Jíyì jì 集異記
Collected Anomalies by 郭季產 (撰)
About the work
A Liú-Sòng-period zhìguài 志怪 collection by Guō Jìchǎn 郭季產 (郭季產), a writer otherwise sparsely attested but mentioned in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì and Táng catalogs. The work is one of several early-medieval Chinese collections titled Jíyì jì — the most famous being Xuē Yòngruò’s 薛用弱 Mid-Táng Jíyì jì — and is sometimes cited as Guō Jìchǎn Jíyì jì 郭季產集異記 to disambiguate from the Táng namesake. Surviving fragments depict aquatic and ghost-encounter anomalies typical of the southern-dynasties zhìguài tradition.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 lists “Jíyì jì 1 juàn, by Guō Jìchǎn of the Sòng” under zǐbù xiǎoshuō; both Táng catalogs preserve the entry. The work was lost as a transmitted unitary text before the Sòng. Surviving fragments are preserved in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (982) and Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記 (978), with a handful of further citations in the Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚 and Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔. Lǔ Xùn collected the surviving fragments in Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉.
The dating bracket adopted here (420–479) corresponds to the LiúSòng dynasty, the standard placement for Guō Jìchǎn (whose floruit is not more precisely known). Wáng Guóliáng 王國良 (Liùcháo zhìguài xiǎoshuō kǎo lùn) treats the work as a representative product of the post-Gān-Bǎo 干寶 generation of zhìguài compilation, in the same generic milieu as Liú Yìqìng’s Yōumíng lù and the Liú-Sòng-era Yìyuàn 異苑.
The Kanripo edition presents the standard reconstructed fragments — a small selection of episodes featuring lake-and-river anomalies (the floating chain seen by a Yǎnzhōu 兗州 boatman, who pulls it up and finds a giant turtle attached), revenant-tales, and miscellaneous oddities, organised in a single juàn.
Translations and research
- Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938).
- Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō yán-jiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究 (Wenshizhe, 1984).
- Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (rev. 2005).
- Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996).
- No major monograph or critical translation specific to Guō Jì-chǎn’s text located.
Other points of interest
The work’s standard citation form — Guō Jìchǎn Jíyì jì — is the principal disambiguating device by which Sòng léishū distinguish it from Xuē Yòngruò’s Táng Jíyì jì. The two works share no material; the title-coincidence is a striking case of generic-title duplication across the Liù Cháo / Táng watershed.
Links
- Lǔ Xùn, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén.
- https://ctext.org/wiki.pl