Epstein, MaramKim, Jinsu2021-09-132021-09-132021-09-13https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26638This dissertation examines the material and corporeal configurations of the moral self in the Chinese literary tradition from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Unlike the modern Western understanding of morality as an abstract valence produced by the interiority of a rational self, the Chinese fictional narratives of this period exhibit a shared propensity for exteriorizing morality in the material and corporeal realms. In terms of intellectual history, this physio-moral representation marks a reaction against the established earlier metaphysical system, known as Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, which divided the cosmos between a transcendental, purely moral reality and a material counterpart susceptible to moral corruption. The narratives that I identify as illustrating this new monistic worldview reject dualism and present a physical world that is morally self-complete, in which the corporeal and the material regulate the moral order through their inherent mechanisms. The late imperial promotion of corporeality and materiality is indebted to a philosophical paradigm shift, later called qi monism. Qi monism challenged the earlier dualistic model by claiming that the phenomenological world possessed an intrinsic moral capacity. The monistic narratives that I examine go beyond being mere fictional adaptations of a Confucian discourse. They appropriate Buddhist and Daoist elements and shape them into a syncretic vision. The qi monistic vision as a literary concept challenges the current scholarly approach that reduces subjectivity to an inner psychic state. This dissertation argues that a holistic conception of Chinese subjectivity, in which the moral, the material, and the corporeal are inseparable, was more prevalent in late-imperial fiction than current scholarship recognizes.en-USAll Rights Reserved.BodyMaterialityPhysio-moralityQi monismQi monistic visionTransvaluationElectronic Thesis or Dissertation