Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Women in Culture and Society)

ISBN: 0226900541

Author: Wilson, Liz

Condition: New

In this highly original study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women,Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions ofspirituality. She argues that despite the marginal role women played inmonastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhisthagiographic literature. In narratives used for the edification ofBuddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and afterdeath) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring spiritualgrowth through sexual abstention and repulsion in the immediate world.Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representationof women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of androcentrism in Buddhistliterature and practice. She also makes persuasive use of recenthistorical work on the religious lives of women in medievalChristianity, finding common ground in the role of miraculousafflictions.This lively and readable study brings provocative new tools and insightsto the study of women in religious life.