Mastering a Minor Tradition: Pu Songling and the Chinese Ghost Tale

Abstract

Pu Songling's (1640–1715)Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio(Liaozhai zhiyi) is arguably the most read, studied, translated, staged, and filmed ghost story collection in world literature. While acknowledgingLiaozhai zhiyi's now‐unshakeable status as a masterpiece of Chinese literature, this chapter traces the tortuous route of the work's literary and cultural ascension, and argues that much of its cultural relevance and popular appeal derives from its origin as a “minor discourse” rooted in the Chinese tradition ofzhiguai, or records of the strange. Mixing genres and modes, and juxtaposing aesthetic refinement with discursive power, Pu Songling's ghost tales function as a literary construction, a projection of human psychology, an interpolation on religious belief, and a contested field of cultural and ideological debate.