Project MUSE®: Religion & Literature - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Religion & Literature.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 50 (2018) through current issueLatest Articles: Religion & LiteratureTWOProject MUSE®Religion & Literature2328-69110888-3769Latest articles in Religion & Literature. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Religious and Literary Infrastructure in the Tang-Song Transition: Bai Juyi and Beyond
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987768
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When we call a work of literature "religious," we typically do so on the basis of its content, its usage, or the identity of its creator: a hymn praises a deity, a chant accompanies confession, a parable illustrates a doctrine, a poem quotes a scripture, a priest composes a song, a work contains a flash of faith.1 These approaches reflect longstanding assumptions about "religion and literature" rooted in the field's almost exclusive focus on modern Abrahamic religions, especially as they exist in Europe and North America. For example, looking at the back issues of this journal, a mere 82 of its 1,025 articles currently accessible via JSTOR in July 2023 mention the words "Buddhist" or "Buddhism" even once (8%). Of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallReligious and Literary Infrastructure in the Tang-Song Transition: Bai Juyi and Beyond2026-04-19text/htmlen-USReligious and Literary Infrastructure in the Tang-Song Transition: Bai Juyi and Beyond2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®994282026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Introduction: New Perspectives on Buddhism and Chinese Literature
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987767
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In modern academic institutions, scholars of Buddhism are often situated in departments of religion, while scholars of Chinese literature typically work in departments of Asian languages and cultures.1 But how salient are the academic distinction and institutional divide between "religion" and "literature" in the original cultural contexts of the works we study? Whether one agrees with Erik Zürcher's groundbreaking claim about "the Buddhist conquest of China," or follows Kenneth Ch'en's counterargument for "the Chinese transformation of Buddhism," the processes of conquest or transformation could never have happened without Chinese literature, which has both shaped and been shaped by Buddhism.2 Some pioneers have
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallIntroduction: New Perspectives on Buddhism and Chinese Literature2026-04-19text/htmlen-USIntroduction: New Perspectives on Buddhism and Chinese Literature2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®364382026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Metamorphosis of the Snake Empress: Emperor Wu of the Liang'S Wife from Classical and Vernacular Narratives to Rituals and Religious Art
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987769
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While combing through late imperial or early modern Chinese collections of liturgical painted scrolls depicting the Ten Kings of Hell, such as the ones kept by Professor Li Yuanguo 李遠國 in Chengdu, one cannot fail to notice, in parts of the scrolls devoted to short narrative scenes depicting famous visitors to the Netherworld, a rather strange group.1 It is composed of a huge snake with a human female head accompanied by the two male figures of a Buddhist monk and an emperor. The strange trio can be identified as Xiao Yan 蕭衍 (464–549); Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty 梁武帝 (r. 502–549), sometimes called "the Chinese Aśoka," as he has been historically renowned for his Buddhist faith; the cleric is holy monk Baozhi 寶誌
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallMetamorphosis of the Snake Empress: Emperor Wu of the Liang'S Wife from Classical and Vernacular Narratives to Rituals and Religious Art2026-04-19text/htmlen-USMetamorphosis of the Snake Empress: Emperor Wu of the Liang'S Wife from Classical and Vernacular Narratives to Rituals and Religious Art2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®1005472026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19The Therapeutic Text: Jin Shengtan's Sixth Work of Genius
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987770
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It would seem natural to regard Jin Shengtan's 金聖歎 (1608–1661) Sixth Work of Genius 第六才子書 (1656), his annotated edition of the song-drama Story of the Western Wing 西廂記, as drama criticism.1 To do so would be in keeping with Jin's modern reputation as a literary critic and his plan to produce six so-called Works of Genius—commentary editions of some of China's most beloved written works. Yet one historical perspective, that of the poet Xu Zeng 徐增 (b. 1612), invites a different reading. Xu Zeng met Jin through the Buddhist monk Shengmo 聖默 in 1644 and subsequently attended Jin's lectures among the temples and residences of Suzhou.2 Years later, in a letter composed in the summer of 1656, Xu addresses Jin's intimate
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallThe Therapeutic Text: Jin Shengtan's Sixth Work of Genius2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe Therapeutic Text: Jin Shengtan's Sixth Work of Genius2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®970992026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Chan Practice through Literary Commentary: A Buddhist Rereading of a Romantic Drama in Seventeenth-Century China
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987771
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In a late seventeenth-century edition of the renowned play Xixiangji 西 廂記 (Story of the Western Wing, hereafter Western Wing), the Buddhist layman Pan Tingzhang 潘廷章 (1612–after 1702), the editor and commentator to this edition, boldly states: "Western Wing can enter the Buddhist canon" 《西廂》 可以入藏.2 Given that Western Wing was known as "a lover's bible" of Chinese literature,3 Pan's statement may sound puzzling: How, one might ask, can a romantic drama be equivalent to a Buddhist scripture? In fact, Pan's statement illustrates a significant cultural trend of the Ming–Qing period, namely, the interpenetration of popular literature and religious traditions. This engagement often went in both directions: Critics adopted
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallChan Practice through Literary Commentary: A Buddhist Rereading of a Romantic Drama in Seventeenth-Century China2026-04-19text/htmlen-USChan Practice through Literary Commentary: A Buddhist Rereading of a Romantic Drama in Seventeenth-Century China2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®1071862026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19The Spiritual, the Poetic, and the Erotic: The Forgotten Buddhism of Gong Zizhen (1792–1841) in His Poem Collection Miscellaneous Poems of the Jihai Year
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987772
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Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792-1841) is one of the most controversial figures in the history of late imperial Chinese literature and intellectual history. On the one hand, he was praised as a pioneer of "modernity" in many ways. As early as the 1930s, literary critics in China commented that the tremendous change in Chinese literature began with Gong Zizhen and lauded Gong's poetry as "the origin of Romanticism."1 David Wang at the turn of the twenty-first century used Gong's poetry to exemplify the concept of "repressed modernities" in Chinese literature, new perspectives that had developed before the arrival of Western influence.2 Politically, Gong called for learning new technologies to strengthen the country, supported
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallThe Spiritual, the Poetic, and the Erotic: The Forgotten Buddhism of Gong Zizhen (1792–1841) in His Poem Collection Miscellaneous Poems of the Jihai Year2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe Spiritual, the Poetic, and the Erotic: The Forgotten Buddhism of Gong Zizhen (1792–1841) in His Poem Collection Miscellaneous Poems of the Jihai Year2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®911452026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Falling into the Netherworld: Buddhism and Contemporary Chinese BL (Boy's Love) Literature
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987773
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We have been living in hell, but hell is not the end of the journey. 我們一直生活在地獄，但地獄並不是旅程的終點。 Tideng ying taohua 提燈映桃花Shenjian 神鑒, an online BL fiction2 published on Jinjiang Literature City in 2014,3 describes a romantic scene of the two protagonists as follows:
Tangshi pinches his earlobe and speaks in a trembling voice, "Mahāyāna Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Tenth Section of Adorning the Pure Land, the Twentieth Section of Detachment from Physical Appearance4…You have been practicing before the Dīpaṃkara Buddha for over ten years. Will you fail for lack of a final effort due to karmic obstruction and the demonic mind, or will you take me as completely empty…Elder Dharma Brother Shifei…"
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallFalling into the Netherworld: Buddhism and Contemporary Chinese BL (Boy's Love) Literature2026-04-19text/htmlen-USFalling into the Netherworld: Buddhism and Contemporary Chinese BL (Boy's Love) Literature2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®997702026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Undergoing Trials: Refiguring Buddho-Daoist Eschatology in Contemporary Fantasy Novels
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987774
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Internet literature emerged in China in the 1990s and became commercialized in the early 2000s. This literature is produced and consumed in interactive online contexts. Currently it is dominated by fantasy novels serialized on literary platforms.1 These novels draw on Chinese religion as a rich repository of resources to enact worlds and subjects beyond post-Enlightenment scientific rationality. Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer describe Chinese religion as a coherent field of ideas, practices, and institutions. Before the twentieth century, this system of religion encompassed a common set of cosmological assumptions and ethical teachings; practices adopted by all levels of society to communicate with deities
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallUndergoing Trials: Refiguring Buddho-Daoist Eschatology in Contemporary Fantasy Novels2026-04-19text/htmlen-USUndergoing Trials: Refiguring Buddho-Daoist Eschatology in Contemporary Fantasy Novels2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®1166022026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Introduction: Simone Weil's Notion of Value in Relation to Literature
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987775
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"When literature becomes indifferent to the opposition of good and evil, it betrays its function and cannot lay claim to excellence."1Since Simone Weil is lauded for her single-minded pursuit of understanding human nature in relation to its creator, the topic of this forum raises valid questions that need further responses. What relationship does literature have to Weil's concept of values in her religious philosophy? What impact can her innovative literary work have on writers who follow her? Why does she highlight Sophocles' characters of Antigone and Electra and Shakespeare's King Lear as embodiments of the role affliction plays in humankind's relationship with the divine? How does her own writing aid in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallIntroduction: Simone Weil's Notion of Value in Relation to Literature2026-04-19text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Simone Weil's Notion of Value in Relation to Literature2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®280282026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19The Responsibility of Writers: The True Relationship of Good and Evil
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987776
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In 1941, Simone Weil spoke out on the question of writers' responsibility in France; certain writers had been accused of having contributed to the decline of France and to its defeat in 1940. Her position on the responsibility of literature is not that of reactionary ideologues who lament the decline of morals in the arts based on a simplistic conception of the good. It is necessary, she says, to distinguish "two goods of the same designation, but radically different: one is the opposite of evil and one is absolute. … The absolute has no opposite."1 In other words, "what is directly contrary to an evil is [perhaps] never of the order of the higher good," but only "a good in the punitive mode."2 Losing awareness of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallThe Responsibility of Writers: The True Relationship of Good and Evil2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe Responsibility of Writers: The True Relationship of Good and Evil2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®440232026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Concerning the "Medium" and the "Upper" Levels of Love: Martha Nussbaum and Simone Weil on Antigone
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987777
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Literature plays a central role in learning moral philosophy and ethics. Among the foremost authors in this area, Martha Nussbaum is a crucial figure. For her, literature has a high ethical value because it helps us cultivate the ability to recognize others as complete persons with inner lives of their own. Literature allows the reader to bridge distance, to become familiar with foreign experiences, while it encourages the development of emotions such as generosity and compassion. Yet, as Hanna Meretoja has already pointed out, the ethical potentialities of literature championed by Nussbaum are narrowly psychological, normative, and ahistorical.1 In particular, Nussbaum conceives the relationship between the reader
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallConcerning the "Medium" and the "Upper" Levels of Love: Martha Nussbaum and Simone Weil on Antigone2026-04-19text/htmlen-USConcerning the "Medium" and the "Upper" Levels of Love: Martha Nussbaum and Simone Weil on Antigone2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®288302026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Simone Weil's Artful Transpositions of King Lear
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987778
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Discussing education in The Need for Roots, Simone Weil (1909–1943) praises Shakespeare's King Lear in a single sentence, naming it "the direct fruit of the pure spirit of love."1 Similarly brief references to Shakespeare's tragedy appear in Weil's notebooks, letters, and late essays. S. Nagaragan and Stephanie Gehring have explored the critical value of Weil's comments for Shakespeareans, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to what this great play contributed to Weil's own late writing via her philosophical transpositions of it.2Framing my argument with biographical references to Weil's significant encounters with King Lear in April, 1938 and in January, 1943, I here examine three of her wartime
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallSimone Weil's Artful Transpositions of King Lear2026-04-19text/htmlen-USSimone Weil's Artful Transpositions of King Lear2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®378072026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19The Adventure of Electra: Simone Weil's Mystical-Political Reading of Sophocles
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987779
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Literature stands at the core of Simone Weil's work. She was a writer herself, as proved by the poetic quality of her writings and by her few, but meaningful dramatic compositions; she was concerned about the social and political responsibility of literature; and, most importantly, she acknowledged its crucial role in unveiling the truth of the human condition.1 From this point of view, her readings of Greek literature deserve special attention. Weil engages in an original interpretation of the texts based on her own careful translation of selected passages. In doing so, she delivers an innovative, non-academic understanding of the classics, aimed at unfolding its relevance for contemporary times.2Among the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallThe Adventure of Electra: Simone Weil's Mystical-Political Reading of Sophocles2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe Adventure of Electra: Simone Weil's Mystical-Political Reading of Sophocles2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®599092026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19"On the open water": George Oppen and Simone Weil
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987780
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The poet Fanny Howe has written movingly of Simone Weil and the American poet George Oppen as two ships passing in the mine-ridden midnight of the twentieth century. These "two great minds [that] appeared during the worst of times" made their actual transatlantic journeys several months apart; Weil from Marseilles to New York with her parents in the early summer of 1942, and Oppen from New York to Marseilles in October 1944, with the 103rd Antitank Division.1 Six months later, in the Vosges mountains, Oppen would spend ten harrowing hours shrapnel-wounded in a foxhole next to a dying comrade, pinned down by German artillery.2 By then, of course, Weil herself would be two years dead, interred in Bybrook Cemetery
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmall"On the open water": George Oppen and Simone Weil2026-04-19text/htmlen-US"On the open water": George Oppen and Simone Weil2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®465172026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Simone Weil and Henry David Thoreau: The Art of Seeing in the Practice of Journal Writing
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987781
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The philosophers Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) and Simone Weil (1909–1943) were both profoundly individualist thinkers. This individualism has sometimes attracted criticism to their political thought. Indeed, Weil's harsh views of collective life and Thoreau's leeriness of what he called the "They" have been responsible for inaccurate portrayals of their work.1 As Laura Dassow Walls writes in her moving biography of Thoreau, "[W]e have invented two Thoreaus, both of them hermits, yet radically at odds with each other. One speaks for nature; the other for social justice."2 We have also had to suffer the caricature of two Weils: the "early" Weil, fully engaged in politics, and the "later" one, whose interests in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallSimone Weil and Henry David Thoreau: The Art of Seeing in the Practice of Journal Writing2026-04-19text/htmlen-USSimone Weil and Henry David Thoreau: The Art of Seeing in the Practice of Journal Writing2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®440622026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Simone Weil's "Spiritual Autobiography": An Innovative Literary Art Form
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987782
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Her letters to me are the most beautiful of all the texts she entrusted to me.1During her brief stay in the south of France from September 15th, 1940 through May 14th, 1942, while waiting for passage across the ocean, Simone Weil wrote a series of six letters to her dear friend and mentor Père Perrin; the last two were posted from Casablanca, a stopover on the five-week-long voyage to the United States. A fragment of another was found posthumously with her papers.2 The two friends had become acquainted nine months after her arrival in Marseille and had been meeting regularly in the crypt of the Dominican monastery to discuss spiritual matters with the aim of composing a collection of essays centered on "the most
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallSimone Weil's "Spiritual Autobiography": An Innovative Literary Art Form2026-04-19text/htmlen-USSimone Weil's "Spiritual Autobiography": An Innovative Literary Art Form2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®361882026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19E. Jane Doering (1932–2024): A Tribute
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987783
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An epigram adorned the poster for the 2022 meeting of the American Weil Society, "Translations of Beauty: Simone Weil and Literature," at which versions of the essays in this forum were first presented. From among Weil's many words about beauty, E. Jane Doering selected this quote for the poster: "Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity."1 What our dear friend, colleague, and co-editor chose as an epigram may now serve as a fitting epitaph for her own life, which she lived out with joy for what is eternal: love, truth, justice, beauty.On August 23, 2024, I returned to my office at Notre Dame for the first time after a hiatus of three full weeks
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallE. Jane Doering (1932–2024): A Tribute2026-04-19text/htmlen-USE. Jane Doering (1932–2024): A Tribute2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®213902026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19About the Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987784
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Ann W. Astell is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Formerly professor of English at Purdue University, she is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Religion. She is the author of seven books, most recently The Saint's Life and the Senses of Scripture: Hagiography as Exegesis (2024) and the editor or co-editor of seven collections of essays, the most recent of which is Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality (2020). Her essays on Simone Weil have appeared in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, The Journal of Continental Philosophy, and The Palgrave Handbook on Mimetic Theory and Religion. Astell's book, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallAbout the Contributors2026-04-19text/htmlen-USAbout the Contributors2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®145312026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Is Poetry Divinely Inspired?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987785
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Apelles, the renowned painter of ancient Greece, one of the most influential artists in all of classical antiquity; Apelles, the court painter for Alexander the Great, honoured for posterity through the writings of Pliny the Elder, feted for his ability to capture subjects with striking realism; Apelles, lauded for his innovative techniques, including his application of a varnish known as atramentum, which he used to protect and enhance the brilliance of his colors, making his works more lifelike and durable: Apelles was stuck.1He was creatively stymied. He was trying to paint a horse, but he was unable to depict the foam at its mouth. Each failed attempt only deepened his frustration until it became unbearable.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/795/image/coversmallIs Poetry Divinely Inspired?2026-04-19text/htmlen-USIs Poetry Divinely Inspired?2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®1109712026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19