Research Catalog

Title

The Japanese discovery of Chinese fiction : the water margin and the making of a national canon / William C. Hedberg.

Author

Hedberg, William C.

Publication

New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 250 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"The classic vernacular Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection against the corrupt imperial court. Imported into Japan in the early seventeenth century, it became a ubiquitous source of inspiration for translations, adaptations, parodies, and illustrated woodblock prints. There may be no work of Chinese fiction more important to both the development of early modern Japanese literature and the Japanese imagination of China than The Water Margin. In The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction, William C. Hedberg investigates the reception of The Water Margin in a variety of early modern and modern Japanese contexts, from eighteenth-century Confucian scholarship and literary exegesis to early twentieth-century colonial ethnography. He examines the ways in which Japanese interest in Chinese texts contributed to new ideas about literary canons and national character. By constructing an account of Japanese literature through the lens of The Water Margin's literary afterlives, Hedberg offers an alternative history of East Asian literary culture: one that focuses on the transregional dimensions of Japanese literary history and helps rethink the definition and boundaries of Japanese literature itself"--

Subjects

• Chinese literature
• Shui hu zhuan
• Yuan Dynasty (China)
• Chinese literature > Yuan dynasty, 1260-1368 > History and criticism
• Japanese literature > Chinese influences
• Shui hu zhuan > Appreciation > Japan
• Japan
• 1260-1368
• Art appreciation
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction : entering the margins : reading Shuihu zhuan as Japanese literature -- Sinophilia, sinophobia, and vernacular philology in early modern Japan -- Histories of reading and nonreading : Shuihu zhuan as text and touchstone in early modern Japan -- Justifying the margins : nation, canon, and Chinese fiction in Meiji and Taishō Chinese-literature historiography (Shina bungakushi) -- Civilization and its discontents : travel, translation, and armchair ethnography -- Epilogue : a final view from the margins.

Call Number

JFE 20-3019

ISBN

• 9780231193344
• 0231193343
• 9780231550260 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2019008386

OCLC

1086570567

Author

Hedberg, William C., author.

Title

The Japanese discovery of Chinese fiction : the water margin and the making of a national canon / William C. Hedberg.

Publisher

New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1260-1368

Other Form:

Online version: Hedberg, William C., author. Japanese discovery of Chinese fiction New York : Columbia University Press, [2019] 9780231550260 (DLC) 2019018582

Research Call Number

JFE 20-3019