The dissertation is a study of the boom of waka poetry in the tenth century. Waka is approached here as a cultural phenomenon, that is, a complex system of people, practices, and ideas centering around the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural artifacts. Four main aspects of this system are examined: first, the network of people who, at various stages and in different ways, were involved in it. I identify three primary groups of agents (the poets, the patrons, and the public) and provide an analysis of each. Second, the body of ideas and beliefs that motivated and sustained involvement with waka as either poets, or patrons, or recipients. Third, the shared body of ingredients and skills that poets used to craft their works. Fourth and final, the criteria that contemporary audiences used to evaluate poems. Each chapter deals with a specific aspect. Chapter 1 and 2 provide a sort of bird's eye view of the social world behind the waka phenomenon. Chapter 1 uses criteria such as social position and gender to present a typology of poets in tenth century court society. I distinguish between low-ranking poets who viewed waka as a potential pathway to career advancement, and high-ranking poets who used it mainly as a tool for conducting dalliances and as a marker of status. I also examine the case of women poets, and discuss whether it is legitimate to see them as a distinct type. Chapter 2 focuses on the contribution of the patrons and the public. I start with a short history of patronage from the origins to the mid-tenth century, and then discuss various specific aspects of patronage, including its relation to the monjo keikoku theory (the idea that literature was useful for government), the appearance of the "poetry specialists" (senmon kajin), and the role of women as patrons of waka. This chapter also sketches a first, tentative profile of the waka public, and identifies some of the areas that a more thorough study should or could cover. Chapter 3 deals with the ideas and beliefs that motivated and sustained the waka phenomenon of the tenth century. As Bourdieu notes, "the sociology of art and literature has to take as its object not only the material production but also the symbolic production of the work, i.e. the production of the value of the work, or, which amounts to the same thing, of belief in the value of the work." Some of the developments that the chapter examines are the emergence of a new view of poetry-making as a pathway to immortality, a new image of the poet as a literary giant worthy of the respect and admiration of society, the emergence of a proto-celebrity culture around poets and their work via poem-stories (utagatari), and the sedimentation of the connection between poetry and courtly elegance (miyabi). Chapter 4 focuses on the body of ingredients and skills that poets used to make poems. I discuss how poetic know-how was acquired through study, what it consisted of, and several methods to apply it in actual composition. A discussion of the Kokin waka rokujo (Six Tomes of waka, c. 974), a giant poetry collection probably intended to serve as a reference book for poets, completes the chapter. Chapter 5 deals with contemporary criteria to evaluate poetry. Two main texts are examined: the Tentoku yo'nen dairi uta-awase (Poetry contest at the Palace of the Fourth Year of Tentoku, 960), and the Waka kuhon (Nine Grades of waka, c. 1009) by Fujiwara no Kinto; (966-1044). The final section of the chapter discusses Tokieda Motoki's argument that since poetry was used in everyday life as a medium of communication, the aesthetic value of a poem was often less important than its performative value.

This project seeks a new perspective on issues of literacy, literary language, and cultural contact in the literature of premodern Japan by examining the primers used to study Chinese-style literature in the Heian and early medieval periods (c. 900-1250CE). Much of Heian literary production was centered on kanbun: "Chinese-style" writing that resembled classical Chinese and mobilized allusive connections to classical Chinese texts, but was usually read based on classical Japanese vocabulary and syntax. The knowledge gleaned from introductory kanbun education forms an important and little-researched common thread linking readers and writers from a wide range of backgrounds - from male and female courtiers to specialized university scholars to medieval monks and warriors eager to appropriate court culture. While tracing the roles of commonly-studied kanbun primers and commentaries in shaping Heian literary culture and its medieval reception, I consider key aspects of premodern Japan literacy - from the art of kundoku ("gloss-reading") to the systems of knowledge involved in textual commentary and the adaptation of kanbun material. Examining the educational foundations of premodern Japanese literary culture demonstrates that kanbun and other literary styles functioned as closely entangled modes of literacy rather than as native and foreign languages, and that certain elements of classical Chinese knowledge formed a valued set of raw material for literary creativity. Chapter 1 outlines the diversity of premodern Japanese literacy and the key primers and encyclopedic reference works involved in kanbun education. Chapter 2 focuses on a primer for learning written characters, the Thousand Character Classic (Qian zi wen), discussing its varied reception in the contexts of calligraphy practice, oral recitation, and commentarial authority and offering translations from the tongue-in-cheek literary showpiece Thousand Character Classic Continued (Zoku Senjimon, 1132). In Chapter 3, I examine the role of kanbun knowledge in Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (Makura no soshi, early 11th century), which foregrounds the social and creative roles of introductory kanbun material as a vocabulary of conversational quotation among both men and women. Chapter 4 turns to Condensed Meaning of the New Ballads (Shin gafu ryakui, 1172), a ground-breaking anecdotal commentary on Bai Juyi's poetry, to discuss the way that kanbun texts were interpreted and reinvented through commentary. Chapter 5 discusses an innovative poetic adaptation of a kanbun primer, Waka Poems on the Child's Treasury (Mogyu waka, 1204), which makes use of poetic topics and historical anecdotes as effective ways of organizing kanbun knowledge and also suggest the potential for introductory education to spark literary creativity across genre boundaries. I conclude with a brief look at the relevance of premodern Japanese kanbun education for broader questions about literary language and for comparisons involving other transregional classical languages like Latin. By illustrating the processes by which elements of Chinese literary culture were adopted and adapted throughout East Asia, this project provides fertile ground for exploring issues of literacy and cultural interaction that underlie all forms of literature.

This thesis explores the uncharted territory of relational subjectivity in modern Chinese literature. As a model of identity that positions the self in a web of social interaction, emotional connectivity, relational subjectivity suggests that the self is continually partial, open, and constantly "under construction." Lacking an autonomous "closed system," subjects remain open to exchange and to becoming agents of co-created meaning. Through readings of the fiction, essays, and poetry of Lu Xun, Ye Shaojun, Shen Congwen, Bing Xin, Xiao Hong, and Eileen Chang, I investigate the ways these writers manipulated narrative structure, texture and voice to present a discourse of openness, receptivity, and tolerance for difference. My investigation uncovers a wider range of subjectivities and relational yearning than was previously recognized for this era. Chinese writers also linked the discourse of relational subjectivity with a more generalized epistemological openness characterized by neutral visual attentiveness and acts of listening. This study reflects a growing interest in locating forms of sociality in the modern Chinese context. As such, my work furthers the theoretical discourse for examining self-other relationships, especially those shaped by multiple-perspectivism, non-hierarchy and horizontal ways of seeing. Finally, this research offers possibilities for locating an alternative beginning for modern Chinese conceptualizations of self in community.

This dissertation examines the influence of `poetic sociality' during Japan's Meiji period (1867-1912). `Poetic sociality' denotes a range of practices within poetic composition that depend upon social interaction among individuals, most importantly the tendency to practice poetry as a group activity, pedagogical practices such as mutual critique and the master-disciple relationship, and the exchange among individual poets of textually linked forms of verse. Under the influence of modern European notions of literature, during the late Meiji period both prose fiction and the idea of literature as originating in the subjectivity of the individual assumed hegemonic status. Although often noted as a major characteristic of pre-modern poetry, poetic sociality continued to be enormously influential in the literary and social activities of 19th century Japanese intellectuals despite the rise of prose fiction during late Meiji, and was fundamental to the way in which poetry was written, discussed and circulated. One reason for this was the growth of a mass-circulation print media from early Meiji onward, which provided new venues for the publication of poetry and enabled the expression of poetic sociality across distance and outside of face-to-face gatherings. With poetic exchange increasingly taking place through newspapers and literary journals, poetic sociality acquired a new and openly political aspect. Poetic exchanges among journalists and readers served in many cases as vehicles for discussion of political topics such as governmental corruption, international relations and environmental disasters, an aspect of Meiji-era poetry that has received comparatively little attention.

This dissertation combines methods from literary history, book history and religious history in order to map formerly unknown regions of Hindi literary culture in early modern North India. By sketching the broad contours of the manuscript archive and also looking closely at the material aspects and histories of individual text artifacts including notebooks, anthologies, and scriptures, it reveals connections and distinctions between audiences, genres, and canons that could not otherwise be seen. As the vernacular language of Hindi gradually came to displace the cosmopolitan language of Sanskrit as the medium of literary, scholastic and religious discourse over the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, new configurations of oral performance practices and written manuscripts came into being; these practices and manuscripts in turn helped to consolidate new networks, and eventually bring new publics into being. For the religious communities associated with bhakti in particular, the process of vernacularization opened up opportunities for innovation concerning genre and style: by adopting certain literary techniques and particular inscriptional practices, these groups were able to deploy their writings as literature, scholarship, scripture, or a combination of all three. The distinctions that traditions like the Sikhs, the Dadu Panth, and the Niranjani Sampraday made between these different discourses and genres are reflected in the manuscripts that they created, and in the performance modes of which those manuscripts were a part. In the process of creating physical scriptures, they also transformed themselves into a different type of textual community.

This dissertation offers a new perspective on the birth of modern Chinese literature by investigating the following question: How did literature come to be understood as an effective vehicle of national salvation? The following chapters locate the answer to this question in intertwining ideas on religion and realism. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an upsurge of vernacular literature portraying contemporary life in China alongside deliberations on the meaning of a newly introduced term: “religion” (zongjiao). This process launched a long lasting perception of literature as effective—capable of turning a country in flux to a strong nation. The story of modern Chinese literature’s rise to such prominence forms part of a transnational history, linking national literatures and Christian modernity. Across the colonial world, Protestant missionaries introduced the idea that a true-to-life literary portrayal can mobilize readers into action by appealing to their natural sympathy towards human suffering. These theories found a seedbed in China, Japan, India and Africa, where various authors modified the Christian evangelical message into a thorough critique of imperialist thought. Chapter One begins with the global rise of “Life” in the 1910’s as a new epistemology for understanding the human. In China, deliberations over the meaning of life hinged upon interactions with social Darwinism, American Protestant ideas on religious experience, Bergsonian vitalism, critiques of materialism in German Lebensphilosophie, and Chinese Neo-Confucian ethical thought. “Life” became the main axis pivoting debates on how to save China from its plight: Could evolutionary biology account for the truth of life? Could religion explain aspects of life that biology cannot? The task of representing the truth of life was entrusted upon the fledgling modern Chinese fiction and poetry. Chapters Two and Three trace this conviction in the powers of literature to nineteen-century missionary essay contests. Held in sites of imperial encroachment around the world, these contests promoted fiction writing as a miraculous endeavor. Similar to the way that reading the scriptures was supposed to produce a sense of connection to the great beyond, so too was the spiritual message of literary texts believed to ignite a “sympathetic resonance” (gongming) between authors and readers that would propel the latter to social action. The religious concept of sympathy inspired Chinese authors to further explore the connections between man and the universe in search of the perfect representation of life. This search led to an important encounter with the Bengali Renaissance Movement, explored in Chapters Four and Five. Rabindranath Tagore’s visit in China (1924) serves as a point of departure to investigate how prominent Chinese authors experimented with concepts such as “Eastern Spirituality” “The Poet’s Religion” and “Folktales”. Such literary interactions added important dimensions to the formation of Chinese realism, by envisioning Pan-Asian literary sympathies, which redefined the meaning of religion, life, and the nation. By foregrounding the transnational collaborations and interactions of religion, realism, and Asian solidarity in shaping Chinese literature, this dissertation offers a multi-sited perspective on the unmatched significance of modern literature to China’s national revival and, in turn, delivers a new understanding of China’s role in a global deliberation over the meaning of human life.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Texte remanié de: Habilitationsschrift--Lehrstuhl für Orientalische Philologie--Erlangen--Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. [457]-479.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Oriental Studies)--Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.