Animality, Humanity, and Divine Power: Exploring Implicit Cannibalism in Medieval Weretiger Stories

Abstract

This paper examines representations of implicit cannibalism, in terms of a man in tiger form preying on human(s), in three stories from medieval China. The descriptions of the circumstances of the protagonist’s transformations into a tiger and back, and what he faces after his return to human society, show overlaps and divergences in the visions of the relationships among weretigers, human victims, and divine forces. Each story in its own way explores the fluid boundaries between animality and humanity and the limits of human agency and power vis-à-vis divine forces. Such thematizations reveal the development of a communal discourse on the place of humans in a cosmos imagined as hierarchical. The social identities of the featured characters and other details further reveal ways in which the stories convey the interests and concerns of low-level scholar-officials in medieval China.