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.
Court Diary • Fujiwara no Teika (Sadaie) • Temporality • Edo literature • Inner scriptures • Genji monogatari • Gender dynamics • Religion • Sharebon • Book indexes • Yomihon • Sarayashiki • Kabuki • Nihon ryōiki • Fantastic literature • Nun Abutsu • Waka • Tsuruya Nanboku IV • Kokin wakashū • Premodern Japanese literature • Intertextuality • Layers of narration in intertextuality • Shinkokinshū • Chinese novels • Kana literature • Zen • Dōgen • Utatane • Metatextuality • Re-interpretation • Nō theatre • Roland Barthes • Sarashina nikki • Buddhism • Japanese poetry • Baba Bunkō • Ise monogatari • Text • Female enlightenment • Sūtras • Fujiwara no Shunzei (Toshinari) • Classical Chinese literature • Katsura Bunji I • Morishima Chūryō • San’yūtei Enchō • Ki no Tsurayuki, Kagerō nikki • Mythologies • Commentaries • Kawara-no-in • Outer writings