Traces of the Way: The Poetry of “Divine Transcendence” in the Northern Song Anthology Literature’s Finest (Wen cui)

In her chapter, Shields questions the categories of religion and poetry as she explores the classification of poems in an important yet still understudied Song anthology, the Wen cui (Literature’s Finest). By tracing the shifting conceptualizations of Daoism, Buddhism, and “religion” in the poems of “divine transcendence” (shenxian) in the early tenth-century anthology, she reveals that we may be hampered in understanding Tang Daoist poetry not only by our own modern categorizations, but also by dynamic changes in cultural and literary contexts that shaped the reception of Tang literature during the Song.