Religious and Numinous Practices in the Novel Pomegranate Bloom

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30996/anaphora.v7i2.10783
Keywords: Institutionalised religion, folk religion, animal worship, divination, traditional Chinese medicine

Abstract

A novel entitled 石榴花开 Shiliu Huakai ‘Pomegranate Bloom’ (Trans. Mine) (2019) falls into a literary subgenre 乡土文学 xiangtu wenxue ‘native-soil literature’ and it is composed by a Shandong-born fictionist 耿雪凌 Geng Xueling (1968- ). Apart from salient folk attributes paining a vivid portrait of the rural area of southwest Shandong, Pomegranate Bloom is also featured by numinous depictions pertaining to paranormal forces and occult deeds. To be more specific, the narrative encompasses rituals and deities of the institutionalised Taoism and Buddhism, practitioners of esoteric arts and magical powers correlated to popular religion, animal worship and shamanistic curse, a veritable cornucopia of divinatory acts, as well as folk remedies that are surmised to be justified by traditional Chinese medicine.

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Author Biography

Aiqing Wang, University of Liverpool

Dr Aiqing Wang is currently employed as a Lecturer and PhD supervisor at the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film, University of Liverpool. After graduating with a Master of Arts in Linguistics from University College London, she received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of York. Her doctoral project investigated Late Archaic Chinese syntax. Apart from linguistics, her ongoing research interest also includes cultural studies.

Published
2025-01-15
How to Cite
Wang, A. (2025). Religious and Numinous Practices in the Novel Pomegranate Bloom. Anaphora : Journal of Language, Literary, and Cultural Studies, 7(2), 79-95. https://doi.org/10.30996/anaphora.v7i2.10783
Issue
Vol 7 No 2 (2024): DECEMBER
Section
Articles

Copyright (c) 2024 Aiqing Wang

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