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well worth reading. Dr. Chou clearly knows Tu Fu and is very well
read in traditional as well as the latest Tu Fu scholarship. It is the
most advanced work on Tu Fu to date and will be of interest and
use to scholars of Tu Fu and Tang poetry. A large number of
poems are translated and the discussions can be helpful, informa-
tive, and insightful. Especially valuable are the numerous refer-
ences to traditional critics. One may or may not agree with Dr.
Chous readings or the comments of the traditional critics, but
the reader finds himself enjoying Tu Fu with worthy colleagues.
Given Dr. Chous obvious knowledge, however, Reconsidering Tu
Fu should have been much better than it is. Topics such as the
nature and evolution of Tu Fus reputation or his use of juxta-
position are important, and are examples of the sort of questions
scholars should be engaged in. If only the approaches and
methods had been kept simpler and more straightforward and
the arbitrary invention of terms and concepts avoided, the results
would have been far more rewarding.
and Lay Society in Tang China. A Reading of Tai Fus Kuang-i chi.
Dudbridge makes two new claims in his book. First, that the
genre we have come to know as chih-kuai is, in some cases at least,
more religious than literary. Second, that in traditional China,
especially prior to Chu Hsis influence, there was a pervasive set
of religious beliefs more basic than the Three Teachings of
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, and that this set was shar-
ed by all levels of society.
Since I have followed with almost missionary devotion the
direction of Glen Dudbridges interests from pre-modern popu-
lar literature in his first two books to the classical-language
narratives that inform his most recent volume, I know that Dud-
bridges elegance in style and care in scholarship make reading
his books a pleasure. This one is no exception. Yet although Reli-
gious Experience promises the sacred in its title and focuses on
translations from what has been considered a literary work, it is
in large measure iconoclastic and non-literary. The only con-
tinuity with Dudbridges earlier works is the continued retrogres-
sion in timehere from the study of early ninth-century litera-
ture in The Tale of Li Wa (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), his most
recent monograph, to this probe of a fascinating collection of
about 300 stories entitled Kuang-i chi (The Great Book of
Marvels) compiled by Tai Fu (chin-shih 757, fl. 760780).
The book opens (Chapter 1: A Sequence of Voices) with the
translation and discussion of several narratives followed by Dud-
bridges attempt to bifurcate the structure of these narratives into
inner stories and outer stories (p. 14):
Those two self-defining elements within the whole narratives we can call ...
inner story and outer story. Each speaks for a distinct set of perceptions. ...
The inner storya highly coloured adventure with beings from the other
world, the centre of attention for the anecdotes earliest readerswill in-
terest the historian precisely as mythological property shared between sub-
ject, author and society at large. Its character is defined by that common
ownership. Its interest is both general, for belonging to a whole society, and
specific, for belonging to a given situation as a given time.
The outer story creates a distance from all this. At first sight its work of
observation seems to give us what we ourselves might have seen if we had
been there to see it. But of course the detachment is more apparent than
real, for those observations are filtered through the minds of informants
and shaped by the hand of the compiler Tai Fu. They perceive (as we should
perceive) selectively and express their perceptions in forms their culture
has laid down for them. The results need interpreting with care. And here
too, as we have found with each of the stories above, the historians own
mind will interpose itself as he tried to make the dead speak.
2 See Dudbridges Tang Tales and Tang Cults: Some Cases from the Eighth
Century, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Sinology, Section on
Literature (Nankang: Academia Sinica, 1990), 33552, and his The Tale of Liu
Yi and Its Analogues, in Eva Hung, ed., Paradoxes of Traditional Chinese Literature
(Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1994), pp. 6188.
3 Although Dudbridge uses Fang Shih-mings edition (see text just below and
n. 4) elsewhere, he does not mention Fangs text of the preface in his meticu-
lously annotated translation of that piece. Other sources on the preface or the
Kuang-i chi which are not cited in the bibliography are Huang Ching-chan
, ed., Chung-kuo li-tai hsiao-shuo hs-pa chi-lu: wen-yen pi-chi hsiao-shuo pu-fen
(Wuhan: Hua-chung Shih-fan Ta-hseh,
1989), pp. 945 (punctuated version of the Preface), and Li Chien-kuo ,
Tang Wu-tai chih-kuai chuan-chi hs-lu (Tientsin: Nan-kai Ta-
hseh, 1993), v. 1 (of 2), pp. 46389 (on the preface, author and relations of the
Kuang-i chi with other texts).
4 Published with Ming-pao chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1992).
tive for the educated elite ... [but] prior to this shift in interpretation,
mediumistic practices were not limited to the lower classes (p. 111).
meal was served for them and when it was eaten they all departed. He also
recovered from the other symptoms. (p. 7)
***
On a later occasion when he was seriously ill he forced himself to rise
in the dark and invoke the name of the Bodhisattva Kuan-yin. ... Then he
saw a feast of delicacies being carried out through the gate on stands, about
a hundred of them. Again, he saw several hundred people dressed in radi-
ant clothing, drawn up in lines inside his residence; and he saw his late fa-
ther, sword in hand, furiously saying, I have no rooms for you to stay in!
And the people all at once broke up and fled. Not long after this he recov-
ered from the illness. (p. 8)
The importance of food offerings in controlling spirits is also
emphasized by Paper (The Spirits Are Drunk, pp. 4043ff and 48).
Although Dudbridge elsewhere stresses the importance of money
as the most active system of transaction between mortals and
spirits (p. 54), in this story, at least, food dominates.6
But elsewhere there are the usual tasty lagniappes of a Glen
Dudbridge book. A number of small, perceptive discussions such
as that on City Gods (p. 70), a plethora of detailed, useful foot-
notes such as n. 19 on p. 121 on the cult of Hsiang Y or n.
93 on p. 114 (see also p. 132 and n. 61 on that page) on the Kun-
ming Poolall easily accessible through the index. Both the
translations and the textual work behind them is generally exem-
plaryI was impressed to see Dudbridge cite the oft-neglected
notes by Yen I-ping on TPKC variants.7
6 Ritual offerings of food are also mentioned on pp. 1245 and 129 and in
the summaries for stories #104 and 139 (pp. 194 and 201). Moreover, food (or
the lack of it) seems to be the motive behind the chaos caused by the spirit of
Y-chih Chiung and his daughter, since they are hungry ghosts rather than
poltergeists (p. 131).
7 A few problems concerning the translations which might be raised are:
There is confusion here. We have for the first time the term
outer shell to describe the final line: The two families united
them in spirit marriage. I wonder whether this new term, shell,
doesnt suggest a back-frame and a retreat from the argument
that the two kinds of stories form a distinct set of perceptions.
Granted, the two families are outside the spirit world, but so is
the protagonist, Wang I, throughout most of the narrative (he
dies in the penultimate sentence). Similarly, the treatment of
perceptions troubles in the discussion of the final story in the
book, #128, on p. 170. This narrative begins Li Ying of the Chao-
chn clan ... had an unmarried cousin, thirteenth in her
generation, who travelled south with her brothers at the be-
ginning of Chih-te [756]. She died and was buried at Hai-yen in
the land of Wu. Here there may be an implied outer story, but
it is not mentioned. Instead Dudbridge argues Li Ying is ap-
parently the authors informant for this tale. Perhaps the
application of some of the concepts argued by modern literary
scholars such as Grard Genette would have proved useful in
Dudbridges attempt to analyze the structure of these narratives.
Indeed, in general I felt that the scholarly framework Dudbridge
provides the narratives from Kuang-i chi were more admirable
than the tales themselves. Over the years Dudbridge was com-
scantily treated subject matter (p. 199), (5) that contact with
spirits of particular places was a prominent motif in these nar-
ratives (p. 261), and (6) that the unseen world is such that it
constantly speaks to humanity through the codes of anomalies
(p. 354). Indeed, if one reads carefully, Dudbridge, too, has sug-
gested most of these ideas.
Religious Experience, however, moves to conclude in a more
understated fashion:
I have chosen to end this books with the story of Thirteenth Sister for rea-
sons which reach beyond the particular question of spirit marriage. More
than any other report in Kuang-i chi it brings seriously into play all the three
levels of historical time we have adopted as a measure of dynamic change.
Almost triumphantly it transcends the discourse of ghost story rhetoric to
claim the status of historical document. As history of events it lets the
accurately reported progress of the An Lu-shan rebellion play a structural
part in the family drama which occupied center stage ... this great national
crisis of 756 is communicated as the population felt it, not as career
historians presented it. ...
Tai Fus catholic openness of mind and his relish for the far extremes of
human experience filled his notebooks with material from which these
questions can be studied. Many others were like him. It can only be a gain
if we learn to use their surviving work with the critical care that is taken for
granted in more conventional historical study (pp. 1723).