Health & the Art of Living: Illness Narratives in Early Medieval Chinese Literature

Research Lecture

Friday Nov. 6 

2:00-4:00pm 

Humanities Gateway 1030

Speaker: Antje Richter, Professor of Chinese Literature, University of Colorado Boulder

Discussant: Huijun Mai Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA

In this talk, I introduce my research on narratives of health and illness in early medieval Chinese literature (ca. 200-ca. 600). I survey a range of literary sources—essays, prefaces, correspondence, religious scriptures, and poetry—to explore the spectrum of views on health and illness that are expressed in these texts. One theme that emerges is the deep concern of writers, troubled by overwork and excessive internal exertion, with the preservation and cultivation of their literary creativity. Another theme is how writers of self-narratives reflected on their physical conditions to legitimize authorship, maintain intimate relationships, or obtain sick leave. Yet another theme is the rise of sickbed poetry in early medieval China. Shaped by Xie Lingyun and the Vimalakirti sutra, it helped to establish illness as a topic in the refined literature of the period. Drawing attention to the grounding of literature in the lived experience of their creators, the talk aims at illuminating the conditions of literary production in early medieval China.