Religious experience and lay society in T'ang China : a reading of Tai Fu's Kuang-i chi
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Religious experience and lay society in T'ang China : a reading of Tai Fu's Kuang-i chi
（Cambridge studies in Chinese history, literature and institutions）
Cambridge University Press, 2002, c1995
First paperback edition
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Note
Bibliography: p. 239-252
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The remains of Tai Fu's lost collection Kuang-i chi ('The Great Book of Marvels') preserve three hundred short tales of encounters with the other world. This study develops a style of close reading through which those tales give access to the lives of individuals in eighth-century China. Through the eyes of a mid-century county official the picture emerges of a complex lay society, served by a mixed priesthood of ritual practitioners, whose members' lives at all levels were profoundly shaped by their perceived experience of contact with the other world. It was a society embarking on fundamental change, and this book uses the sharp historical focus of Tai Fu's collection to study the dynamics of that change. The work gracefully reveals the transition from the beliefs and institutions of early mediaeval China towards those we now recognize as modern.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note to the reader
- Maps
- 1. A sequence of voices
- 2. A contemporary view
- 3. The dynamics of Tai Fu's world
- 4. The worshippers of Mount Hua
- 5. Yu-ch'ih Chiung at An-yang
- 6. Victims of the Yuan Ch'ao rebellion
- 7. Mating with spirits
- Appendix: the stories of Kuang-i chi
- List of works cited
- Index.
by "Nielsen BookData"
