ABSTRACT:

Over the past decade “world literature” has evolved into a new paradigm of comparative literature in both research and pedagogy. Overwhelming attention is given to modern concepts and forms of “world literature,” and thus, ultimately, to questions of influence and reception. But how should we conceive of premodern world literatures and compare literary cultures that were historically not related at all? In her recently published book Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons Denecke compares the dynamics between the younger literary cultures of Japan and Rome and the literatures of their venerable predecessors, China and Greece. How were writers of the younger cultures of Rome and Japan affected by the presence of an older “reference culture,” whose sophistication they admired, even as they anxiously strove to assert their own distinctive identity? How did they tackle the challenge of adopting the reference culture’s literary genres, rhetorical refinement, and conceptual vocabulary for writing texts in different languages and within distinct political and cultural contexts?

In this lecture Denecke will discuss methods, attractions, and challenges of cross-cultural comparison in the premodern world.

 

SPEAKER BIO:

Wiebke Denecke studied Medicine, Sinology, Japanology, and Greco-Roman philosophy in her native Germany, in Hungary, Norway, Dalian, Taipei, and Tokyo and received her BA and MA from the University of Göttingen and her PhD from Harvard University. She has taught at Columbia University/Barnard College, Doshisha University (Kyoto) and is currently Associate Professor of Chinese, Japanese & Comparative Literature at Boston University. Her research encompasses the classical literatures of China and Japan, comparative studies of the ancient world, and more broadly world literature.

She is the author of The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi (Harvard University Press, Asia Center, 2011) and of Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Denecke is an editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature (2012) and Norton Anthology of Western Literature (2014) and has published with Kôno Kimiko a volume on The Concept of “Letters” and “Literature” in Japan (日本における文とブンガクNihon ni okeru bun to bungaku) (Tokyo: Benseisha, 2013) (in Japanese). With Zhang Longxi she is editing the book series East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture  (Leiden: Brill).