ABSTRACTS: Suzhou literatus Jin Shengtan's 金聖歎 (1608–1661) commentary edition of the song-drama Story of the Western Wing has traditionally been read from the standpoint of literary aesthetics, as the work of a critic. The present article departs from this approach by situating Jin Shengtan's commentarial work in relation to its immediate social context, in particular the spiritually experimental literati communities of late-Ming Jiangnan, wherein Jin's drama commentary served as a source of Buddhist therapeutics. Against this backdrop, I present a close reading of Jin's commentary on the scene "Interrogating the Amorous" ( Kao yan 拷艷) from Story of the Western Wing . Over the course of this scene, Jin makes significant changes to earlier recensions of the dramatic work effectively justified by his synthesis of the confession at the heart of this scene with Buddhist repentance ( chanhui 懺 悔). Jin's commentary and editorial decisions collectively refashion the dramatic scene of confession into an adaptation of—or, perhaps, even an artistic proxy for—Buddhist repentance. At the crux of this synthesis, I argue, is Jin's understanding of writing as a medium that can somatically and affectively rework the reader's body to incite an awakening to truth informed by Buddhist corporeality. Through this analysis, I aim to underscore the importance of moving beyond the mere identification of religious rhetoric in early modern Chinese aesthetic criticism to consider how art might engage religious concepts at the level of form. Such cases render conventional scholarly distinctions between "literature" and "religion" null.
Alia Goehr (Sat,) studied this question.