Religion and Poetry in Medieval China

Religion and Poetry in Medieval China

The Way and the Words

This volume of interdisciplinary essays examines the intersection of religion and literature in medieval China, focusing on the impact of Buddhism and Daoism on a wide range of elite and popular literary texts and religious practices in the 3rd-11th centuries CE. Drawing on the work of the interdisciplinary scholar Stephen Bokenkamp, the essays weave together the many cross-currents of religious, intellectual, and literary traditions in medieval China to provide vivid pictures of medieval Chinese religion and culture as it was lived and practiced. The contributors to the volume are all highly regarded experts in the fields of Chinese poetry, Daoism, Buddhism, popular religion, and literature. Their research papers cut across imagined disciplinary boundaries to show that the culture of medieval China can only be understood by close reading of texts from multiple genres, traditions, and approaches.

  • Cover
  • Table of Contents
    • Conventions for Frequently Cited Works
    • Introduction
      • Gil Raz and Anna M. Shields
    • 1. Brushing Past Rainbows: Religion and Poetry in the Xu Mi Stele
      • J.E.E. Pettit
    • 2. Li Bo and Hu Ziyang: Companions of the Way
      • Paul W. Kroll
    • 3. The Vicarious Angler: Gao Pian’s Daoist Poetry
      • Franciscus Verellen
    • 4. Traces of the Way: The Poetry of “Divine Transcendence” in the Northern Song Anthology Literature’s Finest (Wen cui 文粹)
      • Anna M. Shields
    • 5. A Re-examination of the Second Juan of the Array of the Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure 太上靈寶五符序
      • Wang Zongyu 王宗昱 (translated by Gil Raz)
    • 6. “True Forms” and “True Faces”: Daoist and Buddhist Discourse on Images
      • Gil Raz
    • 7. After the Apocalypse: The Evolving Ethos of the Celestial Master Daoists
      • Terry Kleeman
    • 8. Shangqing Scriptures as Performative Texts
      • Robert Ford Campany
    • 9. My Back Pages: The Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters Revisited
      • James Robson
    • 10. Taking Stock
      • John Lagerwey
    • Epilogue
      • Traversing the Golden Porte—The Problem with Daoist Studies
        • Stephen R. Bokenkamp
    • Index

Subjects

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