Waka Poetry as a Cosmopolitan Vernacular in Early Japan

Torquil Duthie

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Chapter 5 Waka Poetry as a Cosmopolitan Vernacular in Early Japan

In: Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen æ

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Torquil Duthie

Torquil Duthie
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 159â183

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004529441_007

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Abstract

Modern literary histories have associated the development of a Japanese vernacular with texts that were written in cursive kana style in the Heian period. This is a somewhat distorted view, given that most early forms of literate vernacular in Japan in fact developed as variant ways of reading and writing Literary Sinitic. What is true, however, is that a literary vernacular was from the beginning envisioned in ideal terms as a discrete textual world comparable to the cosmopolitan realm of Literary Sinitic. In this essay I argue that the foundation of this ideal vision of a vernacular literary realm was the poetry called uta (song), or waka (Japanese song): an exemplary form of written language versified according to Japanese prosodic patterns and posited as a vernacular equivalent to Sinitic poetry, or shi.

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Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen æ

Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis

Series:Â Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis, Volume: 5

Cover Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen æ

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004529441

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 25 May 2023

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Front Matter

Part 1 Beginnings: Origins and Early Centuries of the Sinographic Cosmopolis

Part 2 Medieval and Early Modern Cases from China, Japan, and Vietnam

Part 3 The Special Case of Korea: From Late ChosÅn to Colonial ChÅsen

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Chapter 5 Waka Poetry as a Cosmopolitan Vernacular in Early Japan

Abstract

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen æ

Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis

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Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen æ