Wisdom Literature, Orality, and Textual Histories: Another Look at Heraclitus and the Laozi

Luke Parker

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Chapter 2 Wisdom Literature, Orality, and Textual Histories: Another Look at Heraclitus and the Laozi

In: After Wisdom

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Luke Parker

Luke Parker
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 54–76

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004529014_004

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Abstract

This essay compares the textual histories of Heraclitus and the Laozi in order to argue that such comparison offers new perspectives on each text as well as on the particularities, coincidences, and convergences of the philological traditions in their respective cultures. A broadly comparative notion of ‘orality’ has lately shaped studies of the unique—and uniquely similar—expressive form of these texts. However, examining their respective textual histories within the framework of “wisdom literature” reveals that stark differences in those histories have much to tell us about their current form and cultural status. Considering four areas of comparison—textual transmission, author and authorial biography, commentary tradition, and contemporary situation—reveals both contrasts and convergences for each text and its cultural tradition, together with a persistent interest in the origins of texts that appears across cultures in antiquity and in modernity.

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After Wisdom

Sapiential Traditions and Ancient Scholarship in Comparative Perspective

Series: Philological Encounters Monographs, Volume: 4

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004529014

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 05 Dec 2022

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Front Matter

Part 1 Comparing Greek and Chinese Wisdom Literatures

Part 2 Chinese Wisdom Literature as Seen from Greece

Part 3 Greek Wisdom Literature as Seen from China

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Chapter 2 Wisdom Literature, Orality, and Textual Histories: Another Look at Heraclitus and the Laozi

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Citation Info

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After Wisdom

Sapiential Traditions and Ancient Scholarship in Comparative Perspective

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