scholarly journals Tower of Myriad Mirrors: The first BL ‘quick transmigration’ novel?

2021 ◽  
pp. 38-50
Author(s):  
Aiqing Wang

Journey to the West is adulated as one of the Four Great Classical Novels in China, which has inspired a veritable cornucopia of sequels and adaptations. Tower of Myriad Mirrors (aka A Supplement to Journey to the West) composed during late Ming (1368-1644) is one of the three most illustrious sequels in pre-modern literature, in that it is characterised by vivid imagination and creativity, Buddhist ethos and philosophical thoughts, as well as biting satire on political reversals and societal predicaments in the 17th century. More significantly, Tower of Myriad Mirrors manifests psychological insights and features enigmatic dreams, which might have inspired a subgenre dubbed as ‘Quick Transmigration’ in China’s online literature. To be more specific, Tower of Myriad Mirrors is parallel to web-based BL (Boys Love) fiction under the category of Quick Transmigration, in terms of their analogous settings, storylines and characters. In this sense, Tower of Myriad Mirrors can be regarded as a prototypical BL novel concerning ‘quick transmigration’.

Author(s):  
Chi-Lung Lee ◽  
Hsi-Peng Lu ◽  
Judy Chuan-Chaun Lin

In this study, we would like the readers to conduct online-reading using the method of role-playing. We chose the Journey to the West, one of China’s four greatest classic literatures, as the material in this experiment. The readers will take on the role of the main hero of the book, Sun-wu-kong, while reading, experiencing, and exploring the story. We wish to discuss topics relevant to website stickiness and characteristics of online game and in turn to understand the acceptance of Web-based RPG Reading style.


1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Gary Seamen

Pei-yu chi [Journey to the North] is a late Ming novel, which since Ch'ing dynasty times has usually been published together with three other short novels, namely Nanyu chi [Journey to the South], Tung-yu chi [Journey to the East], and Hsi-yu chi [Journey to the West], as a composite edition entitled Ssu-yu chi [The Four Journeys]. Authorship of Pei-yu chi is usually attributed to a certain Yü Hsiang-tou, but the work is popularly regarded as the mythic charter of divinity of the Emperor of the Dark Heavens (Hsüan-t'ien Shang-ti), apotheosis of the north. Arguments based on analogy with present-day religious practices on Taiwan, as well as the content and structure of Pei-yu chi, are used to support a theory that the text was originally composed as a religious tract (shan-shu) by Chinese spirit-medium cults.


2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-358
Author(s):  
WEN-CHIN OUYANG

I begin my exploration of ‘Ali Mubarak (1823/4–1893) and the discourses on modernization ‘performed’ in his only attempt at fiction, ‘Alam al-Din (The Sign of Religion, 1882), with a quote from Guy Davenport because it elegantly sums up a key theoretical principle underpinning any discussion of cultural transformation and, more particularly, of modernization. Locating ‘Ali Mubarak and his only fictional work at the juncture of the transformation from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ in the recent history of Arab culture and of Arabic narrative, I find Davenport's pronouncement tantalizingly appropriate. He not only places the stakes of history and geography in one another, but simultaneously opens up the imagination to the combined forces of time and space that stand behind these two distinct yet related disciplines.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document