Ming Qing Studies Revisiting Liaozhai zhiyi

Revisiting Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 is a reflection on the main motifs of Pu Songling’s collection – a boundless psychic landscape of lost dreams and astonishing visions, masterly told with great humanity and irony. Its inspiration originates from the author’s frustrated career and literary ambitions, his dreams of worldly success and temptations of retreating to Dao-Buddhist asceticism.

The perspective from which the stories are told is that of a poor male student who is obsessed with passing civil examinations, suffers an inferiority complex about career and marriage, and begrudges the concubines that only lucky scions of wealthy families can afford.