A Study On Human-nonhuman Romance In Chinese Folklore

A Study on Human-nonhuman Romance in Chinese FolkloreChinese folk tales of human-nonhuman romance are found very popular.These stories, originated in ancient times when all the creatures areconsidered having a spirit, have spread widely and similar versions haveemerged in many parts of the world. In China, scholars have early startedstudying the human-nonhuman romance stories from the perspective of storytype and cultural significance, which offers us new insights into therestories.This paper draws upon the method of story character and charactertypes presented by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folktale anddeciphers the human-nonhuman romance stories from the perspective ofnarrative mode and plot functions. It is an attempt to identify the commonfeatures and meanwhile the culture meaning behind the differences of thesestories.There are many types of human-nonhuman romance stories, among whichare well-known The Snail Girl, The Snake Lad, Swan Maiden Tale and DragonLady. In this paper, they are divided into two general categories, storiesof nonhuman husband and those of nonhuman wife. The former category isrepresented by The Snake Lad, The Calf Got Married, The Toad Son, OldMonkey Got Married, etc. The paper examines a large number of texts toidentify the cultural significance of the plots and their creators’thinking. The other category is bigger in both number and coverage, sothey are taken as a whole when the author uncovers their deep meaning.