Tang Dynasty Short Stories on Women’s Revenge from the Perspectives of Lifestyle and Chronotope

Amongst the many Tang dynasty short stories describing incidents of revenge, those taking revenge are almost always men. Yet in the official histories there are found a few narratives in which a woman enacts revenge. In this paper I examine the chronotopic structure of several such incidents. Mainly in the form of popular anecdotes, these narratives can be divided into two types: a chronotopic description of the emotional response to a change of status; and a dispassionate description of a major departure from ordinary life. The former type is exemplified by “Xie Xiao 'e,” while "“Guren qi” is typical of the latter type. In comparing such fantastic stories with those that are more realistic, it can be seen that they all utilize the themes of death, murder, and renouncing the world as metaphors and to form a chronotopic structure. They all convey the view that life is a battlefield in which revenge is the only viable option for overcoming loss and grief, yet which ultimately fails to bring regeneration, inevitably leading to renunciation of the world. In these stories of survival and separation, the disruption of the previous order of the individual 's life results in a situation in which“returning home”proves impossible, leaving the person alone and adrift. Such narratives vividly express the ethos and values of the middle and late Tang dynasty, when the romantic optimism of the early Tang had already faded away. In particular, such a narrative context demonstrates that by the middle of the Tang dynasty many had begun to lose faith in social institutions, leading to increasing importance being given to self-reliance.