Way of Complete Perfection, The: A Quanzhen Daoist Anthology by Komjathy Louis;

Author:Komjathy, Louis; [Komjathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Taoism, Eastern, philosophy, Taoist
ISBN: 9781438446530
Google: U1rA_P5cq2cC
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2013-06-05T23:57:15.178272+00:00

Chapter Six

Hagiographical Ideals

Hagiographies, or “accounts of saints,” are religious texts aimed at documenting the lives of major personages and at inspiring other adherents or potential members of the tradition. The genre is perhaps most often associated with the lives of medieval Catholic saints.1 Hagiographies frequently include tales of extraordinary qualities, uncommon feats, and miraculous occurrences. In this way, hagiography differs from a modern notion of “biography,” or third-person accounts of an individual that aim at “accuracy” and “objectivity.” At the same time, hagiography is not “fiction.” The study and reading of hagiography requires that one reflect on the compiler's potential motivations and concerns, those of his or her religious community, the intended audience, as well as audience expectations and generic conventions (see Campany 2002, 98–100). Moreover, as Robert Campany has pointed out,

To hagiography as a type of writing we can apply the tired but serviceable notion that it, like other religious representations, serves as both “model of” and “model for”; that is to say, it is both descriptive of and prescriptive for religious life. The hagiographies of any religious tradition are where its airy speculations, its abstract pronouncements, and its systematic prescriptions for life touch ground in particularity and assume the scale of the human. Precisely because hagiography intends to inspire belief, veneration, and perhaps emulation, its depictions of the contexts of religious life must be, for the most part, realistic, which is to say, recognizable and familiar to readers. We too easily forget to ponder the expectations of the readers for whom premodern hagiographies were written, whose mental and social landscape was part of what was portrayed in them. Because it announces itself as an account of the lives of real persons, hagiography must meet readers on that familiar landscape before attempting to move them to the horizon where it meets transcendence; it must give a recognizable model for life as readers know it, and cannot content itself only with giving models for the ideal religious life. (2002, 100–1)

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