Gender Perspectives in a Female Authored Buddhist Autohagiography

Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Marks, Susan

Keywords

Buddhist Literature, Gender Perspectives, Hagiography

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze gender perspective in one particular piece of Buddhist literature: an autohagiographic work by the Nepalese nun, Orgyan Chokyi. I explore to what extent a female perspective is present in this female-authored piece. Her story is found to lie between two extremes, one of which is that of a female perspective and the other of which is a male perspective. Her story is not purely of a female perspective, as Kurtis Schaeffer tends to portray. This is evident by the male literary conventions that she uses, which were formed by men to tell their own stories. However, Liz Wilson's claim of the absence of female voice and perspective in Buddhist literature is also not entirely applicable. In the deviations from male conventions in Chokyi's story, we do get elements of a female perspective. Both of these stances are only valid to limited extents. Her story is an example of a mixture of male and female perspectives. This mixture is significant for analyzing gender perspectives in her story.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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