China Humanities Seminar featuring Kerstin Storm — Old Age and Aging in Medieval Chinese Poetry

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Speaker : Kerstin Storm , University of Münster

***Please note the different location for this talk in the series.***

Perceptions of old age and aging in so-called traditional China are often reduced to two extremes: on the one hand, respect for the elderly, commonly associated with the Confucian cardinal virtue of filial piety, and on the other the Daoist ideal of longevity. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the cultural and aesthetic conceptualization of the stages of life, and of old age in particular, in Chinese literary works. Poetry offers a remarkably diverse range of representations of the aging process. These include, but are not limited to, impassionate laments of both physical and mental decline as well as portrayals of perceived tranquility, wisdom, serenity, or joy in later stages of life. This talk examines representations of old age in early medieval Chinese poetry. Moving beyond familiar stereotypes, it explores the aesthetic variability of poetic responses to aging. By tracing literary traditions, detecting intertextual connections, and situating individual representations within their respective literary and historical contexts, it seeks to illuminate a range of conceptions of, and attitudes towards, the later stages of life in early medieval and medieval China.

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