February 27 | Jason Protass, Brown University

Date: 

Monday, February 27, 2017, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge St.

The Poetry Demon: Tensions within Chinese Buddhist Monks’ Literature

Abstract: Buddhist monks in Song dynasty China were visited by a literary impulse that interrupted religious activities and ritual. This unwelcome muse was sometimes referred to as the demon of poetry. In this talk, I explore some lesser-known intersections of Chinese poetry and the Buddhist path. I read monks’ verse together with prescriptive texts that restricted literary activity, including legal codes, primers, and hagiography. I hypothesize that at the heart of monastic verse culture was the negotiation of competing commitments to Buddhist monasticism and to literary expression.