Promotional Information

Offers a new interpretation of Chinese Buddhist art focusing on the spiritual beliefs of the medieval Chinese

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Many Treasures Stupa: Visionary Signpost and Cognitive Model
2. Textual Space and Pictorial Reconstitution
3. The Circumstantial World and the Numinous Realm
4. Mapping and Transformation
5. Mirroring and Transformation
6. Chronotope and Heterotopia
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Chinese Glossary
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index

About the Author

Eugene Y. Wang is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University.

Reviews

"Shaping the Lotus Sutra ranges over a dazzling array of topics, all of them fascinating and all tied to the central goal of illuminating the visual logic of medieval Buddhist art." Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University "I react to Wang's work as I do to Zizek's: I find it electrifying." Jerome Silbergeld, Princeton University "Shaping the Lotus Sutra explores what the medieval Chinese actually believed about spiritual matters, through careful analysis of artistic representations of its most beloved text, the Lotus Sutra." Amy McNair, University of Kansas