Wiebke Denecke

Chinese Antiquity and Court Spectacle in Early Kanshi

This essay argues for closer attention to Japans active appropriation of Chinese culture and an acknowledgment of the independence of kanshibun from Chinese literature. Obliged to give historical depth to an emerging literature, the compilers of the first kanshi anthologies adopted charismatic moments from Chinese literary history. Poets sympathized especially with courtly settings of Chinese antiquity: they evoked the Zhou court and its vassals at banquets for Korean envoys, performed phrases of the Analects at the Rites for Confucius, or replayed Han rhapsody recitation. The article contributes to studies of the creative use of the Chinese textual canon in Japan.

Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 Setting the Stage: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Constellations CHAPTER 2 Starting avant la lettre: Ways to Tell the Beginnings of Literature and Eloquence CHAPTER 3 Latecomers: Of Simplicity, Ornament, and Decline CHAPTER 4 City-building or Writing? How Aeneas and Prince Shotoku Made Rome and Japan CHAPTER 5 Rome and Kyoto: Capitals, Genres, Gender CHAPTER 6 Poetry in Exile: Sugawara no Michizane and Ovid CHAPTER 7 Satire in Foreign Attire: The Ambivalences of Learning in Late Antiquity and Medieval Japan CHAPTER 8 The Synoptic Machine: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Juxtapositions EPILOGUE Beyond the Comforts of Influence: Deep Comparisons BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Disciplines in Translation: From Chinese Philosophy to Chinese What?

Abstract This paper argues that not just texts, but also disciplines need new translations. Since the sixteenth century texts such as the Confucian Analects have been considered ‘Chinese philosophy’, an approximation that under the pressure of China’s modernisation and the emergence of analytic philosophy has increasingly forced these texts, which the Chinese have traditionally considered a genre of ‘Masters Literature’, into a shape dictated by contemporary notions of European and American philosophy. Illustrating its case by discussing Mencius’s notion of ‘human nature’, the paper argues that the ‘Masters Texts’ should be ‘translated’ into the new disciplinary context of a comparative intellectual history that includes non‐western thought traditions and provides more fruitful models of analysing the symbiosis of intellectual concerns with rhetorical strategies. Ultimately, such a new ‘translation’ of Chinese ‘Masters Literature’ will hopefully lead western philosophers to rethink their disciplinary framework, in particular the age‐old antagonism of the philosophical against the rhetorical/literary that is foreign to the Chinese tradition. 1 I would like to thank David Damrosch, Wai‐yee Li, Michael Puett, and the two anonymous referees for their generous suggestions, which have considerably improved this paper.Abstract This paper argues that not just texts, but also disciplines need new translations. Since the sixteenth century texts such as the Confucian Analects have been considered ‘Chinese philosophy’, an approximation that under the pressure of China’s modernisation and the emergence of analytic philosophy has increasingly forced these texts, which the Chinese have traditionally considered a genre of ‘Masters Literature’, into a shape dictated by contemporary notions of European and American philosophy. Illustrating its case by discussing Mencius’s notion of ‘human nature’, the paper argues that the ‘Masters Texts’ should be ‘translated’ into the new disciplinary context of a comparative intellectual history that includes non‐western thought traditions and provides more fruitful models of analysing the symbiosis of intellectual concerns with rhetorical strategies. Ultimately, such a new ‘translation’ of Chinese ‘Masters Literature’ will hopefully lead western philosophers to rethink their disciplinary fram...