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LitPre15


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Dueling Dimensions: Notions of the Literary and the Spoken in Vernacular Poetry 
Convenor:
James Scanlon (Yale University)
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Chair:
Ivo Smits (Leiden University)
Discussant:
Ivo Smits (Leiden University)
Section:
Pre-modern Literature
Sessions:
Friday 27 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

How did notions of literature and spoken language inflect the construction of knowledge, textual production, and writing? This panel explores the dynamic relationship of language and text and the implications of those dynamics in intellectual history.

Long Abstract:

The notion of the voice (koe) is pervasive in Japanese poetry. Edo period scholars, especially those in the kokugaku "national learning" tradition, sought to describe the "native" poetic form, waka, in terms of its connection to an originary and pure essence that was only accessible through Japanese, as opposed to Chinese, language. This notion of voice and its relationship to language has continued to influence scholarship on the oral-written distinction, defining it largely in terms of its ideological implications or as a framework for the historical development of poetry. This orientation towards oral-written dichotomy in Japanese scholarship is symptomatic of a self-referential literary history that has reified notions of language and text developed within its own intellectual traditions. One consequence of this has been heavy focus on the mechanical process of textual (re)production and cross-cultural comparisons. In contrast, the papers in this panel seek to broaden scholarly discourse and explore a human-centered perspective on cultural forces that shaped these texts, their transmission, and reception. Guiding questions of the panel are: "How did spoken language intervene in vernacular literature?" and "To what extent did spoken language and linguistic awareness come to mediate written forms?" Papers range from classical to early modern textual reception.

The first presenter argues that regional dialect forms in fuzoku uta "folk song / poems" were not extrinsic to the text, but constituted a type of literary dialect that was used for ritual purposes and later adopted as a form of literary embellishment. The second presenter discusses the poetry-prose binary through the lens of an oral-literary teleology in the poetic theories of Mori Asao and Ōura Seiji. Her paper looks primarily at theories of seijutsu shincho (poems that directly relate feelings) in Man'yōshū poetry collection (ca. 759). The third presenter considers the textualization of waka knowledge in the early medieval era, looking at the motivations and implications of written karon (commentaries) transmissions. The fourth presenter investigates medieval waka scholars and intellectuals, considering how some came to define waka as having a presence of voice, in contrast to more strictly literary definitions of waka as corresponding to Chinese poetry in ancient Japan.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 27 August, 2021, -