LITERATI CULTURE

The focus is on the cultural production of the literati class (wenren; bunjin).  This is the class of persons in the pre-modern and early modern China and Japan responsible for what came to be viewed as the “high arts” of the culture, although the richness of their expression owes much to interaction with other centers of cultural production, including the imperial court above (in which some literati participated) and merchant class culture below. 

Literati were the creators of the bulk of the poetry, the art song, calligraphy, and painting of China and Japan, as well as the rich traditions of literary and art criticism that adhered to those primary arts.  Issues in the representation of the self, common to all the forms of expression, are foremost among topics of interest.  These are connected to the problems of stylistic innovation over time, the tension between individuality and group orthodoxy, and relations with both the imperial court as would-be arbiter of taste, on the one hand, and the growing commercial market for art objects, on the other.  Of special interest is the bipolar pull of elitist tendencies in expressions (e.g., erudition in language, the use of semi-private codes or allusions in the visual and literary arts) and an attraction to the perceived authenticity of the “unpolished” or “popular” as antidotes to the hackneyed conventionality of expression among the educated bureaucratic class.  Another pervasive interest is that of the relation between text and image, whether in the inscribed paintings of Song-Qing period China or the witty interplay of narrative and illustration in Edo period literature.

Students may pursue several related fields of study to complement their work in this specialization.  Course work in Buddhist studies (in East Asian or Religious Studies) would provide insight into one of the major sources of literati thought and values, particularly the preference for non-discursive or non-verbal modes of expression.  Study with specialists in Chinese and Japanese art in the History of Art and Architecture Department will provide for in-depth work in the visual arts (calligraphy, painting) that are central to the specialization.

FACULTY

Ronald Egan
(Chinese literature and aesthetics)
Haruko Iwasaki
(Edo literature)
Katherine Saltzman-Li
(early modern Japanese literature)
William Powell
(Chinese religion)
Peter Sturman
(Chinese art history)
Miriam Wattles
(Japanese art history)