The tale of a devout Buddhist girl who separates from her family and through suffering and death finally achieves divine status is a myth of religious celibacy, of filial piety, and of ritual salvation of the dead. It also presents a major symbol of the tension in women's lives between individual spiritual fulfillment and the imperatives of family duty. This is a new edition of the first full study of this important and influential Chinese legend.

The remains of Tai Fu's lost collection Kuang-i chi ("The Great Book of Marvels") preserve three hundred short tales of encounters with the other world. Through the eyes of an official, the picture emerges of a complex lay society, served by a mixed priesthood of ritual practitioners. This study develops a style of close reading through which the tales give access to the lives of individuals in eighth-century China, a society embarking on fundamental change.

The remains of Tai Fu's lost collection Kuang-i chi ("The Great Book of Marvels") preserve three hundred short tales of encounters with the other world. Through the eyes of an official, the picture emerges of a complex lay society, served by a mixed priesthood of ritual practitioners. This study develops a style of close reading through which the tales give access to the lives of individuals in eighth-century China, a society embarking on fundamental change.

A study of the early versions of the classic Chinese novel known to readers in English as Monkey. Dr Dudbridge examines a long tradition of earlier versions in narrative and dramatic form through which the great episodic cycle slowly took shape. The two main fields of interest are popular culture and folklore and the development of Chinese vernacular literature. Dr Dudbridge provides a very thorough survey of present knowledge about the whole topic and discusses critically a good deal of theorising about it. This is a study for experts. It uses Chinese characters, both in text pages and in...

The anecdotal literature of late-medieval China is not unknown, but it is under-used. Glen Dudbridge explores two collections of anecdotal memoirs to construct an intimate portrait of the first half of the tenth century as seen by people who lived through it. The author Wang Renyu's adult life coincided closely with that period, and his memoirs, though not directly transmitted, can be largely recovered from encyclopaedia quotations. His experience led from early life on the north-west border with Tibet, through service with the kingdom of Shu, to a mainstream career under four successive...