This volume first explores the transformation of Chinese Daoism in late imperial period through the writings of prominent intellectuals of the times. In such a cultural context, it then launches an in-depth investigation into the Daoist dimensions of the Chinese narrative masterpiece, The Story of the Stone—the inscriptions of Quanzhen Daoism in the infrastructure of its religious framework, the ideological ramifications of the Daoist concepts of chaos, purity, and the natural, as well as the Daoist images of the gourd, fish, and bird. Zhou presents the central position of Daoist philosophy both in the ideological structure of the Stone, and the literati culture that engenders it.

Zuyan Zhou is professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the Hofstra University, USA. His most recent major publication is Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature (2003). He has published in a variety of American and international journals, and translated several English novels and literary criticism into Chinese.