Early Modern Literature

要旨

Generally speaking, the history of Japanese literary studies in English can be divided into two stages.The first stage is usually that of translation; the second is that of scholarship.In some cases, translation is preceded by literary histories or more general studies that take up texts that have not been translated.Such is the case of William Aston, A History of Japanese Literature (1899), the earliest history of Japanese literature, and Donald Keene's World Within Walls. 1 These literary histories have served the function of arousing the interest o f readers and potential translators in yet untranslated works.Generally speaking, however, it is the appearance of a translation that sets the stage for scholarship and criticism, particularly in the case of major literary texts such as The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Heike, or Noh drama.The translation of The Tale of Genji by Edward Seidensticker, for example, provided the foundation for a series of groundbreaking studies on Heian literature (Norma Field, Richard Okada, Haruo Shirane). 2 Early modern literary studies have not yet reached the stage found, for example, in Heian literary studies, where almost all the texts are already available and where scholarship spawns scholarship.Instead, we find a situation where translation spawns scholarship or vice versa.Thus, it is almost impossible to speak of historical development or trends in scholarship of the kind found, for example, in political or institu-1 Aston, W.

主題