Sensing Sacred Texts - James W Watts
Neo-Confucian Sensory Readings of Scriptures: the Reading Methods of Chu Hsi and Yi Hwang
Sensing Sacred Texts - James W Watts
Yohan Yoo [+]
Seoul National University
Yohan Yoo is a Professor of Comparative Religion at Seoul National University. His previous publications include three books in Korean: Myths of Our Era (2012), Understanding Religious Studies (2020), and Understanding Religious Symbolism (2021). He has also co-authored Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution (Routledge, 2021) and co-edited Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings (Equinox, 2021) with James W. Watts.
Description
Yohan Yoo examines the instructions of two influential Neo-Confucian sages on the discipline of reading Confucian texts. They recommended imaginatively tasting the text while visualizing its author and hearing the author’s voice reciting the contents rather than the reader’s own. Yoo emphasizes that this discipline went beyond metaphor to employ the senses imaginatively in ritual reading.