Popular among the folks of Wu-dialect area, the Wu narrative ballads are songs in verse style with comparatively complete plots about at least two characters. The ballads can be divided into three categories according to their length: the short, the medium and the long ones. The publications of WU GUNIANG and the other collections of narrative ballads in the 80s' of 20th century had caused a sensation and incurred a dispute among the scholars. Some argued the publications "great discovery", which have shaken the belief that there have never been long narrative ballads and poems among the Han Chinese; some others questioned the authenticity of these ballads. Later in the middle of the 90s with folklorists' focuses turned to folklore instead of folk songs, the research on Wu ballads had almost stopped. There exist still many questions unsolved. Starting from the scrutiny on the performing traditions of the Wu ballads with the combined research methods of the first-hand field trips and available text materials, the author of the dissertation has made great efforts exploring the "real world " of those Wu ballads, i.e. their transmission and improvisation rules in order to define the genuine meanings of the Wu ballads. The dissertation has seven chapters with three main divisions in contents. In the first chapter, the writer has explored the historical development of the Wu ballads and examined the achievements done in collection and research by previous scholars. The second and third chapters can be classified as the second part, in which the author, taking into consideration of the encompassing factors, such as the living conditions and the social and cultural environment of the singers, has analyzed and evaluated, from more than thirty narrative songs collected so far, the archetypes, the circulation areas, the improvisation rules as well as transmission skills among the singers. Chapters Four, Five and Six, the third section of the dissertation, are the most important parts, in which the writer has examined the performing contexts, the three typical forms, their features and their functions. The writer has put much importance to the evolution of the different narrative formats by examining the performing traditions and their influences on the singers from generation to generation. By comparing the common and varied features of the singers, the writer has tried to find how the performing traditions are transmitted and how the singers have acquired their singing skills and employed them. The author has scrutinized particularly how the singers improvise their songs by free use of different narrative formats. Based on the analysis, we conclude that as the natural products of the performing traditions of the short ballads, the Wu narrative ballads have developed into different formats from abundant sources of the short ballads and poems, which serve as the reservoir, for the performers to borrow freely. The Wu folk songs ( including the narrative songs) , the representations of the emotions of the Wu folks, are of importance, serving as the integral part to the local people and giving them spiritual amusement which accompany them with their daily labor. The long narrative songs, with no fixed texts, vary according to different situations and are improvised by those good singers who "borrow freely" from other sources to fit their needs under particular contexts. Since there exist rare occasions for long narrative songs to be sung, singers will separate the narration into series of sets, which can be sung either by one set or several sets in accordance with the situation. This habit of performance determines the fea tures of Wu ballads with loose and flexible structure and multiple plots. In short, the Wu narrative ballads, pertaining to the Wu dialect area, represent systematically the dynamic oral narrative traditions with strong local cultural characteristics.
