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續幽怪錄

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Text ID
KR3l0126
Date
820–855
Dynasty
唐

Xù yōuguài lù 續幽怪錄

Continued Records of the Mysterious and Strange by 李復言 (撰)

About the work

A four-juàn mid-Táng chuánqí / zhìguài collection, composed as an explicit continuation of 牛僧孺 Niú Sēngrú’s (779–847) celebrated Xuánguài lù 玄怪錄. The work’s correct title is Xù xuánguài lù 續玄怪錄; in Sòng-era transmissions the character 玄 was systematically substituted with 幽 to avoid the taboo on the personal name (玄) of Sòng Shèngzǔ Zhào Xuánlǎng 趙玄朗 — hence the title Xù yōuguài lù under which the Sòng Línān printing has descended, and which is preserved in the Sìbù cóngkān facsimile printed by the Yǐnjiā shūjí pù 尹家書籍鋪 of Tàimiào qián in Línān 臨安. The Kanripo edition is the Sìbù cóngkān facsimile of this Sòng Línān edition. The work contains some 30 chuánqí tales arranged in four juàn of approximately equal length, including narratives of immortal-transformation (the opening Yáng Gōngzhèng, Xīn Gōngpíng shàngxiān), magical encounter (the Qílín kè), reincarnation and pre-determination (Sūzhōu kè, Liánggé), dream-vision (Xuē Wěi’s fish-dream, Zhāng Féng, the famous Dìnghūn diàn), and political-historical anomaly (Liáng Guó Wǔgōng Lǐ Sù, Xuē Zhōngchéng Cúnchéng).

Tiyao

Abstract

The Xù xuánguài lù / Xù yōuguài lù is the only work securely attributable to the mid-Táng chuánqí author Lǐ Fùyán 李復言 (fl. c. 820–850). The work explicitly presents itself as a continuation of the Xuánguài lù 玄怪錄 of Niú Sēngrú 牛僧孺 (779–847) — the leading Niúdǎng politician and chuánqí writer — and shares its parent text’s preoccupations with dream, prophecy, pre-determination, and the porous boundary between the worlds of men and spirits. The work is not preserved in any Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì-witness 10-juàn edition (such had been recorded for Niú’s parent text), but in the 4-juàn form printed by the Línān Yǐnjiā shūjí pù and preserved in the Sìbù cóngkān facsimile; the Tàipíng guǎngjì also preserves substantial citations under this title, allowing cross-confirmation of the bulk of the text.

The author “Lǐ Fùyán” is widely identified with the Yuánhé jìnshì Lǐ Liàng 李諒, zì Fùyán 復言 — first proposed by Wáng Mèngōu 汪夢鷗 in his Tángrén xiǎoshuō yánjiū (Taipei 1972) and broadly accepted in the modern English literature (Sarah Allen, Shifting Stories, Harvard 2014, treats this identification as the working hypothesis). On this identification, the author was a contemporary of Niú Sēngrú in court and provincial appointments, and the Xù xuánguài lù may be tentatively dated to between the early Chángqìng era (820s) and the Dàzhōng era (847–860). The dating bracket adopted here (820–855) reflects this window: the latest datable internal reference is to the Yuánhé 12 (817) elevation of one of the protagonists, and the work is first attested by Niú Sēngrú’s death (847) and the appearance of citations in the Tàipíng guǎngjì (978).

Stylistically, the Xù xuánguài lù is markedly more reflective and literary than the bald zhìguài of the Six Dynasties: many of its narratives are extended chuánqí of several pages, with developed psychological characterisation, dialogue, and frame-narration. The work’s Dìnghūn diàn 定婚店 (juàn 4) — the tale of Wéi Gù 韋固 encountering an old man under the moon checking marriage-registers, who tells him that his future wife is a poor girl now an infant whom Wéi rejects in horror and later finds himself married to anyway — is the locus classicus of the yuèlǎo 月老 (“old man under the moon”) cliché and one of the most widely-cited Chinese tales in later mythography and drama. Equally famous is the Xuē Wěi 薛偉 tale (juàn 2), of a man who in a fever-dream becomes a fish and is caught and brought to the table — an early Chinese exemplar of the “dream of metamorphosis” tradition that anticipates Pú Sōnglíng 蒲松齡’s KR3l0130 Liáozhāi zhìyì.

The work is generically transitional between Six Dynasties zhìguài and full Táng chuánqí, and is one of the principal exhibits of mid-Táng literary fiction in modern criticism (Allen, Shifting Stories; Reed, A Tang Miscellany).

Translations and research

  • Allen, Sarah M. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2014). The standard English-language monograph on Táng chuán-qí; treats Niú Sēng-rú and Lǐ Fù-yán’s collections as case studies of the genre, with focused discussion of the Xù xuán-guài lù’s major tales.
  • Reed, Carrie E. A Tang Miscellany: An Introduction to Youyang zazu (Peter Lang, 2003). The standard English study of the parallel mid-Táng miscellany KR3l0125 Yǒu-yáng zá-zǔ; orienting context for the Xù xuán-guài lù.
  • Wáng Mèng-ōu 汪夢鷗. Táng-rén xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū sì-jí 唐人小說研究 四集 (Taipei: Yì-wén yìn-shū-guǎn, 1972–1978). Foundational Chinese-language treatment of the Táng chuán-qí corpus, including the identification of Lǐ Fù-yán with Lǐ Liàng.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng Wǔ-dài zhì-guài chuán-qí xù lù 唐五代志怪傳奇敘錄 (Nán-kāi, 1993). The standard Chinese reference for the Táng-Wǔ-dài chuán-qí corpus; full entry on the Xù xuán-guài lù.
  • Chéng Yì-zhōng 程毅中, ed. Xuán-guài lù; Xù xuán-guài lù 玄怪錄；續玄怪錄 (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1982). The standard modern critical edition, building on the Sì-bù cóng-kān base with full cross-collation against the Tài-píng guǎng-jì.
  • Tang Wudai biji xiaoshuo daguan 唐五代笔记小说大观 (Shanghai guji, 2000) includes a punctuated text of the Xù xuán-guài lù.
  • Karl S. Y. Kao, ed. Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Indiana UP, 1985) — translates several individual tales from the Xù xuán-guài lù into English.

Other points of interest

The title-history of the work is a textbook case of Sòng-era tabu-substitution: the original Xuán 玄 of the title (and of every internal occurrence of the character — the work, like its parent, was originally simply Records of the Mysterious and Strange) was systematically replaced by Yōu 幽 during the Northern Sòng to avoid the personal name of Zhào Xuánlǎng, the apotheosised ancestor of the Sòng dynasty. The Sòng Línān printing — which is the textual ancestor of the Sìbù cóngkān facsimile and hence the Kanripo edition — preserves this substitution throughout; modern critical editions (Chéng Yìzhōng, Zhōnghuá 1982) restore the original Xuán.

The Dìnghūn diàn 定婚店 tale’s iconic figure — the yuèlǎo old man under the moon binding the feet of fated lovers with red thread — is one of the most widely-allusioned figures in the Chinese cultural imagination, generating dramatic adaptations from Yuán zájù through Míng chuánqí drama and into modern television; the locus classicus is here in juàn 4.

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