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Charming Cadavers

Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature

Liz Wilson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:5th Dec '96

Should be back in stock very soon

Charming Cadavers cover

In this study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women, Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions of spirituality. She argues that despite the marginal role women played in monastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhist hagiographic literature. In narratives used for the edification of Buddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and after death) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring spiritual growth through sexual abstention and repulsion in the immediate world. Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representation of women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of an drocentrism in Buddhist literature and practice.

ISBN: 9780226900544

Dimensions: 23mm x 15mm x 2mm

Weight: 454g

276 pages