3550 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089

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This symposium will explore questions related to canon inheritance, canon formation, and canon disintegration. It is a sequel to the Loose Canons event held at the University of Southern California in April 2015. We will continue the conversation, investigating the following questions: how do habits of quotation and other episodes of appropriation suggest evaluative judgments about “sources”? How have these practices affected literary composition in the archipelago, both wabun and kanbun? Presentations will be given in English or Japanese, and will span historical contexts premodern and modern. Loose Canons is co-organized by Jason Webb and Matthew Fraleigh.

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ABSTRACT

Primary to understanding how Japanese writers of Chinese-language poetry and prose envisioned themselves within the grand flow of East Asian literary heritage is thorough attentiveness to their habits of quotation. Twentieth-century Japanese specialists in shutten-ron, the enterprise of tracking down allusive sources, have done a great deal to clarify which continental texts were materially available in any given period of Japan's history and what patterns of quotation they engendered. Of course not all engagements with prior texts are that of quotation: received works also are studied, edited, interpreted, and re-compiled. Underlying all of these acts are claims, or assumptions, of value. This symposium seeks to move beyond the strictly empirical inventory work of shutten-ron and instead investigate the following questions related to canon inheritance, canon formation, and canon disintegration: how do habits of quotation and other episodes of appropriation suggest evaluative judgments about “sources”? How do engagements with “sources” play out across coexisting, often competitive communities of literati, monastic scholars, and self-styled poets? Within this process, are new canons formed, or simply old ones deformed? As kanshibun composition in the archipelago evolved, how did its practitioners theorize their enterprise? How did they take stock of domestic traditions and how did they situate these in relation to continental analogues? Our event seeks to explore these questions in a wide variety of historical and compositional contexts. We aim to give each presenter 30 minutes to speak and ample time for a designated discussant's remarks and general discussion. 

 

SPEAKERS

Erin BrightwellUniversity of Michigan
"Downward Spin on the ‘Rising Sun’: Processing the Past in the Wake of the Genpei War"

Wiebke Denecke, Boston University
"Historical and Continental Awareness in the Saga Anthologies"

Matthew Fraleigh, Brandeis University
"Post-War Kanshi Journals and the Canon of Sinitic Poetry"

Gōyama Rintarō, Keiō University
"Anthologies of Sinitic Poetry in Modern Japan and their Literary Significance"

Horikawa Takashi, Keiō University
"Appraisal and Reception of Zekkai Chūshin from the Medieval to the Modern Period"

Kōno Kimiko, Waseda University
"The Formation of a Sino-Japanese Canon: Wakan Rōeishū and its Legacy"

Ōtani Masao, Kyoto University
"Reading Kaifūsō as Japanese Literature"

Jason Webb, University of Southern California
"The Bell and the Box: Criticizing the Sovereign in Early Japan"

 

DISCUSSANTS

Torquil Duthie, University of California, Los Angeles
Mack Horton, University of California, Berkeley
Paul Rouzer, University of Minnesota
Satoko Shimazaki, University of Southern California
Ivo Smits, Leiden University

 

Loose Canons 2015 can be accessed here.

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