Anomaly Tales

While painters and sculptors usually avoided explicit depictions of violence, literature often featured violent acts. However, authors tended to tame depictions of disorder by setting them on the outermost margins of society.

Another literary trend marginalised violence even further by removing it from the ordinary world and associating it with the supernatural. Beginning in the third century, narratives about odd or mystical events became extre­mely popular. These stories coalesced into a genre called zhiguai (‘stories of the strange'), known in English as anomaly tales.^[1040] The emergence of super­natural fiction marked a major turn in Chinese literature, which initially recorded purportedly true events. During the medieval era, many authors began to make up stories, crafting them in such a way that they seemed believable despite their imaginary content. Yet in spite of the rising accep­tance of fabricated narrative, authors usually portrayed supernatural fiction as a record of true events, borrowing the conventions of historiography to fashion a realistic atmosphere. So while the stories may have been fiction, authors and readers colluded to pretend that they were factual accounts. Treating the false as real made the audience read these stories more intently, heightening their entertainment value.

Since the early imperial era, Chinese have attributed strange powers to supernatural beings. In addition to minor deities, dead people could become ghosts, while demons arose from the spirits of animals and even of trees. Even though supernatural beings did not come from the human world, they often acted according to the same motivations as living people and often behaved malevolently.

The plots of some supernatural tales feature pacific characters and events, such as a gentleman who encounters a beautiful female ghost who brings him good fortune. Even so, a large number of stories centre on violence, with death as a common theme. Angry ghosts terrify or harm the living and people die in unusual ways. Even as violent vengeance steadily declined, literature maintained it as a stock theme. These narratives appealed to readers not just because of their entertainment value, but also because supernatural beings frequently appealed to justice to validate their violent actions. Supernatural tales thus satisfied a deep psychological desire for a better society.

Significantly, although these narratives deliver up satisfying examples of justice accomplished, often by killing the guilty, authors attributed retribu­tion to the supernatural realm. Framing violence within a mystical context and removing it from the everyday world implied that violent acts contra­vened the normative order. So, when writing about violence, authors repressed this unsettling theme by safely locating it in an exotic non­human realm that readers knew they would probably never encounter themselves.

These stories further undermine the legitimacy of supernatural violence by portraying ghosts and other unearthly beings in highly ambiguous terms. These creatures do not always act righteously, and their unpredict­ability highlights the dangers posed by their relentless desire for ven­geance. Some ghosts even appear as comic objects of mockery. Sarcasm belittled these unnatural creatures and their trademark violence. Even while seeking justice, ghosts do not obtain respect from the living. A ghost cannot be considered a moral paragon even if it is motivated by righteousness. To the contrary, obsession with revenge makes them seem extremely unpredictable and potentially malignant. Associating violence with the supernatural thereby implicitly questioned the morality of vicious acts. Even when used to seek righteous vengeance, literature portrayed violence as an unsettling subject that contravenes the world's normative order.