Unnatural narratology and Zhiguai tales of the six dynasties in China

This article continues the author’s previous work on unnatural narrative across borders and unnatural narrative in the national literatures written in languages other than English. With Zhiguai tales of the Six Dynasties in China as its central concern, it pursues three major goals: (1) to revisit the much debated conception of unnatural narrative and to call for diachronic and transnational perspectives, (2) to reveal the unnaturalness of impossible storyworlds in Zhiguai tales by taking a close look at such unnatural elements as unnatural characters, unnatural space, and unnatural time at local level, and (3) to further examine the unnaturalness of this genre by investigating the storyworld boundary transgression at global level.