The Mirror and the Brush: Agency, Audience, and Authority in a Late Ming Séance（瓊花鏡與毛筆：晚明降神會中之介體性、觀眾與權威）
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Abstract:
On a cold winter’s night in the last faltering years of the Ming dynasty, the retired scholar-official Ye Shaoyuan（葉紹袁）hired a ritual specialist to call the spirit of his daughter into a mirror. Ten years had passed since the beautiful, talented Xiaoluan（小鸞）had died unexpectedly on the eve of her wedding, yet her bereaved father continued to grapple with her death. But when the séance did not go according to plan, an evening ritual stretched across days and months as Ye and the ritual specialist each struggled to assert their narrative of the ritual, and to define their collective encounters with the spirit world. This project centers on Ye Shaoyuan’s account of the 1642 séance—a complex text layered with literary references, historical allusions, and religious symbolism—to explore grief, gender, family, and the supernatural. Drawing upon methodology from anthropology, religion, and literature, I explore how the late Ming scholar-official used the séance to transcend ritual boundaries and transgress the normative gender and generational hierarchies of the Chinese family to resolve the personal, spiritual, and emotional crises created by Xiaoluan’s untimely death. A close reading of the text reveals a subtle dialectic between Ye Shaoyuan, the ritual specialist, and the attending audience, as each party attempted to assert their authority to direct the ritual and locate Xiaoluan’s place in the spirit world. It was through this process of negotiation, as the boundaries between the realms of gods, ghosts, and men were stretched, transgressed, and re-established, that Xiaoluan’s death was resolved. While the ritual specialist finally drew the line—refusing to summon any more spirits on penalty of divine punishment—it was ultimately Ye Shaoyuan, through his carefully crafted written account, who had the last word on the messages from the spirit world.
On a cold winter’s night in the last faltering years of the Ming dynasty, the retired scholar-official Ye Shaoyuan（葉紹袁）hired a ritual specialist to call the spirit of his daughter into a mirror. Ten years had passed since the beautiful, talented Xiaoluan（小鸞）had died unexpectedly on the eve of her wedding, yet her bereaved father continued to grapple with her death. But when the séance did not go according to plan, an evening ritual stretched across days and months as Ye and the ritual specialist each struggled to assert their narrative of the ritual, and to define their collective encounters with the spirit world. This project centers on Ye Shaoyuan’s account of the 1642 séance—a complex text layered with literary references, historical allusions, and religious symbolism—to explore grief, gender, family, and the supernatural. Drawing upon methodology from anthropology, religion, and literature, I explore how the late Ming scholar-official used the séance to transcend ritual boundaries and transgress the normative gender and generational hierarchies of the Chinese family to resolve the personal, spiritual, and emotional crises created by Xiaoluan’s untimely death. A close reading of the text reveals a subtle dialectic between Ye Shaoyuan, the ritual specialist, and the attending audience, as each party attempted to assert their authority to direct the ritual and locate Xiaoluan’s place in the spirit world. It was through this process of negotiation, as the boundaries between the realms of gods, ghosts, and men were stretched, transgressed, and re-established, that Xiaoluan’s death was resolved. While the ritual specialist finally drew the line—refusing to summon any more spirits on penalty of divine punishment—it was ultimately Ye Shaoyuan, through his carefully crafted written account, who had the last word on the messages from the spirit world.