THESIS
2021
Abstract
Late Qing zhiguai (strange tales) is considered a stagnant genre compared to its mid-Qing
forerunners and modern fiction. Through tracing its formal innovations and cultural afterlives,
this thesis attempts to re-evaluate the genre’s continuing significance in late Qing and modern
global culture, shedding new light on narrative forms and the dynamics of tradition and
modernity. I argue that at the turn of the twentieth century, a “fantastic realism” emerged in this
time-honored genre, in which miraculous and strange discourses ironically generated effects of
verisimilitude through the mechanisms of everyday life and plotted fictionality. Moreover, the
recurring tropes inherited in the zhiguai – otherworldly travels, coincidental encounters, and miraculous healings – have been manifested...[
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Late Qing zhiguai (strange tales) is considered a stagnant genre compared to its mid-Qing
forerunners and modern fiction. Through tracing its formal innovations and cultural afterlives,
this thesis attempts to re-evaluate the genre’s continuing significance in late Qing and modern
global culture, shedding new light on narrative forms and the dynamics of tradition and
modernity. I argue that at the turn of the twentieth century, a “fantastic realism” emerged in this
time-honored genre, in which miraculous and strange discourses ironically generated effects of
verisimilitude through the mechanisms of everyday life and plotted fictionality. Moreover, the
recurring tropes inherited in the zhiguai – otherworldly travels, coincidental encounters, and miraculous healings – have been manifested in multifaced ways in literature and media culture,
embodying the modern mind’s dialectic between the strange and the normal.
The Introduction offers a theoretical reflection on the conceptions of realism and qi (the
fantastic/miraculous/strange) to structure the historically grounded analyses that follow. Chapter
2 focuses on modernized otherworldly travels during the age of maritime discovery and
mechanical reproduction. Chapter 3 explores a serendipitous dimension of Chinese culture
through tracing a genealogy of chance encounters and varied connotations of the coincidence.
Chapter 4 examines the metamorphosis of the leper girl narrative and the genesis of a “biomimetic”
Sinophone horror cinema. Chapter 5 compares two kinds of maritime voyages – zhiguai and Sinophone – and argues that the miraculous legacy of zhiguai could help us to
understand the elusive boundaries of identity, ethnicity, and taxonomy in the contemporary
world.
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