Rhetorical uses of the exemplary child trope in the Biographies of Eminent Monks and Biographies of Nuns
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22347577 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher Jensen (0009-0000-0992-040X, Carleton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 63-111 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Chinese Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2372-9988 • E-ISSN: 2372-9996 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23729988.2020.1854572 |
| OpenAlex | W3135253233 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
Chinese hagiographers and historians from the Warring States period onward had a variety of rhetorical tools at their disposal for conveying superlative character, with one of the most ubiquitous being the exemplary child trope. When Chinese Buddhist hagiographers began to memorialise the lives of their renowned forbears (in collections such as the Biographies of Eminent Monks [Gaoseng zhuan] and the Biographies of Nuns [Biqiuni zhuan]), they too had frequent recourse to this rhetorical commonplace. This article explores the ways in which early Chinese Buddhist authors idealised the childhoods of their protagonists, sometimes drawing on traditional Chinese discourses of exemplarity and other times reinterpreting the trope in light of attitudes, characteristics and practices that would have resonated with a Buddhist audience. To account for the sheer volume of these usages, this article also proposes the hypothesis that some were intended to justify the presence of children in monastic communities
Aesthetics · Art · Buddhism · China · Chinese literature · Linguistics · Literature · Rhetoric · Rhetorical device · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Mothers and sons in Chinese Buddhism
Sharing the Light
Doing Discourse Analysis
The Eminent Monk
The Sūtra on Transforming the Female Form
Signs from the Unseen Realm
Mind and Body in Early China
Selfless Offspring
Chinese Views of Childhood
Exemplary Women of Early China
The Buddhist Conquest of China
Chinese Tranformation of Buddhism
The Theme of the Precocious Child in Early Chinese Literature
The Meanings of Cuisines of Transcendence in Late Classical and Early Medieval China
The Invention of the “Eminent Monk”
(Wei Shou On Buddhism1)
Homestyle Vinaya and Docile Boys in Chinese Buddhism
On Some Factors Responsible for The Antibuddhist Persecution Under The Pei-Ch'ao
The Karma of Words
Making Transcendents
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |