The Hsu-Tang Library presents authoritative and eminently readable translations of classical Chinese literature, in bilingual editions, ranging across three millennia and the entire Sinitic world.\nThis anthology opens up new religious and poetic worlds for readers. It consists of translations of poems written by Buddhist nuns from China's late imperial period (1368-1911). Appreciation of these poems is enhanced by individual biographical accounts for each of the sixty-five nun-poets and an Introduction to the historical, religious, and literary context of these poems, including a concise discussion of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist poetry.\nThe nuns in this anthology come from a range of backgrounds: some were placed in convents when very young; others were former palace ladies or courtesans who found refuge in the religious life; others were women left widowed or destitute in the wake of the various political and social upheavals of the times, especially the violent transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties in the mid-seventeenth century.\nThis period was also marked by a flourishing of women's culture, as more and more women from the gentry-class began not only to receive the classical education required to write poetry, but also to have their works printed and circulated. Most of the poet-nuns in this volume were from this gentry class, and almost all of them had at least one collection of writings, usually poetry, printed in their names. Although most of these collections are now lost, some of their poems have fortunately been preserved in various anthologies from this period, including anthologies dedicated exclusively to women's poetry, as well as in collections of Buddhist records.

An Anthology of Poetry by Buddhist Nuns of Late Imperial China (The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature)

Literature & Fiction

Grant, Beata

Literary

Oxford University Press

One of the most exciting recent developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of an extremely rich and diverse tradition of women's writing of the imperial period (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Many of these writings are of considerable literary quality. Others provide us with moving insights into the lives and feelings of a surprisingly diverse group of women living in Confucian China, a society that perhaps more than any other is known for its patriarchal tradition.
Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, several scholarly books, articles, and even anthologies of women's poetry have been published in the last two decades. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction. 
The authors have presented the selections within their respective biographical and historical contexts. This comprehensive approach helps to clarify traditional Chinese ideas on the nature and function of literature as well as on the role of the woman writer.

The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Idema, Wilt L.

History & Criticism

Harvard University Asia Center

Su Shih (1037-1101) is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese literary and intellectual figures not only of the Northern Sung but of all time. He has been the subject of many studies but, until now, none have attempted to address fully the vital question of Buddhism in his work. Beata Grant has uncovered among Su Shih's voluminous writings an extraordinarily wide range of Buddhist-related poems, hymns, essays, and other writings that attest to Buddhism's importance in the literary culture of this period. In Mount Lu Revisited, Grant significantly alters current perceptions of both Su Shih and of high Sung culture by showing the deep and pervasive influence of Buddhist language, imagery, and ideas on Su's work. The study opens with a concise overview of the complex and multifaceted but little-studied world of eleventh-century Chinese Buddhism and Su's role within it. This is followed by a detailed study of the ways in which the nature of this great poet's engagement with Buddhism was shaped by the constantly changing circumstances of his life and how these changes are reflected in his art. What emerges is a vivid portrait of Su's struggle to resolve creatively the psychological, intellectual, and spiritual tensions in his life, including the classic tension between a world-centered Confucianism and Buddhism's promise of personal liberation. Because many of these struggles reflect larger ones taking place in eleventh-century China as a whole, the light thus shed on Su Shih's life and art also illumines the relation between religious and literary culture during this time. This original and comprehensive work will be of interest not only to students of Su Shih and Sung literature but to all those broadly interested in this important period of Chinese medieval history.

Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih

Reference

Univ of Hawaii Pr

The seventeenth century is generally acknowledged as one of the most politically tumultuous but culturally creative periods of late imperial Chinese history. Scholars have noted the profound effect on, and literary responses to, the fall of the Ming on the male literati elite. Also of great interest is the remarkable emergence beginning in the late Ming of educated women as readers and, more importantly, writers. Only recently beginning to be explored, however, are such seventeenth-century religious phenomena as "the reinvention" of Chan Buddhism―a concerted effort to revive what were believed to be the traditional teachings, texts, and practices of "classical" Chan. And, until now, the role played by women in these religious developments has hardly been noted at all. Eminent Nuns is an innovative interdisciplinary work that brings together several of these important seventeenth-century trends. Although Buddhist nuns have been a continuous presence in Chinese culture since early medieval times and the subject of numerous scholarly studies, this book is one of the first not only to provide a detailed view of their activities at one particular moment in time, but also to be based largely on the writings and self-representations of Buddhist nuns themselves. This perspective is made possible by the preservation of collections of "discourse records" (yulu) of seven officially designated female Chan masters in a seventeenth-century printing of the Chinese Buddhist Canon rarely used in English-language scholarship. The collections contain records of religious sermons and exchanges, letters, prose pieces, and poems, as well as biographical and autobiographical accounts of various kinds. Supplemental sources by Chan monks and male literati from the same region and period make a detailed re-creation of the lives of these eminent nuns possible. Beata Grant brings to her study background in Chinese literature, Chinese Buddhism, and Chinese women’s studies. She is able to place the seven women, all of whom were active in Jiangnan, in their historical, religious, and cultural contexts, while allowing them, through her skillful translations, to speak in their own voices. Together these women offer an important, but until now virtually unexplored, perspective on seventeenth-century China, the history of female monasticism in China, and the contributionof Buddhist nuns to the history of Chinese women’s writing.

Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

University of Hawaii Press

The voices of three female Zen masters reverberate in this much-needed collection. Too often the history of Zen seems to be written as an unbroken masculine line: male teacher to male student. In this timely volume, Beata Grant shows us that women masters do exist—and have always existed. Zen Echoes is a collection of classic koans from Zen’s Chinese history that were first collected and commented on by Miaozong, a twelfth-century nun so adept that her teacher, the legendary Dahui Zonggao, used to tell other students that perhaps if they practiced hard enough, they might be as realized as her. Nearly five hundred years later, the seventeenth-century nuns Baochi and Zukui added their own commentaries to the collection. The three voices—distinct yet harmonious—remind us that enlightenment is at once universal and individual. In her introduction to this shimmering translation, Professor Grant tells us that the verses composed by these women provide evidence that “in a religious milieu made up overwhelmingly of men, there were women who were just as dedicated to Chan practice, just as advanced in their spiritual realization, and just as gifted at using language to convey that which is beyond language.”

Zen Echoes: Classic Koans with Verse Commentaries by Three Female Chan Masters

Politics & Social Sciences

Women's Studies

Wisdom Publications

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