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Pú Sōnglíng, 蒲松龄
Life Time
5 June 1640 - 25 February 1715
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"Liao-Zhai" - wholly "Liao-Zhai-Zhi-yi" - the pseudonym of the Chinese novelist Pu Song-lin, nicknamed Liu-Chuan [1622-1715], originally from Shandong Province. Pu Sun-lin, the author of L.-Ch., received a classical education and belonged to the bureaucratic class of scientists. 16 volumes of his works include more than 400 novels, which do not represent the original genre, but are only a brilliant stylization of fantastic Chinese novels of the VIII-IX centuries. The subject "L.-Ch.", limited almost
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"Liao-Zhai" - wholly "Liao-Zhai-Zhi-yi" - the pseudonym of the Chinese novelist Pu Song-lin, nicknamed Liu-Chuan [1622-1715], originally from Shandong Province. Pu Sun-lin, the author of L.-Ch., received a classical education and belonged to the bureaucratic class of scientists. 16 volumes of his works include more than 400 novels, which do not represent the original genre, but are only a brilliant stylization of fantastic Chinese novels of the VIII-IX centuries. The subject "L.-Ch.", limited almost exclusively to the native province of the writer and his own era, uses the fiction of folk tales. Werewolf foxes, demons, wizards, strange cases - these are the main motives of L.-Ch., and it is not without reason that the book was originally called differently: Gui-hu Zhuan, i.e. stories about demons and foxes. Liao-Zhai also draws its stories from Taoism (one of the religious movements of China). Strictly sophisticated, saturated with literary conventions and quotations, the language "L.-Ch." was not designed for a wide mass, but for a very narrow circle of readers, and the entire interest of the book for connoisseurs of classics was precisely this literary sophistication, which turned the material of the national epic in essence into a book for a few aesthetes from among the educated tops of the feudal bureaucracy. Novels "L.-Ch." repeatedly translated into foreign languages.