Abstract

In the religious-ethical traditions of China, the cultivation of one's virtues, talents, and powers was ideally pursued in harmony with the ongoing creative transformation that is the world. But the relation between self-cultivation and cosmogony came increasingly to be seen as problematic in the Ming period (c.e. 1368-1644): self and world were no longer so confidently seen to be harmoniously integrated. The authors of "Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods", two widely read and deeply influential novels written in the late Ming, subtly address this issue by their delicate handling of "demonic" characters in their narratives. The demons in both works cultivate themselves in ways that obstruct cosmogony. Yet their obstructing actions turn out to be necessary for cosmogony, and necessary too for the self-cultivation of the "heroes" who oppose them. This paper unpacks these demonologies' import for the late Ming problem of the relation between ongoing cosmogony and self-cultivation.