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book: A Garden of Marvels
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A Garden of Marvels

Tales of Wonder from Early Medieval China
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2015

About this book

Between 300 and 600 C.E., Chinese writers compiled thousands of accounts of the strange and the extraordinary. Some described weird spirits, customs, and flora and fauna in distant lands. Some depicted individuals of unusual spiritual or moral achievement. But most told of ordinary people’s encounters with ghosts, demons, or gods; sojourns in the land of the dead; eerily significant dreams; and uncannily accurate premonitions. The selection of such stories presented here provides an alluring introduction to early medieval Chinese storytelling and opens a doorway to the enchanted world of thought, culture, and religious belief of that era. Known as zhiguai, or “accounts of anomalies,” they convey a great deal about how people saw the cosmos and their place in it. The tales were circulated because they were entertaining but also because their compilers meant to document the mysterious workings of spirits, the wonders of exotic places, and the nature of the afterlife.

A collection of more than two hundred tales, A Garden of Marvels offers an authoritative yet accessible introduction to zhiguai writings, particularly those never before translated or adequately researched. This volume will likely find its way to bedside tables as well as into classrooms and libraries, just as collections of zhiguai did in early medieval times.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Robert Ford Campany Robert Ford Campany is Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities and professor of Asian studies and religions at Vanderbilt University.

Reviews

Undergraduate students of Chinese religion will surely find A Garden of Marvels a useful and interesting tool to explore the complex facets of Chinese religious traditions outside of the standard textbooks; to critically think in “unusual ways” about the interactions between religions, everyday life, material culture, and social behavior; and to better understand how the boundaries between ordinary life and other unworldly dimensions in medieval China were often blurry and not well defined. --- Campany (Vanderbilt Univ.) presents a collection of 225 brief Chinese fantastic narratives. . . . The scholarly apparatus is thorough and accessible to the general reader. --- These zhiguai texts are not simply anomaly tales but valuable sources for Chinese studies and reading them is not only for our entertainment. . . . In sum, the zhiguai texts also serve as indirect material for various fields of Chinese studies such as religion, culture, and society.

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Chronological Table

    ix
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    Conventions

    xi
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    Acknowledgments

    xv
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    Abbreviations

    xvii
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    Introduction

    xix
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  • Translations
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    Jiling ji (Item 1)

    3
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    Jingyi ji (Items 2–4)

    3
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    Jiyi ji (Items 5–7)

    8
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    Kongshi zhiguai (Items 8–11)

    9
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    Lieyi zhuan (Items 12–21)

    14
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    Lushi yilin (Item 22)

    20
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    Luyi zhuan (Items 23–28)

    21
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    Qi Xie ji (Items 29–37)

    24
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    Shen lu (Items 38–39)

    28
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    Shenguai zhi (Item 40)

    30
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    Shengui zhuan (Items 41–42)

    31
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    Shenyi ji (Items 43–44)

    32
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    Shenyi jing (Items 45–46)

    33
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    Shuyi ji (Items 47–84)

    35
    Zu Chongzhi
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    Shuyi ji (Items 85–90)

    58
    Ren Fang
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    Soushen houji (Items 91–102)

    61
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    Xiao shuo (Item 103)

    67
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    Xu Qi Xie ji (Items 104–105)

    68
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    Xuanyan ji (Items 106–110)

    71
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    Xuanzhong ji (Items 111–114)

    74
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    Xuyi ji (Items 115–119)

    75
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    Yi yuan (Items 120–183)

    78
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    Youming lu (Items 184–208)

    107
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    Zhenyi zhuan (Items 209–218)

    120
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    Zhi guai (Items 219–220)

    125
    Zu Taizhi
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    Other Assorted Accounts

    126
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    Endnotes

    131
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    Textual Sources

    135
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    Works Cited

    147
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    Further Readings

    157
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    Index

    161
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 5, 2018
eBook ISBN:
9780824853518
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824853518
eBook ISBN: 9780824853518
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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