“The role of native religions in Chinese literature – and of literature in Chinese religion – is easily underrated. Compared with, for example, the Psalms, Sanskrit epics, and medieval European art, Chinese literature and philosophy are often considered ‘this-worldly’, more focused on ethics and social harmony than the fate of souls after death. To the extent salvific religions are admitted to exist in early China, they are sometimes caricatured as so monistic as to lack mind-body dualism. Williams’s Soul Summoning not only proves the importance of souls’ wanderings, resurrections, and transcendence in Chinese literature, but also makes significant contributions to the understudied intersections of poetry, performing arts, and religion.” —Asian Studies Review
“In carrying out his close analysis of these ‘key works’ that include different genres and span over millennia, Williams adopts a strategy that ‘aims to excavate the layers of meaning embedded in key literary works rather than survey entire collections or periods’ (p. 17). This is similar to the philological methodology that Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) recommended and demonstrated in his seminal writings such as ‘Philology and Weltliteratur’ and Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. It proves equally effective in Williams’s study. His sensitive analyses of and comments on these carefully chosen texts convincingly demonstrate both the relevance and vitality of the soul-summoning motif throughout the long history of Chinese literature.” —Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
"This is a masterful study of the Elegies of Chu (Chuci), particularly of the foregrounding that ancient collection of Chinese songs and shamanistic incantations gives to the function of the human 'soul' in life and the afterlife, and the many ways the hauntingly beautiful and, at the same time, vexingly indeterminate Elegies has been appropriated and re-created through some two thousand years of later Chinese poetry. To treat in one book such a range of chronological periods and literary genres as these texts represent is a tour de force. Very few scholars working in premodern Chinese literature would dare to undertake such a study; and it is hard to think of anyone else who could do it so well." —Ronald Egan, Stanford University
“Soul summoning was an ancient Chinese ritual that served as a subject of early poetry and evolved into an enduring poetic motif. In his monograph Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning, Nicholas Williams starts his investigation with the soul of Qu Yuan in the Elegies of Chu (Chuci), and traces the summoning of souls in the ensuing literary tradition of the fu (rhapsodies) of Liu Xiang, Liu Zongyuan’s imitations of the Chuci style, Wu Wenying’s ci-lyrics, Tang Xianzu’s drama scripts, and You Tong’s shi poems. This is a fine example of religio-literary scholarship in the vein of Arthur Waley, David Hawkes, and Paul W. Kroll.” —Timothy Wai Keung Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University
"A splendid panorama of Chinese 'soul searching' across the dynasties, from Qu Yuan (d. 278 BCE) to Yang Lian (b. 1955), this book provides fine translations of Classical poetry and new insights into literary, religious and philosophical topics, often uncharted by Western sinology so far. A learned, densely referenced yet always engaging and eminently readable study of the changing concepts of the two Chinese souls, Chinese Poetry as Soul Summoning is an excellent contribution to the fields of Chinese literary and religious histories." —Wolfgang Behr, University of Zurich
