Paper short abstract:

Appropriation of cultural heritage through re-thinking and giving new meanings to cultural codes of previous epochs was one of the ways of self-identification in Edo Japan. The assimilation of aristocratic literature resulted in burlesque and led to canonization of parodied works, genres and styles.

Paper long abstract:

The dynamic formation of the ukiyo culture was supplemented by a reassessment of the ideals and values of Japanese aristocratic culture, including the concept ukiyo itself. In literature, starting the mid-17th century, this phenomenon took the form of literary parodies on both poetry waka ("Inu Hyakunin Isshū") and prose zuihitsu and monogatari ("Inu makura" and "Inu Tsurezuregusa", "Nise Monogatari" and "Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji"). In a short time, all diversity of parodies forms appeared in Japanese literature. Thus, travesty texts – with markers inu or nise in their title – depict “high” things, heroes and/or stories in a prosaic and vulgarized manner, and mutate ideas of original works. Paraphrases "Jūjō Genji", "Osana Genji", "Ise monogatari hirakotoba" and others were modern renditions (Shirane Haruo) of two the most famous Heian novels.

Along with, Edo narrative fiction is replete with numerous quotations and allusions, in other words, all easily recognizable textual borrowings and stylizations of artistic images, plot lines and heroes from the works, which nowadays constitute the literary canon of the classical period. Nevertheless, if we look closely, we will see that the authors of comic kana- and otogi-zōshi are ironic or ridiculed not of the characters themselves, but rather of their ideals, values, and patterns of behaviour. It reveals the essence of literary parody, namely “not joke or imitation, but contiguity with the sublime” (O. Freidenberg), and at the same time points the effort to adopt by this means the object of imitation. The imitations of styles and citations (like haru-ha-akebono in Shikitei Samba’s "Ukiyoburo"), as well as the usage of typical artistic devices of Heian literature in otogi-zōshi, demonstrate how burlesque authors “isolate a separate device from its functional system and transfer it to another one” (M. Gasparov) and easily deal with “low” subjects, described in a “high” style.

Thus, in my paper, I argue that attempts to digest national literary tradition in the Edo period led, in the nature of things, to canonization of parodied texts by their constant and various reproduction.