Stephen Mitchell’s Version of the Tao Te Ching: A Spiritual Interpretation
This article analyses Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching. With his adoption of the concepts from Zen Buddhism and his borrowing of ideas from Christianity, Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching is not a scholarly faithful translation but rather a spiritual interpre...
| Subtitles: | Special Forum on Taoism and Western Literature |
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| Authors: | ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2020]
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2020, Volume: 34, Issue: 4, Pages: 486-493 |
| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism BM Chinese universism; Confucianism; Taoism CD Christianity and Culture |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article analyses Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching. With his adoption of the concepts from Zen Buddhism and his borrowing of ideas from Christianity, Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching is not a scholarly faithful translation but rather a spiritual interpretation that is heavily improvised. The importance of this spiritual interpretation lies in the way Mitchell fuses the horizon of Chinese Taoism with his own Zen practice and the English-speaking reader's horizon of Christianity. However, this contribution is offset by the limitation of Mitchell’s work. His version of the Tao Te Ching risks estranging itself from the sociocultural context of the Chinese original, misleading English-speaking readers, and displacing Taoist thought with Buddhist and Christian teachings. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/fraa023 |