ABSTRACT
The eighteenth-century eccentric tradition was formed from many disparate elements, the variety of which can be seen in the multiple meanings of the Chinese word guai 怪, the term we are translating when we discuss Chinese “eccentric” literature and art of that age. 1 One twentieth-century scholar has argued convincingly that in the earliest texts the word guai is fairly close in meaning to the modern word “myth” (shenhua 神話,) and this supernatural meaning of the term was still current in the eighteenth century, as witnessed by such expressions as guiguai 鬼怪 (“ghosts and monsters”) and yaoguai 妖怪 (“ghosts and demons,”) still in use today. 2 Perhaps as a result of such supernatural associations, the word guai gradually extended in meaning to include such ideas as “strange,” “uncanny,” and “weird” and was frequently employed to describe unusual natural objects, as in the term guaishi 怪石 (“weird rocks,”) or even human beings possessing particularly unusual personalities or who engaged in eccentric activities. Whether they applied it to physical objects, supernatural creatures, or humanbeings, many authors used the term guai with a strong sense of disapproval or even repulsion, the major exception being authors who cultivated the esthetics of the eccentric themselves, as in Yuan Mei’s praise of Zhao Yi’s poetry, already translated on page 271. 3
