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Podcast: New Books in Medieval History
Episode: Stephen R. Bokenkamp, "A Fourth-Century Daoist Family: The Zhen’gao, or Declarations of the Perfected, Volume 1" (U California Press, 2020)
Description: The Zhen’gao, or Declarations of the Perfected is one of the most important Daoist texts, and a literary classic in its own right. The Declarations of the Perfected collects fragmentary texts—poems, information on the realm of the dead, instructions for practice—revealed to Yang Xi (330—ca. 386) by celestial beings. These texts were assembled and annotated by Tao Hongjing (456–536), whose notes provide a window into textual and literary practices of medieval China. The fragments themselves are richly informative not only about divine beings and celestial realms but also about the social world in which these revelations were made, and the interac...