A gothic Taoism and its dual facets: possible worlds in *The Haunted Monastery*

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 Gong An [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.

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). 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 official. 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).

The article surveys scholarship on Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee Mysteries, noting that although widely read among Sinophiles, the fiction received limited scholarly appraisal until the 21st century. Chinese scholarship has primarily examined Chinese cultural elements (Taoist, Confucian, supernatural) in the novels, often classifying the series as foreign literature. Recent studies argue for a Western basis to the Judge Dee Mysteries, but many focus on how Chinese elements were adapted for Anglophone tastes without detailing the specific Western origins. Van Dover (2015) identifies Western genre formulas in the series, though largely based on van Gulik’s own testimony.

The paper also reviews the relationship between Gothic literature and detective fiction: during the Victorian era detective fiction borrowed Gothic elements; Gothic’s atmosphere of dread serves restoration of order, while detective fiction’s rationality responds to social anxieties and resolves mysteries once attributed to the supernatural (Miranda, 2017; Skenazy, 1995). It situates the study within this Gothic–detective intertext and positions Marie-Laure Ryan’s Possible Worlds Theory (PWT) as an interpretive framework. Additionally, it contextualizes anti-religious traditions in both Western Gothic (anti-Catholic sentiment; Hoeveler, 2012) and Chinese courtroom fiction (evil monks in Ming-era gong’an fiction; Chang, 2018; van Gulik, 1977), forming the comparative background for interpreting The Haunted Monastery.

The study employs Marie-Laure Ryan’s Possible Worlds Theory (PWT) to analyze how Gothic elements are projected across the internal organization of the semantic universe in The Haunted Monastery. Key PWT constructs include the Actual World (AW), Textual Actual World (TAW), and Textual Alternative Possible Worlds (TAPWs), along with characters’ private modal worlds: K-world (knowledge/belief), O-world (obligation), W-world (wish), P-world (pretense), and F-universes (dreams, hallucinations, stories). Narrative development is approached as dynamics of plot arising from conflicts among and within these worlds.

Analytic plan proceeds in three steps: (1) map the correspondence between the story worlds of Gothic novels and those of The Haunted Monastery (TAW and TAPW), identifying how Gothic properties are reflected in characters, settings, and conflicts; (2) use the PWT notion of plot dynamics to examine the novel’s anti-religious feature, focusing on conflicts between TAW and private modal worlds (e.g., between monks’ public obligations and private desires); (3) contextualize the novel’s anti-religious elements within historical and authorial contexts (transculturation of Gothic and Chinese courtroom traditions) to provide a situated interpretation. Evidence includes close reading of character roles and tropes (victim, offender, rescuer), spatial design (isolated monastery, storm, labyrinthine corridors), and dialogic cues revealing modal worlds and their conflicts.

• Characters exhibit classic Gothic tropes within a Taoist crime scenario: White Rose (and other maidens) as defiant yet vulnerable heroines; villains True Wisdom (current Abbot) and Sun Ming (Taoist sage/former Imperial tutor) disguise worldly greed and sexual desire under religious authority; rescuers (Tsung Lee, Miss Ou-yang/Kang I-te, and Mo Mo-te) display Byronic and sacrificial bravery. The “live burial”/dungeon entrapment and sadistic tableaux (e.g., White Rose gagged and clamped; p. 160) reinforce Gothic misogyny and patriarchal abuse motifs.
• Settings build a Gothic monastery world: the schematic temple map shaped like a six-sided coffin contrasts earlier city maps’ utopian order; isolation, stormy weather, thunder, and a ravine heighten menace and foreshadow danger. Weather mirrors plot progression—from raging storm to dawn’s red rays upon resolution (pp. 86, 128, 133, 194). Labyrinthine corridors (“hundreds,” often dark and sparsely lit) function as alien spaces producing suspense and facilitating both threat and discovery.
• TAPWs and F-universes contribute spectral ambiguity: whispers, shadows, and legends of massacres create a frame for “haunting” talk while remaining open to rational explanation. A broader Taoist network outside the monastery appears influential yet potentially pretended/inauthentic (e.g., dubious exegesis of the Abbot’s last sermon by the Chief Abbot; p. 138), intensifying Gothic oppression.
• PWT conflict analysis: tragedies stem from mismatches between characters’ K-worlds and TAW (e.g., naïve faith in Taoism as solace leads to peril). Monks’ O-world self-presentations (piety) conflict with their W-worlds (wealth and women), generating investigation. The primary antagonism is between Judge Dee’s legal-rational K/O-worlds and Sun Ming’s elitist antinomian stance (“laws are for the common people… far above ordinary human rules”; p. 182). The monastery functions as an autonomous, lawless enclave enabling prohibition–violation–punishment cycles.
• Anti-religion as Gothic convention, yet with ambivalence: van Gulik largely rejects supernatural solutions while allowing supernatural atmospherics to guide inquiry (pp. 189). The controversial “Higher Tribunal” episode—locking Sun with a bear to let “Heaven” decide (p. 184)—invokes a Supernatural Punishment hypothesis; critics differ whether this elevates Judge Dee above law or repairs legal loopholes via a religious-moral order.
• Dual-faced image of Taoism: revered for profundity and cosmology (Yin–Yang, Tai Chi) yet grotesque when literalized into coercive sexual rites and materialist craving. The temple is desacralized (spaces of sermons turned into sites of orgy, crime, and rescue), aligning with Gothic secularizing performances while preserving an ultimate restoration symbolized by dawn and prophetic verse (“Dissolve the morning clouds in the Eternal Light”; p. 42). This creates a Gothic Taoism that faces both the divine and a secular world of limitless desire.

The findings address the research question by identifying concrete Western Gothic foundations—character archetypes, spatial and atmospheric devices, and anti-religious conventions—embedded within van Gulik’s Chinese-set detective fiction. Through Possible Worlds Theory, the analysis shows how conflicts among TAW, TAPWs, and private modal worlds produce Gothic dynamics: naïve belief collides with institutional corruption; monks’ public obligations mask private desires; and a Confucian detective’s rational-legal commitments confront religious power. These interactions construct an explicitly Gothic semantic universe while maintaining connections to Chinese courtroom traditions.

The significance lies in clarifying that the Western basis of the Judge Dee Mysteries is not merely a matter of style but of structural transposition: Gothic tropes are integrated at the level of characters (defiant heroine vs. patriarchal villain), settings (isolated castle/monastery, storm, corridors), and plot mechanics (secularizing, desacralization, uncanny atmospherics resolved by rational inquiry). Yet van Gulik’s stance toward religion is ambivalent rather than purely subversive: while exposing clerical abuses and desacralized spaces, the narrative preserves respect for profound Taoist philosophy and stages an ultimate moral restoration. This duality refines claims of simple “Westernization,” revealing a negotiated transculturation where Gothic anti-religion coexists with a reverent vision of Taoism’s metaphysical depth.

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).