Images from the Past: Intertextuality in Japanese Premodern Literature
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abstract
This volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and career stages to rethink the role and scope of intertextuality in the context of premodern Japan. From antiquity to the rise of modernity, originality through repetition persists as a staple in the literary, performative, and artistic traditions of this country. Nonetheless, rather than slavish recycling of pre-existing tropes, the redeployment of familiar motifs by patterns of borrowing, allusion, and imitation would become a means to explore untrodden creative pathways and craft a shared sense of cultural belonging. Stemming from an international symposium hosted at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2021 with the generous support of The Japan Foundation, the papers in this collection offer a thoughtful contribution to this debate by engaging texts from different historical periods, media, and genres – be it poetic, narrative, theatrical, visual, or religious. Although intertextuality may not be a new topic, the essays that follow attest to the enduring appeal of a concept whose explanatory power proves most effective when combined with other methods of inquiry, such as discourse analysis, social sciences, gender studies, and material culture. Thus, while opening new windows onto Japan’s literary worlds, these cross-disciplinary approaches provide further insights into the uses (and abuses) of the past in a non-Western non-modern society.
Nihon ryōiki • Waka • San’yūtei Enchō • Inner scriptures • Intertextuality • Japanese poetry • Kokin wakashū • Nun Abutsu • Kana literature • Religion • Tsuruya Nanboku IV • Outer writings • Sharebon • Ise monogatari • Layers of narration in intertextuality • Court Diary • Premodern Japanese literature • Genji monogatari • Mythologies • Sarashina nikki • Edo literature • Shinkokinshū • Nō theatre • Gender dynamics • Zen • Fujiwara no Shunzei (Toshinari) • Kabuki • Yomihon • Chinese novels • Metatextuality • Roland Barthes • Female enlightenment • Buddhism • Ki no Tsurayuki, Kagerō nikki • Morishima Chūryō • Fantastic literature • Kawara-no-in • Katsura Bunji I • Re-interpretation • Classical Chinese literature • Text • Utatane • Commentaries • Sūtras • Baba Bunkō • Book indexes • Fujiwara no Teika (Sadaie) • Temporality • Sarayashiki • Dōgen