Why Poetry for the Middle-Tang “Poet-Monks”?

Abstract This essay asks why monks’ literary pursuits came in the Middle Tang period (roughly 755–825) to be particularly associated with the single genre of shi -poetry 詩. Though monks in China had previously engaged extensively in literary writing and had written significant amounts of shi -poetry, no monk before this period had been labeled a “ shi-seng ” 詩僧 (“poet-monk”). This essay suggests that this novel Middle-Tang phenomenon reflects the way discourse about literature in general, and key genres of prose in particular, had begun to connect literary writing with a Confucianism increasingly conceptualized in contradistinction to Buddhism. By comparison, discourse focused on shi -poetry partly resisted this Confucianization and preserved features of an earlier vision of literary composition that made room for Buddhist participation.