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LitPre11


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Uses and Re-creations of "Literary Heritage" in Premodern Japan 
Convenor:
Edoardo Gerlini (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
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Discussant:
Rebekah Clements (ICREA Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Section:
Pre-modern Literature
Sessions:
Saturday 28 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

Inspired by the idea of "heritage as practice", this panel aims to stimulate a general rethinking of the concept of koten (classics), giving evidences of how premodern cultural producers actively used and re-created the "literary heritage" to answer new needs in their contemporary society.

Long Abstract:

In recent years, the concept of cultural heritage has gathered a growing interest from scholars of different disciplines. Openly in contrast with institutions like UNESCO, scholars retheorized heritage in a much wider meaning than that of cultural property. Heritage has been redefined as a process of meaning-making, performed by individuals and communities as a way to engage with the present while imagining possible futures, through the use and re-creation of cultural manifestations from their past, both tangible and intangible. Heritage becomes therefore tightly connected to issues like memories, feelings, identities, and ownership.

Thus far, premodern literature has received little attention from scholars of the interdisciplinary field known as "heritage studies", despite the fact that literary texts undoubtedly represent a valuable source of information about how people of the past engaged with their historical memories and managed their cultural identity. The case of premodern Japan is especially meaningful for two reasons: 1) the vast amount of surviving documents conserved in Japan constitute a sizeable "textual heritage" for both East Asia and the world; 2) the considerable continuity of literary canons until modern times - e.g. the lively longevity of the tanka form - suggests strong ties between new producers and traditional texts, continually charged with new meanings: political, religious, artistic.

Inspired by the idea of "heritage as practice" (Laurajane Smith 2006), this panel aims to rethink historical reuses and re-production of canonical texts, offering a new perspective on the role of premodern studies today vis-a-vis the "crisis of the classics". The papers demonstrate how authors in the medieval and early modern periods actively re-appropriated this textual heritage to answer new needs and problems. Japanese premodern literature, intended not as an object but rather as a social practice of re-evaluation, endlessly performed through the centuries, can be therefore considered a peculiar kind of cultural heritage useful to stimulate the academic discourse on material/immaterial. We hope that this historically informed perspective will foster further discussions about the role of modern technologies - like open-access databases and online resources - in preserving and sharing the "literary heritage" of Japan and East Asia today.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Saturday 28 August, 2021, -