This book compares the cultural dynamics of Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman literatures, exploring the ways in which “younger” cultures related to their venerable predecessors. 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 poli ... More

This book compares the cultural dynamics of Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman literatures, exploring the ways in which “younger” cultures related to their venerable predecessors. 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? Exploring writers from Sugawara no Michizane to Sei Shônagon and from Cicero to Ovid and Martianus Capella and engaging issues ranging from narratives of literary history, foundation figures, literature of the capital and poetry of exile, to strategies of cultural comparison through parody and satire, This book captures the striking similarities between the ways Early Japanese writers wrote their own literature through and against the literary precedents of China and the ways Latin writers engaged and contested Greek precedents. But it also brings to light suggestive divergences that are rooted in geopolitical, linguistic, sociohistorical, and aesthetic differences between Early Japanese and Roman literary cultures.