In this talk I will share one example of the ways in which a focus on the politico-military chronology of the Warring States era has helped me envision a key source for the period in a new light. The Mu Tianzi zhuan has always been understood as an idiosyncratic text. Disinterred during the fourth century C.E. from the tomb of King Xiang of Wei 魏襄王 (r. 318 B.C.E.-296 B.C.E.), the Mu Tianzi zhuan purports to recount the travels of King Mu of Zhou 周穆王 (r. 956 B.C.E.-918 B.C.E.) through the outer regions of his domain, detailing his interactions with alien peoples and the denizens of the spirit world.

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Much secondary scholarship has focused on the apparent parallels between the Mu Tianzi zhuan and later zhiguai 志怪 tales, treating the text as antecedent to later genres of fiction. I will argue that such analysis misconstrues the nature of the source. If we read the Mu Tianzi zhuan against the context of the radically ambitious agenda of King Xiang’s father King Hui of Liang (r. 369 B.C.E.-319 B.C.E.), we can see that the Mu Tianzi zhuan was a deeply political text that reveals a great deal about the social and strategic tensions driving historical change in the last half of the fourth century B.C.E.

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Thursday, April 09, 2026, 04:00pm - 05:30pm Scott Hall Room 201