Zhōng Xīng 鍾惺 (1574 – 1624), zì Bójìng 伯敬, hào Tuìgǔ 退谷 and Tuìān 退庵, late-life Buddhist sobriquet Wǎnzhī jūshì 晚知居士 (“Lay practitioner of late-life knowing”). Native of Jìnglíng 竟陵 (in modern Tiānmén 天門, Húběi). One of the two principal founders of the Jìnglíng school (Jìnglíng pài 竟陵派) of late-Ming poetry and literary criticism, alongside Tán Yuánchūn 譚元春 (1586 – 1637).
Jìnshì of Wànlì 38 = 1610. Held offices including Hànlín shùjíshì 翰林庶吉士, Lǐbù xíngrén 禮部行人, and Fújiàn tíxué fùshǐ 福建提學副使. Most influential as a literary editor and anthologist: with Tán Yuánchūn co-edited the Shīguī 詩歸 (Return to Poetry; 51 fascicles), an iconoclastic anthology of pre-Tang and Tang verse that defined the Jìnglíng aesthetic of yōushēn gūjiào 幽深孤峭 (“recondite depth, isolated jaggedness”) in opposition to both the Qián-Hòu Qīzǐ 前後七子 archaism and the Gōngān 公安 school’s spontaneity. Also co-edited the Gǔshī guī 古詩歸 and Tángshī guī 唐詩歸 separately.
In late life Zhōng turned to Buddhist study and composed the Lèngyán-jīng rú-shuō 楞嚴經如說 in 10 fascicles (KR6j0694, X13 no. 286), a literati’s running gloss on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra notable for the application of his characteristic Jìng-líng close-reading technique to the sūtra’s text.
Source: CBDB c_personid 122198 (b. 1574, d. 1624); DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001872; Hummel et al. (eds.), Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Library of Congress, 1943) for the Jìnglíng school context; Wai-yee Li, “The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal,” in Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford UP, 1997). For Zhōng’s poetics: Chih-p’ing Chou, Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge UP, 1988), with comparative discussion of the Jìnglíng school.