This dissertation discusses the Edo-period Japanese translation, adaptation, and theoretical analysis of Chinese popular fiction and drama between 1680 and 1815. I focus on the ways in which Japanese encounters with fiction and drama written in the unfamiliar “vernacular” engendered reinterpretations of Japan’s cultural relationship to China. Whereas this relationship had previously centered largely on the Confucian classics and their ongoing interpretation in Japan, I argue that the introduction of vernacular texts enabled new modes of visualizing China’s position as a locus of textual and cultural authority. I connect the increasingly formalized study of vernacular texts to a discourse on temporality and linguistic change, and demonstrate the degree to which engagement with late imperial Chinese fiction and drama led to the reformulation of definitions of culture, literature, and language. By dramatically widening the range of materials and texts that could be used to construct a vision of China, the introduction of vernacular fiction and drama encouraged Edo-period philologists and fiction connoisseurs to reconceptualize both the criteria for judging textual competence, and the position of their own writing with respect to China. Rather than focusing on eighteenth-century efforts to efface traces of China’s cultural imprint on Japan, I seek to complicate accounts of the development of Japanese literature by exploring the oeuvres of philosophers, philologists, and fiction writers who attempted to theorize areas of convergence between Chinese and Japanese literary production. The study is divided into four chapters. Chapter One introduces the major themes of the dissertation as a whole and analyzes the rhetoric surrounding both the introduction of Chinese vernacular texts and subsequent attempts at reifying their study as an independent academic discipline. Chapter Two develops these themes further through an analysis of three eighteenth-century explorations of aesthetics, genre, and literary translation. In Chapters Three and Four, I examine a group of anomalous “reverse translations” of Japanese fiction and drama into the language and structure of vernacular Chinese fiction—using these largely overlooked texts to map out networks of literary contact and discuss the hermeneutics underlying eighteenth-century Japanese engagement with vernacular Chinese fiction and drama. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Dissertation Advisor: Parimal G. Patil Elon Goldstein

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1999. / Directors: David Der-wei Wang; Charles Laughlin. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Western Ontario (Canada), 2007. / (UMI)AAINR30853. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3848.

abstract: This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through a close reading of the play, I hope to illustrate how the play's complicated ending and lack of complete resolution reveals why it has received relatively little attention from scholars who have previously discussed other strong, intelligent female characters in Guan Hanqing's plays. The second chapter of this thesis includes translation of the play that is comprised of a wedge preceding the four acts. Before each act of the play is a critical introduction and analysis of the act to follow. Although many of Guan Hanqing's plays have been translated into English, this play has never been translated. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Asian Languages and Civilizations 2011

abstract: Kiran Nagarkar, who won the Sahitya Akedemi Award in India for his English language writing, is a man who attracts controversy. Despite the consistent strength of his literary works, his English novels have become a lightning rod - not because they are written in English, but because Nagarkar was a well-respected Marathi writer before he began writing in English. Although there are other writers who have become embroiled in the debate over the politics of discourse, the response to Nagarkar's move from Marathi and his subsequent reactions perfectly illustrate the repercussions that accompany such dialectical decisions. Nagarkar has been accused of myriad crimes against his heritage, from abandoning a dedicated readership to targeting more profitable Western markets. Careful analysis of his writing, however, reveals that his novels are clearly written for a diverse Indian audience and offer few points of accessibility for Western readers. Beyond his English language usage, which is actually intended to provide readability to the most possible Indian nationals, Nagarkar also courts a variegated Indian audience by developing upon traditional Indian literary conceits and allusions. By composing works for a broad Indian audience, which reference cultural elements from an array of Indian ethnic groups, Nagarkar's writing seems to push toward the development of the seemingly impossible: a novel that might unify India, and present such a cohesive cultural face to the world at large. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2011

xvii, 417 p. : ill., maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / In the postwar era, early modern or Edo period (1600-1868) Japan has most often been represented as a culture in isolation due to ostensibly draconian Bakufu regime policies that promised death to any one returning from abroad ( sakokuron , or the "Closed-Country" theory). While historians of Japan acknowledge limited contact with Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Ryukyuans, the two hundred and sixty-some years of the Edo Period has consistently been interpreted as a time in which an indigenous Japanese culture developed and flourished without the corrupting influence of extensive foreign contact. This project takes as its subject the stories of thousands of Japanese fisherman and sailors who became distressed at sea ( hyôryûmin ) and subsequently drifted throughout the Pacific before being rescued and repatriated by foreigners during the late 18 th and 19 th centuries. The hundreds of narratives that comprise this textual category of early modern hyôryûki or "castaway narratives" served as the primary means of representing encounters with foreigners in and around the Pacific region and, in turn projecting an emerging Japanese national consciousness. The origins of these hyôryûki are tied to the earlier establishment of diplomatic protocol for handling repatriated castaways primarily within an East Asian context and the kuchigaki ("oral testimonial") narrative records that resulted from interrogations of the repatriated subjects by both bakufu and domain officials. Late Edo castaways also had their stories of drift recorded in kuchigaki form, however with the encroachment of first Russian, and later English, American, and other western ships in the waters off the coast of Japan in the late Edo period (post-1780) other hyôryûki forms--both scholarly and popular--came to proliferate, as it became imperative to translate and re-imagine geopolitical developments in the greater Pacific. This dissertation not only uncovers a diverse textual and cultural category of hyôryûki , but also the complicated interrelationship between cultural production and concrete territorial and political concerns of the State. In so doing, it not only challenges traditional historiography of early modern Japan, but also reclaims a certain cultural specificity for the late Edo Japanese hyôryûki , contextualizing these texts within a more global process of colonization and modern Nation-State formation. / Committee in charge: Stephen Kohl, Chairperson, East Asian Languages & Literature; Alisa Freedman, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Maram Epstein, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Jeffrey Hanes, Outside Member, History

ix, 106 p. / This thesis focuses on the metafictional elements in selected works of the contemporary Chinese authors Gao Xingjian, Huang Jinshu, and Wang Xiaobo. I define metafiction as both a formal feature inherent in the text and the result of an approach towards that text. I argue that metafiction confronts us with the (postmodern) issues of 1) the ontological status of the text, 2) the figure of the author and reader, and 3) the (ambiguous) relationship between fiction and reality. Simultaneously, it accepts and celebrates this self-conscious and ambiguous character, encouraging readers to do the same. By combining elements from the indigenous literary tradition and international literary movements, contemporary Chinese metafiction is a valuable contribution to the study of metafiction. Ultimately, it shows what it means to write and read in a Chinese as well as in a global context. / Committee in charge: Prof. Alison Groppe, Chairperson; Prof. Maram Epstein, Member; Prof. Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang, Member

This thesis argues that women writers of the South Asian diaspora are inscribing a literary aesthetic which is recognisably feminist. In recent decades women of the South Asian diaspora have risen to the forefront of the global literary and publishing arena, winning acclaim for their endeavours. The scope of this literature is wide, in terms of themes, styles, genres, and geographic location. Prose works range from grave novelistic explorations of female subjectivity to short story collections intent on capturing historical injustices and the experiences of migration. The thesis demonstrates, through close readings and comparative frameworks, that an overarching pattern of common aesthetic elements is deployed in this literature. This deployment is regarded as a transnational feminist practice.

abstract: This thesis investigates similarities in the diachronic sound changes found in Eastern Old Japanese dialects and in Ryukyuan languages and tests a hypothesis of language contact. I examine three sound changes attested in the Eastern Old Japanese corpus of Kupchik (2011). These three are denasalization of prenasalized obstruents, the fortition of the labial glide [w] and prenasalized / simple voiced fricative [(n)z], and the irregular raising of Eastern Old Japanese mid vowels. Extralinguistic and linguistic evidence is presented in support of a hypothesis for language contact between 8th century Ryukyuan speakers and Eastern Old Japanese speakers. At present, many assumptions bog down any potential evidence of contact. However, cases where reconstructed Ryukyuan could have donated a form into EOJ do exist. With future research into early Ryukyuan development and the lexicons, phonologies, and syntactic patterns of Ryukyuan languages, more can be said about this hypothesis. Alongside testing a hypothesis of language contact, this thesis can also be viewed as an analysis of Eastern Old Japanese spelling variation of the three changes mentioned above. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2015