Late imperial Chinese narratives about magical warfare are full of strange figures called ‘zhen’ 陣. Inspired by the battle arrays of the military treatises, they are depicted in late imperial novels, plays and ballads as powerful architectures, grids or mazes able to capture, disorient, or even simply dissolve the enemy once he steps into the device.

Though having attracted the attention of literary historian C.T. Hsia as early as 1971, the late imperial novelese zhens remain largely understudied since. Even the recent studies focusing on the relationships between vernacular narratives and religious rituals barely mention them. This talk will first show in which way ‘novelese zhens’ are linked to various rituals (Taoist exorcistic altars, festival’s processions) or techniques (divination, games) and what are their overall structural roles in narratives, before turning to what could be the weirdest of all zhen, the ‘soul-loosing grid’ (mihun zhen 迷魂 陣 ). We will explore its various appearances in novels and plays, from allegorical uses to graphic depictions of powerful black magic drawn from the female body.

Vincent Durand-Dastès teaches premodern Chinese literature at the INALCO (Paris) and at the University of Geneva. He has been the co-editor of the scholarly journal ‘Etudes chinoises’. His research focuses on late imperial narrative literature in its relationship with the supernatural in a broad acception: He has worked on ghost stories and ghost dramas, dream narratives, Buddhist and Taoist vernacular hagiographies, Underworld’s journeys. He publishes mainly in French, but has also authored two English pieces: ‘A late Qing Blossoming of the Seven Lotus: Hagiographic Novels about the Qizhen 七真’ (in Quanzhen Daoists in Chinese Society and Culture, 1500-2010, Berkeley, 2013) and ‘Divination, Fate Manipulation, and Protective Knowledge: in and around The Wedding of the Duke of Zhou and Peach Blossom Girl, a Popular Myth of Late Imperial China’, (in Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia, Brill, 2018). He has edited the volumes ‘Empreintes du tantrisme en Chine et en Asie orientale : imaginaires, rituels, influences’ (2016) and co-edited ‘Fantômes dans l’Extrême-Orient d’hier et d’aujourd’hui’ (2017 with Marie Laureillard) & ‘Récits de rêve en Asie Orientale’ (2018, with Rainier Lanselle).