Writers › Writer / Poet
Xu Zhonglin
Ming writer, styled the Recluse of Zhongshan, named as compiler of the Investiture of the Gods in its earliest edition, an attribution that remains disputed
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Hao Zhongshan Yisou
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Almost nothing is known of Xu Zhonglin beyond a single credit line in the novel Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi). The earliest surviving edition, printed by Shu Zaiyang in Suzhou in the Wanli era, names its compiler as Xu Zhonglin, the Recluse of Zhongshan; since Zhongshan is Purple Mountain at Nanjing, he is usually taken to have been a native of Yingtian. The novel runs to a hundred chapters and follows King Wu's overthrow of the Shang, drawing rival schools of immortals into the war until Jiang Ziya invests the fallen as gods, and it fixed figures such as Nezha and Yang Jian in popular memory. The Qing catalogue Summaries of Drama (Quhai zongmu tiyao) instead credits the Daoist Lu Xixing, and some scholars read the preface by Li Yunxiang as evidence that Li helped finish the book, so the question remains open. The Shu Zaiyang edition, now in the National Archives of Japan, is the basis for textual study of the novel.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; late Ming