Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China

Abstract

extended to incorporate other texts, both received and excavated, which do not belong either to the “Masters” literature or to the Shi. Throughout the book, Hunter engages in a respectful critical dialogue with scholarship, making his study useful not only as a source of innovative argument, but also as an engaging introduction to the Western research on the Shi. Nevertheless, it is expected that an ambitious study like Hunter’s would contain some debatable points. For example, one may wonder whether the pattern of return and homecoming, identified in the book as a key element of the Shi poetics that influenced many other texts, really originates from the Shi or is simply an element of shared cultural repertoire that is articulated in the Shi the most explicitly. But in any case, there is no doubt that the embracement of this pattern in the Shi has reinforced its impact on Chinese culture across centuries.