So I Married an Axe Murderer

So I Married an Axe Murderer

This unit introduces what is commonly thought of as lightweight literature: Chinese ghost stories. Not until the twenteith century has ficiton of this nature even been considered a remotely respectable form of literature. That means that for centuries in China the writing of ghost stories and their enjoyment were almost entirely an unrespected, diversional activity, the indulgence of innocent children, bored youth and weery scholars. This however does not imply that they were not well crafted or culturally significant. Quite to the contrary. Ghost stories were an imaginative realm of the Chinese mind that gave vent to fears, desires, angsts and fantasies too often smothered in reality by taboos and propriety. They were often elegantly penned by the hand of learned literati. Furthermore, they contain much in the way of contemporary, social criticism and satire. Their role in the development of modern Chinese literature is significant (v.s. David Der-wei Wang, "Second Haunting").

Ghost stories in China are not strictly speaking horror stories, as understood in the Western sense. As a genre that grew out of taoist hagiographies (tales of magical sages), ancestor worship, folk religions and old stories, the tales involve the occult and fantastical but not necessarily the gory or terrifying. Their most acclaimed narrators in China come out of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912): Pu Songling and Zhi Yun.

Readings:
Pu Songling's Strange Tales (see ANGEL)
Zhi Yun's Sketches from a Cottage (see ANGEL)

Questions:
(1) What are unique about these ghost stories?
(2) What social issues do these tales seem to tackle?
(3) Locate some of the stories' stock characters. What is significant about their function?

Links:
*Tang Menglai's Preface

Secondary references:
* Chang, Chun-shu and Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang. Redefining History: Ghosts, Spritis, and Human Society in P'u Sung-ling's World, 1640-1715. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998.
* Zeitlin, Judith T. Historian of the Strange: Pu Songlin and the Chinese Classical Tale. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993.
*David Der-wei Wang and Shang Wei. Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005.