Pu Songling's (1640-1715) 'Liaozhai zhiyi' and the Chinese discourse on the strange

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the vision of the strange in Pu Songling's (1640-1715) Liaozhai zhiyi, a collection of classical Chinese tales. The term strange is employed as a loose translation of three related Chinese words, guai, yi, and qi. In my usage the strange is both a cultural construct and a psychological effect expressed through literary means; it is not a genre or a literary mode.;The body of the thesis treats three important "windows" on the strange, all of which involve the crossing of boundaries. "Obsession" (the animate and inanimate axis) traces the history of an excessive attachment to objects and the elevation of obsession into pure self-expression in late-Ming romanticism. "Dislocation in Gender" examines the profusion of types who transgress or blur sexual boundaries: "The human prodigy" (female impersonators), "the hero among women" (male impersonators) and the shrew. "The Dream" (the axis of illusion and reality) analyzes the narrative techniques of dream interpretation and explores the dream as a metaphor for enlightenment and fictionality. Each of these chapters undertakes a close reading of selected Liaozhai tales; each central theme is also discussed within the context of the 16th- and 17th-century cultural milieu.;The first chapter traces the changing interpretation of Liaozhai's relation to the strange found in the prefaces, colophons, and commentaries composed for the work from the 17th through the 19th centuries. A significant interpretative shift is shown to have occurred. The 17th century critics rehearse the arguments typical of standard zhiguai (records of anomalies), attempting to define the strange in morally and intellectually acceptable terms. In the 18th century the work is distanced from the problem of the strange and is recast as autobiography and allegory. By the 19th century the work is simply praised as a fictional oeuvre of superb literary style. Pu Songling's own preface to Liaozhai is then reconsidered in light of this discourse on the strange and as a major component of the collection's "subjective frame."...