Description:
Did East Asian literatures, ranging from bronze inscriptions to zazen treatises, lack a concept of authorship before their integration into classical modernity? The answer depends on how one defines the term author. Starting out with a critical review of recent theories of authorship, this edited volume distinguishes various author functions, which can be distributed among several individuals and need not be integrated into a single source of textual meaning. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literary traditions cover the whole spectrum from 'weak' composite to 'strong' individual forms and concepts of authorship. Divisions on this scale can be equated with gradual differences in the range of self-articulation. Contributors are Roland Altenburger, Alexander Beecroft, Marion Eggert, Simone Müller, Christian Schwermann, and Raji Steineck.
Brief description:
Christian Schwermann, Ph.D. (2005), University of Bonn, is lecturer of Classical Chinese at that university. He has published chiefly on early Chinese literature, including a monograph on the concept of stupidity in ancient texts ("Dummheit" in altchinesischen Texten, Harrassowitz, 2011).
Raji C. Steineck, Ph.D. (2000), University of Bonn, is Professor of Japanology at the University of Zurich. He mainly works on the interrelation between symbolic configurations and ideational content in Japanese intellectual history, as in his new work on the Critique of Symbolic Forms (frommann-holzboog, 2014).