanings of the Xuanzong story—as morality play, as romance, as political lesson—in the post-Rebellion era.

Her thematic approach also sheds light on conflicting social attitudes toward the relationship between birth and talent and the distribution of power in Tang elite society. In chapter 2, “Literati Sociality,” she contrasts the snobbish perspective found in Zhao Lin's Yinhua lu (pp. 71–79) to a view of poetic talent as independent of pedigree, as in the anecdotes of Fan Shu's Yunxi youyi (pp. 79–88). Luo argues that Tang literati felt deeply ambivalent about official service, and that storytelling provided a way to perform those tensions. In chapter 4, “Cosmic Mobility,” she explores this ambivalence in stories about literati navigation of the underworld bureaucracy and dreams of attaining (or leaving) office. In chapter 3, “Sexuality,” Luo is able to draw on considerable scholarship (much of it from the past few decades) on Tang romantic narratives and examine the relationship between sexual and political power, arguing that what superficially appears to be the subversion of power hierarchies in romantic tales was more ambiguous and contradictory. This romantic sphere depicted in these tales, Luo suggests, became a place in which literati could “both … take issue with and become part of [the normative] order” of literati life (p. 134).

When discussing texts, Luo generally chooses to summarize stories rather than translate and provide close readings. Over the course of the book, this choice tends to weaken her arguments by obscuring the length and narrative complexity of individual anecdotes and tales. The summarizing approach also flattens distinctions between types of texts, a more serious problem for her conclusions, and ignores questions of circulation and audience. (Luo explicitly brackets these in the introduction, pp. 21–22.) But without some consideration of authorial context and objectives, let alone speculation on the circulation of different types of texts among Tang readers, Luo's interpretations run the risk of being too general and ahistorical. The moralizing political anecdotes of Liu Su's Da Tang xinyu had very different objectives than the long individual stories of romance such as the “Tale of Li Wa.” Can we then read them as equally influential texts in expressing—or shaping—Tang literati identity? If so, influential for whom, and at what moments? A more detailed examination of the social and cultural contexts for individual collections and stories would have given broad conclusions about literati identity more precision.

Literati Storytelling in Late Medieval China sometimes uses an overly schematic approach to Tang culture. For example, in chapter 2, “Literati Sociality,” Luo divides late medieval literati into the “Moral Community,” “Prestige Community,” “Poetry Community,” and “Examination Community.” Though she acknowledges that “these subgroups by no means excluded each other” (p. 62), Luo might more productively have represented them as cultural spheres writers explored in their stories rather than “subgroups” of individuals. This schematic approach can also be found in a problematic concept in the book, the “myth of empowerment.” Discussed at length on pages 15–18, this “myth of empowerment,” in Luo's formulation, was the literati belief that official service empowered them economically and culturally and yet was simultaneously a burden, due to financial and sociopolitical pressures. However, this argument blurs critical distinctions among ranks of officials and kinds of texts. Though the romantic tales of chapter 3 contain critiques of official service in their depictions of Tang society, we find few skeptical portrayals in the collections of political anecdotes in chapter 2, which attempt to convince readers of the integrity of the Tang officiate through positive and negative models of conduct. Approving anecdotes about men like grand councilors Wei Zheng and Pei Du were intended as lessons on how to deploy the moral and rhetorical power of the Tang official in the service of the state; it does not seem likely that the compilers of such anecdotes would have seen that power as either mythical or burdensome. Greater consideration of Tang political and social history would have helped to nuance these arguments.

Notwithstanding these limitations, scholars of the Tang dynasty and of Chinese narrative should certainly consult this book. Luo's ambitious range of sources and her creativity as a reader allow her to make some new, insightful arguments about the relationship between narratives and the dominant cultural interests of late medieval literati. Hopefully readers will then investigate the less commonly studied collections of stories, not simply to test Luo's arguments but also to discover fascinating texts that require much further study.