Fictions of Enlightenment is the first book to examine the fascinating and intricate relationship between Buddhism and the development of Chinese vernacular fic

"The brain contains ten thousand cells," wrote the poet Matthew Prior in 1718, "in each some active fancy dwells." In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

Organized chronologically, starting with Buddha and ending with contemporary seekers, this book focuses on the moment of enlightenment in the lives of saints an

Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness explores the novel's participation in eighteenth-century "inquiries after happiness," an ancient ethical project that ac

In eighteenth-century England, the institution of marriage became the subject of heated debates, as clerics, jurists, legislators, philosophers, and social obse