书讯 | 傅飞岚著Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliveran

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Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China

Series: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 118

Author: Franciscus Verellen

ISBN: 9780674237247 

Publication Date: 04/22/2019

About this Book

Imperiled Destinies examines the evolution of Daoist beliefs about human liability and redemption over eight centuries and outlines ritual procedures for rescuing an ill‐starred destiny. From the second through the tenth century CE, Daoism emerged as a liturgical organization that engaged vigorously with Buddhism and transformed Chinese thinking about suffering, the nature of evil, and the aims of liberation. In the fifth century, elements of classical Daoism combined with Indian yogic practices to interiorize the quest for deliverance. The medieval record portrays a world engulfed by evil, where human existence was mortgaged from birth and burdened by increasing debts and obligations in this world and the next. Against this gloomy outlook, Daoism offered ritual and sacramental instruments capable of acting on the unseen world, providing therapeutic relief and ecstatic release from apprehensions of death, disease, war, spoilt harvests, and loss. Drawing on prayer texts, liturgical sermons, and experiential narratives, Franciscus Verellen focuses on the Daoist vocabulary of bondage and redemption, the changing meanings of sacrifice, and metaphoric conceptualizations bridging the visible and invisible realms. The language of medieval supplicants envisaged the redemption of an imperiled destiny as debt forgiveness, and deliverance as healing, purification, release, or emergence from darkness into light.

Franciscus Verellen

A historian of medieval China, Franciscus Verellen is Professor in the History of Daoism and a former Director (2004-2014) of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO). He currently heads the EFEO Hong Kong Center. 

Verellen has published widely in the fields of regional cultural history and Daoism, including Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China (Harvard University Press 2019), The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (3 volumes, ed. with Kristofer Schipper, University of Chicago Press 2004), and Du Guangting (850-933): taoïste de cour à la fin de la Chine médiévale (Collège de France 1989).

After doctoral studies at Oxford and Paris, Franciscus Verellen taught at Columbia University, New York, and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, before joining the EFEO in 1992. He held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and invitations as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (Munich, Oxford, and Heidelberg), fellow-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Wassenaar), Stewart Lecturer in the Humanities (Princeton), member and Edwin C. and Elisabeth A. Whitehead Fellow in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and distinguished adjunct researcher at Renmin University, Beijing.

Since 2014, Franciscus Verellen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as Honorary Research Fellow in the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, University of Hong Kong.

Distinctions: member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, Institut de France; knight, French Legion of Honour; officer, Palmes Académiques; knight, Royal Order of Sahametrei; officer, Royal Order of Cambodia; Association of American Publishers 2005 Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing, American Academy of Religion 2007 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (for The Taoist Canon).

傅飛嵐是法國遠東學院道教史教授、法蘭西學院銘文與美文學院院士及香港中文大學中國文化研究所高級研究員。並且自2004迄2014年，擔任法國遠東學院院長；他先後任法國高等研究學院（巴黎）、美國哥倫比亞大學、普林斯頓大學、加洲大學柏克萊分校及香港中文大學訪問教授；目前任法國遠東學院香港聯絡中心的主任。傅飛嵐的著述涉及中國中古宗教文化及晚唐和五代社會史，包括《杜光庭─唐末五代皇家道士》（法蘭西公學院，1989年）、與施舟人教授合編的《道藏通考》（芝加哥大學出版社2004年出版）及最近出版的新作《命途多舛─中國中古道教對救贖之追求》（哈佛大學出版社，2019年）。

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https://www.efeo.fr/chercheurs.php?code=1153&l=EN&ch=76