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Keywords = medieval Chinese poetry

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18 pages, 273 KB  
Article
Approaching Saint Bernard’s Sermons on the “Song of Songs” through the Book of Odes (Shijing): A Confluence of Medieval Theology and Chinese Culture
by Yanbo Zheng
Religions 2024, 15(4), 513; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040513 - 21 Apr 2024
Viewed by 2779
Abstract
This paper aims to decode medieval theology from the vantage point of ancient Chinese poetry, employing a cross-textual methodology that encourages a fusion of horizons. It highlights Saint Bernard’s profound and influential theological exegesis of the “Song of Songs”, particularly his comparison of [...] Read more.
This paper aims to decode medieval theology from the vantage point of ancient Chinese poetry, employing a cross-textual methodology that encourages a fusion of horizons. It highlights Saint Bernard’s profound and influential theological exegesis of the “Song of Songs”, particularly his comparison of the divine–human relationship to the conjugal bond. The present study posits that readers from Chinese culture can gain access to Saint Bernard’s mystical theology through the sentiment of love, as portrayed in the Book of Odes (Shijing). Initially addressing love as a core human sentiment, this study progresses by juxtaposing the representations of love in the Book of Odes with those in the “Song of Songs”. This comparative analysis culminates in an exploration of Saint Bernard’s theological perspectives, illuminated through these analogous depictions of love. The results affirm that engaging with Saint Bernard’s discourse on love via the Book of Odes is not only feasible but also instrumental in dispelling widespread misconceptions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Medieval Theology and Philosophy from a Cross-Cultural Perspective)
17 pages, 1879 KB  
Article
A Constant Cascade: Ancient and Medieval Verse on the Four Waterways
by Nicholas Morrow Williams
Religions 2022, 13(2), 166; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020166 - 14 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4625
Abstract
The literary representation of China’s great rivers has repeatedly been transformed by changes in religious belief and ritual. In the Book of Songs, rivers figure primarily as political boundaries and figures of separation. Though they may already play a role in religious [...] Read more.
The literary representation of China’s great rivers has repeatedly been transformed by changes in religious belief and ritual. In the Book of Songs, rivers figure primarily as political boundaries and figures of separation. Though they may already play a role in religious rites, their geographical identity is paramount. However, in the “Nine Songs” of the Elegies of Chu, they appear in a new guise as sites of divine encounter and shamanistic flight. Their treatment in later works may be regarded as a peculiar synthesis of these two traditions. Once the Four Waterways were designated as the object of state ritual in the Western Han, their divine status was widely accepted, along with explicitly political ramifications. For instance, the god of the Yellow River was honored as a participant in flood control and imperial governance writ large. Meanwhile, the tradition of the epideictic fu also celebrates the awesome scale of China’s waterways, reaching a culmination not long after the fall of the Han in Guo Pu’s (286–324) “Rhapsody on the Yangzi River”. However, it is noteworthy how often the fu tradition eschews material description of rivers in favor of celebrating their numinous powers and divine inhabitants. Because of this turn towards the divine in the medieval literary tradition, it is no accident that one of the most prominent subjects of fluvial verse in the Tang is not body of water at all but rather the Sky River, or Milky Way. Full article
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