Kǒng Yuē 孔約
Eastern Jìn zhìguài compiler, fl. mid-4th c. Author of the Kǒngshì zhìguài 孔氏志怪 (KR3l0149), an anomaly-account anthology lost as a unitary work and surviving only in quotations re-anthologized by Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 in Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈.
Almost nothing biographical survives. Kǒng Yuē is not listed in the Jìn shū and has no entry in CBDB. The bibliographic notice in the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 (子部·小說家) records “Zhìguài 志怪, 4 juǎn, by Kǒngshì 孔氏 of Jìn”, and the Jiù Táng shū Jīngjí zhì and Xīn Táng shū Yìwén zhì preserve similar entries; the surname-only attribution suggests that even the SuíTáng catalog compilers had no fuller information. The personal name Yuē 約 is supplied by later scholarship (notably by Lǔ Xùn’s Zhōngguó xiǎoshuō shǐlüè 中國小說史略 §5 and the Zhōngguó wényán xiǎoshuō zǒngmù tíyào 中國文言小說總目提要, Níng Jiāyǔ 寧稼雨 ed.) on the basis of a Táng-era citation; the identification is conventional but not securely established.
Generic placement: the Kǒngshì zhìguài is grouped by Lǔ Xùn and by Lǐ Jiànguó’s Tángqián zhìguài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 with Zǔ Táizhī 祖臺之 Zhìguài, Cáo Pí 曹毗 Zhìguài (cf. 曹毗), Zhíshì 殖氏 Zhìguài jì and Zǔ Chōngzhī 祖沖之 Shùyì jì — i.e. the second-tier post-Gān-Bǎo Eastern-Jìn / LiúSòng zhìguài corpus that survives only in léishū citations. The collection is best known as the home of the Lú Chōng 盧充 / Cuī Shàofǔ 崔少府 ghost-marriage narrative (one of the foundational yōuhūn 幽婚 tales of the medieval supernatural tradition); other surviving fragments preserve the legendary Zhōu Chǔ 周處 sānhài 三害 (“three pests”) anecdote, anecdotes about Zhōng Huì 鍾會 and Xún Xù 荀勗, and several brief tales of supernatural metamorphosis.