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 QiánHòu 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.