Chunyu Kun: Motifs, Narratives, and Personas in Early Chinese Anecdotal Literature

摘要

The present article undertakes a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese anecdotal and dialogic sources on Chunyu Kun, who is presented in a variety of roles such as trickster, sophist, envoy, jester, procurer of talent for his ruler, and erudite at the so-called Jixia academy which was allegedly established in the pre-imperial state of Qi. The article outlines how certain motifs and topics were reused and, in the process, reshaped by the narrative tradition and Chunyu Kun came to serve as a stock figure in different types of discourse.