Abstract: Through a critical examination of the connotation and referent of the term chunaqi (legendary story, literally, "transmission of the strange") in the study of fiction in the ancient China, the paper points out that the term chuanqi in the ancient critical discourse was not a concept of genre but a concept of content and thematic type. When chuanqi is referred to as a genre, it was often called as a then homophonic term zhuanji (biographical record), while chuanqi referred to "a book-length account of an event from the beginning to the end." This term of chunaqi referred to a literary text in the form of a book, which differed from literary sketches in the form of a collection or an anthology. In the orthodox concept, chuanqi was, compared with literary sketches, only "a subsidiary of literary creation," less significant in literary status and value, and the self-consciousness of fictional nature in writing chuanqi stories did not start in the Tang Dynasty but in the Ming Dynasty.

Key words: chuanqi (legendary story), connotation, referent, status, conscious fiction