I feel like the current wuxia genre, especially when used by the audience colloquially, is more defined by (more) modern works, exemplified by authors like Jin Yong, Gu Long, etc.
This I agree with.
If we're going to talk about Wuxia genre as understood by laymen parlance, the Ur example would be 三侠五义, officially published in 1879. Most genre defining tropes, themes, and structure can be found in this work. Jin Yong & Gu Long borrowed heavily from this book and popularized the tropes into tropes.
Water Margins to me feels like it might fit better into historical fantasy... But then again that would put it in the same bucket as the likes of 隋唐演义. Hm.
Water Margins is 100% historical fiction (the fantastical aspect is too minor to really fit into the larger fantasy/mythology category). The thing about historical fiction is that it's a huge label and not a type of "genre fiction", aka it's not easily defined by shared tropes and themes. This is why I contrasted Water Margin with RotTK, because both are historical fiction, but are thematically very different. Unlike genre fiction, there's no "common theme" or "common tropes" to bind the historical fiction literature together, so one can't use a single mindset to interpret all historical fiction.
This attempt to use genre fiction reading skills to analyze literature drives me a bit batty. While general lit crit methods can be applied to genre fiction, the reverse doesn't work because genre fiction is so much more derivative. (Again, not saying it's bad, just limited.)
no subject
This I agree with.
If we're going to talk about Wuxia genre as understood by laymen parlance, the Ur example would be 三侠五义, officially published in 1879. Most genre defining tropes, themes, and structure can be found in this work. Jin Yong & Gu Long borrowed heavily from this book and popularized the tropes into tropes.
Water Margins is 100% historical fiction (the fantastical aspect is too minor to really fit into the larger fantasy/mythology category). The thing about historical fiction is that it's a huge label and not a type of "genre fiction", aka it's not easily defined by shared tropes and themes. This is why I contrasted Water Margin with RotTK, because both are historical fiction, but are thematically very different. Unlike genre fiction, there's no "common theme" or "common tropes" to bind the historical fiction literature together, so one can't use a single mindset to interpret all historical fiction.
This attempt to use genre fiction reading skills to analyze literature drives me a bit batty. While general lit crit methods can be applied to genre fiction, the reverse doesn't work because genre fiction is so much more derivative. (Again, not saying it's bad, just limited.)