Gustav Prucaek of Czechoslovakia, Cyril Birch of Great Britain, and Patrick Hanan of the United States pioneered the modern study of vernacular fiction, so that by the 1960s, when Idema was a student, vernacular literature had once again become a lively field in Chinese studies.
當時，捷克的 Gustav Prucek、英國的 Cyril Birch、美國的 Patrick Hanan 為白話小說的研究打出天下，因此，到了六○年代伊維德作學生的時候，白話文學已經成為漢學研究的「熱門」主題。