The fantastic dimension in Mo Yan: A new way of narrating the supernatural encounter?

Abstract

In the enthusiastic revival of the marginal genre of the zhiguai tale that characterized the 1980s, Mo Yan’s tales of the supernatural deserve particular attention. In stories such as Qiyu 奇遇 (“Strange Encounter”) and Yeyu 夜渔 (“Night Fishing”) collected in Xuexi Pu Songling 学习蒲松龄 (“Learning from Pu Songling,” 2011), the protagonists experience an unexpected and unsettling encounter with the supernatural, especially when returning to their home villages from modern cities. While borrowing themes already present in the Liaozhai, Mo Yan’s return to this ancient genre shows stylistic innovations that recall rhetorical devices described as central in the Western fantastic tale. In Mo Yan, this especially concerns the new context in which the strange event takes place and the new reactions of his modern protagonists towards the supernatural.

Adopting some descriptive categories proposed by critics of the Western fantastic, this analysis focuses on the frontier space of the countryside as a central rhetorical device that activates a fantastic mode of ‘hesitation’ towards supernatural encounters. As soon as they ‘cross the threshold’ to the fantastic dimension, Mo Yan’s modern protagonists are led back into a world in which the unforeseen return of an ancient and apparently overcome order causes bewilderment and incredulity.