This study examines what has been described as the 'cult of the child' in late Ming China and explores how this influenced classical Chinese fiction of the seventeenth century. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this monograph conducts an analysis of childlikeness in fiction. and specifically in the most important seventeenth-centul), anthology of fiction. the Liuozhai zh(vi, by Pu Songling (1640-1715).