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列異傳

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Text ID
KR3l0137
Date
220–300
Dynasty
魏-西晉

Lièyì zhuàn 列異傳

Records of Various Marvels by 曹丕 (attributed) / 張華 (attributed)

About the work

A Wèi — Western-Jìn zhìguài 志怪 collection in 3 juàn — historically the earliest named anomaly-anthology of the kind that would later flower in KR3l0099 Gān Bǎo’s Sōushén jì and beyond. The authorship is divided in the early bibliographic record: the Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 attributes the work to “Wèi Wéndì” 魏文帝, i.e. 曹丕 Cáo Pī (187–226); both Táng bibliographic treatises (the Jiù Táng shū jīngjí zhì and the Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì) carry the work but the latter offers the alternative attribution to 張華 Zhāng Huá (232–300, the polymath compiler of KR3l0006 Bówù zhì 博物志). Modern scholarship is divided. Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (Zhōngguó xiǎoshuō shǐ luè 中國小說史略) treats the Cáo Pī attribution as broadly defensible — the work would predate his death in 226 and represent the genre’s foundational moment under the early Wèi. Lǐ Jiànguó and Wáng Guóliáng prefer the Zhāng Huá attribution, citing internal evidence of post-Cáo-Pī datable episodes; some scholars argue for a layered text that began under Cáo Pī’s name and accreted Western-Jìn material assigned to Zhāng Huá in the Bówù tradition.

Tiyao

Lost; no original 提要; fragments only.

Abstract

The Lièyì zhuàn is registered in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 (under shǐbù, zázhuàn category) at 3 juàn under Cáo Pī’s name. The composition window must lie between Cáo Pī’s accession in 220 (i.e., the Wèi Wéndì title presupposes his enthronement) and Zhāng Huá’s death in 300 — a 70-year envelope that bridges both candidate attributions; the range adopted here is 220–300. The work was lost as a transmitted unitary text by no later than the early Sòng; the Chóngwén zǒngmù does not register it. Surviving fragments — approximately 50 substantive entries — are preserved in: (1) the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (numerous citations under guǐshén 鬼神, yāoyì 妖異, qínyú 禽魚 topics, etc., usually attributed Lièyì zhuàn); (2) the Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記; (3) the Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚; (4) the Sòuyǐn 索隱 commentary on the Shǐ jì 史記 (Sīmǎ Zhēn 司馬貞, Táng) and the Sānfǔ huángtú 三輔黃圖 commentary; and (5) the Hòu Hàn shū commentary. The modern reconstructions of Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén) and Wáng Guóliáng have established the basic recension.

The contents survey the foundational repertoire of Chinese zhìguài: the burial of the Yellow Emperor at Qiáoshān 橋山 (only sword and slippers remain in the empty tomb after the mountain collapses); the chthonic creature wèn 媪 (or 媦) of Chéncāng 陳倉 that feeds on the brains of the dead, and the Chénbǎo 陳寶 paired pheasant-children whose capture conveys kingship or hegemony (a parallel to the Shǐ jì’s Fēngshàn shū 封禪書 narrative of the founding of the Chénbǎo shrine — confirming the work’s early date, since the Shǐ jì sòuyǐn explicitly cites the Lièyì zhuàn on this episode); the foundation legends of the Wèi-period state cults; ghost-narratives (including the famous Sòng Dìngbó 宋定伯 catching-the-ghost-and-selling-it-at-market story, which is paralleled in KR3l0099 Sōushén jì); and fox-spirit and dragon-transformation tales. Several substantive episodes appear also in Sōushén jì, and indeed are the basis for Lǐ Jiànguó’s argument that the surviving 20-juàn Sōushén jì recension absorbed the Lièyì zhuàn corpus during the Míng reconstruction.

The work is the earliest known dedicated anomaly-anthology in the Chinese tradition — predating Gān Bǎo’s Sōushén jì by approximately a century — and as such occupies a foundational position in the zhìguài genre. Lǐ Jiànguó treats it as the “first link” (shǒuhuán 首環) of the zhìguài chain that culminates in the Sōushén jì of the Eastern Jìn.

Translations and research

  • Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Zhōng-guó xiǎo-shuō shǐ luè 中國小說史略. Chapter 5 treats the Lièyì zhuàn as the foundational zhì-guài anthology.
  • Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎo-shuō gōu-chén 古小說鉤沉 (c. 1909–11; published 1938). The pioneering modern reconstruction.
  • Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū. Critical apparatus.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng qián zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Nán-kāi, 1984; rev. 2005). §3 on the Lièyì zhuàn as foundational text and its relation to Sōushén jì.
  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY, 1996). Treats the Lièyì zhuàn in the context of genre formation.
  • DeWoskin, Kenneth J. “The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction,” in Plaks ed., Chinese Narrative (Princeton, 1977).
  • Knechtges, David R., and Chang, Taiping, eds. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide, vol. 1 (Brill, 2010), entries on Cáo Pī and Zhāng Huá.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §62 (zhì-guài genre).

Other points of interest

The double attribution (Cáo Pī / Zhāng Huá) is itself a piece of evidence for the work’s early-Wèi to Western-Jìn date envelope. Whichever attribution is correct, the Lièyì zhuàn is the bridge text between the late-Hàn zhìguài impulse (visible in KR3l0001 Liú Xiàng’s Lièxiān zhuàn 列仙傳 in its Daoist hagiographical form, and in the Wǔxíng zhì 五行志 of the Hàn shū) and the systematic Eastern-Jìn zhìguài of Gān Bǎo. Several of its episodes — Sòng Dìngbó, Chénbǎo, the chthonic wèn — are core narratives of the Chinese supernatural canon, transmitted continuously from this collection through Sōushén jì, Tàipíng guǎngjì, and into late-imperial fiction (compare Pú Sōnglíng’s Liáozhāi zhìyì engagement with the Sòng Dìngbó topos). The Sòng Dìngbó tale is also the subject of Lǔ Xùn’s modernist short story Sòng Dìngbó in Gùshì xīnbiān 故事新編.

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