P'U SUNG-LING

born June 5, 1640, Tzu-ch'uan, Shantung Province, China died Feb. 25, 1715, Tzu-ch'uan Pinyin Pu Songling, courtesy title (WadeGiles romanization) Liu-hsien, or Chien-ch'en Chinese fiction writer whose Liao-chai chih-i (1766; Strange Stories from Liao-chai's Studio; Eng. trans., Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) resuscitated the classical genre of short stories. Completed in 1679, this impressive collection of 431 tales of the unusual and supernatural departed from the prevailing literary fashion that was dominated by more realistic hua-pen stories written in the colloquial language. P'u instead wrote his stories in the classical idiom, freely adopting forms and themes from the old ch'uan ch'i, or marvel tales, of the T'ang and Sung dynasties. Although P'u lived and died as an obscure provincial schoolteacher, his work gained fame when first printed, inspiring many imitations and creating a new vogue for classical stories. P'u did, however, write in the vernacular. He is credited with having adapted several of his tales into drum songs, a popular dramatic form of the time; and the colloquial novel Hsing-shih yin-yan chuan (A Marriage to Awaken the World), which realistically portrays an unhappy contemporary marriage, is attributed to him by some scholars.