Anomaly Accounts, Allusion, and Textual Reuse in Jinlouzi

Xiao Yi's 蕭繹 (508–555) book Jinlouzi 金樓子 is noted for its frequent appropriation of the contents of earlier works. Like other early medieval texts, Jinlouzi has also been reorganized and rewritten throughout its complex textual history. This article examines textual reuse in Jinlouzi in relation to this later process of transmission and reception. I focus on the "Zhiguai" chapter, which is devoted to the collection of anomaly accounts ( zhiguai ). Jinlouzi justifies the collection of these tales through allusive parallel prose passages at the beginning and end of the chapter. I show that these passages connect the practice of anomaly account collection to Jinlouzi compiler Xiao Yi's penchant for book collection and literary composition, interests that also inform the structure and contents of the other chapters of Jinlouzi . I then discuss how elements of Jinlouzi itself, including its anomaly accounts, have been incorporated into later texts, and the way in which these citations mediate the experience of reading Jinlouzi in the present.