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Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents by Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE)
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By the middle of the third century BCE, some people in China had begun to imagine it possible to employ esoteric methods to refashion themselves into posthuman beings with spirit-like capabilities, enhanced bodies, and greatly extended lifespans. Such beings were termed transcendents ( xian 仙). Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents ( Liexian zhuan 列仙傳), attributed to the imperial bibliographer Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE), is the earliest extant collection of colorful stories about such figures. This volume makes available a critical edition and the first complete, annotated English translation of a text preserving some of the earliest mentions of alchemical, dietary, and medicinal methods of self-cultivation that later became standard in transcendence-seekers’ repertoire of practices. Through this work we can already glimpse the sorts of engagements with local communities that made the quest for transcendence a matter of keen interest not just to practitioners themselves but to many in Chinese society for centuries thereafter.
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Keywords
- Chinese Humanities
- Chinesische Geisteswissenschaften
- Liu
- Liu Xiang
- Selbstkultivierung
- self-cultivation
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets
- thema EDItEUR::G Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects::GT Interdisciplinary studies::GTM Regional / International studies
- transcendentalism
- Transzendentalismus
- Xiang
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