Thailand’s Storyteller Writer Jacob and His Rewriting of Sanguo Yanyi

Abstract

Of the numerous Chinese literary products in Thailand, the one that is the most influential is, unarguably, Luo Guanzhong’s historical novel Sanguo Yanyi, an important Ming-era novel that was commissioned by King Rama I to be translated into Thai, entitled Samkok. When printing technology was introduced into Thailand by an American missionary in the middle of nineteenth century, Samkok started to circulate among general readers, and never ceased to be popular ever since. There have been numerous works that attempt to retell and rewrite the novel, one of which successfully produced by Thai famous novelist Jacob. Between 1937 and 1952, Jacob successively published individual stories on many Sanguo Yanyi characters, as a way to make the complicated stories more accessible to general Thai readers. The series of books was called Samkok Chabap Waniphok (meaning “A Storyteller’s Three Kingdoms”). And its great success started the trend for many to follow Jacob in rewriting Samkok. This article aims to introduce the overall feature of Samkok Chabap Waniphok, respectively from four aspects including Jacob’s status as a storyteller, eye-catching story titles, easier-to-focus narrative, dramatization of the stories and citation of Samkok and Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the rewriting.