| Zhiguai xiaoshuo | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 志怪小說 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 志怪小说 | ||||||||
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Zhiguai xiaoshuo, translated as "tales of the miraculous", "tales of the strange", or "records of anomalies", is a type of Chinese literature which appeared in the Han dynasty and developed after the fall of the dynasty in 220 CE and in the Tang dynasty in 618 CE. They were among the first examples of Chinese fiction and deal with the existence of the supernatural, rebirth and reincarnation, gods, ghosts, and spirits.
Robert Ford Campany sees the genre loosely characterized in its early examples by relatively brief form, often only a list of narrations or description, written in non-rhyming classical prose with a "clear and primary" focus on things which are anomalous, with a Buddhist or Taoist moral.[1] Campany, however, does not see the stories as "fiction", since the literati authors believed that their accounts were factual.[2] Lydia Sing-Chen Chiang suggests that one function of the stories in this genre was to provide a "context by which the unknown may be ascribed names and meanings and therefore become 'known,' controlled, and used."[3]