Religion and Poetry in Medieval China: The Way and the Words (Global Chinese Histories, 250-1650)

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 1 Table of Contents 6 Conventions for Frequently Cited Works 8 Introduction 10 Gil Raz and Anna M. Shields 10 1. Brushing Past Rainbows: Religion and Poetry in the Xu Mi Stele 20 J.E.E. Pettit 20 2. Li Bo and Hu Ziyang: Companions of the Way 42 Paul W. Kroll 42 3. The Vicarious Angler: Gao Pian’s Daoist Poetry 64 Franciscus Verellen 64 4. Traces of the Way: The Poetry of “Divine Transcendence” in the Northern Song Anthology Literature’s Finest (Wen cui 文粹) 88 Anna M. Shields 88 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 110 Wang Zongyu 王宗昱 (translated by Gil Raz) 110 6. “True Forms” and “True Faces”: Daoist and Buddhist Discourse on Images 134 Gil Raz 134 7. After the Apocalypse: The Evolving Ethos of the Celestial Master Daoists 162 Terry Kleeman 162 8. Shangqing Scriptures as Performative Texts 176 Robert Ford Campany 176 9. My Back Pages: The Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters Revisited 198 James Robson 198 10. Taking Stock 222 John Lagerwey 222 Epilogue 242 Traversing the Golden Porte—The Problem with Daoist Studies 242 Stephen R. Bokenkamp 242 Index 260