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Crazy Ji
Chinese Religion and Popular Literature
Meir Shahar
Harvard University Press, 1998
Crazy Ji is the one of the most colorful deities in the pantheon of late imperial and modern China. The author uses the evolution of his cult to address central questions regarding the Chinese religious tradition, its relation to social structure, and the role of vernacular fiction and popular media in shaping religious beliefs. Shahar demonstrates that vernacular novels and oral literature played a major role in the dissemination of knowledge about deities and the growth of cults and argues that the body of religious beliefs and practices we call "Chinese religion" is inseparable from the works of fiction and drama that have served as vehicles for its transmission.
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front cover of Religion in China and Its Modern Fate
Religion in China and Its Modern Fate
Paul R. Katz
Brandeis University Press, 2014
Paul R. Katz has composed a fascinating account of the fate of Chinese religions during the modern era by assessing mutations of communal religious life, innovative forms of religious publishing, and the religious practices of modern Chinese elites traditionally considered models of secular modernity. The author offers a rare look at the monumental changes that have affected modern Chinese religions, from the first all-out assault on them during the 1898 reforms to the eve of the Communist takeover of the mainland. Tracing the ways in which the vast religious resources (texts, expertise, symbolic capital, material wealth, etc.) that circulated throughout Chinese society during the late imperial period were reconfigured during this later era, Katz sheds new light on modern Chinese religious life and the understudied nexus between religion and modern political culture. Religion in China and Its Modern Fate will appeal to a broad audience of religionists and historians of modern China.
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