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Paper short abstract:

Examining a Sinitic prose-poem (fu) by Sugawara no Michizane, I investigate how literary meaning is constructed through the deployment of natural, literary, and social environments in two different anthologies: Michizane's own "Kanke bunsō" and the 11th-century collection "Honchō monzui."

Paper long abstract:

Sometime in the late ninth century, the Heian scholar-official Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903) composed a prose-poem (fu 賦) in Sinitic titled the "Fu on an Autumn Lake" (Shūko no fu 秋湖賦). The text describes how a weary rider reaches a lake at nightfall and, as he admires the view before him, affirms that human experience is rooted in interaction with the surrounding world, before declaring his own intellectual and spiritual shortcomings. "Shūko no fu" survives in two early collections: the author’s 900 personal collection "Kanke bunsō" 菅家文草 ("Literary Drafts of the Sugawara House") and the mid-eleventh century kanshibun 漢詩文 (Sinitic prose and poetry) collection "Honchō monzui" 本朝文粹 (The Literary Essence of Our Court"), which was compiled by Fujiwara no Akihira ca. 1066.

Because of its generic complexity, its rich seasonal language, and the twofold transmission history, "Shūko no fu" presents stimulating material for exploring how literary meaning was constructed through different categories of “environment.” First of all, the natural environment plays a key role in this text, both in the creation of a literary world and in the conceptualisation of human experience. Secondly, Michizane’s fu bridge the divide between metred, rhyming shi and rhymeless prose, urging an exploration of the dialectic with other genres in its vicinity. Finally, the inclusion in two different collections suggests it was considered differently meaningful in different textual environments. "Kanke bunsō," on the one hand, may be read as a strategic positioning of the author in his social environment, thus urging us to interpret "Shūko no fu" through a self-representational lens. "Honchō monzui," by contrast, is more concerned with defining proper literary language and sketching a cultural canon: as one of the oldest fu in "Honchō monzui," this text’s installation into its new textual landscape recasts it as a link to continental practice and local literary precedent.

By highlighting various aspects of this prose-poem’s construction of meaning through interactions with its various natural, social, and textual contexts, I will explore how environments could inform, and in turn be formed by, the process of poetic production in the case of Heian Sinitic composition.