Redefining History: Ghosts, Spirits, and Human Society in P'u Sung-ling's World, 1640-1715

8vo. Hard Cover cloth, no dj. xiii (v), 358 (1) pp, acknowledgments, Chronology: The Ch'ing Reigns, a note about Romanization, Introduction: Text, Interpretation, and Methodology; Part I. P'u Sung-ling: Life, Work, and Intellectual Legacy: 1. The Frustrated Intellectual and His World; 2. The Creative Literatus and His Art. Part II. Liao-chai Chih-i: A History and a Culture Mosaic: 3. The Collection of Liao-chai: Structure, Texts, and Contexts; 4. Gender Relations, Individual Fulfillment, and Family Ethics: Fantasy and Realism; 5. Officials, Would-Be Officials, and Class Consciousness: Satires, Allegories, and Crime Stories; 6. Racial Tension, Socioeconomic Conditions, and Country Life. Part III. The Legacy of the Liao-chai: 7. Culture, Tradition, and the Individual in P'u Sung-ling's Creative Consciousness; 8. Passion, Vision, and Historuy: From the "Small Way" to the "Great Way'; Epicogue: Creating and Transmitting Traditions -- Liao-chai and Its Audiences; Appenidx: On the Authorship of Hsing-shih yin-yuan chuan; notes, glossary, bibliography, index, about the authors. First Edition, 1998. "This intimate examination of the career, times, and ideas of P'u Sung-ling (1640-1715) focuses on his magnum opus, Liao-chai chih- i, or Tales of the Unusual from the Studio of Deliberation and Musing. P'u lived through the turbulent period of Ming-Ch'ing dynastic transition in the seventeenth century. While P'u did not attain his goal of becoming a statesman, he was not impeded in his intellectual and literary pursuits. When he died in 1715, he left a body of work including over 500 essays, 1,295 poems, 119 lyrics, 18 encyclopedias and handbooks, 20 operas, 100 folk songs, and 500 short stories, becoming one of the most well-known scholar-writers and the best known short-story author in Chinese history. The 500 stories in Liao-chai chih-i, which P'u composed in his self-styled capacity as historian, had the most lasting influence of any single work on the shaping of popular consciousness in China. It is based on an exhaustive exploration of contemporary Chinese historical and literary sources, including local histories, clan and family records, autobiographical and biographical materials, folklore, essays, poems, and plays: in short, the entire range of literary sources." from the jacket flap. Clean, tight and strong binding with no underlining, highlighting or marginalia. Black cloth with gilt lettering to spine.