The Classical Moment: Views from Seven Literatures

152 Pages·1999·8.193 MB·English

by  Gail Holst-Warhaft (editor), David R. McCann (editor)

The Classical Moment

The Classical Moment
Views from Seven Literatures
EDITED BY
GAILHOLST-WARHAFT ANDDAVIDR. MCCANN
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham• Boulder• New York• Oxford
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706
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Copyright © 1999 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The classical moment : views from seven literatures I edited by Gail
Holst-Warhaft and David R. Mccann.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: The wake of the Greek classical moment I Gail Holst
-Warhaft --"They requested him as god of their city" : a classical
moment in Mesopotamian experience I William W. Hallo --The
classical moment in India I Stephanie W. Jamison --The classical
moment: China I Paul Rouzer --Unstating the classical moment : the
logic of forms and forces in Heian Japan I Thomas Lamarre -
Performing Dragons : the construction of a Korean classical moment I
David R. McCann --In search of Vietnamese classical moments I K. W.
Taylor.
ISBN: 978-0-8476-9419-8
1. Canon (Literature) 2. Asian literature--History and criticism.
I. Holst-Warhaft, Gail, 1941- II. McCann, David R. (David Richard),
1944-
PN85.C499 1999
895--dc21 98-52483
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
8"'
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSl/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Illustrations Vll
Acknowledgments Vlll
Introduction ix
1: The Wake of the Greek Classical Moment 1
Gail Holst-Warhaft
2: "They Requested Him as God of Their City":
A Classical Moment in the Mesopotamian Experience 23
William W Hallo
3: The Classical Moment in India: The Grammar of
Discrimination in Kalidasa 37
Stephanie W Jamison
4: The Classical Moment in China 47
Paul Rouzer
5: Unstating the Classical Moment: The Logic of Forms
and Forces in Heian Japan 75
Thomas Lamarre
6: Performing Dragons: The Construction of a Korean
Classical Moment 99
David R. McCann
7: In Search of Vietnamese Classical Moments 117
Keith W Taylor
About the Contributors 131
Index 133

List of Illustrations
1. Figure of Victory from the Temple of Victory.
Photograph by William J. Stillman, 1989. xii
2. Stone door socket with an inscription of Nariam-Sim from
the temple of Shar-Maradda. 22
3. Sandstone sculpture from the Gupta period depicting
the goddess Sarasvafi (Uttar Pradesh, sixth century). 36
4. Woodblock edition of the Shi jing (variously translated as
"Book of Songs" or "Classic of Poetry"). 46
5. Selections from the Ki' no Tsurayuki collection in the
Nishihongaji edition of The Collection of Thirty-six Poets. 74
6. Woodblock of The Song of the Flying Dragons, showing
Chinese characters next to Korean script. 98
7. Giac Duyen hovering over the still-dazed Kieu, from
Kim Nan Kieu by Nguyen Du. 116
vii
Acknowledgments
T
his book was the result of a collaboration between the scholars who wrote
the individual contributions and the editors. The editors would like to thank
the contributors for their patience and unflagging enthusiasm for the project.
We are grateful to the Humanities Council, the Society for the Humanities,
the Institute for European Studies, and the Classics Department and East Asia
Program at Cornell University for sponsoring the original conference out of
which this volume grew. We would also like to thank Piotr Michalowski, David
Owen, and Martin Bernal for their valuable contributions to the conference.
We thank Professor Andrew Szegedy-Maszak for permission to repro
duce the photograph from his personal collection by William J. Stillman on
page xii. We also thank Professor William W. Hallo for permission to repro
duce the photograph of the inscription of Naram-Sin from the Yale Babylonian
Collection on page 22. We are grateful to Mahlon Lovett, of Princeton
University's Communications Department, for his help with the design of the
volume. Last, but not least, we thank Gregory Nagy, who made a valiant at
tempt to reach the original conference in a winter storm and has been a source
of support and encouragement ever since.
viii
Introduction
T
he idea of a "classical moment" is something that begs, in this age, to be
undone. It reeks of elitism, of fixed canons, of the romantic worship of
an idealized past. "Classical" is doomed by its relation to "class," "moment,"
by its temporal and cultural claim to uniqueness. In an age perhaps unparal
leled in its willingness to question its own bases of legitimacy, its prejudices,
and its canons, the idea of a single "classical moment" that defined our cul
ture was bound to come under scrutiny. What is more surprising is how
tenaciously it has been defended. In the Western world, the "classical"
implies Greece and Rome. Most prestigious universities continue to label
departments of Greek and Latin "classics departments," and despite broad
side and more subtle attacks on the implications of the term there have been
equally adamant demands for the preservation of the privileged status of
Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and language as the underpinnings
of our culture.
In gathering scholars together whose work concentrates on literatures other
than Greek and Roman, and asking them to discuss the "classical moment" as
it applied to the cultures they studied, we set out neither to undermine nor to
uphold the notion of a "classical moment." We were interested in discovering
whether such moments do appear in other cultures and, if so, how they be
come enshrined in the cultural memory of a society, what effect they have on
preceding as well as subsequent literary and artistic creations.
The idea for this gathering of moments grew from a course we taught
together at Cornell University called "Hidden Songs in Greece and Asia." The
course began with readings in the Chinese Book of Odes, ancient Greek trag
edy, and vernacular (Korean) and classical (Chinese) language narratives in
premodern Korean literature. We discussed these readings in terms of a series
of contrasts such as state and society, folk and elite literature, and male and
female roles in society. We noticed patterns of concealing and enhancing in
the transition from orality to literacy and saw how groups that had been sig
nificant in an oral tradition were obscured or submerged in written literary
culture.
We were led to consider the idea of "classical" literature in new ways and
to discover surprising numbers of common threads in the Asian and Greek
ix