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Novel Lending Services and Limitation in Traditional Era of China

Kang, Jong-Im 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The manner of book lending called “稅書” in traditional era of china was not a popular way of book distribution. Even the history of Chinese literature or novels seldom mentions about the book lending system. Therefore book lending may seem like it is not been studied enough and foreign scholars' view on Chinese novel lending doesn't quite differ from this misunderstandings. However, in traditional era of China, there was a personal book lending system called “轉借”, “租賃”, system in which people can get books from a professional book lending shops, and there even were franchise called “稅書鋪”. Moreover, there were “書船”, ships professionally carrying books to either lend or sell them and book peddlers called “貨郞” have been found in the records of history. Nevertheless the factors of book lending once prospered, there are social, cultural reasons that it did not receive attention. First, the dazzling development of commercial book market due to the pressing and printing relatively led lending business to be hidden. Second, it is the Chinese concept on the value and collecting books coming down from ancient times in China. Third, the proceeding procedure to borrow books: deposit may have acted as obstacle to development of book lending business. However the book lending in the traditional times of China did exist in many forms, we cannot exclude the possibility that the reasons above have diluted the existence and the social significance of book lending. The trial in the study of expected to be helpful in the later studies on comparison on circulation of books in China and Korea considering that the book lending in China has not been known to Korean literary world.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.