Courting Transcendence: Poetry and Daoism in the Southern Dynasties (420–589)

Abstract

This paper examines some aspects of the interaction between court poetry and the Shangqing Daoist tradition during the Southern Dynasties, with special attention to the changes in poetic imagery, its religious sources and the contexts and audiences of poetic performance. It surveys how the Shangqing revelations enriched the early medieval poetic repertoire as reflected in the treatment of three broad topics: divine topography, attainment of immortality, and the image of perfected life.