A THEMATIC AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ISABELLE ROBINET (REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION)*

Monica ESPOSITO

I. Introduction 1

II. Chronological Bibliography of Isabelle Robinet 2

III. Annotated Bibliography of Isabelle Robinet Arranged by Theme... .7

I. Introduction

Born on October 18, 1932, Isabelle Robinet died in Paris on June 23, 2000.1 With her death, the pioneering phase of Taoist studies also seems to have come to an end.

She was a student of important French sinologists of the 20th century like Maxime Kaltenmark, Michel Soymié, Rolf A. Stein, and Léon Vandermeersch. In 1973 she obtained her Ph.D. of Far-Eastern Studies (Doctorat de troisième cycle) at the University of Paris VII under the guidance of Maxime Kaltenmark with a thesis on the commentaries of the Daodejifig (see bibliography below). From 1973 to 1982 she was lecturer at the National Institute of Oriental Language and Civilization (INALCO) in Paris, reading on the great currents of Chinese thought and on religious Taoism. In 1981, under the direction of M. Léon Vandermeersch, she completed her State Thesis (Doctorat es lettres et science humaines, thèse d'Etat) which was published in 1984 under the title La révélation du Shangqing [The Shangqing revelation; see bibliography below]. In 1985 she was appointed Professor and later Director of the Center of Letters and Humanities at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille I) and worked there as Professor of Chinese History and Civilization until her untimely death.

Beside her participation in various international projects and research groups (including the European Science Foundation's "Projet Tao-tsang," the franco- canadian "Huainanzi Project," etc.), she also served on the editorial boards of the Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, Taoist Resources, and the Journal of Chinese Religions.

Rather than wasting her time in academic and administrative complexities, Robinet concentrated on producing a stream of solid contributions to sinology in general and to Taoist studies in particular. Her writings are so numerous and widely spread that it seemed opportune to present a general bibliography of

Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 14(2004) : 1-42.