Strange Tales from MakeDo Studio Author:Pu Songling Strange Tales From Make-Do Studio is a famous collection of about 500 short stories by Pu Songling (1640-1715), a wrtier of the Qing Dynasty. Fifty-one stories are selected for this English edition. These stories cover a wide range of subjects, such as werefoxes and fish spirits and ghosts and monsters that are personified. Like human bei... more »ngs, they have feelings of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, love and hatred as well as happiness and discontent. These mystical stories reflect the social life of the time in which they were written. Living under a feudal monarchy, the writer had to criticize the unfairness of the feudal system and express his indignation by writing of fox spirits and monsters. Although most of these stories are progressive and written with a critical slant, some of them still have ideas of feudal superstition and fatalism. The stories in Strange Tlaes from Make-Do Studio are written in simple and straightforward language, but they are highly structured with complicated plots that often employ the technique of combinging illustion with reality. Some of these stories are based on popular folk legends and thus have a plain, folksy style. The ideological and artistic achievements of Strange Tales fro Make-Do Studio have greatly influenced later novels and operas. The stories in this book have been selected by the Chinese Department of Ahongshan University in Guang-zhou. Illustrations are included in this book.« less