Religion and Prison Art in Ming China (1368-1644) Creative Environment, Creative Subjects (Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences)

Approaching the prison as a creative environment and imprisoned officials as creative subjects in Ming China (1368-1644), Ying Zhang introduces important themes at the intersection of premodern Chinese religion, poetry, and visual and material culture. The Ming is known for its extraordinary cultural and economic accomplishments in the increasingly globalized early modern world. For scholars of Chinese religion and art, this era crystallizes the essential and enduring characteristics in these two spheres. Drawing on scholarship on Chinese philosophy, religion, aesthetics, poetry, music, and visual and material culture, Zhang illustrates how the prisoners understood their environment as creative and engaged it creatively. She then offers a literature survey on the characteristics of premodern Chinese religion and art that helps situate the questions of “creative environment” and “creative subject” within multiple fields of scholarship. Contents Religion and Prison Art in Ming China (1368–1644) Creative Environment, Creative Subjects Abstract Keywords Cast of Characters Introduction The Ming Prison as a Creative Environment Defamiliarizing the Familiar—or—Why Poetry? Chinese Religion as an Art of Life—or—Why the Art of Living? Format, Contents, and the Structure of the Volume Part 1 1 Creative Nature and the Calendar in Prison Poetry 1.1 The Agricultural Calendar: Lichun (the Establishment of Spring) and Liqiu (the Establishment of Autumn) 1.2 The Social Calendar 1.2.1 The New Year 1.2.2 Duanwu (the Fifth Day of the Fifth Month) and Chongyang(the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month) 1.3 The Personal Calendar 1.3.1 Days for the Dead 1.3.2 Birthdays 2 The Self in Nature, Ritual, and Poetry 2.1 Self-Cultivation and Nature 2.2 Self-Cultivation and Poetry Part 2 3 The Literati Art of Living in Confinement 3.1 The Zither 3.2 Flowers and Trees 3.3 Visual Art 3.3.1 Appreciating Paintings 3.3.2 Portraits 3.3.3 Calligraphy 4 The Art of Living: Nourishing Life, Transcending the Form 4.1 Imagetext and the Shape of Life 4.2 The Art of Living and the Religion of the People Acknowledgments Bibliography