Introduction

If the Dutch sinologist Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) evokes any impression at all in our minds, it must be of his detective stories set in ancient China, known as the Judge Dee Mysteries. His fascination with Chinese detective fiction emerged during the Second World War when he translated an eighteenth-century one Dee GongFootnote 1An [狄公案] into English Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. He claimed that he chose this classic over other Chinese detective novels because it conforms to standards that the West is accustomed to, in that “it does not reveal the criminal at the very beginning, lacks the more fantastic supernatural element, has a limited number of dramatis personae, contains no material that is not germane to the plot, and is relatively short” (Van Gulik, 1976, p. v). Through this translation he aimed to highlight Chinese detective fiction’s merits while challenging the popularity of what he thought of as mediocre Western thrillers in the Far East. He intended to bring forth the wisdom of ancient China (Roggendorf, 1968) and create a detective novel that would captivate both modern Asian and Western readers (Van Gulik, 1997a, p. v). The translation sparked van Gulik’s ambition to craft his own series of Judge Dee Mysteries, which encompass a collection of sixteen books, published in English during the turbulent years of the 1950s and 1960s.Footnote 2

Despite being widely read among early to mid-twentieth-century Sinophiles, Gulik’s fiction received limited scholarly appraisal until the twenty-first century. The literary conventions in the series have been widely explored, as he introduced elements and formulas from Western and Chinese detective fiction. Generally classifying the series as foreign literature, Chinese scholars are mostly interested in examining the Chinese elements in the novels (e.g., Taoist culture, Confucian culture, Chinese supernatural culture).Footnote 3 However, van Gulik admits that his compositions, particularly in the later period, are also Western reader-orientated, and therefore, “like any writer who works within a genre, he had to ground his novelties on a foundation of the [Western] expected formulas”(van Dover, 2015, p. 13). As a result, scholars in recent years have started to argue for a Western basis to the Judge Dee Mysteries. However, most of the studies following this trend often simply note that van Gulik recreated the Chinese elements to the tastes of Anglophone readers, and not unexpectedly, the focus has been on how these elements were recreated, and the real, specific Western foundations to the elements are little discussed or even mentioned. In the monograph (2023) The Transculturation of Judge Dee Stories: A Cross-cultural Perspective, Yan Wei spends a chapter illustrating the traditions and innovations in Judge Dee Mysteries. But her primary concerns are still the ways in and degrees to which the characters, supernatural elements and differ from traditional Chinese courtroom fiction (gong an xiao shuo [公案小說]). In other words, the elements of Western literary tradition are rarely noted, while the influence of Western conventions is claimed. J.K. Van Dover (2015) also devotes a chapter in The Judge Dee Novels of R.H van Gulik to explaining the traditions of both Chinese and Western detective stories in these novels. Van Dover points out some Western generic formulas, while his findings are extracted from, and thus confined to, van Gulik’s own testimony about the referential detective story authors he deemed to be the masters (2015, p. 14). Yet these findings, not elaborated on in his research, leave scholars with interesting guidance and space for further exploration.

Although detective fiction and Gothic literature are relatively recent genres, their fascination with mystery and the unknown is as ancient as humanity itself (Pérez, 2021, p. 3). However, it was during the Victorian era that Western detective fiction began to borrow literary elements from Gothic novels (Miranda, 2017, p. 2). From the perspective of taking literature as a form of fictional creation, incorporating Gothic elements into detective fiction is reasonable as the unsettling and haunting feelings intrinsic to Gothic novels are instrumental in the eventual restoration of order (Skenazy, 1995, p. 114). From the perspective of taking literature as a response to social system, while the Gothic novel was the one of the earliest literary movements to recognize that literature should reflect societal flaws, the detective figure emerged as a symbol of rationality confronting the flaws. This feature became a response to the era’s social anxieties, as the public’s growing interest in the fields of science and criminology led detective fiction to integrate these elements. Thus, mysteries that Gothic literature had once left to the supernatural were resolved in detective fiction through scientific reasoning (Miranda, 2017, p. 2).

This research investigates the Gothic conventions in a specific Judge Dee Mystery, namely The Haunted Monastery. The novel, published in 1961, is the first volume of van Gulik’s second series of Judge Dee Mysteries. It is about Judge Dee, a district magistrate, discovering some monks’ vicious crimes in a Taoist temple. In ancient China, the district magistrates often took on multiple roles: judge, jury, prosecutor, and detective, which earned them the name father-mother officialFootnote 4. Using the same structure as the first series, van Gulik plots three cases in the story, the murder of the former Abbot, the torture of White Rose (the heroine) and three other young believers, and the mystery of the enigmatic actor Mo Mo-te. This story, as well in van Gulik’s other Judge Dee mysteries, is the “Dutch speaker’s 20th-century English version of the first half of an 18th-/19th-century Chinese novel set in the eighth century, and observing 15th-century Chinese customs” (van Dover, 2015, p. 2). In other words, it forms its own fictional world while connected to the tangible world of the Tang Dynasty and the experiential world of the author himself. Therefore, this paper will draw upon Marie-Laure Ryan’s Possible Worlds Theory as a framework to discover the author’s use of Gothic tropes within the religious crimes depicted, since the “pw-inspired theory of fiction is based on the relations between the actual world and the textual world” (Ryan and Bell, 2019, p. 18).

Possible worlds theory

As an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, Possible Worlds Theory is rooted in philosophical logic but has later been applied to literary studiesFootnote 5. The term possible worlds was first proposed by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz [1646–1716] in the early eighteenth century in his defense of God’s creation whereby God conceived many possible worlds and chose the best of them, the world we are now inhabiting, to be actualized (Leibniz, 1952). The theory remained fairly unnoticed until the late twentieth century when analytical philosophers were attracted to the modal notions of possibility, necessity, and probability, and they developed the concept of possible worlds to interpret modal claims (Kripke, 1963).

In the early 1970s, noticing the neglect of fictionality in semantics, French structuralists like Tzvetan Todorov (1969) and Claude Bremond (1972) focused on relevant topics, such as “the mode of existence of narrative events, the importance of virtual elements in literary semantics, and the problem of the possibility of fictional worlds relative to the laws of the real world”, which are also the concerns of possible worlds theory (Ryan, 1992, p. 528). The theory not only rebuilds the connection between virtual worlds and the actual world, which was blocked by formalism and structuralism in the early twentieth century, but also transgresses the conventional idea that a fictional world merely mirrors the actual world (Zhang, 2021, p. 257). The theory’s application in literary studies broadly covers four categories “theory and semantics of fictionality”, “genre theory/typology of fictional worlds”, “narrative semantics, including theory of character”, and the “poetics of postmodern” (Ryan, 1992, p. 528). Marie-Laure Ryan is regarded to have provided “the most comprehensive and most appropriate Possible Worlds model”, which divides the fictional text into different worlds and establishes the relationship between them (Raghunath, 2020, p. 36). Some of Ryan’s important terms in possible world theory are presented as follows (Ryan, 1991, p. vii):

Actual World (AW): Centre of the system of reality.

Alternative Possible World (APW): A possible world exists in a modal system of reality.

Textual Actual World (TAW): The image of referential world proposed by the text. The author of the text determines the facts of TAW.

Textual Alternative Possible World (TAPW): A possible world exists in the modal systems of a textual universe, which is displayed as mental constructs formed by the inhabitants of TAW.

In the highly recommended book, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory, Ryan presents how the theory of possible worlds can be applied to describe the internal organization of a semantic universe projected by a text. As a narrative plot is “a succession of actually occurring events leading to changed states of affairs” (Ryan and Bell, 2019, p. 19), narrative semantics should consider “both the factual events of TAW and the virtual events contemplated by characters” (Ryan, 1992, p. 540). The characters’ state of mind further constructs their other possible private worlds. They are K-world (knowledge-world, characters’ knowledge, belief, or ignorance of TAW), O-world (obligation-world, “commitments and prohibitions defined by social rules and moral principles” integrated by characters), W-world (wish-world, characters’ propositions signed by “axiological predicates good, bad, and neutral”), P-world (pretend-world where characters forge their beliefs, obligations, and desires to deceive others), and F-universes (“dreams, hallucinations, fantasies, and fictional stories told to or composed by the characters”) (Ryan, 1991, pp. 112–119). These worlds and their relationships are not static as there are always conflicts to spur on a plot in the textual universe, and conflicts are never completely eliminated until the end of the story. To better analyze the narrative theme, Ryan (1991, pp. 121–122) establishes a typology of narrative conflicts, which includes conflicts between TAW and a character’s private worlds, conflicts between a character’s private worlds, conflicts within a private world, and conflicts between the private worlds of different characters. The typology provides guidance for inspecting the relationships, as well as the movements, of these multiple worlds.

When we accept the notion of Possible Worlds (PW), which posits that “a fiction is a story told as true of a world (or worlds) other than actual world” (Ryan and Bell, 2019, p. 16), we gain guidelines for understanding and interpreting fictional worlds. We can view the novel both as an independent world, acknowledging its own operational logic, and as a world closely connected to the actual world, interpreting it within the historical context (including linking it with the author’s world). Furthermore, readers can combine it with other texts considered as real worlds, examining their accessibility relationships (Zhang, 2021, p. 266). In sum, “PWT offers a model for a narrative semantics that transcends the boundary between fiction and nonfiction” (Ryan, 1992, p. 540).

Applying Possible Worlds Theory to the interpretation of gothic elements in The Haunted Monastery, this study will unfold in three steps. Firstly, it will discuss the correlation between the story worlds (TAW and TAPW) of gothic novels and the story worlds of this novel, specifically how the properties of the former are reflected in the latter. Secondly, this study will adopt the important concept of “dynamics of plot” within Possible Worlds Theory to delve into an important gothic feature of the novel, namely anti-religion. Finally, it will contextualize the anti-religious elements in the novel with the historical context of the work and its author to provide a contextualized interpretation of the novel.

Characters in multiple worlds: gothic religious crimes

The Morning Clouds is a Taoist retreat. Judge Dee and his team are compelled to stay over at the retreat because a violent storm prevents their return to Han-yuan, where he holds the position of magistrate. As an accidental intruder to this Taoist temple, the Judge helps solve the mysteries of the heroine’ entrapment that night and the death of three young women at the monastery two years ago, identifying in the end those clerics responsible for the crimes. Gothic elements are introduced to the Chinese religious criminal scenario in how van Gulik designs the main characters.

Role

Character

Plot

Gothic Trope

victim

White Rose (and three other young women)

was tortured and entrapped in a secret room in the temple for her refusal to take part in secret sexual rites

defiant female victim, responsible for the vulnerability

offender

True Wisdom, the current Abbot

stole a large sum of money, murdered the former Abbot

monk, represented authority, disguised vicious desire under robes

Sun Ming, Taoist sage and former Imperial tutor

seduced young women to participate in secret sexual rites and tortured and entrapped them

monk, represented authority, disguised sexual desire under robes

rescuer

Tsung Lee, a poet

investigated the death of the former Abbot and fell in love with White Rose

Byronic hero

Miss Ou-yang, an actress

later found out to be White Rose’s brother, disguised himself to prevent her sister from becoming a Taoist nun

sacrificial bravery

Mo Mo-te, itinerant actor

investigated the death of his sister (one of the three young women)

mysterious stranger

White Rose, representative of young female victims in the story, is attracted to Taoism and committed to becoming a Taoist nun but ends up in falling into the clutches of the Taoist villains. Her resistance to being dominated to protect her virginity confirms the defiant female victim rule that the mistreated heroine must resist to “escape with virtue and dignity intact” (Granger, 2019). In the monastery, the outcomes of the other three young girls protecting their virginity are tragic who end up either committing suicide or being tortured to death. White Rose is lucky to be saved despite also having been tortured. These maids’ misfortune shows another feature of heroines in Gothic fiction that, to some degree, “[these young heroines] are responsible for their vulnerability” as they are unable to resist “intrusive tempters and seduction” (Granger, 2019). For instance, these young girls are interested in Taoism (some are even curious about the secret rites) without knowing much about the religion. White Rose is committed to entering the religion only because her sweetheart has died. Furthermore, she readily agrees to become a nun at the advice of a pious widow (Mrs. Pao) she has met at the White Crane Nunnery who turns out to be the accomplice of the murderers. However, she immediately changes her mind when she notices that her brother, who has disguised himself as an actress in a theatrical troupe to come to the temple, is hurt on stage. This casual conversion proves that she is easily influenced or seduced, which leads her into danger.

The religious villains, particularly the Taoist sage Sun Ming, also typify a male heretic with power and authority in the Gothic novel. The monk entraps White Rose in a subterranean space (a dungeon not found by Judge Dee until the end of the story), which is the first rule of Gothic fiction (Frank, 1987). This scene of locking people (most of the time a woman) in the dark dungeon is given a structural name of Gothic novels, the “live burial”, which often involves sexual punishment in the underground spaces (Sedgwick, 1986, p. 5). The sage is interested in virgin maids for sexual abuses, causing a possible impression of misogyny which prevails in Gothic stereotypes. Marie Mulvey-Roberts (2016, p. 108) notes how Gothic novels often show “female powerlessness” embodied by controlling their bodies through “marriage, domestic violence or imprisonment”. This targeted abuse not only illustrates an abuse of power but also reflects the entrenched misogyny, portraying women as both vulnerable and tormented, exposing their suffering under patriarchal dominance. The sexual misconducts or secret sexual rites take the form of sadism (van Dover, 2015, p. 102). For instance, after resisting the sage’s sexual assault, White Rose is forced into being a statue of a naked woman in the Gallery of Horrors. Van Gulik writes, “[She] was half lying, half hanging over some hard thing, [she] couldn’t see well because [her] hair was hanging over [her] face. [She] tried to open [her] mouth but [she] had been gagged. [Her] arms and legs were held by clamps that cut into [her] flesh at the slightest attempt to move” (p. 160). Van Gulik brings an intense tension to this novel with the fear of being buried alive: on one hand, White Rose has just been imprisoned in the dungeon, transitioning from a state of freedom to one of captivity; on the other hand, Judge Dee and his companions are precisely arriving to search for her, creating the potential for a transition from captivity back to freedom. This “instant of moving out of or moving into the dungeon” forms a scene of “unspeakable” terror typical of Gothic novels (Sedgwick, 1986, p. 21). The physical entrapment and the sadistic abuse not only display the villains’ “unnatural lusts and passions” (MacAndrew, 1979, p. 82) but also reflect a male-dominated hetero-normative space in the Gothic (Frank, 1987). Su (2003, p. 84) finds that most villains who abuse maids in Gothic fiction are elders representing the dead patriarchy. Sun Ming, conforming to the established identity, holds a double supremacy over these pious maids (not yet nuns): as the Taoist sage in the religious world, he represents the divine authority, and as the former Imperial Tutor, he possesses power bestowed by the Imperial Court in the secular world. The story of vicious clerics is still intriguing because the characterization is impressive; on the one hand, they are the purest representation of “shared natural grace and beauty”, but on the other hand, they are the “embodiments of spiritually misshapen humanity” (MacAndrew, 1979, p. 81). This approach of revealing the hidden sexual desires and resultant sinful behaviors in religious figures, who are generally perceived as uninterested in worldly lusts, was already portrayed in Matthew Lewis’s 1796 seminal work of early Gothic literature, The Monk.

Van Gulik introduces another two investigators besides Judge Dee. They are Mo Mo-te who disguised himself as an itinerant actor to investigate the death of his sister in the temple years ago and Kang I-te who disguised himself as Miss Ou-yang and came to this temple to prevent her sister White Rose from becoming a Taoist nun. Their investigations come from love and they show sacrificial bravery by putting their lives on the line, both of which are classic characteristics of the Gothic novel (Frank, 1987).

In addition to these main characters in TAW, van Gulik also produces characters in TAPW. In the novel, many scenes depict Judge Dee encountering fleeting shadows and indistinct whispers in the corridors. These mysterious sightings contribute to his skeptical view on the existence of spirits, prompting discussions among characters, such as Judge Dee and the novice monks, about legendary tragedies long rumored in the narrative, “A hundred years ago there were many soldiers here. Rebels had occupied this monastery and fortified themselves here, together with their families. The army took it, and slaughtered all of them, men, women and children” (pp. 22-23). Not only does their suspicion construct the F-universe of TAPW, their turning to a remote time or history for a tentative explanation also signifies a sense of Gothic mystery in the story (MacAndrew, 1979, p. 113). There is a TAW outside the domain of the monastery too. In that outer world are Miss Pao’s intimate fellows in other Taoist temples in the Imperial City, the Chief Abbot in the Capital who comments on the last sermon of the former Abbot of Morning Clouds, and Sun Ming’s people in the Imperial Court. These marginal characters contrive a Taoist network outside the monastery. But this Taoist world is possibly pretend (forged to deceive people), as Judge Dee indicates when he finds out the truth about the former Abbot Jade Mirror’s death,

‘Allow me to explain, sir,’ Judge Dee interrupted respectfully. He then told Sun about the reference to nightshades in the old Abbot’s letter to Dr Tsung, and how the symptoms of nightshade poisoning accorded well with the old Abbot’s behavior during his last hours. He added diffidently: ‘If I may say so, sir, it has often struck me that Taoist texts are always couched in a highly obscure and ambiguous language. One could imagine that the old Abbot’s last sermon was in fact a confused mixture of various religious passages he remembered. It needed the commentary of the Chief Abbot to make sense. I presume he chose some mystic terms from the Abbot’s sermon, and made those the theme for a lucid discussion, or he …’ He broke off, giving Master Sun an anxious look. (p. 138)

Judge Dee refers to the absurdity of the Chief Abbot’s seriously-taking of the former Abbot’s last sermon, which is nothing but “a confused mixture of various religious passages he remembered” (p. 138). However, the Chief Abbot from the Capital comments on it exclusively and both the sermon and commentary are widely used in all temples of the province. As the Judge does not realize Sun Ming’s involvement in all these crimes, he reveals his findings to this Taoist sage with respect and, to some degree, dread. The Chief Abbot’s (possibly deliberate) misinterpretation, the popularity of the misinterpretation, and Judge Dee’s caution (giving an anxious look) when suggesting the misinterpretation all pave the way to indicate the influence or power of Taoism in the Court. Therefore, when characters move from one closed domain (the monastery) to an open everyday domain (the outer Taoist world, inauthentic but influential), a Gothic device, it intensifies not only the “static” status of the Taoist temple but also the oppression of the Taoist power (MacAndrew, 1979, p. 110).

It seems that van Gulik intended to contrive a religious crime where faith is broken in the story. The men in the divine world victimize those who hold faith in the secular world, while these religious men maliciously fight for desire and interests that should only belong to the secular world. As for the rescuers, none of them are believers.

Settings in textual actual world: a gothic Taoist monastery and mystery

Scholars have found that as Judge Dee Mysteries moved into a new stage, van Gulik abandoned some features welcomed in Chinese courtroom fiction (van Dover, 2015, p. 97). It shows his determination to orientate his Dee stories more towards English readers. But in terms of his experimentation in this novel, we notice that though the form of “three cases in a single book” is sustained, the time taken to handle these cases is squeezed into a single night. In addition, the map van Gulik has drawn for The Haunted Monastery is also different from that of his first five novels. Two maps are presented here to show the differences.

Each volume of the first Dee series, as exemplified by The Chinese Maze Murders, contains a graphic map of the city where Judge Dee holds the position of a magistrate. It sketches a rectilinear city with streets, canals, and important buildings. The Magistrate’s Tribunal, the Temple of Confucius and a flowing river are always included. Van Gulik was purposeful when designing a closed-off city as the rectilinear fortress initiates a sense of security, the flowing river emits a living energy that sustains life in all forms, and the well-organized buildings deliver a message of a self-sufficient unit. Added to the finale of each story that Judge Dee brings back justice and restores social order, these impressions generated from the map lure scholars into concluding that van Gulik was building a utopia in Tang China (van Dover, 2015, p. 38). However, the Monastery replaces it with a schematic map of a Taoist temple, which takes the shape of a traditional six-sided coffin. Though the map is designed to help readers visualize the locations where events occur, its shape immediately infuses them with a sense of death and crisis, sharply contrasting with the sense of controllability implied by the maps in the first series.

The unpleasant feeling also comes from the isolation of the temple, whereas the map in The Chinese Maze Murders depicts buildings that can be easily reached from one another. At the beginning of the haunted monastery, van Gulik construes “one of the most stable characteristics of the Gothic”, the old, preferably haunted, castle (MacAndrew, 1979, p. 48). Stone architecture has different symbolic meanings in Gothic literature. It can indicate a material presence (a “dire and threatening place” closed off) or a psychological state (“the dark, tortured windings in the mind” of those civilized people) (MacAndrew, 1979, pp. 48-49). It can also be interpreted as a paradox: a place of security and faith and a locus of danger and imprisonment (Ellis, 1989). The Taoist monastery in this fiction bears all these implications. It is a place where crimes are located, but also a place for Judge Dee and his men to keep out of the wind and rain. And for the victims, it is a place to pay religious homage but also pay the price of this commitment. As a castle, here the Taoist temple, is often broken into by passers-by, Van Gulik warns readers of impending danger at the beginning of story, when Judge Dee and his team are heading towards the magistrate’s tribunal in the stormy night,

‘We are high up in the mountains,’ the other coachman added. ‘There is not a hut or farm for miles around, there’s only the old monastery up there. But of course you wouldn’t like to…’ A flash of lightning lit up the wild mountain scene. For one brief moment Judge Dee saw the high, scraggy mountains that loomed on all sides, and the red mass of the old monastery, towering on the slope above them, on the other side of the ravine. There was a deafening clap of thunder, and all was dark again. (pp. 3-4)

The old red monastery on the top of the mountains sitting by a ravine turns into “a large, walled-in front courtyard” when the Judge shifts from an observer into a concerned person, and as the main gate of the monastery he just enters closes with a resounding thud, he “suddenly shivered” (p. 7). In the process of being carried to the temple (the first two pages of the second chapter), the Judge gradually zooms in from a distance towards his surroundings. Viewed through the author’s narrative lens, readers can feel the intruders’ escalating sense of insecurity as they move from the mountains, to the high trees, and eventually, into the enclosed yard of the secluded temple. Dee’s sudden shivering is most certainly not from the possibility that “he must have caught a bad cold in the rain”, as he thinks (p. 7). It is a bad omen for him and the readers.

The fog of isolation cast upon the temple verifies the core conventions of the Gothic novel, which is to foster nameless fears, familiar anxieties, and an atmosphere of menace (Tracy, 1974). Likewise, bad weather also functions as a displacement of fear in Gothic literature. For instance, a storm is often perceived as a harbinger of evil. The stormy night is designed as a catalyst in alluring Dee’s team to that isolated temple. The starting lines of Chapter One also set the scene of the antiheroes’ evil conspiracy.

The two men sitting close together in the secluded room, up in the tower of the old monastery, listened for a while silently to the roar of the storm that was raging among the dark mountains outside. Violent gusts of wind were tearing at the tower, the cold draught penetrated even the solid wooden shutters. (p. 1)

On the one hand, the roaring storm, gusting wind, and rumbling thunder help create an atmosphere of evil. On the other hand, the secluded room enclosed by the bad weather resembles a tight space, which functions to mirror and magnify the anxieties of the two men, who are later found out to be the criminals (True Wisdom and Sun Ming). The bad weather also stimulates a sense of horror through sudden interference with the characters’ dialog and sensory experiences. On many occasions, when the antiheroes are muttering their conspiracies or Judge Dee is discussing the cases, their words are drowned out or interrupted by rolls of thunder.

Though the weather in the Gothic novel is always going to be tempestuous, it changes with the plot to acquire the role of “predictability” for the whole story. Footnote 6 The first two chapters apply the device to show the upcoming danger for the protagonists. However, as Judge Dee gathers more and more clues, the power of the storm and rain changes and then we have, “[the] storm had abated somewhat, it was still raining”, “That will be the last of the storm”, “It [the rain] seemed less heavy”, “The storm is over” (pp. 86, 128, 133, 133). And when the three cases are finally cleared up, at the end Judge Dee sees “The red rays of dawn were streaking the gray sky,” and his wife exclaims, “It’s going to be a beautiful day!” (pp. 182, 194) Here again, we notice the relationship between weather and the inner self of the protagonists, as horrible storms “contrive to express human torment and rage”, and sunshine and a beautiful day “convey spiritual peace” and the like (MacAndrew, 1979, pp. 48-49).

Besides the isolated temple and tempestuous storm, corridors, omnipresent in Gothic fiction, are also transplanted by van Gulik into the haunted. The baffling corridors and stairways in the temple become a metaphor for mystery and create terrors as they allow “things to advance or recede ominously from the viewer”, and therefore turns itself into a device that “multiplies the anticipatory fear” (Luckhurst, 2018, p. 302). However, characters in the corridor (and readers immersed in the plot) can sense that the ominous advance or retreat of things is substantially related to the fact that the corridor is an alien space. In the monastery, corridors appear forty-six times. There are “hundreds of corridors” forming a veritable labyrinth; they are “long”, “straight”, “narrow”, “cold”, and “deserted”; lit by “one broken lantern”, “an occasional lantern”, “a few lanterns”, or without any lights, either “semi-obscure” and “semi dark” or in complete darkness. Since Judge Dee’s investigation is conducted at night, readers should heed the advice of carrying a metaphorical light when walking with the Judge along the passages. These corridors become the site of mysteries or obstacles for Judge Dee in his investigation. For instance, he runs into people who are not supposed to be there; he is spied and eavesdropped on and attacked; and as a Confucian man, he is forced to doubt that a ghost might follow him. However, there are occasions where these corridors play a contradictory role. They often lead Judge Dee and his team to a new space where they manage to gather clues or evidence, or identify and interrogate the criminals.

Though van Gulik created the Judge Dee series and invented characters living under the social conventions of the Ming Dynasty, these stories build a textual actual world of crimes and justice. As for The Haunted Monastery, van Gulik applies the narrative devices, settings, to contrive a feeling of suspense and horror, adding a Gothic sensation to the monks’ crimes in the Taoist monastery.

Unresolved conflicts in multiple worlds: the Flesh and The Spirit of Taoist monks

The multiple worlds of a text are composed of three dimensions: 1) Actual World, Textual Actual World, and Textual Possible World; 2) worlds in different domains (e.g., worlds in the monastery and the outer Taoist network); 3) private worlds of different characters (e.g., Judge Dee, Sun Ming, and White Rose) (Ryan, 1991). The relationships between these worlds in a narrative system are constantly changing, forming the plots of a story. However, to start a plot, “there must be some sort of conflict in the textual universe” (Ryan, 1991, p. 120). Van Gulik creates a series of conflicts to contrive the story of Taoist monks committing crimes and a Confucian Governor solving the cases. This section will discuss the conflicts that provide the conditions for the young maids’ tragedies, the investigation of the religious crimes, and the conflicts that stimulate Judge Dee’s suspicion of the Taoist monks.

For a tragedy to occur, certain pre-conditions must be present, such as a dangerous locale and individuals susceptible to harm. As outlined in the fictional account, the Taoist monastery has descended into a den of depravity. The underlying reasons for the temple’s descendent and its attraction to the young girls are potentially suggested in the design of van Gulik’s conflicts. The Taoist sage Sun Ming confess that he left the Palace as Imperial Teacher to the local temple because his secret sexual rites led to the death of a Palace lady. Apparently, that Sun could still see the temple as a place for seeking pleasure demonstrates his accord with the authority of the temple in terms of their knowledge-worlds (views of immoral conduct). However, the isolation of the temple and the fact that Sun Ming could only satisfy his malicious lusts in an isolated place, specifically the dungeon, shows that Sun’s private Obligation-world, where the religious orgy of seducing girls is allowed, violates the social rules or laws in TAW. The resolution of conflict as such requires “either the sacrifice of the K-world of the hero, or of the law-defying facts” (Ryan, 1991, p. 121). Therefore, for the plot to start, the monastery must be a lawless land. In this sense, Sun Ming is both a Taoist sage and vicious runagate and accordingly, the monastery is both coveted and covert. From a certain point of view, the tragedies of these maids are attributed to the fact that their “K-world mispresents TAW” (Ryan, 1991, p. 122), which means they wrongly believe their private worlds will be satisfied in the Taoist domain in TAW. For instance, White Rose believes that converting to Taoism will lift her out of the misery of losing her love, while instead it brings her the danger of nearly losing her life; she trusts Mrs. Pao as a friend to get nearer to Taoism, but the fanatical widow sacrifices her to the Taoist heretic Sun Ming. The “Subjective vs. Objective Conflicts” might also help to explain the tragedy of these Gothic heroines who are unable to resist temptation. Meanwhile, certain conflicts between TAW and private worlds, whose solution is either a violation of laws or the non-fulfillment of personal commitments, generate a permanent narrative of this detective fiction: “prohibition – violation – punishment” (Ryan, 1991, p. 121).

The concealment of serial crimes within the temple and the need for van Gulik to send an intruder, Judge Dee, to this lawless and autonomous territory stems from the fact that the two Taoist authorities, True Wisdom and Sun Ming, are not perceived as criminals by themselves. This perception certainly comes from their knowledge (K-world) of Taoist monks. The two villains’ verbal presentation of their modalized private worlds also serve to convince Judge Dee that they are irrelevant to the crimes. In his first private talk with True Wisdom (Chapter 4), the Judge enquires about the three deaths and the nuns living in the temple. True Wisdom replies, accordingly, with the Taoist thought that “Human life being submitted to the limitations set by Heaven, people fall ill and die, here as everywhere else” (p. 29) and the explanation that he was too busy to accept nuns studying in his monastery. We might deduce from the Abbot’s reply that he was a person who adhered to the religious doctrine (O-world). Judge Dee’s inquiry to Sun Ming is more straightforward (Chapter 8), “I have heard people say that some Taoists, under the pretext of religious motives, practise orgies in secret, and force young women to take part in those. Is there any truth in these allegations?” (p. 68) Sun gives a seemingly astonished response to such a polite interrogation by exclaiming that it is against the moral principles of Taoism to indulge in food, let alone orgies. And when the current Abbot’s sin is disclosed, Sun (Chapter 15) regrets that he did not keep an eye on the secret rites in the temple. Sun’s modalized statements reveals his obligation-world (what a moral Taoist monk should be). Although the two monks are ultimately discovered to be evildoers, it remains uncertain whether their representations of their duty-bound lives to Judge Dee are fabricated or inauthentic. But these obligation-worlds certainly pose conflicts with their wish-worlds (as signified by their aspirations to obtain wealth and women), engendering a dichotomy between their sentiment and reason (or between their hidden desires and public persona), thereby generating a fertile ground for Judge Dee’s investigation.

The most productive conflict for the narrative development in The Haunted Monastery occurs between the private worlds of Judge Dee and the villainous monks. The mutual incompatibility of their private domains defines their relationship as antagonistic, and resolving this type of conflict usually means the end of the narrative universe (Ryan, 1991, p. 120). In a detective fiction, the primary level of conflicts is between the guardians (represented by Judge Dee) and the violators (identified as True Wisdom and Sun Ming). Since the Judge is a Confucian governor and the other two are Taoist authorities, that the detective enters Taoism’s territory to investigate the monks’ crimes is easily understood as a conflict between Confucianism and Taoism, which is certainly a hasty view. Conflicts indeed exist between the two sides’ knowledge worlds, as revealed in their private dialogs (Chapters 4, 8, 19). For instance, Judge expects from True Wisdom “a more humane attitude” towards the actors and actresses on the stage as he shows contempt for their profession (p. 31). In another example, while Sun Ming thinks Taoism is more comprehensive than Confucianism in explaining man’s relations to the Universe (p. 67), Judge Dee argues that since Taoism emphasizes more about the afterlife, he prefers to “keep to the practical wisdom” of Master Confucius to deal with everyday duties (p. 189). That is why when he finds the monks standing tall and strong, the Judge is besieged with the impression that they should “do their duties to society, marry and raise children” (p. 44). The first example just makes True Wisdom a monk of low moral character in the Judge’s eyes. The second one, though clearly presenting the differences between their K-worlds, only indicates their different understandings of Taoism and Confucianism. It does not imply a conflicting nature between the two schools. As a matter of fact, Judge Dee holds a degree of respect for Taoism. Take his private talk with Sun Ming in Chapter Eight as an example. He admits the profound wisdom of the religion when Sun Ming mentions that people could strive to “pass [their] limited life with a healthy mind and body” even though any attempts to reach immortality are futile (p. 67). And he is fully engrossed in Sun’s explanation of Tai Chi [太極] and Yin Yang [陰陽]. Even after the two evil monks are eventually identified, Judge Dee still believes that “Taoism penetrates deep into the mysteries of life and death” (p. 189).

The real fundamental conflict between the K-worlds of Judge Dee and Sun Ming is their disparate perceptions of a lawful society. As the defender of law, the Judge is committed to bringing Sun Ming to the courtroom and the executioner’s platform, even though this evildoer possesses symbolic and social capital with the absolute advantage of being a famous Taoist sage and Imperial tutor. But Sun is neither regretful of his crimes nor afraid of them being disclosed. In his final talk with the Judge, Sun calmly defends his vicious acts and claims that laws are for the common people, not for him; he is “far above ordinary human rules and limitations” because he has “considerable influence in the capital” (p. 182). Therefore, if the Judge holds an unfavorable opinion of Taoism, it must be from the interference of Taoism in the power of the Imperial Court. In Chapter Five, Judge Dee expresses this resentment and his wrath, “Just because the Palace has deigned to show interest in the Taoist creed, those people think they are above the law! And I hear that Buddhist influence is also growing at Court. I don’t know which of the two is worse!” (p. 44)

In all these conflicts in different possible worlds, we can find common ground, the twisted image of Taoism. On the one hand, Taoism is regarded by the ordinary people, borne in mind by the monks and respected by the men of letters as divine, supreme, and profound. On the other hand, it brings unnatural lusts and worldly passions. The ambivalent abnormality of Taoism as portrayed in the story creates an attribute of grotesqueness, evoking a profound sense of “radical alienness” among its readers in TAW and AW (Steig, 1970, p. 253). The transformation of familiar objects into unfamiliar ones upon reaching “a certain degree of abnormality” renders them fearful and disgusting to readers (Thomson, 1972, p. 24). The most direct response to the grotesque elements of Taoism in the story is Judge Dee’s resentment towards statues representing sinners suffering in the Taoist Inferno. Upon noticing the statues of naked woman with their hands and feet cut off, the Judge is taken back by “the lurid representations” in the sacred place and insists that they be removed (p. 124).

Judge Dee, at the end of all the conflicts, attributes the twisted image to the idea that “[Taoism’s] abstruse knowledge may inspire that evil, inhuman pride that turns a man into a cruel fiend. And its profound philosophy about balancing the male and female elements may degenerate to those unspeakable rites with women” (p. 189). His knowledge of Taoist thought might also sound a little abstruse to his readers, including the lieutenant that he then talks to, as he does not explain how the profound thought can inspire evil. A possible explanation that the Judge refers to is zou ruo ru mo [走火入魔], the experience of serious negative psychological changes resulting from improper practice or other self-cultivation activities. It certainly implies the enigmatic personalities of the Gothic villains. However, we should not evade the two Taoist monks’ deficiencies, in that they choose an excessive obsession with erotic or material lust. Therefore, we might attribute the twisted image of Taoism to the separation of the monks’ flesh and spirit, that they turn away from what they believe in to live a moderate life.Footnote 7

Reconciling tradition and innovation in anti-religion

Van Gulik follows the Western Gothic literary tradition in his English-language creation of Chinese courtroom fiction and brings us a Gothic Taoist crime fiction. However, concerning the traditions of religion-related narrative within the Chinese and Western conventions, his stance appears somewhat ambiguous.

At the outset, in regard to the use of religious superstitions as narrative elements in Chinese detective fiction, van Gulik does not entirely forego their implementation as might be expected from his apparent dismissal of their value. He once noted that the supernatural elements feature in most Chinese detective stories, which “clashes with our principle that a detective novel should be as realistic as possible” (Van Gulik, 1976, III). Therefore, he claims to have abandoned these elements in his Judge Dee series (Van Gulik, 1997a, p. 321). Nevertheless, researchers have discovered that van Gulik does not entirely eschew the supernatural elements. Not employing “the occult for a solution to the crime” (Hao, 2016, p. 556), he uses it to supplement suspense and horror or leave traces to lead the Judge to update his knowledge-world (Benedetti, 2013, p. 131).

This ambiguous attitude towards religious superstition is also mirrored in The Haunted Monastery. In its concluding chapter, Judge Dee conveys his opinion of Taoism to his lieutenant, admitting that, “Of course it would be foolish to ignore entirely the existence of mysterious, supernatural phenomena. Yet most occurrences which we consider as such prove in the end to have a perfectly natural explanation” (p. 189). Essentially, the author and the character agree that the inclusion of supernatural elements is permissible; however, these should be scrutinized through rational analysis and logical explanation to understand their occurrence in investigative contexts. In other words, the supernatural could provide clues and inspiration, but can never provide evidence to solve the case. However, there is another important plot in the mystery that represents van Gulik’s deviation from this convention. Judge Dee tricks Sun Ming into a closed room with a mature bear, feeling that it is impossible to bring he to justice through judicial procedure, as being a Taoist sage and Imperial tutor gives Sun overwhelming power to dismiss the charges of a district magistrate. The Judge leaves the trial to the Higher Tribunal to decide if the vicious monk be savaged to death by the bear or saved by people passing by (p. 184). It suggests that van Gulik uses the Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis that individuals who break social norms should be punished by God (Carney, 2014, p. 206). There is a moral dispute over the plot. Van Dover (2015, p. 102) argues this move shows that Judge Dee is “placing himself above ordinary human rules and limitations”, the same as the villainous Sun. But from a different perspective, Xie and Li (2023, p. 8) think that the Judge is turning to religion to fulfill the legal system’s loopholes that “even if the law cannot convict Sun, Heaven (religion) can”, displaying “van Gulik’s understanding of religion as a precondition for morality”. Van Gulik’s attitude towards Taoism highlights his ambivalent stance towards the anti-religious tradition prevalent in both Western Gothic novels and Chinese courtroom fiction, where the long-standing objective of the genres is to subvert religious beliefs.

Like Gothic fiction in the West, Chinese courtroom fiction, which flourished during the Late Ming period (16th century), also featured the depiction of clerics, primarily Buddhist monks, being found guilty of crimes. Statistics show that the cases of crimes committed by monks constitute almost 10% of stories in the 12 collections of Ming dynasty courtroom fiction (Chang, 2018). This particular group is referred to as “evil Buddhist monks” [惡僧]. Their characterization in courtroom fiction is argued to serve as a warning of the (possible) social turmoil resulting from a surge in the individuals, lacking in ethical values and decency, embracing Buddhism during the Ming dynasty (Chang, 2018). Van Gulik also found that the negative depiction of monks became a collaborative narrative by the Confucian literati, who hoped to restore social morality by criticizing Buddhism (Van Gulik, 1977). While the setting of The Haunted Monastery takes place in a Taoist temple, the Judge is situated in the role of a Confucian governor and expresses the same worries and resentments as the Confucian intellectuals of the time.

The disapproval of religious beliefs is also rooted in Gothic fiction. This theme of “the blasphemous” is first to be found “in British Gothic literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries”, particularly evident in the anti-Catholic sentiment that is central to many of these works (Hoeveler, 2012, p. 15). The Roman Catholic Church is then portrayed as “idolatrous, demonic, and cult-like” (Abate, 2016, p. 169) to stand in opposition to the Protestant individuals who thinks they are with modern subjectivity and thus, “alternately combat[s] and flirt[s] with this uncanny double” (Hoeveler, 2012, p. 16).

The Gothic novels of the 18th century emerged during the Enlightenment and the concurrent scientific and industrial revolutions (Miranda, 2017, p. 2). This genre is identified as coinciding with “the development of science and the subsequent secularization of society and culture” (Băniceru, 2021, p. 37). Therefore, Hoeveler (2012, p. 15) notes that Gothic novels often showcase a strong anti-Catholic sentiment through what he describes as a “secularizing” performance. This performance initially manifests in the desacralization of religious sites in this novel, transforming the spaces intended for monastic sermons into scenes of sexual desires, crimes, and romantic encounters. The door and high walls of the Taoist temple intended to separate the sacred from the profane are also breached by individuals from various social strata. Furthermore, within these narratives, religious beliefs obsessed with “the uncontrollable”, notably the power of immortality, are contrasted against a “modern and secularized subjectivity” (Hoeveler, 2012, p. 16) that obsesses over rationality, equality, and romantic love. For instance, characters like Judge Dee persist in their belief that the mysteries they encounter have rational explanations. Contrasting with Sage Sun’s attempts at sexual assault in the name of religious rituals, several men from the secular world who express their familial and romantic ideals through actions aimed at rescuing and protecting women, breaking down class and even gender barriers. Additionally, the novel identifies a unique secularizing performance, “secularizing of the uncanny”, which involves a process of expressing and simultaneously repressing the sacred (Hoeveler, 2012, p. 16). In the story, while presenting profound Taoist philosophical ideas, particularly the understanding of gender under the philosophy of Yin and Yang, van Gulik also reveals a religious ritual of dual cultivation guided by this epistemology, conducted through deceit, seduction, and coercion. Through integrating crimes driven by sexual desires and acts of salvation motivated by love from the secular world into the realm of religion, van Gulik organizes a typical anti-religious Gothic novel.

However, drawing an inference that van Gulik’s narrative of Gothic Taoist crimes is aimed at opposing religion would be an oversimplification. As a 20th-century work, while van Gulik’s narrative employs conventions of anti-religion found in both detective and courtroom genres, it does not reject Taoism completely, nor does it endorse other religious or ideological groups. As we have discussed above, the Judge in TAW retains a complicated attitude towards Taoism: he shows respect for profound Taoist thoughts but no tolerance for the monks’ misconduct and their “perceived” irresponsibility to society. However, van Gulik, its creator, finds the Judge’s positive opinions of Taoism fail to convey its real spirit. He (1961) thinks that Taoism is much more complicated in thought than Confucianism. Thereby, he names the temple Morning Clouds and features a young man singing a prophetic ballad (Gothic element, the final lines of which are “Defeat for ever the deadly shades of night, Dissolve the morning clouds in the Eternal Light”) (p. 42). And indeed, after Sun Ming is eventually executed in the name of the Heaven, the Judge, stepping out on the open platform in front of the temple gate, sees “the red rays of dawn” “streaking the gray sky” (p. 193). This symbolizes the temple’s enduring divinity despite the upheaval wrought by the elimination of evil. Thus, the restoration of order, be it in the secular or religious world, is underscored.

Hence, we observe van Gulik’s dual perspective towards Taoism: on one hand, he appreciates its profound and sacred philosophical ideas; on the other, he uncovers the materialism of monks and the creepiness of religious rituals. Such superficial religious practices and the obsession with materialistic desires, in his view (1969, p. 46), come out of a “literal sense” of the lofty teachings of Taoism. This novel, in turn, uses the materialized behaviors of Taoist adherents to set off the noble Taoist conceptions, embodying the Gothic novel’s narrative against Catholicism, to create an “‘other’ against which it could define itself” (Hoeveler, 2012, p. 15).

Conclusion

Scholars interested in van Gulik’s Judge Dee Mysteries have examined the stories’ hybrid narrative structure in relation to the traditions of Chinese and Western crime fiction. However, this paper directs its focus towards a more specific Western narrative genre, the Gothic convention, as depicted in one of the mysteries, The Haunted Monastery. By adopting Marie-Laure Ryan’s Possible Worlds Theory, it investigated Gothic conventions in the temple, specifically in terms of three dimensions - characters, settings, and conflicts in the textual actual world and beyond - while scrutinizing the image of Taoism in crime fiction. The analysis reveals a Gothic Taoist crime characterized by the coercive and abusive relationship between the heroines (sexually abused yet defiant victims) and the antiheroes (patriarchal Taoist villains). By scrutinizing the setting of the crime, a Gothic Taoist temple is also discovered to have been formed in creating suspense and horror. This Gothic Taoism is further constructed through the discord arising from conflicts across multiple realms. The findings suggest that van Gulik has crafted a Gothic literary world within the Taoist temple by reconciling conventions in Chinese courtroom fiction and the Western Gothic novel. Between crime and punishment, Confucianism and Taoism, the dual-faceted image of religion is depicted: one face towards the purely divine religious world, and the other towards the secular world of limitless desires.

As a genre that often intersects with other literary forms, the detective fiction “is concerned with revealing truths” in the story world and the actual world it is related to (McChesney, 2020, p. 1). In detective stories, we are getting more likely to observe varied understandings of truth among plaintiffs, defendants, criminals, and judges, as seen in The Haunted Monastery, where Judge Dee and the criminal monks do not reach a stable understanding of the truth concerning Taoism. There can even be differing perceptions of truth between the narrator and the creator. With the help of the core guidelines of Possible Worlds Theory, which provide a framework for understanding narrative meaning that goes beyond the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, readers can gain deeper appreciation and understanding of the dual attitudes toward truth in detective fiction: persisting in a view of truth that “is conceived of as a certainty” and demonstrating the view that “truth is considered relative to the interpreter’s desires” (Watson, 2021, p. 23).