De-Heroized Scholars and Empowered Fox Spirits: Gender Reversal and Mutual Salvation in Liaozhai Zhiyi

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_30How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Masculinity; Liaozhai; Fox Spirits; Mutual Salvation; Identity Reconstruction

Abstract

This paper examines the conspicuous yet critically overlooked scholar-fox spirit pairings in Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi), focusing specifically on the crisis of masculinity embedded in these cross-species romances. While existing scholarship has predominantly centered on the subversive potential of fox women, this study shifts analytical attention to the scholar protagonists, revealing how their physical fragility, examination failures, and emotional dependence reverse hegemonic gender configurations. Through close textual analysis of tales including “Xiaocui”, “Yingning”, and “Nie Xiaoqian”, the paper demonstrates that the fox spirit’s supernatural competence functions not merely as narrative device but as structural compensation for masculine deficiency under the late imperial examination regime. The analysis further identifies a dialectical model of “mutual salvation” wherein both marginalized figures, namely the alienated literatus and the ostracized non-human, achieve identity reconstruction through affective interdependence, transcending the binary logic of rescuer and rescued. By foregrounding male vulnerability and female agency in tandem, this research contributes to masculinity studies in premodern Chinese literature and offers a non-Western framework for understanding gender relations beyond dominance-submission hierarchies, underscoring literature’s capacity to imagine ethical co-existence across species and social boundaries.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yixiang Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - De-Heroized Scholars and Empowered Fox Spirits: Gender Reversal and Mutual Salvation in Liaozhai Zhiyi
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 296
EP  - 304
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_30
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_30
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -