Strange Tales from Liaozhai - Vol. 2The weird and whimsical short stories in Strange Tales from Liaozhai show their author, Pu Songling (1640-1715), to be both an explorer of the macabre, like Edgar Allan Poe, and a moralist, like Aesop. In this first complete translation of the collection's 494 stories into English, readers will encounter supernatural creatures, natural disasters, magical aspects of Buddhist and Daoist spirituality, and a wide range of Chinese folklore. Annotations are provided to clarify unfamiliar references or cultural allusions, and introductory essays have been included to explain facets of Pu Songling's work and to provide context for some of the unique qualities of his uncanny tales. This is the second of 6 volumes. |
From inside the book
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... .............................................. 543 114. An Official Notice to the Ghosts ...................... 548 115.The ClayDemon ............................................. 550 116. A Farewell Dream .................
... officials by asserting in “An Official Notice to the Ghosts” (yu gui) that Minister Shi Maohua's righteous representation of the people's interests is what empowers him to intimidate some unruly spirits into ceasing their disruptive ...
... official named Chu in “Fourteenth Daughter Xin” (xin shi si niang), and as a consequence he almost brings about his own destruction. According to Pu, scholars, like anyone else, should be respected and valued in proportion to their ...
... official from the creature that had been plaguing him. Pu also exhibits the ethnographer's interest in relating the behavior of the members of cultural groups to demographic factors like socioeconomic status (Swanson and Siegel, 1-3): ...
... officials constructed from Confucian principles of governance and social interaction. In order to determine the state ... Official Lu's Daughter” (lu gong nu), when scholar Zhang recites the Buddhist scriptures of the Diamond Sutra for ...