Zhuangzi – prototypes of fiction and (proto)principles of Chinese novels

Abstract

This paper investigates Zhuangzi as a proto-fictional frameworks that anticipates the formal, rhetorical, and epistemological principles of xiaoshuo and, implicitly, of the Chinese novel. By situating Zhuangzi’s philosophical prose within the diachronic evolution of Chinese narrative forms, the study argues that fiction in China emerges not solely from oral vernacular traditions, but also from a literary, polemical, and iconoclastic discourse that relativizes Confucian axiology. Through irony, paradox, parable, and fictional dialogue, Zhuangzi articulates a weak, plural, and self-reflexive mode of thinking that destabilizes canonical hierarchies and legitimizes narrative ambiguity. The paper further demonstrates how these proto-fictional strategies are perpetuated in classical gudian xiaoshuo and reconfigured in modern and post-Maoist fiction. Ultimately, the analysis proposes a non-teleological genealogy of the Chinese novel, grounded in processes of metamorphosis, rewriting, and discursive negotiation rather than rupture alone.