The Normal and the Exceptional: A Comparison of Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s Surreal Worlds

Abstract

From a comparison of the surreal worlds of Pu Songling and Mo Yan in their respective auctorial context, this paper argues that although Pu Songling’s short stories integrate surreal elements, contrary to the accepted typology of genres, they fall into realistic and not speculative fiction because the worldview of Imperial China in which he lived not only accepted the supernatural as real, but as foundational to the traditional order. By comparison, Mo Yan’s supernatural stories partly fall within supernatural literature, because post-1949 China espoused a scientific worldview which banishes the supernatural. On a second level, however, both Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s surreal fictions are political satires of their times. Yet, even on this point they diverge. While Pu Songling articulates the social and political criticism of his present to surreal elements, Mo Yan casts the surreal as a stand-in for the exceptional situations of his recent past which are the object of his criticisms.