Old Age and Aging in Early Medieval and Medieval Chinese Poetry

CHINA HUMANITIES

SPEAKER: Kerstin Storm, University of Münster

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.

About the speaker

Kerstin Storm has been Professor of Sinology at the Institute of Sinology and East Asian Studies at the University of Münster, Germany, since 2022. She received her PhD from the University of Münster with a dissertation entitled Childhood in the Poetry of Bai Juyi (772–846) (Kindheit in der Dichtung des Bai Juyi; Ostasien 2014). Her postdoctoral years she spent at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University, Japan, where she scholarly engaged in the field of law and literature and studied modes of argumentation in pan (“decisions”) from the Tang dynasty, and at Trier University, where she initiated her research on conceptions of old age with a project entitled “Variety and Variability of Indigenous Perceptions of Age and Ageing in Chinese Poetry.”