Literary History: Towards A Global Perspective

Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective
Volume 1
W
Literary History:
Towards a Global Perspective
Edited by
Gunilla Lindberg-Wada
Editorial Board
Stefan Helgesson · Annika Lundström · Tord Olsson
Margareta Petersson · Anders Pettersson • Bo Utas
Volume 1
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Notions of Literature
Across Times and Cultures
Edited by
Anders Pettersson

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within
the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018932-2
ISBN-10: 3-11-018932-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Literary history: towards a global perspective,

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018932-2 (set : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 3-11-018932-1 (set : alk. paper)
1. Literature-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 2. Literary form. 3.
Literature, Comparative. 4. Literature and society. I. Pettersson, Anders,
1946- II. Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla. III. Petersson, Margareta. IV. Hel-
gesson, Stefan. V. Title: Notions of literature across times and cultures.
VI. Title: Literary genres, an intercultural approach. VII. Tide: Literary
interactions in the modern world 1. VIII. Tide: Literary interactions in the
modern world 2.
PN441.L486 2006
809 - dc22
2006024317
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Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin
Contents
V O L U M E 1: NOTIONS OF LITERATURE ACROSS TIMES AND CULTURES
General Preface to the Series

Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective IX
Acknowledgements XIII
Anders Pettersson
Introduction: Concepts of Literature and Transcultural
Literary History 1
Mar ja Kaikkonen
Becoming Literature: Views of Popular Fiction in
Twentieth-Century China 36
Martin Svensson Ekström
One Lucky Bastard: On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese
"Literature" 70
Japanese Literary History Writing: The Beginnings Ill
Gunilla Gren-Eklund
The Pleasure of Poetry—Sanskrit Poetics and kävya 135
Bo Holmberg
Adab and Arabic Literature 180
Leif Lorentzon
Let the House Be Dead Silent: A Discussion of Literariness
in East African Oral Literature 206
Tord Olsson
Experiences of Orature in Sahelian West Africa 245
Notes on Contributors 291
Index 293
VI Contents
V O L U M E 2 : LITERARY GENRES: A N INTERCULTURAL APPROACH
Introduction: Genji monogatari and the Intercultural Under-
standing of Literary Genres 1
Noriko Thunman
The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story Watakushishösetsu in
Japanese Literature 17
Lena Rydholm
The Theory of Ancient Chinese Genres 53
Christina Nygren
Drama for Learning and Pleasure: Japan, China and India in a
Comparative Perspective Ill
Kerstin Eksell
Genre in Early Arabic Poetry 156
Bo Utas
"Genres" in Persian Literature 900-1900 199
Lennart Ryden f
Byzantine Saints' Lives as a Literary Genre 242
Anders Pettersson
Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and Theories
of Genre 279
Index 309
Contents VII
V O L U M E 3 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE MODERN W O R L D 1
Margareta Petersson
Introduction: Cultural Encounters between Literary Cultures.
The Example of the Novel 1
Per Erik Ljung

Inventing Traditions: A Comparative Perspective on the
Writing of Literary History 30
Stephan Larsen
African Literature, or African Literatures? Reflections on a
Terminological Problem 67
Keiko Kockum t
The Role of Western Literature in the Formation of the
Modern Japanese Novel 97
Bo Holmberg
Transculturating the Epic: The Arab Awakening and the
Translation of the Iliad 141
Stephan Larsen
Euro-African Dialogue: Some Examples of African Hyper-
texts of European Hypotexts 166
Index 201
VIII Contents
V O L U M E 4 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE M O D E R N W O R L D 2
Leif Lorentzon
"Something Very Light, Perhaps a Little Educative": Negoti-
ations of Cultural Hierarchies in the Ghanaian Novel in English
between Nkrumah and Armah 1
Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega
Amerindian and European Narratives in Interaction 40
Margareta Petersson
Hybridity in Indian English Literature 80
Stefan Helgesson
Modernism under Portuguese Rule: Jose Craveirinha, Luandino
Vieira and the Doubleness of Colonial Modernity 118
Marja Kaikkonen
The Detective in the Service of the Emperor, the Republic, and the
Communist Party 157
Christina Nygren
Appropriations of European Theatre in Japan, China and India 199
Gail Ramsay
Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the United Arab
Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman 241
Roberta Micallef
Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Turkish Children's Litera-
ture: Victims or Heroes? 278
Stefan Helgesson
Going Global: An Afterword 303
Index 324
In politics, economics, communications and culture, the world is more of

an interconnected whole today than ever before. It is increasingly difficult
to claim an understanding of one's own culture without realising the need
to understand other ways of thinking and other cultural traditions than
one's own. Inasmuch as literature serves as a repository of and a window
on cultural histories, intercultural understanding in the literary field is now
more indispensable than ever before.
Meaningful familiarity with other traditions requires a knowledge of his-
torical developments and the verbal articulations that express and define
those traditions; hence the importance of a study of literary history that
takes historical specificities into account but does not stop at historical and
cultural divides. True literary history now, in the twenty-first century, must
aspire to a global perspective in spatial as well as temporal terms.
Major histories of world literature have in fact been written since the
1830s and are still being produced—though works of this kind in English
have always been rare and seem to have ceased to appear after the Second
World War. The intellectual defensibility of literary history writing, espe-
cially of broad overviews of literary history, has been intensely contested
over the last few decades. Not least, and like all "master narratives" that as-
pire to global coverage, histories of world literature do indeed face serious
theoretical and practical difficulties on many levels. This project faces up
to these difficulties deliberately and with great caution.
The present series of four volumes, Literary History: Towards a Global
Perspective, attempts to address some of the theoretical problems and, at
the same time, present a body of literary-historical contributions that shed
light on the underlying literary realities and illustrate the fruitfulness of a
global literary-historical perspective. It does not aspire to be a history of
world literature. It is, instead, organised as a discussion of three fundamen-
tal questions: the notion of literature, the problem of genres and encounters
between literary cultures. These three issues are associated with the con-
ception and realisation of such a history. In the process of investigating
χ General Preface to the Series
them, this project highlights the diverse modes by which a number of cul-
tures around the world relate their verbal productions to their cultural life
and to the narratives of their self-defining practices as individuals and
groups. Each question forms the topic of a separate part of the series.
Part One, Notions of Literature Across Times and Cultures, concerns the
treatment of the notion of literature itself. It is emphasised that this concept
is a product of the European eighteenth century and that it lacks exact or
even really close counterparts in earlier times and in other cultures. This
volume comprises a series of essays discussing notions of "literature," and
analogues of the same, in Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Arabic, and East
and West African literary cultures, or various aspects of such notions. The
historical scope is often considerable—three thousand years, in the essays
about China. A n introductory essay, drawing in part on the contributions
on specific cultures, is devoted to a discussion of the concept of literature
itself, of its traditional use in world histories of literature and of ways of
overcoming the seeming theoretical impasse which the concept represents.
Correspondingly, Part T w o , Literary Genres: An Intercultural Ap-
proach, takes up the problem of genres. Like the first volume, Part T w o
deals, indirectly, with the large underlying issues of intercultural compari-
sons between literatures and of the distortions that Western biases, terms
and intellectual habits may introduce into Western writing of world literary
history, especially the history of the cultures of other, non-European tradi-
tions. This second volume, then, contains essays about systems of genres
and about the understanding of genre in the Chinese, early Arabic, and Per-
sian literary cultures, and also essays about specific genres: Byzantine
hagiography, Indian, Japanese and Chinese drama in a comparative per-
spective, and the Japanese autobiographical genre watakushishösetsu. As
in Part One, the historical span is great. Using the Japanese monogatari
genre as an example, the introductory essay contains some reflections on
what aspects may prove especially relevant for intercultural comparisons
between types of literature as these obtain in their localised contexts and as
they intermingle across frontiers of such sites of production. The concept
of genre itself, or principles of organising kinds of verbal production in di-
verse cultures, is analysed in a concluding essay, starting out from genre
notions in the European context. Inasmuch as such principles are instru-
mental in defining how verbal productions are deemed to be "literary," this
essay also suggests how questions of genre can be productively ap-
proached in a world history of literature.
Part Three, Literary Interactions in the Modern World, is considerably
larger than the preceding two and has been divided into two volumes. It fo-
General Preface to the Series XI
cuses on encounters between literary cultures—and specifically on fault-

lines between literature and modernity—in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Very broadly conceived, the theme encompasses the negotiation
of Western literary cultures with other literary traditions over the last two
centuries and also, in part, the influence on Western literary thought and
practices exerted by these cultures. Underlying this part of the series, too,
is a problem of great significance for the writing of literary history: the un-
derstanding and representation of confrontations and exchanges between
literary traditions. This question of transculturation and how it relates to
the writing of literary history is treated in an introduction to the first of
these two volumes (3), whereas the conclusion to the last one (4) deals in a
more general manner with the issue of studying literature on a global scale.
The treatment of this question, naturally, makes use of the materials and in-
sights presented in the essays on literary-historical phenomena dealt with
in the two volumes. These latter contributions cover a wide spectrum with
regard to geography as well as to genres. There are essays about Japanese,
Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Turkish, African and Spanish American litera-
tures, about the novel, drama and poetry, and about many aspects of the ap-
propriation and rejection of foreign literary influences and of their inter-
play with indigenous traditions and conditions of literary production.
The whole series of volumes was produced within the framework of a
Swedish research project carried out between 1996 and 2004, "Litteraturen
i världsperspektiv" ("Literature and Literary History in Global Contexts"),
which was sponsored by the Swedish Research Council. Because of this,
all the participants—who come from various academic disciplines: Arabic/
Semitic languages, Byzantine studies, Comparative literature, Comparative
religion, Indology, Iranian studies, Japanese studies, Sinology, Spanish,
Theatre studies—work or used to work at Swedish universities. The par-
ticipants met a couple of times a year, in small groups or in plenary ses-
sions, to consider drafts of the articles or other problems relevant to their
work or to listen to invited lecturers. The drafts of the volumes were dis-
cussed with international advisers in a series of special seminars in 2002.
The four volumes do not aim at comprehensiveness in time or space, nor
do they pretend to achieve a fair or proportional coverage of all literatures.
There is, for example, little about European literature or literature from the
Americas, since Western literature was largely left to figure as an implicit
point of reference; nor is there very much about oral literature. Both of
these absences are lamentable, not least since it is precisely the implicit
nature of the Western perspective that deserves to be interrogated, but this
should not detract from the main ambition: to enrich the understanding of
XII General Preface to the Series
the important issues associated with the forging of a more current and more
truly intercultural perspective on the literary history of the world, and to do
this through a combination of theoretical reflection and historical scholar-
ship.
The literary-historical essays are not constrained to serve as examples of
the ideas put forward in introductions and conclusions; nor are the intro-
ductory and concluding essays designed to sum up the main findings of the
literary-historical contributions. A l l of these elements are structured in a
less straightforward, more dialectical relationship to each other. The lit-
erary-historical essays are meant to be influenced by the theoretical per-
spectives, while the introductions and conclusions are informed by the lit-
erary—historical insights. Together, they should make the questions under
consideration both more concrete and more transparent.
The three parts and four volumes that comprise the series may be read
separately, but the project is designed to constitute a larger coherent whole
than the sum of its parts.
Acknowledgements
The research behind this project was funded by the Swedish Research
Council. We are deeply grateful to the Council for its generous and abiding
support.
Early drafts of the volumes—then differently organised—were present-
ed to external assessors in two-day meetings in the autumn of 2002. We
benefited greatly from these discussions and wish to thank our assessors
warmly: Elleke Boehmer, Eugene Eoyang, Djelal Kadir, Graham Pechey
and Peter Widdowson. Thanks also to Michael Knight, Pat Shrimpton,
Michael Srigley and Deborah Turrell, who scrutinised our English.
Wislawa Szymborska's poem "The Birds Return" ("Przylot"), from
Wislawa Szymborska, Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts, Magnus J. Krynski
(trans.), © 1981 by Princeton University Press, was reprinted in volume 1
by permission of Princeton University Press.
ANDERS PETTERSSON
Introduction: Concepts of Literature and

Transcultural Literary History
Historical and Transcultural Literary Studies
The study of literature does not, in principle, exclude any time or any cul-
ture. Nor are there any a priori restrictions that would render impossible re-
search and expositions with a large historical and cultural span—or even
world histories of literature.
The idea of a world history of literature may sound profoundly problem-
atic. Many would question the ideological and epistemological soundness
of such a project, and these kinds of doubts may also affect many types of
less ambitious undertakings within transcultural literary history. (By trans-
cultural literary studies I mean, here, literary studies which transcend the
borders of a single culture in their choice of topic.) Some objections in this
vein will be considered later. In my view, however, it is also easy to find
arguments to support the need for a global perspective in literary studies.
The word "global," with its affinity to "globalization," is in itself likely
to arouse complex and conflicting associations. It should be uncontrover-
sial to say, though, that a large number of interrelated developments have
successively tied the world more tightly together. The constantly intensi-
fied internationalization of economic and political activities, transporta-
tion, electronic communications, personal encounters, and media coverage
are some of the more prominent expressions of this pattern. Our ecological
fragility has also increased, and with it our ecological interdependence. As
a consequence of all these changes, the need has never been greater for
people with different cultural backgrounds to interact nor, naturally, the
need to be able to understand and to take seriously cultures other than
one's own.
For some time now, colonial/postcolonial studies have been addressing
globalization and its effects in the literary field over the last few centuries,
2 Anders Pettersson
emphasizing not least the aspect of power involved in cultural encounters

and how literature may be used both to disseminate and to undermine he-
gemonic ideologies. Yet there must obviously also be room for many other
kinds of transcultural studies of literature in a broad temporal and geo-
graphical perspective. It would arguably be a good thing if literary studies
could advance a clearer view of the literary cultures 1 of the world and
make them, and their mutual relationships, more comprehensible to stu-
dents of literature and to a wider audience. Establishing and spreading
deeper knowledge and understanding of other cultures appears both impor-
tant and urgent. 2
Transcultural literary competence is also of value for purely scholarly
and critical purposes. Much as our knowledge of the map of the world
gives us a perspective on our location in space, some knowledge of the
world history of literature will undoubtedly help students of literature to
orientate themselves regardless of their specialities. Even in studies of
one's own national literature, lack of knowledge of the rest of literary his-
tory is likely to seriously distort one's outlook. I will attempt to illustrate
later in this essay how our understanding of the very concept of literature
suffers from not being informed by a culturally and temporally broader
perspective than it is at present.
Thus far I have been speaking as if a world history of literature were an
imaginary, Utopian project, but such histories already exist. In fact the gen-
re has a relatively long tradition. The concept of literature as we know it
came into existence, roughly speaking, during the course of the eighteeenth
century. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries already saw the
1 My use of the expression "literary cultures" (and, mutatis mutandis, of the word "cul-
tures") should of course not be understood as implying that western literary culture, Chi-
nese literary culture, etc. are homogeneous and unchanging entities. The generalizing
talk of literary cultures is to be taken as a convenient shorthand. Cf. the use of the phrase
in such contemporary works as Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History:
Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003); Mario J.
Valdds and Djelal Kadir (eds.), Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative His-
tory, 3 vols. (Oxford 2004); and Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer (eds.), History
of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19'h
and 20"' Centuries, 1 vol. to date (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publ.
Co., 2004-).
2 This is often underlined in present-day comparative literature—in different contexts and
with varying emphases. See, e.g., Masao Miyoshi, "Turn to the Planet: Literature, Diver-
sity, and Totality," Comparative Literature 53 (2001), esp., p. 296; Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Death of a Discipline, esp. chap. 3 (New York: Columbia UP, 2003).
Concepts of Literature and Transcultural Literary History 3
beginnings of the writing of literary history—the history of national Euro-

pean literatures, the history of European literature as a whole and, at least
from the 1830s onwards, the world history of literature.3 A considerable
number of such world histories were produced as early as in the nineteenth
century, especially in Germany but also elsewhere, and the genre has con-
tinued to exist on the European continent.4
The most extensive modern world history of literature is the 24-volume
German Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft (New Handbook of
Literary Studies, 1972-2002). 5 The Soviet Russian Istorija vsemirnoj li-
teratury ν devjati tomach (History of World Literature in Nine Volumes,
1983-94) was considerably more ambitious from a systematic point of
view but was never properly completed: the work was published in only
eight volumes, despite its name, for after the fall of the Soviet Union the
collective of writers felt incapable of dealing adequately with the twentieth
century section of the history.6 Another substantial modern specimen of the
genre is the seven-volume Scandinavian, mainly Danish, Verdens litte-
3 I am thinking of such works as Thomas Warton's three-volume history of English litera-

ture (1774-81), Friedrich Schlegel 's two-volume history of European literature
Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (History of Old and New Literature, 1815-;
originally a series of lectures held in Vienna in 1812), and the Handbuch einer allge-
meinen Geschichte der Poesie (Handbook of a General History of Poetry), 3 vols. (Halle:
Eduard Anton, 1832-33) by the young German philosophy professor Karl Rosenkranz.
As far as I can tell, Rosenkranz's work is the first world history of literature in the
modern sense. (The genre of historia litteraria still existed at the time, i.e., presentations
of all writings within the arts, sciences and polite letters. It was then often referred to in
German as "allgemeine Literaturgeschichte"—general history of literature—and
Rosenkranz no doubt called his work a history of "poetry" not least in order to distin-
guish it from historia litteraria. Prose is included in Rosenkranz's concept of poetry.)
4 Bibliographical information about the genre can be found in G.P. Berdnikov et al. (eds.),
Istorija vsemirnoj literatury ν devjati tomach, 8 vols., vol. 1 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo
Nauka, 1983), pp. 537-38. Alexander Baumgartner, Geschichte der Weltliteratur, 3rd
and 4th improv. ed., vol. 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1901),
pp. v-vi, note 1, lists a considerable number of works from before 1900. See also
Fernand Baldensperger and Werner P. Friederich, Bibliography of Comparative Litera-
ture (New York: Russell and Russell, 1950), pp. 7 - 8 and, not least for the Scandinavian
material, Hans Hertel (ed.), Verdens litteraturhistorie, 7 vols., vol. 1 (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1985), p. 381.
5 Klaus von See (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, 24 vols. (Wies-
baden/Frankfurt am Main: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion; Wies-
baden/Wiebelsheim: AULA-Verlag, 1972-2002).
6 Cf. note 4 above. See Peter Ulf M0ller "Writing the History of World Literature in the
USSR," Culture and History 5 (1989), for a presentation of the Istorija vsemirnoj lite-
ratury in English. The reasons for the untimely discontinuation of the work are explained
in a notice from the editorial management in vol. 8 (1994), pp. 5 - 6 .
4 Anders Pettersson
raturhistorie (The Literary History of the World, 1985-1993). 7 No com-

parable contemporary surveys seem to have been written in English. I am
not aware of a single Anglophone world history of literature whose first
edition appeared after the Second World War.
Works such as the ones mentioned above are often produced by excel-
lent specialists and are normally extremely valuable as sources of informa-
tion. Typically, however, they are problematic on at least four counts.
First, the apportionment of space among the literary cultures does not seem
fair. Western literature (in the sense of literature written in European lan-
guages) tends to occupy around 80 % of the total space, while other litera-
tures share the remaining 20 % (a little space may also have been set aside
for transcultural overviews and the like). 8 Second, works of this type treat
of a number of different literary civilizations: Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Af-
rican, Western, et cetera, but on the whole each such culture is portrayed as
a world of its own. Their interconnections are not very well analysed.
Third, the accounts of different cultures operate, to a considerable extent,
each with its own conceptual apparatus and angle of approach. One does
not find a consistent set of points of view applied throughout the work—to
take a simple example, where textual genres are concerned no consistent
terminology is employed. Fourth, despite the fact that the concept of litera-
ture is pivotal to the works, the idea is by and large left unexplained. In re-
ality, the concept is given different extensions in the works depending on
the time and culture being discussed.
These four peculiarities conspire to place the reader in quite a complex
situation. Imagine an atlas of the world composed on analogous principles.
The atlas would not contain any key map of the world, only a series of in-
dividual maps, loosely related to one another, representing particular re-
gions. Most of the pages in the atlas would depict Europe and America,
and those pages would employ a far less reduced scale than the rest—while
information about scales, and explicit discussion of the distribution of
7 Hans Hertel (ed.), Verdens lilteraturhistorie appeared simultaneously in Danish, Swe-

dish, and Norwegian versions. In this essay I base myself on the Danish ed. (Copenha-
gen: Gyldendal).
8 According to my categorization, 1 % of Rosenkranz's work (1,051 pp.; cf. note 3 above)
deals with transcultural matters, 85 % with western material and 14 % with non-western.
The corresponding figures for Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft (10,841 pp.)
are 0 - 8 5 - 1 5 respectively, for Istorija vsemirnoj literatury ν devjati tomach (5,141 pp.)
3 - 6 7 - 3 0 , and for Verdens litteraturhistorie (2,773 pp.) 4 - 8 7 - 9 respectively. My inspec-
tions of other works in the genre, not mentioned here, have mostly disclosed similar pro-
portions. Note, however, Letourneau's somewhat eccentric book (see note 52 below).
space, would be scant or non-existent. Moreover, the implicit criteria for

inclusion in the cartographic representations would vary from page to page
(rivers, say, would be indicated on some pages but not on others). Finally,
both the set of map signs and the meanings of the signs would fluctuate,
and keys to the signs would be lacking throughout.
For reasons that will become evident later, I regard it as in principle im-
possible to construct "the" authoritative description of the literary history
of the world. I am convinced, however, that larger or smaller sections of
this vast whole can be usefully described and interpreted—although the de-
scriptions and interpretations will naturally vary depending on the underly-
ing purpose. 9
If one wishes to engage in transcultural literary studies, one has every
reason to reflect on world histories of literature and on the problems asso-
ciated with them. Transcultural literary investigations must of necessity
negotiate many of the problems that surface with special, pedagogically re-
warding acuteness in the transcultural historical studies that are widest in
scope: world histories of literature.
The series Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective is intended
to shed light on some major theoretical problems in historical transcultural
literary research and to help improve the foundations on which such stu-
dies are based. The authors' ambition is to combine empirical awareness of
the internal multiplicity and historical variability of literary cultures and of
their multifarious similarities and differences with theoretical reflection on
the complexities involved in literary studies that cross national, cultural,
9 The metaphor of literary-history writing as a kind of map-making is often used pejora-

tively. Thus according to Linda Hutcheon, traditional literary history has been seen as
"the totalizing verbal counterpart to the geographic world vision of empire visible on
maps." "Rethinking the National Model," in Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. V aides (eds.),
Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP,
2002), p. 5. Spivak, for her part, speaks ironically of "the scopic ambitions of mapping
the world's literatures and bringing it under Euro-US rational control." Spivak, Death of
a Discipline, p. 30.
Certainly a map may distort or function as an instrument of power. I see nothing
wrong in principle however with the idea of maps of the world or with the idea of
large-scale literary-historical overviews. As I just suggested, one of the features of exist-
ing world histories of literature that seems questionable to me, is the western bias which
even their apportionment of space probably represents. Yet the presence of such Euro-
centrism, no matter how entrenched, is of course a contingent state of affairs, not a
necessary feature of world histories of literature. For further discussion of relevant
points, see the sections "Conceptual relativity" and "Employing Concepts of Literature
in Transcultural Literary History" below.
6 Anders Pettersson
and temporal boundaries. In this project, Swedish specialists in Sinology,

Japanology, Sanskrit, Arabic, et cetera cooperated with Swedish and Scan-
dinavian scholars from comparative literature and from certain other disci-
plines. The four volumes centre on problems of intercultural comparison
(related to the concept of literature in volume one and to that of genre in
volume two) and of intercultural interplay (the studies of encounters be-
tween literary cultures during the last two centuries in volumes three and
four). Ideally, theory and empirical knowledge should support each other
in all the essays.
This opening volume is devoted to the concept of literature and to the
question of how it can profitably be understood and employed in historical
transcultural literary research. The theoretical discussion, mainly contained
in the present essay, will not result in a definition of the concept, but I will
recommend a general way of viewing the problem and consider possible
strategies for handling it.
The central part of the essay—the next four sections—is concerned with
the concept of literature and its understanding and use. In the final section
the other seven contributions to the volume will be briefly presented.
These are studies in Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, and African lit-
eratures which illustrate how the concept of literature—or, rather, its more
or less close counterparts—is conceived of in these cultures. Considered
together, the eight essays should help the reader form a more comprehen-
sive, practical, and adequate idea about the concept of literature, its cul-
tural specificity or ubiquity, and its possible use in transcultural literary
studies.
Concepts of Literature
Many cultures have operated with a division of texts into literary and
non-literary—or at least into categories that students of literature have be-
come accustomed to regarding as corresponding to such a distinction. It is
thus customary to point to synonyms or near-synonyms for "literature" in
other times and cultures—words like "wen" (Chinese), "kävya" (Sanskrit),
"adab" (Arabic), "poiesis/poesis" (Greek/Latin), and so on. One should
however also be aware of the quite substantial differences between such
concepts and our present-day western notion of literature.
Traditional oral cultures, and early literate cultures such as the Ancient
Egyptian and the Sumerian/Babylonian/Assyrian, often have a more or less
developed vocabulary for designating genres, but they cannot, as far as I

understand, be said to possess any concepts suggestive of the notion of lit-
erature. 10 Ideas of that kind were not formed until later, in literary cultures
such as the classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek/Roman, and Arabic ones.
Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft have described the emergence and meaning
of literature-like concepts in such cultures by saying that when "there is a
dramatic increase in the number of writings, with a corresponding differen-
tiation in their content and character, the texts are likely to be subdivided
into the categories of 'high' literature, professional literature, and popular
literature. 'Literature' (or high literature) is then the term for texts which
are felt to be of general educational value and which are, accordingly, re-
garded as part of the necessary intellectual baggage of every cultured per-
son.'" 1 This is, by and large, the division in the world of texts that underlies
concepts like wen, kävya, adab, poesis: the distinction between culturally
important utterance, worth preserving, studying, and handing on, and utter-
ance of a practical, popular, or downright trivial character ("professional,"
"popular," or "trivial" literature 12 ).
The concepts referred to are not exact counterparts—for example, kävya
and poesis carry with them a strong suggestion of verse—and their respec-
tive contents are often imprecise and always historically mutable. It ap-
pears evident, nevertheless, that they differ from the modern concept of lit-
erature in important ways. Most conspicuously, they often include types of
text that are not in the denotation of the modern concept, texts that we
might classify as history, philosophy, geography, law, administrative docu-
ments, magic, et cetera. Conversely, fictional prose, close to the centre of
the current idea of literature, hardly falls within their scope. This will be
become obvious in the essays in this volume which comment on the indig-
enous Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Arabic conceptualizations.
If we wish to call these older or non-western notions "concepts of litera-
ture," we should remind ourselves that they are—to put it very simply—
concepts of "literature" in the sense of 'utterance answering to high stan-
10 For Sumerian literature and the concept of literature, see Joachim Krecher, "Sumerische
Literatur," in Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 1 (1978), p. 104. For
Ancient Egyptian literature, cf. the discussion in Antonio Loprieno, "Defining Egyptian
Literature: Ancient Texts and Modern Theories," in Antonio Loprieno (ed.), Ancient
Egyptian Literature: History and Forms (Leiden, New York, Cologne: E.J. Brill, 1996).
11 Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: The Univ. of
Michigan, 1997), p. 9.
12 Ibid.
8 Anders Pettersson
dards of cultural significance and style,' not in the sense of 'imaginative

literature.' The latter concept, with its associations with aesthetic auton-
omy, arose in Western Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries, replacing "the traditional concept of literature that demanded the
union of utility with pleasure in works of educational value.'" 3 (I will make
no real attempt to explain why. 14 ) The Latin loan-word "literature" simul-
taneously developed into the term that was used to express the new concept
in European languages (while transforming its earlier meaning(s) consider-
ably). 15
What, then, does "literature" mean today? The proposed definitions
vary. The basic explanation of the word "literature" in the Oxford English
Dictionary {OED) is often quoted as a point of reference: "Literary produc-
tions as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or
period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, ap-
plied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty
of form or emotional effect." 16 Yet the definition does not, of course, cover
all the semantic and pragmatic complexities connected with the concept of
literature.
The OED definition itself refers to two quite different ways of under-
standing the word: one in which it appears to be more or less synonymous
with "everything written" and one designated the "restricted sense." Many
additional inner tensions in the concept are left unmentioned by the OED.
For example, the recurring talk of "writings" and "writing" in the defini-
13 Ibid., p. 10.
14 Some simple observations are made in the section "Literature Across Times and Cul-
tures" below.
For an ambitious analysis of the underlying social, intellectual, and cultural transi-
tions, see Siegfried J. Schmidt, Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im
18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989). The broader cultural and his-
torical picture is painted, with an impressive diachronic span, in Larry Shiner, The Inven-
tion of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001).
Shiner sees the new view of literature (and of art generally) as emerging successively
between ca. 1630 and ca. 1815.
15 See, e.g., Robert Escarpit et al. (eds.), "La Difinition du terme 'littdrature'," in Le Lit-
teraire et le social: Elements pour une sociologie de la litterature (Paris: Flammarion,
1970); Henryk Markiewicz, "The Limits of Literature," in Ralph Cohen (ed.), New
Directions in Literary History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); Rend
Wellek, "What Is Literature?," in Paul Hernadi (ed.), What Is Literature? (Bloomington
and London: Indiana UP, 1978); Peter Widdowson, Literature (London and New York:
Routledge, 1999), chap. 2.
16 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (prep.), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 20
vols., vol. 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 1029.
tion serves to exclude oral literature, which it would nowadays be quite

normal to classify as literature (despite the word's etymological connec-
tions with letters of the alphabet, literacy, and writing). 17 Nor does the
OED mention the important fact that the genres of poetry, drama, and fic-
tional prose constitute a kind of core area according to our present intui-
tions about literature—so much so that there is an even more restricted, but
quite prominent, sense of the word in which "literature" is synonymous
with "imaginative literature.'" 8
Some more subtle and more general circumstances also add diversity to
the use and meaning of the concept. What I have been speaking of thus far
is the unspecific, everyday idea of literature, which is used to effect certain
rough divisions within the world of texts, often rather ad hoc, and which is
characterized by a vagueness and versatility suited to that task. This is
however not the concept's only role. The notion is used in library classifi-
cation, for instance, and for delimiting the kind of writing that makes one
eligible for the Nobel Prize in literature, and of course also, in a large
number of more or less specialized ways, within the academic field of liter-
ary studies. Closer inspection would reveal that the library classification
concept is not in fact the same as the Nobel Prize one, and that neither is
adopted within literary studies. 19
Another aspect of the concept's multiplicity is the fact that its actual use
and meaning vary both among individuals and over time. When the every-
day concept of literature first emerged, for example, it also covered histor-
ical and philosophical writings and oratory. Its scope was however gradu-
17 Cf., e.g., book titles like Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social
Context (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977) and Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Litera-
ture: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
UP, 1992).
18 These literary genres have been presented as the most central ones by, among others,
Rend Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (London: Jonathan Cape,
1966), p. 25; by Richard Shusterman, The Object of Literary Criticism (Amsterdam:
Rodopi; Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1984), p. 37; David Damrosch, What
Is World Literature? (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2003), pp. 128, 130.
19 Consider, e.g., the differences between Willie van Peer's "academic" special-purpose
definition in "But What Is Literature? Toward a Descriptive Definition of Literature," in
Roger Sell (ed.), Literary Pragmatics (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 138,
the Nobel definition as quoted in Lars Gyllensten, The Nobel Prize in Literature, trans.
Alan Blair (Stockholm: The Swedish Academy, 1987), p. 15, and the definition in Melvil
Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index: Devised by Melvil Dewey,
21st ed., ed. Joan S. Mitchell et al„ 4 vols. (Albany: Forest Press, 1996), vol. 3, p. 737
and vol. 4, pp. 1184-85 (note that the term "belles-lettres" is still employed as an alterna-
tive to "literature" in the Dewey Decimal Classification).
10 Anders Pettersson
ally narrowed down during the course of the nineteenth century and has
then, perhaps, tended to broaden again from the mid-twentieth century on-
wards.20 I am also convinced that different groups of people have rather di-
verging ideas about what is and is not comprised in literature in the modern
western sense. As regards the everyday concepts of literature entertained
by the general public, these are probably relatively diffuse and inco-
herent.21
To add one final brushstroke to the picture: the concept of literature
tends to change in content and meaning depending on whether it is applied
to modern times or to older literary cultures. "Literature" carries a partly
different and much wider meaning when used about literary cultures that
do not conform to the modem western pattern,22 a fact to which I will re-
vert later.23 It would have been a pleasure to be able to adduce a good his-
torical explanation of this circumstance, but I know of no relevant studies
and do not wish to speculate.
20 Concerning the emergence and successive changes of the modern concept of literature,
see Klaus Weimar's informative account in his "Literatur," in Harald Fricke et al. (eds.),
Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft: Neubearbeitung des Reallexikons der
deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols., vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
2000), pp. 445-47. Cf. Shiner, The Invention of Art, p. 191.
21 This is certainly the impression that one gains from the only ambitious empirical investi-
gation of the matter that I know of: a study from more than 20 years ago concerning
West Germany. See Dagmar Hintzenberg, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Reinhard Zobel,
Zum Literaturbegriff in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Braunschweig and Wies-
baden: Friedr. Vieweg und Sohn, 1980), esp. pp. 71-72, 89-90.
22 Consider, e.g., Miriam Lichtheim's words in the preface to her much used anthology
Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, 3 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: Univ. of California Press, 1975-80), vol. 1 (1975), pp. v-vi: "In dealing with
ancient literatures it is both customary and appropriate to define literature broadly, so as
to include more than belles-lettres.... Egyptian literature, then, means all compositions
other than the merely practical (such as lists, contracts, lawsuits, and letters)." Cf., e.g.,
Rainer Rosenberg, "Literaturgeschichtsschreibung," in Harald Fricke et al. (eds.),
deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000),
vol. 2, p. 458.
23 See the section "Employing Concepts of Literature in Transcultural Literary History"
below.
Presentational Discourse and the

Modern Western Concept of Literature
As the observations in the last section should have made obvious, the
content of the modern western concept of literature is variable and often
vague. If one wishes to use the concept in a structuring function in a
research project or an exposition, it would normally be wise to give it a
suitable more definite and precise sense, something which must arguably
involve a more or less pronounced element of stipulation. The productive
thing to do would be to give the concept such a content that the lit-
erature/not-literature distinction becomes a relatively precise distinction,
and one which it is also important to make in the investigation at hand.
It will then depend on the topic and on the researcher's frame of interests
which definition of "literature" would be the best under the circum-
stances. 24
What is needed in my present essay however is not the designing, partly
through stipulation, of a more precise concept of literature suitable for use
in a specific research context. It is rather a somewhat closer description of
the modern western concept of literature, a description which, by serving
as a point of reference, may help the reader see more clearly the similari-
ties and differences between the modern western concept and its real or
presumed counterparts in earlier times or in other cultures. In this section, I
will therefore give an approximate description of the normal content of the
concept, such as I perceive it. It should be remembered that the term "lit-
erature" in this section should always be understood as a synonym of "lit-
erature in the modern western sense." 25
Let us think of literature against the background of linguistic intercourse
in general. Language is first and foremost a vehicle of communication. Al-
most without exception, linguistic utterances possess a representational
24 Cf., once again, the section "Employing Concepts of Literature in Transcultural Literary
History" below. In my article "The Concept of Literature: A Description and an Evalua-
tion," in Stein Haugom Olsen and Anders Pettersson (eds.), From Text to Literature:
New Analytic and Pragmatic Approaches (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), I
have explained in much more detail how I see the problems surrounding definitions of
"literature" and also considered other ways of viewing the matter.
25 The notion described in the following could be said to be the one called "the restricted
sense" in the OED definition. The even narrower sense which I referred to as "imagina-
tive literature"—poetry, fiction, drama—is very nearly equivalent to what I dub, below,
"presentational discourse."
content; a description of something in the world is formulated and made

available to an addressee.26
The representational content may be intended to be taken as depicting
actual, existing states of affairs, as when you take a guest for a walk around
your campus and point out the Humanities building to her or him, saying
"That is the Humanities building." Such utterances are assertions, state-
ments of facts, produced in order to be believed and to provide the ad-
dressee with information. Whole texts are seldom simply webs of asser-
tions (a text of any considerable length is normally somewhat heterogen-
eous from a pragmatic point of view), but texts of certain kinds—a univer-
sity textbook, say, or a newspaper notice—may nevertheless be dominated
by the manifest ambition to convey correct representations of the world.
Let us characterize texts answering to that description, and also simple as-
sertions, as pieces of informational discourse.
Conversely, the representational content of an utterance or a text may
sometimes be intended to outline states of affairs that do not yet exist but
are to be brought about by the activity of the addressee. This is the case
with explicit or implicit exhortations. A sign reading "No smoking in this
area," for example, describes a situation—nobody is smoking in the area
concerned—which the addressees (anyone in the vicinity, in this case)
are expected to help to realize. Again, one seldom finds a whole text of
any length made up solely of exhortations, but there are kinds of compo-
sitions, such as summonses, manuals, and cookery books, that are domi-
nated by the ostensible ambition to regulate the addressee's behaviour
and thus make the states of affairs described come true. Let us character-
ize such texts, and also simple exhortations, as pieces of directive dis-
course.
The representational content of an utterance or a text may also be intend-
ed to be taken in other manners, which gives rise to a whole spectrum of
pragmatic varieties of speech acts and discourses. Of considerable interest
in our context is the case where the representational content is meant to be
understood as depicting an entirely invented situation or series of situa-
26 Or, to look at the same fact from a more psychological angle: a mental state (a belief
that so-and-so, an intention to do so-and-so, a wish that so-and-so would happen, or
suchlike) is expressed. Cf. John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy
of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), p. 176 and John R. Searle and Daniel
Vanderveken, Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985),
p. 18.
tions. Think, for example, of the chains of events recounted (in narrative
form) in a work of prose fiction like Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter
(Kojinteki-na taiken, 1964) or (in dramatic form) in a play like Wole
Soyinka's Camwood on the Leaves (I960). 27
The human importance of fiction is less easy to explain than that of in-
formational or directive texts and utterances. (Western reflection on litera-
ture usually portrays it as pleasing—aesthetically pleasing, or just enjoy-
able—or cognitively illuminating, or both at the same time. 28 ) For the sake
of my argument it suffices to point out that the representational content
plays a different role in a piece of fiction than it does in informational or
directive discourse. The fictional representational content is not directly as-
sociated with a matching reality which it, purportedly, truthfully reflects
(informational discourse) or pictures as desirable to bring into existence
(directive discourse). Nicholas Wolterstorff once described the representa-
tional content of fictional discourse—quite aptly in my view—as being
merely presented by its author:
The fictive stance consists of presenting, of offering for consideration, cer-
tain states of affairs—for us to reflect on, to ponder over, to conduct strand-
wise extrapolation on. And he [the fictioneer] does this for our edification,
for our delight, for our illumination, for our cathartic cleansing, and more
besides. It's as if every work of fiction were prefaced with the words "I
hereby present that..." or "I hereby invite you to consider that.. ."2g
Let us characterize texts and utterances dominated by the ostensible ambi-

tion to "present," in Wolterstorff s sense, a representational content to an
addressee as pieces of presentational discourse.
Wolstertorff's view has been criticized for not taking into account that
contents are also presented in informational and directive discourse. But
this is simply not true—not if one is speaking of "presentation" in its tech-
nical, Wolterstorffian sense. A representational content is certainly intro-
duced in informational, directive, and presentational discourse. But in
presentational discourse, unlike the other forms, the content is principally
27 A Personal Matter (1964), trans. J. Nathan (New York: Grove Press, 1968); Camwood
on the Leaves (1960) (London: Methuen, 1973).
28 The best known of the loci classici is Quintus Horatius Flaccus, De arte poetica, 11. 3 3 3 -
34 (and 343-44). Horace is then echoed throughout the history of western thinking about
literature. Consider, e.g., Wellek and Warren, Theory of Literature, pp. 29-30 and the
quotation from Wolterstorff below.
29 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1980),
p. 233.
meant to be valuable in itself as a source of experience, not mainly intend-

ed to be valuable from the informational or directive point of view. In say-
ing that a fictional picture of a young teacher of English in Tokyo is pre-
sented in Oe's A Personal Matter one does not merely state that it is intro-
duced. One rather contends that the reader is expected to use the represen-
tation of the teacher (and of the rest of the fictional world, including the
formal elements of the representation) in the first place to prompt associa-
tions (related to feelings). 30 At the same time, one also implies that the ad-
dressee is not primarily expected to relate the content directly to empirical
realities (as something asserted to be the case or as something to be
brought about). 31
Wolterstorff's description of presenting forms part of an analysis of
what he calls "the fictive stance." It is important to stress, however, that
presentational discourse is not necessarily fictional. Consider, e.g., Wi-
slawa Szymborska's poem "The Birds Return" ("Przylot") from the collec-
tion A Million Laughs, A Bright Hope (Sto pociech, 1967):
This spring the birds have again come back too early.
Rejoice, Ο reason, instinct can also err.
It dozes off, it overlooks—and down they fall into the snow,
and perish senselessly, perish with scarce justice to
the structure of their throats and arch-claws,
the solid cartilage and conscientious webbing,
the estuary of the heart, the labyrinth of innards,
the aisle of ribs and vertebrae in splendid enfilade,
the feathers worthy of a pavilion in a museum of all the crafts,
and the beak of monkish patience.
This is no dirge, it's only outrage

that an angel of real albumen,
a flighty fidget with glands from the Song of Songs,
30 The word "prompt" is a deliberate allusion to chap. 1, sec. 2 of Kendall Walton, Mimesis
as Make-Believe. "Prompters," says Walton, "induce us to imagine what otherwise we
might not have been imaginative enough to think of.... Imagining is a way of toying
with, exploring, trying out new and sometimes farfetched ideas. Hence the value of lur-
ing our imaginations into unfamiliar territory." Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-
Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard UP, 1990), p. 22.
31 For an extensive treatment of the nature of presentationality, see my book A Theory of
Literary Discourse (Lund: Lund UP; Bromley: Chartwell-Bratt, 1990), esp. chaps. 2, 6,
7. In Verbal Art: A Philosophy of Literature and Literary Experience (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's UP, 2000) I offer a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms leading
from the representational content presented to the reader's literary experience.
singular in air, uncountable in hand,

tissue after tissue woven into a unity
of place and time like classical art
to the applause of wings—
falls and lies near a stone,
which in its archaic and boorish way
looks on all life as attempts repeatedly failed.32
Szymborska describes and evaluates a situation and its consequences.

What we are told, literally speaking, is that the birds have come back too
early, and that a dead bird has been found in the snow near a stone. This is
not obviously fictional; it may well correspond to actual fact. (Much of
what is said is said through metaphor and allusion, but being figurative and
being fictional are two different things. 33 And much is reflection, but re-
flection is not specifically connected with fictional discourse.) Yet it does
not make sense to suppose that Szymborska comments on these incidents
in order to inform the reader of them, so what we have before us cannot be
a piece of informational discourse. In fact, the poem is clearly a piece of
presentational discourse—the content is undoubtedly presented in the tech-
nical sense. This demonstrates that presentational discourse is not the same
as fictional discourse: the poem is obviously presentational but not, or not
obviously, fictional.
We can thus distinguish between at least three discursive modes: the
informational, the directive, and the presentational. 34 As the reader may
have guessed, I wish to associate literature with presentational discourse.
One cannot, however, simply identify presentational discourse with lit-
erature if one wishes to capture the usual content of the latter notion.
Some presentational discourse (for example, simple jokes) is not litera-
ture. Cultural expectations of many kinds are linked to the concept of lit-
erature, and these are sometimes strong enough to prevent presentational
compositions that do not fulfil them from being seen as literature. I be-
32 Wislawa Szymborska, "The Birds Return" (1967), in Szymborska's Sounds, Feelings,

Thoughts: Seventy Poems, trans, and introd. Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981), p. 97.
33 See Searle's lucid exposition of the distinction between fictional speech and figurative
speech: John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979), p. 60.
34 I do not wish to give the impression that the presentational mode is on a par with the
informational and directive ones. I regard the two latter as being absolutely fundamental,
while I see presentational discourse—together with promises, performatives, and many
other kinds—as secondary pragmatic varieties.
lieve that at least the following traits ought to be included in a list of such
expectations. 35
Literature is of central cultural importance. Literature is expected to
hold an important place among the spiritual values in our civilization.
(This partly explains why presentational but culturally less valued types of
texts such as popular literature and children's literature have some difficul-
ty in gaining acceptance as literature.)
Literature is carefully and expertly formed. As we have seen, "beauty of
form" figures among the literature-making properties mentioned in the
OED. As I understand it, expert craftsmanship is not in fact normally
regarded as being either a necessary or a sufficient condition for belonging
to literature, but it is still a quality that one expects literature—especially
paradigmatic, prototypical imaginative literature—to possess.
Literature is conducive to aesthetic experience. Literature is expected to
give rise to experiences whose main value consists in some sort of inner
enrichment that is difficult to describe.
It is also worth remembering that most literature (the exception being
oral literature and staged drama) today exists in the form of printed matter,
read individually and silently. Admittedly, that feature has no relevance for
the definition of literature, but it is important to point out since it never-
theless lends literature an individualistic character. It is natural to think of
the notion's associations with intangible refinement, individualism, expert
craftsmanship, and cultural importance as mutually reinforcing one another.
With some justification, then, literature in the modern western sense
could be understood, approximately, as presentational discourse produced
with pretensions to being culturally important, and/or well- formed, and/or
conducive to aesthetic experience. It is worth remembering, however, that
"literature" is used in a wider sense, sometimes approaching 'everything
written,' when one is referring to older cultures. That circumstance, too, is
an aspect of the modern western notion of literature.
To forestall misunderstanding, it is worth repeating that this is simply an
attempt to describe how the concept's content is perceived today. Such de-
scriptions could be formulated differently. My ambition is to provide a rea-
sonable, brief description which is also grounded in considerations of how
language is used in what we call literature.
35 By rights, I should of course furnish empirical evidence that these established expecta-
tions are in fact in force—something which cannot be done within the compass of this
essay. I must rely on the reader's cultural competence for verification.
Conceptual Relativity
I have not attempted to say what literature is, but only how it is ordinarily
perceived. I have a reason for this. Many people, including myself, hold
that terms, concepts, linguistic expressions, and suchlike are human arte-
facts. As John Searle puts it: "Systems of representation, such as vocabu-
laries and conceptual schemes generally, are human creations, and to that
extent arbitrary."36 If this is correct, there can be no question about what
the content of a given concept is, over and above the question of what
knowledgeable people currently take it to be. One can certainly always
suggest, for such and such avowedly good reasons, that the concept should
be given a more or less different content—that the word in question should
be associated with partly different ideas—but that is a different matter.
Think of the concept of a friend. All competent speakers of English have
some knowledge of what "friend" means. Webster defines a friend primar-
ily as "one attached to another by affection or esteem," and this presum-
ably tallies with our ordinary linguistic intuitions. Could we all be mis-
taken in our semantic beliefs—not you or I individually, but all of us, taken
together? Is it conceivable that competent speakers of English as a collec-
tive are wrong in their assumptions about the meaning of the word
"friend"? My answer is no: the meaning of a word in a language at a given
point in time simply is what competent speakers, understood as a collec-
tive, take it to be. This is true of all concepts, the concept of literature in-
cluded. Hence the meaning of the word "literature," the content of the con-
cept of literature, is what competent people perceive it to be.37
True, there are other ways of approaching the question of what literature
is, interpretations in which being does not coalesce with being perceived.
For example, we may ask all kinds of empirical questions about literary
texts—not about the concept of literature itself, that is, but about (some of)
36 John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 151.
37 It may be objected that one should not identify meanings with concepts. I agree in prin-
ciple, but regard meanings as being crucial parts of concepts, so that my remarks in the
text still hold. Personally I would see the idea of what the word "friend" means as being
included in our idea of what a friend is, in our concept of a friend, while the concept
would also contain information of other kinds. Since there are many ways of conceiving
of meaning, and many ways of conceiving of concepts, it is difficult to carry the discus-
sion of the matter further here. For my own part, I subscribe to the view of concepts pre-
sented in Paul Thagard, Conceptual Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992), chap.
2, esp. pp. 2 4 - 3 0 and, more briefly, in Thagard's Mind: Introduction to Cognitive
Science (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, A Bradford Book, 1996), esp. pp. 6 0 -
62.
the objects which we classify as literary texts. Such questions, too, can be
understood as questions about what literature is (or is like). They may be
very significant and interesting, but they concern, naturally, very different
subjects than the content of the concept of literature.
As I have already implied, we may also be in search of a better concept
than the one presently at our disposal. We may want to refashion the con-
cept, make it more apt and more useful. This presupposes that we have, im-
plicitly or explicitly, some idea of a purpose for which the remodelled con-
cept will be more suitable than the original one. Investigations along these
lines may likewise be of great importance. In pursuing them, however, we
do not, arguably, attempt to discover what the content of the concept of lit-
erature actually is. We are, instead, reconstructing the concept. (Think of
car manufacturers improving a car model—their task is not to find out the
truth about the model, for there is no model independent of their various
designs, and consequently no such truth. What they attempt to do is to
make a better car.)
These remarks should have removed much of the impression of stark
relativism from the idea that literature is what it is perceived to be. Yet the
standpoint is indeed relativistic to some extent. Some may wish to take an
objectivist stance instead: they may think that concepts (or some concepts)
do exist independently of human construction and human agreement so
that the collective of qualified observers may in fact be mistaken in its per-
ception of their content. Personally, however, I find it difficult to make
sense of such a view. I particularly feel the need for an explanation of
where, and how, these mind-independent concepts are thought to exist, and
of how we are supposed to acquire and ascertain knowledge about them.
Their being a kind of human construct does not make our concepts
somehow spurious. Human constructs (think of such things as chairs,
boats, space shuttles) may be of great value (or complete failures, and
everything in between). It is natural to ask about constructs, including con-
cepts and other kinds of representations, whether they are good constructs
or not. However that question does not make any real sense unless we also
specify a purpose the construct is meant to fulfil, one in relation to which
the construct may be judged productive or unsuccessful. (Whether the re-
lated purpose is worth pursuing is also a pertinent question.)
The observations about concepts are naturally also valid for the concept
of literature. Many systems of text classification can be devised and have
been devised. The category of literature forms part of most current sys-
tems, but systems without the concept have certainly existed, and such sys-
terns are not a priori inferior. It is an open question whether 'literature' ac-
tually is a useful concept. Perhaps it is practical for some purposes but not
for others. Perhaps it needs to be constructed in different ways in different
contexts, depending on the purpose at hand.
Some readers will probably feel that this is to carry relativism too far: it
is an undeniable fact, they will reflect, that literature does exist. My
answer is that there are senses in which this is true and senses in which it is
not. We have created a concept of literature with the help of which we clas-
sify texts, and when we apply (some version of) that human-made concept
to the world of texts, some texts will come out as being literary and some
texts as being non-literary. Thus given our present system of text classifi-
cation literature does indeed exist, and we can ask all kinds of questions
about its characteristics. Yet if other systems of text classification were
constructed and used, systems that did not include a category called "litera-
ture," there would no longer be any literature.
Again, some readers may feel that this is not true. Once the concept of
literature is invented, it becomes possible to create texts meant to meet the
criteria of the concept. Many texts are literary in the rather fundamental
sense that they are written as literature, intended to function as literature.
It is admittedly a historical fact about such texts that (some version of)
the idea of literature influenced their creation. Yet if other systems of text
classification were constructed and used, systems that did not include a
category called "literature," there would still no longer be any literature,
except in the historical sense that people once reckoned with something
they called "literature" and that we will have to understand this notion if
we are to comprehend how they intended some of their writings to be
taken—much as we will have to understand the concept of a witch if we
are to make historical sense of early modern witch trials. It is consequent-
ly not the case, I would say, that literature exists in any absolute sense:
that we cannot do without the concept of literature because it captures a
structure in reality itself that simply has to be conceptualized, no matter
what.38
38 I foresee the objection that it would be quixotic to doubt the inevitability of the concept
of literature, since the concept is so central to our understanding of an important cultural
good. I would however find such an objection too narrow in its perspective. The concept
is central to our present understanding of an important cultural good, but the textual
domain in question may imaginably be better conceived in other terms. Such conceptual
reorganizations occur all the time and are sometimes profound and dramatic—see
Thagard, Conceptual Revolutions.
Searle refers to his contention that systems of representations are human

creations, and thus to some extent arbitrary, as the thesis of "conceptual
relativity." 39 What he wishes to underline is that one and the same reality
can be described in terms of many different systems of representation, and
that all these descriptions may be correct, given the respective systems. To
take some simple examples (not used by Searle): the colours of a flower
may be described in different natural languages and in terms of different
systems for colour description. Dates and years may be given according to
different calendars—which are, of course, different systems for the repre-
sentation of time. Generally speaking, more than one optics can be used in
the description of reality, and there is no absolutely privileged optics, since
reality cannot prescribe how it is to be viewed and talked about. This, I
take it, is the gist of the thesis of conceptual relativity. 40
The idea of conceptual relativity can perhaps help us to view some epis-
temological and ideological objections to literary history in a new light, for
the relativity associated with literary history has often been comprehended
as a feature of literary history specifically, not as the general condition of
human knowledge that it undoubtedly is. Thus David Perkins was inclined
to deny, in his ambitious and influential book from 1992, Is Literary History
Possible?, that "any construction of a literary past can meet our present crite-
ria of plausibility." His reasons were, basically, of a conceptual or epistemo-
logical nature. Perkins argued, among other things, that "the objects to be
classified are heterogeneous; in observing their similarities and differences
we must be selective; in drawing the boundary lines we must impose a single
point of view or a limited set of points of view. In the process of being
formed, classifications cease adequately to represent the past." 41
Apparently, according to Perkins, classifications cease to adequately
represent the past as soon as there is selectivity and a point of view behind
them. What Perkins does here is, in my view, to use the feature of concep-
tual relativity, encountered in all human activity, as an argument specifi-
cally against the plausibility of literary history. I would say that the argu-
39 Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, p. 151.

40 My references to "reality" may have caused some raised eyebrows. I certainly believe in
the existence of a mind-independent outer world, but this is not the place to defend that
idea, especially since those w h o wish may take the word here in a relativistic vein and
equate it with "presumed reality" without further consequences for my argument.
41 David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP). Quotations
from, pp. 17, 111 respectively.
ment is not relevant. Perkins could just as well have said that literary histo-
ry is implausible since it uses language.
It is also often assumed that literary history is by necessity driven by
ideological forces. Linda Hutcheon has recently described it as a "fact that
the writing of literary history inevitably serves political interests." 42
I have taken it for granted that all representations, and all other human
constructs, are created in order to be useful in one way or another. In this
fashion, constructs are bound up with human purposes—with cognitive
purposes and, at least indirectly, with wishes and desires. Hence concepts
are always intricately associated with networks of beliefs and purposes. As
a consequence, all human representations and all human discourse will be
coloured, to a larger or lesser extent, by the worldviews and agendas un-
derlying them. This lends some justification to Hutcheon's contention that
the writing of literary history inevitably serves political interests. Yet I be-
lieve that either the word "inevitably" or the word "political" ought to be
replaced.
It would be easy to prove that literary history "sometimes" serves politi-
cal interests, but the idea that it does so "inevitably" seems to me difficult
to sustain. It is not clear to me why this would be logically or factually
necessary. Likewise, it seems impossible to doubt that the writing of liter-
ary history serves human interests, and that such interests are always in-
evitably more or less specific and partial. Nevertheless, the word "politi-
cal," with its suggestion of a tangible relationship to politics, does not ap-
pear felicitous to me. Put more generally: I would accept the idea that there
is always an ideological component in our accounts of reality, 43 provided
that the word "ideological" is understood in the sense of 'relating to a sys-
tematic body of ideas,' not in the sense of 'based on a political philosophy
or a sociopolitical programme.' I would not however be prepared to regard
literary history as being special in this respect: ideological components in
this sense can be found in all discourse, most obviously of course in all dis-
course outside of the exact sciences.
42 Hutcheon, "Rethinking the National Model," p. 5.

43 "There does, in fact, appear to be an irreducible ideological component in every histori-
cal account of reality," says Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973), p. 21. In
this book—also very influential within the theory of literary history—White points out
with great effectiveness how the historian's activities are constructive through and
through (see, e.g., p. 30) without questioning, because of that, the existence of a
mind-independent outer world (see esp. p. 6, note 5).
Employing Concepts of Literature in

Transcultural Literary History
The expression "literary history" may refer to literary-historical reality it-

self—the actual history of literature—or to the branch of literary research
devoted to its study. A work of literary history is an account of a larger or
smaller portion of literary history.
"History" normally implies the existence of real historical connections
among the elements studied, but the nature of these links may arguably be
allowed to vary. Some would no doubt say that we cannot speak of a world
history of literature before the point in time when the literary cultures of
the world came in genuine communication with each other, 44 but such a re-
quirement appears unnecessarily strict to me. The cultures are in contact
now, and consequently the events forming part of them constitute histori-
cal processes that eventually came to interact.
Accounts of literary-historical complexes and processes may be valu-
able for various reasons. Evidently, a literary-historical work should have
something interesting to say about literary history, but this leaves very
many possibilities open. I cannot attempt to survey here the conceivable
goals of literary-historical works. 45
When speaking of transcultural literary history, I will continue to use
world histories of literature as an example, since it is so instructive. In the
opening of my essay, I suggested that it is important for laypeople and spe-
cialists alike to acquire a clearer view of the literary cultures of the world
and of their mutual relationships, and I will take that point for granted.
How, then, can the concept of literature profitably be understood and used
within a world history of literature?
In my opinion, that question has no single, positive answer. The concept
of literature, as I have described it, has a relatively vague and somewhat in-
coherent content. That may not be a serious problem when the notion is
used in everyday situations. In an academic context, however, something
44 Note that I am speaking of a world history of literature, not of a history of world litera-
ture. By tradition, "world literature" refers to a subset of literature, typically a canon of
masteipieces of world significance. Today, some researchers suggest giving the concept
a partly different content, see, e.g., Damrosch, What Is World Literature?, pp. 4, 15, 283
and Stefan Helgesson's afterword to volume 4 in the present series.
45 Cf. on this point Jörg Schönert, "Literaturgeschichte," in Harald Fricke et al. (eds.),
deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 2 vols, to date (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
2000), vol. 2, esp. pp. 455-56. See also Rosenberg, Literaturgeschichtsschreibung.
more precise is often needed. If we employ the word "literature" in our

academic work46 without giving it a relatively clear meaning, the state-
ments in which we use it will themselves lack clarity of meaning. As I em-
phasized earlier, when the word "literature" does not in itself possess
enough precision for the academic purpose at hand, we will simply have to
add that precision ourselves by stipulation. We will have to refashion the
concept of literature so that it can serve the purpose for which we need it.
In short, we should make sure that we have something interesting to say
in our world history of literature, and that we employ the concept of litera-
ture in such a way that it becomes a useful tool for putting that central con-
tent across. It would be a mistake to ask in abstracto how the concept
should be defined and used. Instead, we should make a point of defining
the purpose of the history in a productive way and of designing the concept
in a manner that makes it suitable for the purpose.
That is in fact not at all how the matter is usually approached. Normally,
the concept of literature is taken at face value. A typical world history of
literature is avowedly a global account of that which is literature in the
general, everyday sense, which means that the concept of literature is in re-
46 Why, indeed, should we not abandon the concept of literature and make a fresh start? My
reply is that we could probably get along quite well without the concept of literature, and
that I am not against that in principle, but that it is important to remember that there are
no completely fresh starts.
We cannot place ourselves outside history. We can certainly invent new concepts,
denoted by newly coined terms, for discussing what is now called "literature." There is
nothing inherently wrong with such manoeuvres. When introducing and using these
innovations, we will however, now and in the foreseeable future, be forced to explain, in
one way or another, how our new concepts relate to the notion of literature traditionally
used about the area. We will have to explain, e.g., how the new vistas that we open up
supplant the old ones, and in what their superiority consists. For that reason alone we
cannot, whatever we wish to do in this field, manage without an understanding of the
concept of literature and of its complexities. Such understanding will also be necessary
to keep us from the risk of inventing concepts that are superficially new but are by and
large beset by the same problems as the notion of literature.
In fact in the present essay I am, in a sense, suggesting that we abandon the concept of
literature—namely, that we abandon the idea of one concept of literature, the concept of
literature suitable for all contexts and purposes. My proposal is that in academic literary
studies contexts we replace it, whenever any considerable degree of precision is needed,
with concepts of literature specially designed to suit the purpose at hand. In other words,
I believe that "literature" will have to be defined whenever it is to carry structural weight
in an academic book or article or lecture, and that the definition will have to be stipula-
tive to some extent. This goes some way towards abandoning the concept, for the con-
cepts of literature thus introduced could naturally (in view of the arbitrariness of the rela-
tion between concepts and their designations) have been presented under some other
name than "literature."
ality left v a g u e and inconsistent. M o s t conspicuously, "literature" is tradi-

tionally used in a m u c h wider sense w h e n applied to older periods than
w h e n used about m o d e r n times. 4 7
T h i s is not a promising strategy. If o n e collects an aggregate of texts on
inconsistent principles, there will probably b e f e w interesting general per-
spectives on the corpus. Sensing that, one will tend to b e less willing to at-
tempt to f o r m u l a t e clear and specific p u r p o s e s for o n e ' s work. All in all, I
believe that insecurities rooted in the understanding of the concept of lit-
erature and its possible uses play a considerable, negative role in existing
world histories of literature.
M a n y , of course, see these matters differently. Researchers tend to ac-
cept the modern western concept of literature unquestioningly, as if it were
not an optics but something o f f e r i n g u n m e d i a t e d access to reality. T h u s
Ν . I. K o n r a d writes, in the Istorija vsemirnoj literatury:
It is an obvious fact that the scope of literature is not the same at different
times in history. Plato's Symposium is included in Ancient Greek literature;
Livy's History and the Historical Records by Sima Qian form part of
Ancient Latin and Ancient Chinese literature respectively. Ferrero's Great-
ness and Decline of Rome is however not counted as a work of Italian lit-
erature of the Modern Era, nor does Burckhardt's The Civilization of the
Renaissance in Italy form part of imaginative literature—despite the undis-
putable brilliance of these two works precisely in literary respects.48
A f t e r a n u m b e r of analogous observations, K o n r a d g o e s on to argue that

the historical c h a n g e s in literature's scope is one of the most important
p h e n o m e n a in literature's history. 4 9 In doing so, he is taking the m o d e r n
western concept of literature for granted, inconsistencies and all. It is true
that P l a t o ' s Symposium is included in Ancient Greek literature by us, to-
day, but it was not so included by the ancient G r e e k s t h e m s e l v e s — f o r the
simple reason that there was n o concept of literature, nor any really close
counterpart, in Ancient G r e e c e (or R o m e , or China). K o n r a d ' s perception
of a historical c h a n g e in literature's s c o p e is, I would say, an illusion cre-
47 This is a well-known feature of histories of literature. See, e.g., Rosenberg, "Literaturge-

schichtsschreibung," p. 458. Contributors to world histories of literature are often aware
of these inner tensions in the concept of literature, and they sometimes comment on
them. For some such statements in the Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, see
Krecher, "Sumerische Literatur," pp. 103-104, Emst Vogt, "Die griechische Literatur,"
in vol. 2 (1981), pp. 1-2, and Wolfhart Heinrichs, "Einführung," in vol. 5 (1990), p. 17.
48 N.I. Konrad, "Mesto pervogo toma ν Istorii vsemirnoj literatury'," in Istorija vsemirnoj
literatury, vol. 1 (1983), p. 14. My translation.
49 Ibid., p. 15.
ated by our modern western concept of literature. We use much more

liberal criteria for classifying older texts as literature, and consequently a
much larger portion of the older corpus of texts will be included in the con-
cept. 50
If we are not prepared to use the concept of literature without modifica-

tions in our transcultural literary-historical work, 51 how should we pro-
ceed? As before, I will use the writing of world histories of literature as my
main example.
One option would be to decide on one definite concept of literature on
which the history should be based, and to write a world history of that
which is literature in this specific sense. For instance, one could write the
world history of literature in the "imaginative literature" sense, including
in the history only imaginative literature and excluding history, oratory,
philosophy, geography, magical writings, and so forth. This would satisfy
the interest in knowing what existed in earlier cultures that coincides with
literature in the sense used about present conditions. A history of world lit-
erature along these lines would of course look very unfamiliar, but that is
not in itself an intellectual shortcoming. More worrying, perhaps, is that
such a history might simply separate individual older works from the cul-
tures to which they belong, and where they form natural parts of textual
worlds very different from the modern western one, and thus be deeply un-
historical in important respects.
Conversely, one could write the world history of literature-in-the-
wide-sense—of all verbal discourse, or of all verbal discourse with marked
aesthetic ambitions (whatever one takes that to mean). True, this would
perhaps be an insuperable task unless it were done in extremely broad out-
line and the history were focused not on individual works or authors, or
even genres, but on something like verbal cultures and their successive
50 If one shares Konrad's intuitions, one can of course attempt to mount a convincing inde-
pendent argument for the usefulness of a concept of literature supplied with different
inclusion criteria depending on the time to which it is applied. I believe that such a
project would be foredoomed but will not pursue the matter here.
51 Naturally, nothing prevents us from consciously writing new world histories of literature
on the traditional pattern, building on the unmodified, modern everyday concept of lit-
erature. (The writing of such histories could, e.g., be motivated by demands or expecta-
tions from the reading public.) What I dispute is that such histories of literature are
defensible on systematic, scholarly grounds.
changes. In fact, I know of one such history: the French anthropologist

Charles Letourneau's work from 1894, L'Evolution litteraire dans les di-
verses races humaines (The Evolution of Literature in the Different Hu-
man Races). In his very original work, Letourneau emphatically includes
oral literature in his considerations, and he describes it as his aim simply to
"mark the principal phases" through which literature has passed with a spe-
cial focus on its emergence. 52 (Here it is the Rest, not the West, that is be-
ing focussed on: the West is given about 26 % of the space, the Rest 67 %,
and 7 % is set apart for general introductions and the like.)
Letourneau's work is of course antiquated, and the way it employs the
concept of race is bound to make a contemporary student of literature ra-
ther uncomfortable. Nevertheless I find it easy to sympathize with many of
the intellectual impulses behind Letourneau's book. I would be even more
interested, however, in a world history of literary cultures where the worlds
of texts associated with different civilizations and eras were described,
against their societal background, together with their principal characteris-
tics and functions, and the kinds of discourse tending towards imaginative
literature were marked off and exemplified.
Such a work would not necessarily have to employ a concept of lit-
erature at all. It could simply point to the fact that the kinds of texts at the
centre of attention are those often conceived of as being literary, and let
that motivate its presentation as a work concerned with "literary" cultures.
It might however be a good idea to introduce a concept of literature for the
sake of comparison and orientation. In the account of the literary cultures,
one could for example point out what is and is not literature according to a
concept of literature which one introduces carefully (for example, a con-
cept of literature in the sense of imaginative literature or in the sense of
presentational discourse).
I would also be greatly interested in reading a world history of literature
that concentrates on the formal and pragmatic possibilities of language
typically employed in literary discourse in the modern sense, and on their
emergence and use in various cultures throughout history—a history of the
emergence and use of presentationality, for example. In such a history,
again, no specific concept of literature would be needed. The real object of
investigation would be a kind of language use, defined in terms of linguis-
52 Ch. Letourneau, L'Evolution litteraire dans les diverses races humaines, Bibliothfeque
anthropologique, No. 15 (Paris: Ancienne Maison Delahaye, L. Battaille et Cie, iditeurs,
1894), pp. v-vi. Quotation from p. vi; my translation.
tic and philosophical pragmatics, and its special characteristics and use in
various times and cultures.
In current state-of-the-art literary-history writing it is common to empha-

size strongly (and, of course, rightly) the complexity of literary-historical
processes. One also often wishes to break up the presentation of literary
history by means of a kind of mosaic disposition. Thus the new, complexly
structured three-volume literary history of Latin America sponsored by the
International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), Literary Cul-
tures of Latin America: A Comparative History (2004), is described by its
main editor as being an "open history ... designed as multiple dialectic en-
counters whose tensional developments must be interpreted by the reader"
and as one where "the historical materials ... are laid out in a grid, subject
to the multiple viewpoints of 242 scholars and open to the interpretation of
the reader." 53 The related history about East-Central Europe, also sup-
ported by the ICLA, History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Eu-
rope: Junctures and Disjunctures in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu-
ries (2004-), is organized according to so-called "nodes." It will contain
both articles about temporal nodes (1989, 1968/1956, and so on), about
topographical nodes (for example, about the literary cultures of cities like
Prague, Bucharest, Vilnius/Wilno/Vilna, and others), and about insti-
tutional nodes (for instance, journals, censorship), period conventions,
transformations of genres, and figural nodes (the writer as national icon,
figures of female identity, et cetera). 54
This type of literary-history writing is often contrasted favourably, by its
proponents, with "the linear mode of historical discourse" or with "single,
critical recitation[s] of dates, facts, or events." 55 It is important to remem-
53 Mario J. Valdis, "Beyond Literary History," in Valdds and Kadir (eds.), Literary Cul-
tures of Latin America, vol. 1, pp. xx and xxiii respectively.
54 See the "General Introduction" to the first volume of History of the Literary Cultures of
East-Central Europe by the editors Cornis-Pope and Neubauer, and also their more
extensive advance presentation of the project, Towards a History of the Literary Cultures
in East-Central Europe: Theoretical Reflections, ACLS Occasional Paper Series, No. 52
(New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002), esp. pp. 3 5 - 3 7 , 4 2 - 5 0 .
55 Quotations from Valdds, p. xx and from Linda Hutcheon, Djelal Kadir, and Mario J.
Valdes, Collaborative Historiography: A Comparative Literary History of Latin Ame-
rica, ACLS Occasional Paper, No. 35 (New York: American Council of Learned Socie-
ties, 1996), p. 8.
ber, however, that neither kind can describe literary history as it is in itself,
or come closer to such an account than the opposite model, for it would be
a mistake to believe in the idea of an account of literary history in its own
terms. Conceptual relativity is in force here too. 56 Rather, both representa-
tive practices have their advantages and drawbacks. To put it figuratively
and very simply: pointillistic varieties seem especially well adapted to por-
traying the trees, while single, critical recitations probably fare better with
the wood. 57 What is important to emphasize in the present context, is that
my general suggestions about how we should view the employment of the
concept of literature in transcultural literary history are intended to apply to
"pointillistic" historiography as well.
Literature Across Times and Cultures
The subject of the present volume is the concept of literature and its under-
standing and use in historical and transcultural literary studies. This intro-
ductory essay has been largely theoretical. The focus was on complexities
in connection with the concept of literature, on how they should be con-
ceived of, and on how they may be dealt with. Much more than theory is
needed, however, for the successful employment of the concept in trans-
cultural literary history. The seven essays that follow offer perspectives on
the textual worlds of some important literary cultures. Taken together, the
56 True, the literary historian writes about a material that does, in itself, have an intrinsic
mental perspective (or rather, innumerable such perspectives, since no two people or lit-
erary works will be identical in perspective). However the historian's task is not (nor-
mally regarded as being) that of reproducing this confusing multiplicity, but of making it
comprehensible, from some point of view and for some purpose. There is no way of
doing that which is absolutely privileged ontologically or epistemologically, since an
external perspective (that of the historian or collective of historians) must inevitably be
introduced. This is why I do not concur with Damrosch when he writes (my italics):
"Any global perspective on literature must acknowledge the tremendous variability in
what has counted as literature from one place to another and from one era to another; in
this sense, literature can best be defined pragmatically as whatever texts a given commu-
nity of readers takes as literature." Damrosch, What Is World Literature?, p. 14. (Since
the concept of literature did not actually exist before the eighteenth century, it is also dif-
ficult to accept the idea that there were texts in earlier cultures that "counted as litera-
ture," but I already pointed that out apropos of Konrad.)
57 There is a well-known distinction between narrative and encyclopedic literary history,
introduced by David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible?, chs. 2 and 3. The distinction
is reminiscent of my loose contrast between two types of literary-history writing, but I do
not believe that Perkins's concepts are exactly what I have mind.
essays should provide some idea of the variable contexts which we have to
take into account when we do transcultural literary history using the con-
cept of literature as one of our tools. I will now give a brief overview of the
essays (deviating, in my presentation, from the order in which they appear
in the volume).
Traditional oral cultures usually display a number of genres that we are ac-
customed to calling literary: songs and narratives of various kinds—enter-
taining, practical, mythical, magical, or religious, often at one and the same
time.58 They do not however have a concept of literature. (Such notions as
'religion' and 'myth' are of course also western categories without exact
counterparts in the cultures in question. Implicit or explicit indigenous cat-
egorizations often exist, but for obvious reasons they cannot correspond to
their western counterparts except very approximately.)
The essays by Tord Olsson and Leif Lorentzon deal with oral literary
cultures in Africa. Olsson's "Experiences of Orature in Sahelian West Af-
rica" is based mainly on his own fieldwork with Mande bards (or griots) in
Mali and takes a particular interest in their sensuous conception of oral lit-
erature. The bards say that they "eat literature" and that they are "eaten by
literature." According to Olsson, their relation to oral literature is ex-
pressed by means of gustatory metaphors based on a specific philosophy of
language, suggesting a conception of literature orientated towards the tac-
tual.
While Olsson writes about West African literature, Lorentzon concen-
trates on East Africa in his study "Let the House Be Dead Silent: A Discus-
sion of Literariness in East African Oral Literature." Coming from com-
parative literature, Lorentzon does not himself know the languages of the
literatures under discussion. His focus, however, is not on the oral texts
themselves but on their classification and conceptualization as literature by
critics. Lorentzon looks at the critical discussion of African, especially
East African, oral literature from Ruth Finnegan's classic Oral Literature
in Africa (1970) onwards, reflecting on the writers' criteria for applying
58 Cf„ e.g., Jan Vansina's interesting taxonomy of what he calls "oral traditions" (i.e., tradi-
tional oral utterance) in his Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (1961),
trans. Η. M. Wright (Harmondsworth, England and Ringwood, Australia: Penguin
Books, 1973), pp. 1 4 2 - 1 6 4 (the expression "oral traditions" is found in p. 142). Concern-
ing African oral literature, see esp. Okpewho, African Oral Literature.
the concept of literature and concentrating especially on Karin Barber's

studies of Yorübä oral poetry (Nigeria) and on Peter Seitel's research on
Haya verbal art (Tanzania).
In literate cultures genres multiply with time. Religious, administrative,
and economic texts of many kinds are created; some of them are viewed by
the culture itself as part of its central heritage. Texts that might be charac-
terized as philosophical or historical can be written down, as well as poems
and perhaps also songs and stories. Personal letters will abound, and texts
of an autobiographical nature may also come into existence. Oral genres,
naturally, also persist.
As I have already indicated, the very early literate cultures—such as the
Mesopotamian and the Ancient Egyptian—appear to lack concepts that are
at all comparable to 'literature.' Such concepts begin to emerge in various
civilizations during the centuries immediately before and after the begin-
ning of the Common Era. Idema and Haft date the relevant Chinese
concept of wen to the third century CE. 59 The Greek concept of 'poetry'
('poiesis') is an even earlier example. 60 (In the West, however, the two
concepts of 'poetry' and 'rhetoric' tended to combine to express the cate-
gory of culturally valued secular writing which fell under concepts of
'literature' such as the Chinese wen, the Sanskrit kävya, and the Arabic
adab.61) In the words of Idema and Haft, the literature-like concepts cover
those texts which are "felt to be of general educational value and which
are, accordingly, regarded as part of the necessary intellectual baggage of
every cultured person." If we call this "literature," it is literature in the
sense of 'prestigious writing,' not literature in the "restricted" sense or in
the sense of 'imaginative literature.'
This is the structuring of the "literary" field that we have in "classical"
literate cultures—basically, in all literate cultures up to the eighteenth cen-
tury, when the break referred to above occurred. Aspects of the system
come to the fore in most of the remaining five essays in the volume.
59 Idema and Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature, p. 9.

60 According to Andrew Ford, the idea of poiesis as "a craftsmanly kind of 'making' " pro-
ducing songs arose in the fifth century BCE, and a notion of literature (in the wide sense)
in the fourth century BCE. Ford, The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic
Theory in Classical Greece (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2002), esp. pp. 93
(with the quote), 231.
61 During the Middle Ages, the concept of poetry thus only plays a very subordinate role in
the western tradition. See, e.g., Marina Plasmati, "Poetry, Medieval," in Andre Vauchez,
Barrie Dobson, and Michael Lapidge (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (1997),
trans. Adrian Walford, 2 vols., vol. 2 (Cambridge: James Clark and Co., 2000), p. 1155.
T w o of these essays concern Chinese literary culture. Martin Svens son

Ekström ("One Lucky Bastard: On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese 'Litera-
ture' ") studies the beginnings of literature in the sense of imaginative,
presentational literature in China, concentrating especially on the Shijing
(Book of Odes; ca 1000 to ca 600 BCE). Svensson Ekström suggests that
the discourse found in these poems developed out of several different
high-status forms: the divinatory or mythic Yijing (the Book of Changes),
the historiographic bronze inscriptions, and the hymns and rituals per-
formed in ancestral temples. He also attempts to demonstrate how some
poems in the Shijing engage in a play with rhetorical patterns which lends
them a partially self-referential character, making them "poetic" even in
the Jakobsonian sense.
There is a rich tradition of Chinese thinking about wen, literature-in-
the-wide-sense as it is classically conceived in China, at least from the Han
dynasty (206 B C E - 2 2 0 CE) onwards. 62 Marja Kaikkonen's "Becoming
Literature: Views of Popular Fiction in Twentieth-Century China" begins
with a brief overview of central aspects of the classical Chinese "literary"
system, highlighting not least its elitist character. This lays the foundation
for her discussion, in the remainder of her paper, of the changing views of
popular fiction in China. She argues that there has been a gradual and diffi-
cult movement away from traditional, condescending reactions, a move-
ment which has had to force its way through massive elite resistance. Kaik-
konen suggests that these changes may be viewed—within the larger per-
spective of modernization—as a slow, non-voluntary adaptation on the
part of the elite to the egalitarian idea, and that such developments are in-
deed found in both the West and the East.
Chinese civilization exerted massive influence on neighbouring peoples.
For example, the Chinese writing system was adopted in Japan in the
fourth century CE (though it was eventually largely supplemented with
others), and native Japanese literature in Chinese actually played an impor-
tant role up to the nineteenth century. 63 In 1868 however, the Meiji restora-
tion opened the gates to western influence, something which soon also had
consequences for the literary field. In her article, "Japanese Literary Histo-
62 On Chinese theories of literature see, e.g., James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Litera-
ture (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975) and Stephen Owen, Readings
in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard
Univ., 1992).
63 See, e.g., Shuichi Kato, A History of Japanese Literature, new, abridged ed., trans, and
ed. Don Sanderson (Richmond, England: Japan Library, 1997), pp. 3-4.
ry Writing: The Beginnings," Gunilla Lindberg-Wada describes how the

word bungaku ('learning'; originally a Chinese loan word: wenxue) was
turned into a native synonym of the modern western concept of literature
and how national histories of literature started to be written, bringing a new
national literary canon into existence. Her focus is on the first comprehen-
sive history of Japanese literature, the two-volume Nihon bungakushi pub-
lished in 1890, and on how the new tendencies interact with earlier indig-
enous perspectives associated with the school of "national learning," koku-
gaku.
According to a speculative but highly thought-provoking idea put for-
ward by Earl Miner in his Comparative Poetics (1990), all literary cultures
except that of the West have based their most fundamental understanding
of literature on lyrical poetry. 64 Because Aristotle took drama as his start-
ing-point, western tradition came to focus on the "mimetic," but all other
poetics, especially those of the East, are described by Miner as belonging
to the "affective-expressive" kind. 65 Miner finds it difficult to come to
terms with Indian literature and leaves it out of his discussion, but he indi-
cates that he regards Indian literature, too, as being lyric-based. 66
Without relating specifically to Miner's distinction between "mimetic"
and "affective-expressive" poetics, Gunilla Gren-Eklund centers her ac-
count of Indian views of literature around the concept of poetry in "The
Pleasure of Poetry—Sanskrit Poetics and kävya." She starts with a broad
sketch of Indian literary traditions, but her main emphasis is on Sanskrit
literary culture, its genre system and, principally, its concept of poetry,
kävya. As part of her argument, Gren-Eklund also points to ways in which
this concept is similar to, and differs from, concepts of literature of the
present-day type. In this connection she offers in-depth discussions of key
passages in a number of Sanskrit texts about poetics from different periods,
including the Kävyälamkära by Bhämaha (ca 700 CE), the Kävyamlmämsä
by Räjasekhara (first half of the tenth century CE?), and the Kävyaprakäsa
by Mammata (shortly before 1100 CE).
Bo Holmberg's "Adab and Arabic Literature" is a presentation of the
traditional Arabic notion of adab, which used to mean something like
'education' or '(good) manners' in classical Arabic culture and is now used
in Modern Written Arabic as a near equivalent to "literature." Holmberg
64 Miner is no doubt thinking of imaginative literature.

65 Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay ort Theories of Literature
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990), esp. p. 8 (note 4) and p. 9.
66 Ibid., p. 8, note 4.
emphasizes the fact that Arabic did not traditionally have a word for "lit-
erature" in its modem sense. He explicates the meaning of adab and some
other terms with similar import, while attempting to explain the difficulties
of capturing traditional Arabic literary culture in established western cate-
gories. His study of the vacillating semantic content of the word "adab"
thus becomes simultaneously an introduction to important characteristics
of Arabic literary culture and to some of its major changes over time.
After "classical" literary cultures comes a gradual though very decisive
shift. In the West, complex social, economic, and intellectual develop-
ments successively created a new situation, and new categorizations, in the
field of texts. The modern western concept of literature is the outcome of
these developments. There is no simple explanation for what happened, 67
but, against the backdrop of the general societal changes, the emergence of
a more distinct concept of empirical truth, and the growing prestige of the
sciences, no doubt assisted in widening the felt gap between fact and fic-
tion, or between what I have called above the informational and the presen-
tational. The increased social differentiation and the more pronounced in-
dividualism tended to push genres such as lyrical poetry and (the earlier
disdained) fictional prose narrative into the foreground in the latter kind of
discourse at the expense of the epic and the drama. This helped to create
the new concept of literature, which successively came to be centred on the
fictive and on the novel, not on the true and the well-expressed.
The modern concept of literature already formed an integral part of the
western culture with which western imperialist expansion confronted all
the civilizations mentioned above in the course of the nineteenth century.
Eventually the concept entered these cultures, or most of them, a process
highlighted in Lindberg-Wada's essay, but also commented on in other
contributions (Kaikkonen, Gren-Eklund, Holmberg). It has already been
mentioned (in connection with Lindberg-Wada's paper) that "literature"
received a Japanese caique in the Chinese loan-word bungaku. From Japan
the word "bungaku" with its new meaning was re-exported to China in the
early twentieth century in its original Chinese form, wenxue, now the Chi-
nese word for "literature" (see the contribution by Kaikkonen). Sanskrit re-
cruited the indigenous term sähitya for the same purpose (Gren-Eklund),
while adab was made to play the role of the native modern concept of lit-
erature in Arabic literary culture (Holmberg).
67 Cf„ however, note 14 above.

This is not to say that the literary civilizations of the world gave up their
established perspectives on textual culture under pressure from the modern
western notion of literature. It appears impossible to deny that western
ideas have had considerable impact in this area as well, but how pervasive
and deep this impact has been is open to discussion. For instance, the idea
of aesthetic autonomy, relatively prominent in the (admittedly very hetero-
geneous) western thinking about literature, has certainly not found univer-
sal acceptance (as is illustrated, here, especially in Kaikkonen's essay).
There is no predetermined pattern to which the seven essays conform. In

part, they offer broad, comparatively popular introductions to their respec-
tive literary cultures—their genres, their thinking about literature, their
central concept(s) for delimiting belles-lettres (Gren-Eklund, Holmberg,
the opening in Kaikkonen). In part, they concentrate on specific aspects of
the culture in question: its beginnings (Svensson Ekström), its conceptions
of the refined and the popular (Kaikkonen), the concrete practices sur-
rounding literature in the culture (Olsson), modern attempts to apply con-
cepts of literature to the culture (Lindberg-Wada, Lorentzon).
I believe, however, that the essays jointly give a concrete and convinc-
ing idea of the complexity of the sphere which we are used to referring to
as the field of literature. This is the main reason for bringing them together
in this context. For there are at least three things that you need if you are to
employ the concept of literature successfully in transcultural literary histo-
ry, and one of these is sufficient knowledge of the literary cultures with
which you are dealing: of their texts, of their social practices and the intel-
lectual and societal background of these, of their conceptualizations of the
field that we are used to calling literary.
Secondly, one must have a relatively firm grasp of the concept of litera-
ture and of the complexities involved in its use. That is what I have first
and foremost attempted to offer in this introduction. Thirdly, one must also
be able to formulate a worthwhile investigative aim and to design one's
concept of literature in a way that ensures it supports that aim. To my
mind, that problem has no general, universal solution. Within transcultural
literary history, many quite different pursuits are both legitimate and poss-
ible, and the field can and must be represented partly differently, and in
partly different terms, depending on one's choice of subject and vantage
point.
This observation does not imply any fundamental relativism. I can see
no compelling reason to doubt the possibility of literary-history knowl-
edge, nor to look sceptically on the possibility of designing concepts of lit-
erature—or other intellectual categories—capable of supporting and assist-
ing such insights. 68
68 Some of the material and argument in this essay has been presented in earlier studies or
talks. I would like to mention especially the papers "Global Literary History and the
Conception of Literature" (read at the XVlth ICLA congress in Pretoria in 2000, forth-
coming in the conference proceedings), "Literary History and Conceptual Relativity"
(read at the 2002 annual meeting of ICLA's Committee on Literary Theory in
Dubrovnik), "The Possibility of Global Literary History", in Suthira Duang Samosorn et
al. (eds.), Re-imagining Language and Literature for the 21" Century: Selected Proceed-
ings of the XXII International Congress ofFILLM Held at Assumption University, Bang-
kok, Thailand from 19-23 August 2002 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), and "The Concept
of Literature and Literary History" (read at the XVIIth ICLA congress in Hong Kong in
2004). There is naturally also an overlap with my article "The Concept of Literature."
MARJA Kaikkonen

Twentieth-Century China
Introduction
On a very general level, this essay is concerned with what in a certain place
and in a certain time is considered to be literature, and how something tra-
ditionally excluded from this category is gradually moving toward inclu-
sion. Literature in a culture is defined by its intellectuals, and the concrete
manifestation of the definition exists in the form of the literary canon. Al-
though usually a stable institution, the canon is subject to gradual change,
but very little is known about how such change occurs, or why. This essay
wants to illustrate a specific instrumental way in which the (Chinese) liter-
ary canon is maintained as a canon, and how changes in the canon are al-
lowed to take place. Thus it will hopefully shed light on some mechanisms
through which culture—our understanding of culture—is subjected to
change. The change in question is concerned with the relationship between
elite culture and popular culture, and with the gradual legitimization of a
non-elite cultural form, popular fiction. The legitimization appears to be
one step towards the inclusion of popular fiction into the literary canon,
and it is achieved by new ideas or revisions of old thinking introduced or
supported by important political or cultural figures, by rational arguments
or rationalizations, by reinterpretations of history, and so on. As the essay
shows, this development is in no way straightforward, and many digres-
sions along the way act as backlashes. It seems to me that within the wider
framework of modernization, a process characterized by egalitarian ideas,
the above change could be anticipated. It corresponds with the egalitarian
ideology to the extent that it diminishes the gap between the elite and the
non-elite. At the same time, this very development can be seen as a gradual
process through which the elite or elite thinking reluctantly accommodates
the egalitarian idea.
Views of Popular Fiction in Twentieth-Century China 37
A typical change in literary canons in many cultures in the modern era

has been in the reappraisal of fiction.1 This has meant that the status of fic-
tion has been enhanced at the expense of other genres. In Europe this pro-
cess was a prolonged one and it has therefore been more difficult to see it
as a process. Furthermore, the reluctance of European elites to accept the
egalitarian idea, shown as resistance to various egalitarian reforms such as
universal education or suffrage, has practically been erazed from the histo-
ry books of Europe, which for a long time have proudly displayed the win-
ning side only, that is the Enlightenment. In China, on the other hand, mod-
ernization has taken another path and pace, and, consequently, this process
can be observed more easily, as much of it has been compressed into the
twentieth century. In China, the two separate parts of the process coincide:
both the inclusion of fiction into the literary canon, and the development of
more tolerant attitudes toward popular fiction. It is the latter process that
this essay sets out to describe.
The first part of the essay briefly introduces the traditional Chinese way
of differentiating between canonized literature and (popular) fiction, while
the second presents my understanding of the role of popular fiction in mod-
ernization. The main part of the essay then illustrates the growth of more
tolerant views toward popular fiction in China, through an analysis of the
views of a few representative thinkers, writers and literary critics on fiction
or popular fiction.
Literature and Popular Fiction
Written Chinese uses thousands of different characters, which take years to

learn and master. Until the first half of the twentieth century, the written
language maintained a standard and ideal originating at least as far back as
the early Christian era, known as classical Chinese. As the discrepancy be-
tween this classical Chinese language and the spoken language increased
over the centuries, written Chinese has long been a de facto foreign lan-
guage, even for those whose mother tongue was Chinese. In addition, an
elitist educational system exclusively designed to train high-level govern-
ment officials led to a scarcity of reading and writing skills in imperial
1 The space here does not allow for a discussion of the historically and globally complex
term "novel."
38 Marja Kaikkonen
China.2 Certain writing skills were naturally needed among merchants and
other professionals, but the lack of a written standard in the vernacular, as
well as the lofty ambitions set for the exercise of literariness, restricted
writing among non-literati groups to practical purposes.
Classical Chinese is the medium of the huge corpus of classical Chinese
literature still in existence. Literature here could be said to correspond to
literature in the wide sense, 3 and includes philosophical, historical and
other works already canonized in ancient China, state-commissioned histo-
riographical writing from two millennia and, representing the more regular
options for both professional and leisure writing among the literati during
most of the past two millennia, various types of short prose texts4 and poet-
ry. Classical literature has been an object of study, commentary, antholo-
gizing, collecting, and printing for as long as it has existed. Traditional bib-
liographers divide it into four classes, "Canonical Works" (also termed
"The Classics") (jing), "Histories" (shi), "Philosophers" (zi), and "Collec-
tions" (//). The last category is often translated with "belles-lettres," as it
consists of the collected works of individual authors, which in turn were
mainly made up of short prose texts and poetry.
The main requirement of classical literature was that it was to be "true":
"to be a correct depiction of the moral situation and the feelings it evoked.
Literature could fulfill its task of general edification only if what it taught
2 In around 1800, the number of people with classical education has been estimated at less
than two percent of the entire population. See David Johnson, "Communication, Class
and Consciousness in Late Imperial China," in D. Johnson, A. J. Nathan, E. S. Rawski
(eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:
Univ. of California Press, 1985), pp. 34-72; and Marianne Bastid-Bruguiere, "Currents
of Social Change," in D. Twitchett and J. K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge History of
China (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980), vol. 11, pp. 535-602.
3 Cf. Anders Pettersson's distinction between "literature in the 'imaginative literature'
sense" and "literature-in-the-wide-sense" in his introduction to this volume.
4 As an illustration of the great variety of texts covered by the simple term "short prose"
we can take Yao Nai, A Classified Compendium of Ancient-style Prose and Verse
(Guwen ci lei zuan) (1732-1815), which divides short prose into 13 genres, with a
number of subgenres: 1. essays and arguments, 2. prefaces and colophons, 3. memorials
and deliberations, 4. letters, 5. compositions presented at parting, 6. edicts and orders, 7.
biographies and obituaries, 8. epitaphs and necrologies, 9. miscellaneous records, 10.
admonitions and inscriptions, 11. eulogies and panegyrics, 12. prose poetry, 13. elegies
and funeral orations. See William H. Nienhauser, Jr., "Prose," in William H. Nienhauser
(ed.), The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1986), p. 96. For brief explanations, see pp. 96-97. Although these categories may
appear artificial to us, they were all well-defined, living options of deliberated literary
expression for the Chinese literati through most of the imperial era and to some extent
even later.
was the truth."5 In this respect, the ancient canonical works were regarded
as superior texts created by the sages of antiquity, which in the Chinese
case refers to at least twenty-five centuries back in time. All other literature
was then seen as a continuation of the tradition of the Classics, which
formed a constant point of reference and comparison. "As the Classics do
include examples of historical and philosophical texts, the Histories (shi)
and Philosophers (zi) of later centuries could logically be regarded as con-
tinuing these aspects of the Classics." 6 When it comes to the collections
(//), poetry was seen as a continuation of The Classic of Poetry (also called
The Book of Odes) (Shijing), and "each of the short prose forms [...] was
traced back, sometimes with great ingenuity, to a prototype in one of the
Classics."7 Clearly, in this scheme the production of any new piece of writ-
ing was conditioned by the eventual legitimization supplied by an ancient
model, and the ancient models made up the standard against which every
deviation was measured and criticized.
As a consequence of the requirement for truthfulness, works of fiction,
"which consciously create imaginative reality,"8 were per definition ex-
cluded from the scope of literature in traditional China, irrespective of gen-
re. Fiction, being untrue, was condemned as "misleading and inciting to
moral corruption,"9 and encouraging "adultery and banditry," and individ-
ual works were frequently made the target of bans or were destroyed, as it
was felt that the influence of fiction on the populace should be restricted.10
Fictional material could be included in literature only if it was presented as
historical. Thus myths and legends "tended to be sobered up into dry
'factual' accounts" when written down.11 Despite the lack of official recog-
nition, fiction (including drama) was nevertheless produced and consumed
5 Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: Center for Chi-
nese Studies, Univ. of Michigan, 1997), p. 52. For a concise presentation of the basic
theoretical structure that combines literature and truth, pp. 52-53. On the Chinese terms
for literature, see James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago and London:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 7 - 9 .
7 Ibid.
8 Y. W. Ma, "Fiction," in Nienhauser (ed.), Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 33.
9 On traditional views on fiction, see Idema and Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature, pp.
56-60.
10 For an account of a ban on some works of fiction, see Tai-loi Ma, "Novels Prohibited in
the Literary Inquisition of Emperor Ch'ien-lung, 1722-1788," in Winston L. Y. Yang
and Curtis P. Adkins (eds.), Critical Essays on Chinese Fiction (Hong Kong: The Chi-
nese University Press, 1980), pp. 201-212.
40 Marja Kaikkonen
by its very censors, the literati—for entertainment. Such double standards

may appear paradoxical, but would seem—on second thoughts—a natural
consequence of the existence of any authoritative and categorical system,
in this case the literary canon.
Short pieces of fiction are preserved in China at least from the past fif-
teen centuries, and they have formed several different genres of stories. 12
The classical Chinese language of these works ensured that they were
never an option for the common people. Longer fiction never really devel-
oped in the classical language at all, before a very brief boom of anachro-
nistic print culture in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. 13 In-
stead, the major fictional tradition was almost exclusively vernacular, and
therefore excluded from the considerations of the literati, who regarded the
vernacular as "the vulgar language of the unlearned." 14 The great mass of
popular fiction consumed by the common people in Imperial China was in
oral (and vernacular) form. From as early as the Song dynasty (960-1279)
there are systematic descriptions of professional storytelling, 15 which was
often an urban activity, and the oldest dramatic texts preserved are from
the beginning of the fourteenth century, 16 witness to a wealth of scenic per-
formances. From at least the Song dynasty onwards, but particularly during
the Ming (1368-1644), popular vernacular storytelling is considered to
have contributed to the appearance of vernacular stories in writing. During
the Ming dynasty at the latest, episodes from storytelling began to be com-
piled into large works of fiction that used either the vernacular language or
a mixture of the vernacular and simple classical Chinese. 17 Although main-
ly enjoyed by educated individuals, these written genres were never con-
sidered a part of literature as defined by the intellectual establishment. 18
If we try to apply the categories "non-literary texts" (functional and non-

aesthetic) and "literature" to the Chinese case, it seems that we need some
modifications. "Non-literary texts" certainly existed which were function-
al, practically technical, and non-aesthetic such as engineering, medical,
12 Ma, "Fiction," pp. 35-36.

13 According to Ma, "Fiction," p. 35, "Classical-language novels probably constitute less
than one percent of the novels produced in pre-modern China."
14 Tai-loi Ma, "Novels Prohibited," p. 202.
15 W. L. Idema, "Prosimetric Literature," in Nienhauser (ed.), Traditional Chinese Litera-
ture, p. 83.
16 Stephen H. West, "Drama," in Nienhauser (ed.), Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 26.
17 Ma, "Fiction," p. 35.
18 Idema and Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature, pp. 56-57, 59-60.
etc. manuals and other professional texts, and which therefore also escaped
literati attention. But, on the other hand, what was venerated in China as
literature was not limited to non-functional or aesthetic texts. Historical
texts, for example, were more functional than aesthetic. Literature also had
to be "true." To cover all texts in Imperial China, however, it appears that
one would need to add a parallel third category, fiction, non-functional,
aesthetic, untrue, and non-venerated.
In other aspects, differences are not as striking. The Chinese prere-
quisites for works that could be counted as literature would—had they
been formulated in similar terms—have been identical with those applied
to literature in the modern western sense, inasmuch as literature in China
certainly was "of central cultural importance"—works of literature in Chi-
na were, after all, cherished century after century; they were also "carefully
and expertly formed," and encompassed "beauty of form" (which I already
consider an aesthetic quality), and they were definitely "expected to give
rise to experiences whose main value consists in some sort of inner enrich-
ment that is difficult to describe.'" 9 That this inner enrichment in China
was not expected to remain on the level of aesthetic exhilaration but,
through such an experience, to contribute to the moral betterment of the
reader ought naturally to be another reason for extending the description
"verbal art" to these works.
In my opinion, these texts were even presentational, in the sense of
"valuable [in themselves] as a source of experience,"20 a quality which I
think we can assume was felt to be inherent in works of any genre that
were compiled into anthologies for later generations to enjoy, admire and
comment on, as was done with classical Chinese literature. This applies
even to pieces which were initially written for a functional, seemingly in-
formative/manipulative purpose: they were expected to produce the in-
tended effect through the demonstration of the writer's literary capacity.
The imperial official who formulated memorials to the throne on urgent
problems knew that if he managed to express himself with superior power,
style, and erudition, his writing would convince the emperor of the impor-
tance of his mission and move the emperor to act along the lines he sug-
gested. The quality of the writing, more than the message as such, was seen
as instrumental. Poor writing might embarrass the emperor for having em-
ployed such an unqualified person, and thereby even obliterate the mes-
19 The quotations are from Pettersson's introduction to this volume.

20 Pettersson's introduction to this volume.
42 Marja Kaikkonen
sage. The functional message was delivered to the addressee at the initial
reading, while at least from the second reading on, the reader(s) enjoyed
the text as presentational discourse, as "verbal art," demonstrating the
power of good writing on the human mind. As all "verbal art" and other
valued writing anywhere, even such memorials would later be consumed
both for the enjoyment of reading an excellent piece of writing and as
paragons to emulate. As the imperial official picked up his brush to write,
he was well aware of this entire scenario of effects that successful writing
could achieve.
Literature in the above scheme would include the classical-language,
canonized genres of prose and poetry, while fiction would encompass
prose fiction, drama, and storytelling. As might be expected from its place-
ment in this scheme, fiction in traditional China was banished beyond art,
beyond scholarly study, and beyond systematic criticism—beyond typical
elitist activities which serve to create and maintain values through cultural
products. In every respect, then, fiction in traditional China seems to have
held a position similar to that of "popular literature" in the modern western
world, at least up to the mid-twentieth century.
Alternative views on literature in China were made possible and necessary

only when modern development started changing the basic conditions of
the traditional literati and their culture. An important milestone on that
road was the abolition of the civil examinations in 1905 and the subsequent
expansion of the lay educational system. The collapse of the imperial order
in 1911, of course, constituted another milestone. The same applies to the
replacement of classical Chinese by colloquial Chinese as the official me-
dium of written communication in China; this was effected through grad-
ual reforms, e.g. by primary schools employing the vernacular instead of
the classical language in first- and second- grade Chinese language instruc-
tion from autumn 1920.21
As such changes were the result of long-term efforts by reform- minded
politicians and intellectuals, it is perhaps not surprising that the "new" lan-
guage, the vernacular (baihua), was first appropriated for a modern, mod-
ernist, elite, avant-garde literature, strongly influenced by foreign modern
literature and, consequently, including fiction. This was a strong break
with the Chinese tradition. The first works of this type of "modern" ver-
21 Colin Mackerras, Modern China: A Chronology from 1842 to the Present (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1982), p. 277.
nacular literature appeared in 1919,22 and have been celebrated ever since,
both in China and by foreign China scholars, as heralds of a new age and
new values. That there had existed a rich vernacular fiction—of a popular
character—for quite some time, and a vernacular press—also of a popular
character—was ignored at the time as totally uninteresting and politically
incorrect, as will be illustrated below.
A few terms need some attention here. The Chinese imperial, dynastic
monarchy was run, beyond the court, as a civil meritocracy, where at least
the blueprint decreed that the state examinations were the one and only
way to important government positions. That this system produced an elite,
consisting of those who had passed the examinations, is self-evident. In
China, this group comprised those who were best (and similarly) educated
throughout the country, it was therefore an intellectual elite, the literati·, to
a large extent, this group also coincided with the power, political and econ-
omic elites of the country. The self-evident existence of this elite for more
than a millennium is still felt today, and it has been conspicuous all
through the twentieth century. The imperial Chinese meritocracy is recog-
nized as an unusually successful one, as it allowed a high degree of social
mobility; by their own efforts, non-elite individuals were able to join the
elite: if I didn't make it, a cousin would do so sooner or later. Perhaps it is
this positive quality of the meritocracy that has allowed elitism to remain
acceptable to many Chinese even since the demise of the empire in 1911,
and in spite of Mao Zedong's egalitarian efforts.
Elitism as a widespread attitude has certain consequences in society:
elite values are generally accepted and made a norm, while non-elite
values are disapproved of. It is seen as natural that everyone should strive
to become a part of the elite. This means that the opposite of the elite, the
non-elite, or, the popular, becomes a non-quality, a lack of elite qualities,
and is defined through negatives, something which few people consciously
want to identify with. Popular qualities also thereby to some extent become
subconscious and thus invisible. It is from this kind of position that our Eu-
ropean view of popular culture has gradually grown. I feel that we are still
not quite conscious of all the aspects that in our minds make up the popu-
22 Lu Xun published his short story Kuangren riji (Diary of a Madman) as early as in 1918.
In 1920, Hu Shi published Changshiji (A Collection of Experiments), the first Chinese
collection of poems in the vernacular. It was followed in 1921 by Guo Moruo's poems
Niishen (The Goddesses). See Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of
China in the Twentieth Century (London: Hurst and Company, 1997), pp. 13-22.
44 Marja Kaikkonen
lar. This is, I think, the main reason why definitions of the popular are
lacking. The definition of what comprises elite quality is naturally made by
those who are part of the elite. To the extent that non-elite groups admire
everything that is elite while living a non-elite life, a situation with double
standards arises: lofty ideals and mean reality, and an inability to live up to
the ideals. Perhaps it is such a meritocratic understanding of "winner vs.
loser" that so often makes elitism feel like a natural, intuitive solution, and
egalitarianism as a man-made concept of social engineering, an under-
standing that has been demonstrated often enough in both east and west.
For my part, I am writing neither for nor against elites or elite culture.
What interests me are the ways in which cultural matters are maneuvered
and their hows, whys and wherefores.
When this essay refers to elite literature, it is to the literature appreci-
ated and praised by the elite and upheld by the establishment through the
literary canon, whatever time or place it is applied to. Conversely, popular
literature or popular fiction refer to the literature, especially fiction, dis-
dained by the establishment but consumed by large groups of so-called or-
dinary people. Such literature today is often termed "entertainment litera-
ture," for at least the following reasons: 1. To admit that it is not consumed
only by the so-called ordinary people but even by those who belong to an
elite. 2. To signal that the speaker is conscious of the elite—popular di-
chotomy and makes an effort to view the two groups objectively and to re-
frain from automatically situating him/herself in the elite. 3. To admit that
entertainment, as one of the conceivable functions of literature and as one
of the needs of its readers, is legitimate, and that this need is not inherently
of low social status. Such attitudes in the western world have evolved over
a very long time, but only during the last few decades have they aroused
the interest of academia. W e should keep this in mind when considering
such developments in China.
A terminological reservation: Popular fiction is a part of popular litera-
ture, which again is a part of popular culture. Only some of the writings re-
ferred to below address popular fiction specifically, while in other cases it
is included in the larger categories of popular literature or popular culture.
This results in a somewhat mixed use of terms. The topic of this essay is
popular fiction, and at times I will expect the reader to make the deduction.
Modernization and Popular Fiction
The treatment of popular fiction in the western world bears many similari-
ties to the Chinese situation that this essay sets out to describe. Despite the
long history and large amount of popular fiction, particularly since the
eighteenth century, the academic study of popular literature is a very recent
endeavour, even in comparison with other disciplines that study the condi-
tions of the common people. Both the development of print culture and of
popular reading during the last two or three centuries are typical parts of
the modern project: the press developed for the sake of growing political
participation, and reading fiction evolved to fill the spare time of working
urbanites, who no longer had access to collective village pastimes. From a
nineteenth century enlightened elite point of view, which cherished the
idea of representational government, the press was a respectable tool for
necessary debates and information, something that even the elite needed.
As such it appeared to be a logical part of egalitarian endeavors. But were
there any attempts to treat the cultural consumption of the great unnum-
bered in a similar, understanding and legitimizing manner? Although we
know that the elite consumed popular fiction just as it consumed newspa-
pers, I am afraid the answer is no. I feel we ought to find out why or, if we
already know, say it out loud. Strangely enough, it seems that the Chinese
case, in its temporally concentrated form, may just show us some curious
parallels.
I am convinced that cultural products are produced and consumed as a
response to certain needs, whether conscious or unconscious, material or
immaterial. Producers and consumers may also have more than one need to
satisfy. I believe that this also applies to literature. We know that today
many writers of popular literature both in China and in Europe write in or-
der to make money, and care less about whether they earn fame as a writer
as long as their products sell well. Other writers try their hardest to please
the intellectual elite of a linguistic community, choosing to discard all con-
siderations of earnings, but becoming desperate if the elite critics' response
to their work is negative. They obviously see cultural production as a way
of becoming an active part of an elite. Among consumers of culture, one of
the needs is entertainment, and it is natural that various tastes and habits
rule our choices in this area. Some people may consume certain cultural
products because, through the experience of consuming, they become part
of a certain group to which they wish to belong—often such a group would
be the cultural elite. This is corroborated by the fact that people purchase
46 Marja Kaikkonen
books not only to read them but also to display them; in that way they sig-
nal that their "acquisition" of a book through reading may not become evi-
dent from what they say, but that it will be proven by the presence of the
book on their book-shelf. A similar behavior is clearly illustrated by con-
temporary youth cultures, where group semiotics have an important social
function.
Hardly any popular literary reading would be done with the aspiration of
joining the cultural elite, while much of the reading of popular literature
can certainly be done for the fun of being entertained. But what does it
mean to be entertained? Recent studies of popular reading, seemingly for
entertainment, have revealed that the question is much more complex than
it seems. Various aspects of recognition, identification, learning, and being
informed are involved, even in non-challenging reading. 2 3 1 cannot see any
reason why the situation would have been different earlier on in the history
of popular literature. Quite the opposite, it seems that the great flourishing
of popular reading and thus also the production of fiction, in particular, in
early modernization appeared in answer to specific needs among the com-
mon people. Let us try to understand what at least some of these needs
were.
All through modernization, rapid change has been a problem that most
people have had to cope with. 24 It is conceivable that some human mental
mechanisms lead us to associate non-change with safety and change with
unsafety, and therefore we favor non-change; at least experts on stress tell
us that it is aberrations from the "normal" that build up stress. Change is
also something for which our traditional knowledge, originating in forms
that were dependent on natural phenomena, has not prepared us. This ap-
plies, for example, to peasant culture: the nature of a farmer's work is
cyclical and based on the accumulation of experience from time immemo-
rial, while change—unlike variation—is alien to the system. There may be
unpredictabilities in peasant life, but most of them can be met with the as-
surance that things will return to normal. This contrasts strongly with the
modern project, where the individual leaves his/her traditional life behind,
and moves somewhere else without any guarantees, only hopes, and the
absolute need to cope with entirely different—and changing—circum-
stances.
23 See, e.g., Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance (London: Verso, 1987).
24 My view of modernization is discussed in my article "Globalization, Modernization and
Popular Culture," The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies 10 (1999), pp. 85-96.
V i e w s of Popular Fiction in Twentieth-Century China 47
Many of the changes that modernization has caused are therefore chal-
lenging, either for individuals or groups or both; this was apparent in Eu-
rope and China a century ago and is still so today. At the same time such
changes have been very inspiring, particularly for those whose lot in tradi-
tional society was not the best and for whom the changes could mean im-
provement. For the common people the changes brought by modernization
have come to mean economic opportunities in and around industries, re-
sulting in a rising standard of living, but also in a simultaneous devaluation
of traditional handicrafts; this has sent country people away from home,
looking for careers of acceptable types in new surroundings. In this situa-
tion the experiences their traditional environment has supplied them with
are of little value, as they cannot properly anticipate the dilemmas which
modern urban life may pose for the newcomer. In that predicament, the ex-
perience obtainable through reading, through the press and through popu-
lar fiction, can be invaluable: it often comes from an urban source, from
someone who obviously has already found his/her way in the modern, ur-
ban world, and can perhaps offer guidance through the changing circum-
stances. People who in their original surroundings could live their lives ac-
cording to a traditional, given model and within a given social slot, badly
needed guidance in making their own choices among the possibilities and
pitfalls of modern life. I am convinced that it is such new needs that popu-
lar fiction was and is able to satisfy. Typical examples of this kind of fic-
tion in China are the works of the enormously popular writer Zhang Hen-
shui, which through detailed description allowed the reader to acquaint
him/herself with the important practicalities of modern urban life, while
also telling an entertaining story. To take a simple, concrete example:
through a reading of Ping-Hu tongche (Shanghai Express) the reader-cum-
new-rail-traveller was spared much loss of face at the railway ticket booth,
as s/he already knew the differences between first, second and third class
prices and service levels. 25
Imagined or not, popular fiction pictured options in life which modern-
izing individuals needed to know in order to reach their personal conclu-
sions about what to strive for in their own life. For example, the anonymity
of urban life made moral questions crucial for the newcomers: without the
social control of a family and a small rural community, anyone, theoreti-
25 Zhang Henshui, Shanghai Express (Ping-Hu tongche), trans. William A. Lyell (Hono-
lulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 1997). This novel, first serialized in 1935, even included a
map of the route of the train.
48 Marja Kaikkonen
cally at least, had the option of committing a crime. I am convinced that the
appearance of crime fiction in early modernity both in Europe and in China
was related to the need among popular readers to consider the conse-
quences of the various moral choices suddenly available to them. Another
important need among readers must have been to become acquainted, as a
precaution, with the various forms of criminality that one might encounter
in new surroundings—this aspect appears conspicuously in Chinese crime
fiction of the 1980s. This is not to say that crime fiction lacked other func-
tions. 26 Similarly, love stories can be seen as being informative about vari-
ous kinds of liaisons, marriages, etc. conceivable in the new conditions,
and about how those involved manage them, what problems and rewards
they encounter, and how those around them react to the choices they make.
Such knowledge, such consciousness seem essential for the making of the
modern urban individual, who is expected to make his/her own unique
choices about his/her personal life without the counseling that traditional
structures could offer.
Technological progress in early modernization also led to printed prod-
ucts becoming cheap enough for great numbers of people to buy, which
further boosted the production and consumption of popular fiction. The
symbiosis of the early modern press with fiction in serialized form also
highlights the informational use fiction was put to.
Does this mean that fiction came before life? Yes, for a great many read-
ers it did. Hundreds of intellectuals living in Shanghai in the 1920s and
1930s realized that their own urban lifestyle was itself a gold mine on
which they were able to draw seemingly endlessly: all they had to do was
to write stories about their friends' or their neighbours' lives, while out in
the country there were thousands who thirsted for details about the allure
that epitomised Shanghai. For these writers, life came before fiction; for
their readers it was the other way round. I am also convinced that for many
people in today's Europe, fiction came before life. Through fiction, many
of us became acquainted with a number of outlooks on life, family trage-
dies, successful (male) careers, love affairs, effective ways of ruining one's
life, and so on, long before it was our turn to make decisions about our own
life. The modern individual needs the fictions to make the options visible.
26 On the modern qualities of a 1930s Chinese detective story, see my essay "The Detective
in the Service of the Emperor, the Republic, and the Communist Party" in volume 3 of
this series.
The proliferation of popular fiction in Europe coincides with the flour-

ishing of the novel: "the new novel and the new reading public grew up to-
gether; and during the very years when the form was establishing its right
to exist, a group which had been illiterate and unthinking came into intel-
lectual life." 27 For a student of popular literature, it appears self-evident
that it was popular fiction that was the mainstay in this development, 28 with
the biggest and most notable historical change effected through the growth
of a popular readership, of the printing industry, and of print media—in
other words, of fiction being printed. The changes in elite literature were
minor in comparison, and consisted mainly of the addition of another genre
—fiction—for the traditional purposes of an elite, for example, for the con-
tinued control of the kinds of cultural products that could be considered to be
literature and therefore worthy of public, that is, elite, praise and attention.
Against this background of the history of modernization, the similarities
in the development of modern popular culture, including popular fiction, in
Europe and China are striking. The start was much earlier and more grad-
ual in Europe, but once China started reforming during the latter half of the
nineteenth century, the development there was very swift. One difference
was that the Chinese elite, largely unaffected by European-type Enlighten-
ment ideas, remained extremely elitist in its thinking. For the development
of popular fiction this meant that if it has taken a long time for European
popular fiction to become established as an object worthy of serious study
and elite observation, then Chinese popular fiction has certainly not had an
easier time. In both cases, it is the attitudes among the intellectual elites
that have been decisive for the way that popular fiction has been treated in
the cultural life of these two parts of the world, and to what extent it has
become a part of the literary canon. Since literatures tend to be national
concerns, the picture is much more diffuse in Europe with its multitude of
national language literatures. In China, where the intellectual elite was un-
usually small and, at least until the mid-twentieth century, educationally
rather homogeneous, its attitudes and activities vis-ä-vis popular fiction
make up a clearly distinguishable series of changing standpoints or strate-
gies. It is these strategies that I want to illustrate and briefly discuss in this
essay. The roles that popular fiction plays in late modern society remain
outside its scope.
27 John Tinnon Taylor, Early Opposition to the English Novel: The Popular Reaction from
1760 to 1830 (Morningside Heights, NY: King's Crown Press, 1943), p. 1.
28 See, e.g., Taylor, Early Opposition, pp. 1-20; and Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading
Public (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932).
50 Marja Kaikkonen
The Legitimization of Fiction
Liang Qichao has long been credited with having been the first intellectual
in modern China to express a theoretical interest in popular literature. For
him, popular culture, especially fiction, appeared to be an important chan-
nel through which the growth of a "new citizenry" could be promoted, 29 a
citizenry which would allow China to regain its earlier stature among na-
tions. Recent research has shown that he had adopted his initial view on
fiction directly from the writings of an American missionary named John
Fryer (Fu Lanya). In an article on fiction in the Wan guo gongbao (Chinese
Globe Magazine) 1895, Fryer wrote:
In my humble opinion, when it comes to moving the human heart and mak-
ing customs change, nothing comes up to fiction. Promoted wide and fast,
works of fiction become known in every household after only a short time
of circulation, and they easily cause habits to change. Of China's accumu-
lated evil practices today, three are the worst, namely opium, the eight-
legged essay [of the examinations], and bound feet. Unless methods are
found to improve these, there will never be a sign of wealth or strength. I
now wish to ask those Chinese persons who want to see their country pros-
per to author fiction of a new flavor, to conceitedly show the great harm of
these three matters as well as ingenious methods for getting rid of each one
of them, to make a record of them and to lecture on them, to structure and
compile them, and thread them into volumes, so that when people read
these, their hearts will be moved and their strength be set on expelling them.
It is necessary that the wording is clear and the meaning interesting and ele-
gant so that even women and children may understand them. When describ-
ing affairs, choose from those common today or in recent times, and on no
account plagiarize old style, adopt no strange or curious approach so as not
to startle the eye or frighten the heart [of the reader].30
29 See Liang Qichao, "Xiaoshuo yu qunzhi de guanxi" ("On the Relationship between Fic-
tion and the Government of the People"), Xin xiaoshuo (New Fiction) No. 1 (1902). On
Liang Qichao's views on this question, see also Milena Dolezelovä-Velingerovä (ed.),
The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1980),
pp. 27-29; and C. T. Hsia, "Yen Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao as Advocates of New Fiction."
in Adele Austin Rickett (ed.), Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang
Ch'i-ch'ao (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978), pp. 221-57.
30 Fu Lanya [John Fryer], "Qiu zhu shixin xiaoshuo qi" ("A Letter Pleading for the Produc-
tion of Modern Fiction"). Wan guo gongbao (Chinese Globe Magazine) 77 (June 1895),
as quoted in Yuan Jin, Zhongguo wenxue guannian de jindai biange (Modern Changes in
the Chinese Concept of Literature), (Shanghai: Shanghai shehuikexueyuan chubanshe,
1996), p. 68. Fryer is identified in Wang Lixin, Meiguo chuanjiaoshi yu wan Qing
Zhongguo xiandaihua (American Missionaries and Late-Qing China's Modernization),
(Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1997), p. 518.—All the translations are mine unless
otherwise indicated.
This passage is the earliest appeal in China promoting "new fiction" for the
purpose of changing the conduct of the people in order to get rid of what
were seen as nationwide problems. Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei and other
reformers, who were keen readers of the Chinese Globe Magazine, were to
echo and develop this appeal in their writings. As these gentlemen knew no
western languages, what they learnt about the west came through the writ-
ings and translations of western missionaries. While such sources were less
problematic when it came to natural sciences, the western idea of literature
that such missionary writings reflected was in fact seriously dated, corre-
sponding definitely not to the contemporary informed view but rather to a
medieval Christian didactic idea of literature. 31 This view was not ques-
tioned by Liang or his reforming colleagues, for whom fiction was natural-
ly a popular form of writing; instead, they welcomed it. Liang later ex-
pressed the same idea:
If one intends to renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its
fiction. Therefore, to renovate morality, one must renovate fiction; to reno-
vate religion, one must renovate fiction; to renovate politics, one must reno-
vate fiction; to renovate social customs, one must renovate fiction; to reno-
vate learning and arts, one must renovate fiction; and to renovate even the
human mind and remold its character, one must renovate fiction. Why is
this so? This is because fiction has a profound power over the way of man.32
Liang Qichao viewed fiction as a didactic means to a patriotic end, and

thus joined the Confucians of old who agreed that writings and, conse-
quently, also reading should be useful, an idea traditionally expressed
through the phrase "writing is for conveying the truth" (wen yi zai dao).33
In practical terms, however, the question of the kind of fiction that lived up
to the new requirements turned out to be a knotty one. Of the over 160
works of fiction that were sent to the Chinese Globe Magazine within nine
months of Fryer's above appeal, none proved satisfactory to him. 34 I am
unaware of Liang Qichao ever having undertaken a systematic investiga-
31 Yuan Jin, pp. 67-68.

32 Liang Qichao, "On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People"
("Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi"), trans. Gek Nai Cheng, in Kirk A. Denton (ed.),
Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945. (Stanford: Stan-
ford UP, 1996), p. 74.
33 This sentence was coined by the philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-73), whose "formula-
tion of the moralistic conception of literature was so influential that the slogan 'Litera-
ture is that by which one carries the Way,' or 'Literature is a vehicle of the Way' [...],
became one of the two most often-quoted platitudes in Chinese literary criticism." See
Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 114.
34 Yuan Jin, Zhongguo wenxue, p. 68.
52 Marja Kaikkonen
tion of a similar character. Liang was concerned with what popular litera-
ture could do, or ought to do, not what it was. Liang Qichao's type of utili-
tarian and "potentialist" vision came to dominate Chinese views of popular
literature for most of the twentieth century, among radicals, leftists, and
rightists alike.
Upgrading Folk Culture
A great upsurge of interest in folk literature occurred in China in the late

1910s. Folk literature, described in a number of terms, designated rural
folklore, and as such had little to do with popular fiction, whether tradi-
tional or modern. However, this upsurge was an important step. A number
of scholars at the National Beijing University, including Liu Fu (Liu Ban-
nong), Zhou Zuoren, and Gu Jiegang set up in 1918 an office for collecting
folk songs, and in 1922 they started the journal Geyao zhoukan (Folksong
Weekly) in which to publish them. This journal attracted much attention,
and resulted in the Fengsu diaochahui (Custom Survey Society) being es-
tablished in 1923. Newspapers and journals started carrying special col-
umns on folk literature, and the interest in folklore gradually spread to
many parts of China, forming a whole movement. 35
In their enthusiasm over a renewed outlook on society and an earnest
wish to share the best of folk literature with Chinese readers, many ad-
herents of this view acquired a highly idealized and romantic vision of
Chinese rural life and of peasants. This view was stereotyped as a pasto-
ral idyll inhabited by tranquil peasants who went about their everyday
chores and lived their sound life enjoying its Daoist simplicity. 36 This vi-
sion acquired nationalistic overtones from the 1920s onwards, when folk
literature—the culture of the idyllic peasants—was found to be "the crys-
tallization of the national spirit," and therefore a means for national sal-
vation. 37 W e should note that one important quality in the traditional
peasant is of course his voluntary subordination to authorities—a quality
that elites know how to appreciate, perhaps particularly after a recent
revolution.
35 Chang-tai Hung, Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature 1918-
1937 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard Univ., 1985), p. 1.
36 For an account of the romantic idealization of rural life in the folk literature movement,
see ibid., pp. 10-17.
37 Ibid., p. 17.
This view of folk culture has had a strong and lasting influence in China.
By romanticizing and preserving an outdated rural ideal and description of
the common people, an intolerant attitude was established toward urban-
ites. In my view, this constituted a strong obstruction to the continued re-
ception of modern popular culture which is basically urban and cosmopoli-
tan, and which by comparison with the rural was made to appear less "na-
tional" and more "foreign," and therefore, by implication, unpatriotic and
practically traitorous.
Among the early folklorists only Liu Fu, himself also a writer of popular
fiction, 38 showed an interest in urban popular culture. He even conducted
some unique very early studies on popular story pamphlets in Shanghai. 39
However, it seems that he was met with a lack of interest, if not contempt,
and discontinued the work, consequently concentrating on collecting folk
songs.
That even the acceptance of folk literature was an ideologically con-
troversial issue is revealed by the fact that it continued to meet with op-
position. While Qing regulations had banned folk songs as detrimental, 40
Republican Chinese governments considered it equally natural to sup-
press folk culture on various pretexts, such as its "vulgarity" and its "cor-
rupting influence on public morals." The Guomindang government in
Nanjing continued this tradition even more harshly from 1928-29,
launching campaigns called Pochu mixin yundong (Superstition Destruc-
tion Movement), aimed at eradicating local customs that were considered
unsuitable. 41 This caused severe setbacks to the folk literature movement,
the proponents of which came to appear in a more radical light because
of this opposition.
Folklore came to function as an ideological eye-opener for Chinese in-
tellectuals with a slight modern orientation just as it had been for European
38 Xu Ruiyue, Liu Bannong wenxuan (Selected Works of Liu Bannong), (Beijing: Renmin
wenxue chubanshe, 1986), pp. 323-49.
39 Liu Fu, "Zhongguo zhi xiadeng xiaoshuo" ("Chinese Low-Grade Fiction"), in Zhao Jiabi
(ed.), Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (Compendium of Chinese New Literature), 10 vols.
(Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 358-76. Liu's article was writ-
ten as early as in 1918.
40 Yangge (rice seedling) songs and many other forms of popular entertainment were for-
bidden by Qianlong (r. 1736-1796) and other emperors. See William Dolby, A History of
Chinese Drama (London: Paul Elek, 1976), pp. 134-41; A Ying, "Guanyu Qingdai de
chajin xiaoshuo" ("On Forbidden Fiction in the Qing Dynasty"), in A Ying, A Ying shuo
xiaoshuo (A Ying Talks Fiction) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2000), pp. 70-76.
41 Hung, Going to the People, p. 160.
54 Marja Kaikkonen
intellectuals somewhat earlier. The acceptance of the idea that the cultural
products of a lower, uneducated social group had a value of their own and
made a difference to society as a whole was a clear step toward a more
modern, egalitarian view of society and of different social groups.
At the same time, we should not forget that the idealization of an out-
dated lifestyle and/or a peripheral group is a favorite strategy among con-
servative elites; such activity easily removes the focus from more urgent
considerations (e.g. the expanding and demanding group of urbanites),
and has often hindered modern, egalitarian development. The Slavophile
movement in nineteenth century Russia used this method to idealize
Medieval peasant life, and many more examples can be found outside
China. 42
Radical Leftist Intolerance
The large-scale radicalization of Chinese reform-minded intellectuals after

the May Fourth movement in 1919 gave rise to a massive challenge to
many established views. However, this did not apply to popular culture. 43
The radicalism of this period included the idea that literature ought to ac-
complish ideological awakening among the people, and thus patriotically
participate in the modernization of the country with national salvation as
the final goal. This echoed Liang Qichao's call for "new fiction" for na-
tion-building purposes, and thus meant a continuation of, not a break with,
the earlier trend. Literature in general was divided by the radicals into
"old" and "new," the old designating all existing literature, the new being
the kind that would be produced from then on in accordance with patriotic
and political needs—but which had not yet come into being. It was under-
stood that, if written by writers whose thinking was politically correct, the
results would be perfect, while less perfect results were already seen as a
42 The strategy was also used by Richard Hoggart, w h o started what was called Cultural
Studies in Birmingham 1964. Instead of peasants, he romanticized pre-war "authentic
working-class life." Even he ignored that it implied an acceptance of a much more
authoritarian system than was the case among post-war workers. Today, more parallels
can be found among post-colonial theories, which negate the benefits of modernization
and, in the name of the common people's so-called "right" to so-called "tradition," deny
them a modern life.
43 See, e.g., Denton (ed.), Modern Chinese Literary Thought, pp. 115, 156-57.
sign that the writer did not possess the correct political awareness, a view
that would predominate all through the Maoist period:
The first task of the New Culture movement was the negation of the old
thought; the second task was the introduction of the new. But neither stage
produced the required results. This is because the people engaged in these
two tasks were not complete in their negation of the old thought; even less
did they bear the responsibility of introducing the new. [...]
No one is allowed to stand in the middle. You must come to this side, or
go over there!
[...] Describe with true zeal what you see and hear on the battlefield, the
acute sorrow and anger of the worker-peasant masses, heroic behaviour,
the joy of victory! By so doing, you can ensure final victory, you will
achieve outstanding merit t···] 44
Surprisingly, the radical writers did not question the ability of literature, or of
the individual writer, to work such wonders; perhaps the idea flattered their
vanity. However, by yielding to this ideological fallacy, Chinese writers
were led into a trap from which they were not extricated until the 1980s.
In such radical leftist light, the existing popular literature could only be
condemned: negative views prevailed about both traditional popular litera-
ture, considered "feudal," 45 and modern popular literature, seen as "west-
ern" and "commercial." 46 Of the two, the modern kind could appear even
worse as it was not a part of China's history, which after all the "feudal"
type was. In line with the idealization and nationalization of peasant cul-
ture, a differentiation was further established between folk literature and
popular literature. Among the radicals, this was accomplished by Mao Dun
and Zhou Zuoren. Zhou termed folk literature "yuanshi wenxue" (primi-
tive literature), 47 thus excusing it from intellectual criticism.
In 1921 - 2 2 Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo led a ferocious attack against
urban popular literature, describing it as "mandarin ducks and butterflies"
44 See, e.g., Cheng Fangwu, "From a Literary Revolution to a Revolutionary Literature"

("Cong wenxue geming dao geming wenxue"), trans. Michael Götz, in Denton (ed.),
Modern Chinese Literary Thought, pp. 271, 275.
45 See, e.g., Zhou Zuoren, "Humane Literature" ("Ren de wenxue"), trans. Ernst Wolff, in
Denton (ed.), Modern Chinese Literary Thought, pp. 156-57.
46 See Wei Shaochang (ed.), Yuanyang-hudie-pai yanjiu ziliao (Research Materials on
Mandarin-Duck-and-Butterfly School), 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe,
1984), vol. 1, pp. 32-131.
47 Zhou defined popular literature as written by the literati, and found two categories: caizi
jiaren (stories of talents and beauties) such as Hongloumeng (The Story of the Stone),
and xiayi (stories of knights errant) such as Shuihuzhuan (The Water Margin). See Hung,
Going to the People, pp. 5-6, and Zhou Zuoren, "Guanyu tongsu wenxue" ("About
Popular Literature"), Xiandai 2:6, pp. 795-97.
56 Marja Kaikkonen
literature, a term with a strong derogatory tone. 48 They saw such literature
as pernicious; it poisoned the minds of its readers and kept them from read-
ing more useful literature. Lu Xun, whose views were later given the
monopoly in interpreting the literary field of the May Fourth era, joined the
critics by slandering entertainment literature in numerous essays and even
in his influential work Zhongguo xiaoshuo shi liie (A Brief History of Chi-
nese Fiction), which uses various derogatory terms for popular literature
since the late nineteenth century. 49 Thus the critics denied the common
people the enjoyment of reading for entertainment, a retake of "writing is
for conveying the truth."
Even the commercialism of popular fiction writers was unbearable: in-
stead of thinking of earning money, writers were to work unselfishly for
the best of their own nation. That such writers would need someone else to
feed them did not bother these critics, who often came from wealthy en-
vironments. At the same time, the critics were filled with indignation over
the degenerate state in which they found Chinese urbanites. They hoped by
their attack to prompt a literature that would revolutionize the Chinese
masses. But in order to be influenced by the new literature, the masses
needed to read it. This was the big problem.
Ever since the May Fourth movement, the discourse on popular readings
centered on the question of what the new literature should be like in order
to live up to its ideological and political ambitions and to be well received.
Below the surface loomed the question of how to make the masses like the
things they ought to like and read the things they ought to read. This fruit-
less discussion, a logical step from Liang Qichao's call for "new fiction"
which did not yet exist, engaged the Chinese intellectual elite for decades.
These debates certainly generated ruthless criticism of the writers who
48 Much of this polemic was published on the pages of Wenxue xunkan, and reprinted in
Rui Heshi et al. (eds.), Yuanyang hudie pai wenxue ziliao (Materials on Mandarin-
Duck-and-Butterfly School Literature), 2 vols. (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe,
1984), vol. 2, pp. 726-52. For other relevant articles see pp. 710-25. See also Perry Link,
"Traditional-Style Popular Urban Fiction in the Teens and Twenties," in Merle Goldman
(ed.), Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge, MA, and London:
Harvard UP, 1977), pp. 327-49, and E. Perry Link Jr., Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: Univ. of California Press, 1981).
49 The book was published in 1930 but written in 1923-24 as university lectures. See Lu
Xun, Zhongguo xiaoshuo shi liie (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction), (Beijing: Renmin
wenxue chubanshe, 1973). A critical appraisal of Lu Xun's views on fiction expressed in
the book can be found in V. I. Semanov, Lu Hsiin and His Predecessors (White Plains,
NY: Μ. E. Sharpel980), pp. 56-74.
tried so hard, 50 while nothing was done by way of analyzing contemporary

popular literature itself. It was seen as simply too backward and self-evi-
dent, although it apparently had some good qualities:
The May Fourth-Marxist canonical interpretation of the development of
modern Chinese literature would make it seem that popular literature
simply did not exist, when the fact is that fiction of the Mandarin Ducks and
Butterfly school [··•] succeeded, where May Fourth writers failed, in reach-
ing the very audience that the literary revolution had sought out.51
At times the debate dealt with whether or how to use "traditional forms" of
fiction in new, revolutionary works, but no agreement was reached.
One of the most caustic critics of the May Fourth writers and literary
products since the mid-1920s was Qu Qiubai. He was extremely critical of
the writers' attempts to approach the "popular," attempts which he con-
sidered totally inadequate and superficial: 52
The "May Fourth" New Culture Movement is as if wasted on the masses of
the people! The May Fourth type of literature in the new classical Chinese
(the so-called vernacular [baihua]) as well as the early revolutionary and
proletarian literatures, which were merely a development of this literature,
equal just another type of shark fin banquet for our Europeanized gentry,
something which the masses of the people never get to taste.53
Qu was an exception among his contemporaries in that he did not allow

his own value judgements or aesthetic preferences to blind him to the im-
portance of the cultural forms that the common people actually support-
ed. He could even visualize workers and peasants in the future being
schooled to the point where they were able to write their own literary
works. 54 But he belonged too much to May Fourth himself and was too
Marxist to allow cultural matters to develop in their own way—they were
to be improved through political and social means, as soon as possible.
The working class of his day could still not produce its own literature,
50 This is what earlier research into this period has very much concentrated on.
51 Denton (ed.), Modern Chinese Literary Thought, p. 121.
52 On Qu Qiubai's criticism and attitudes to popular culture, see Paul G. Pickowicz, Marxist
Literary Thought in China: The Influence of Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London: Univ. of California Press, 1981), esp., pp. 147-67.
53 Qu Qiubai, "Dazhong wenyi de wenti" ("The Question of the Masses' Literature and
Art"), in Qu Qiubai, Qu Qiubai wenji (Collected Works of Qu Qiubai), 5 vols. (Beijing:
Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1989), vol. 3, p. 13.
54 Pickowicz, Marxist Literary Thought in China, pp. 150-53, and [Qu Qiubai], Qu Qiubai
wenji (Collected Works of Qu Qiubai), 4 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe,
1954), vol. 2, pp. 874, 885-86, 891-92.
58 Marja Kaikkonen
this had to be done by "intellectuals who possessed a 'genuine' proletar-

ian consciousness." 55
From a popular point of view, the critics seemed to be saying: if we, elite
writers, are patriotic enough to (sacrifice our elite careers and unselfishly)
write for the needs of the common people, then the common people should
(be grateful enough to) read these products to become patriotic as well.
The attitudes published in these debates reveal how condescending,
patronizing, and elitistic the attitudes of even the leftist radicals remained:
certain people ("intellectuals with proletarian consciousness") could see
the needs of the common readers ("working class") and consciously
choose to produce works to agitate on their behalf and to enlighten the
readers, who themselves apparently lacked the visions of the writers and
were unable to see which things lay in their own interests. In practice, this
leftist criticism seems rather to have served the purpose of establishing an
elite status for a new group of critics than advanced the cause of popular
literature.
As the politicization of Chinese cultural life deepened, it is interesting to
note that radical May Fourth generation leftist writers had something very
much in common with the Nationalist government (which they viewed as
reactionary): their abhorrence of urban popular culture. While leftist
writers and critics were busy arguing about how to "popularize" their lit-
erature (dazhonghua), the Nanjing government launched the Xin shenghuo
yundong (New Life Movement) in 1934, with custom reform (fengsu
gaige) programs not just to curb superstition and demolish temples, 56 but
also, for example, to ban public dancing in the capital and to stop popular
music from being broadcast. 57
55 [Qu Qiubai], Qu Qiubai wenji, vol. 2, pp. 875-78. See also Pickowicz, Marxist Literary
Thought in China, p. 149.
56 Hung, Going to the People, p. 160. On the Movement, see also Lin Zezhen, Xin sheng-
huo yundong - lilun yu shijian zhifenxi (1934-1937) (New Life Movement - An Analy-
sis of Theory and Practice). (N.p. [Taibei]: Guoli zhengzhi daxue, 1986); and Zhongyang
xuanchuanbu (ed.), Xin shenghuo yundong yanlunji (Collection of Speeches on the New
Life Movement), (N.p. [Taibei]: Zhengzhong shuju, n.d).
57 A. C. Scott, Literature and the Arts in Twentieth Century China (London: George Allen
and Unwin Ltd, 1965), p. 53. See also "Zhengli guangbo jiemu zhi banfa" ("Methods to
Improve Radio Programs"), Yule zhoubao (Entertainment Weekly), 11 July 1936, p. 531.
Crediting the People
In his Zhongguo suwenxueshi ("The history of Chinese vulgar litera-

ture"), 58 published in 1938, Zheng Zhenduo wrote about various traditional
Chinese literary forms, classical and vernacular, from antiquity onwards.
Inspired by egalitarian views on culture and critical of the narrow literati
understanding of which particular genres constituted "literature," Zheng
wanted to vindicate folk culture through serious scholarly work, and did it
by showing that most literary forms, no matter how high their status today,
in actual fact have their roots deep in folk cultural forms. He contrasted
such "vulgar literature" with "orthodox literature," i.e. canonized litera-
ture, but equated "vulgar literature" with what we now understand as folk-
lore: created among the common people, anonymously and collectively
created, and orally produced. 59
The impressive scholarship of Zheng's work was seen as scientific proof
of his ideas, which were by no means new in China. 60 Zheng's support for
such a radical view was enthusiastically received by leftist intellectuals,
and came to have a normative influence on literary historical writing in the
People's Republic of China (PRC) all through the twentieth century. 61 It
was only gradually, as more professional knowledge of the science of folk-
lore was spread, that this view came to be revised, 62 and the term "vulgar
literature" was employed to designate traditional vernacular literature (fic-
tion, drama and storytelling). This means that in many writings for years to
58 The translation of this title is problematic: earlier the term "vulgar literature" was actu-
ally used in many contexts as the English equivalent of suwenxue. This is probably
illustrative of the way many contemporaries understood the title. We might prefer the
originally German term "trivial literature."
59 Zheng Zhenduo, Zhongguo suwenxueshi (History of Chinese Vulgar Literature), 2 vols.
(Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 1-21.
60 The idea that all literature has its origins in folk literature can be traced to Xu Jiarui. He
presented in his book, Zhonggu wenxue gailun (An Introduction to Medieval Literature)
in 1924 the theory that in Medieval China, folk literature was much more important than
aristocratic literature. This view was received with enthusiasm by Hu Shi and many
others, and incorporated in much theoretical writing of the 1920s and 1930s. See Hung,
Going to the People, pp. 7 - 8 .
61 Particularly appealing to leftists was the idea that folklore was collectively created and
collectively consumed. It seems that this was later taken to prove that common people
were prone to collective action, had homogeneous taste, and were anti-individualistic, all
qualities that Mao Zedong, for example, cherished and needed for the credibility of his
theories.
62 Chang-tai Hung claims, however, still in 1985 that the term minjian wenxue (folk litera-
ture) has never been defined by Chinese folklorists. Hung, Going to the People, p. 1.
60 Marja Kaikkonen
come "vulgar literature" and folklore were treated synonymously, and the
view survives even today, causing a certain terminological anarchy.
From a modern point of view, however, the problem with Zheng's ideas
was that he did not bother about today's world. He asks for appreciation of
folk culture because it digests the world into wonderful source material for
the literati to work on. His view therefore accepts and perpetuates the hier-
archies of traditional society, but it does of course remind the readers—the
literati—of values other than their own. However, folk culture is not so im-
portant for what it is, but for what others can make it into. Zheng Zhenduo
explains history. Therefore, the individualism of the modern man in mod-
em popular culture cannot be accommodated within Zheng's theory, and
therefore the theory could not explain the development current in his own
time.
The reason his work became so influential must be that he expressed a
generous appreciation of the common people's cultural capacities, an idea
which has certainly gained support during the more than half century since
its publication. Another reason for its popularity is of course, paradoxical-
ly, the very limitation of his idea: it was so much easier for his readers to
regard with generosity the cultural products of those common people who
were safely located in history.
M a o ' s Yan'an Line
The various leftist literary debates and particularly Qu Qiubai's ideas ap-
pear to have formed Mao Zedong's thoughts on how to develop culture.
Mao came to express his views in his "Zai Yan'an wenyi zuotanhui shang
de jianghua" (Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Literature and Art) in
1942,63 which was to have an unreasonably strong influence on mainland
Chinese cultural life for at least the next half century. These views were
traditional elitist, Marxist, and May Fourth radical all at once.
Mao Zedong adopted Liang Qichao's idea that literature and art can
serve the nation, and changed it into a necessity for literature to serve the
cause of revolution, in other words, to serve the current political ideology:
63 For the text of this talk, see, e.g., [Mao Zedong], Mao Zedong lun wenyi (Mao Zedong on
Literature and Art) (Beijing 1992), pp. 34-68. For an annotated translation and a discus-
sion, see Bonnie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong's "Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Lit-
erature and Art": A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary (Ann Arbor: The
Univ. of Michigan, 1980).
Comrades! I have invited you to this conference today for the purpose of
exchanging opinions with you on the correct relationship [...] between
work in literature and art and revolutionary work in general, to obtain the
correct development of revolutionary literature and art and better assistance
from them in our other revolutionary work, so that we may overthrow our
national enemy and accomplish our task of national liberation.64
He also supported the idea that authors with the right ideological qualities
will produce the perfect literary products, a thought construct that deftly
hands over the responsibility for the state of things to the writers them-
selves, who from then on were made to strive for the unattainable salvation
called correct thinking.
According to Mao, the common people were in a pitiful cultural state
and therefore revolutionary intellectuals, who were necessarily on a higher
level than the people, had to create cultural products that would raise the
people's level. All that the people had was endless needs, which leaders
and intellectuals had to meet. Cadres, on the other hand, were defined as
having "higher" cultural needs than the masses. 65 Mao also problematized
at length the consequences of class affiliation for cultural production and
consumption, but did it with no consideration to actual practice, and in an
entirely prescriptive manner.
Unfortunately, Mao was much more rural than Qu Qiubai, and therefore
could not develop Qu's ideas on the importance of modern urban popular
culture. This may be one reason why Mao talked very little about popular
culture, and when he did, his ideas appear very conventional, old-fash-
ioned and unsophisticated. He implied a dogmatic hostility toward the ur-
ban xiao shimin (petty bourgeoisie) stratum—as the only consumers of
decadent urban popular culture,—and confessed to an elitist, hierarchic
view of "elementary literature and art" as something needed by the "broad-
est masses" (zui guangda qunzhong suo zui xian xuyao de chuji de
wenyi).66
Mao lacked experience of urban life, and consequently acquired a neg-
ative bias toward urban popular culture. From 1942, his cultural policies
were aimed at replacing and wiping out modern urban culture. M a o ' s
early contacts with urban life had been very brief: a year in Beijing, some
64 McDougall, Mao Zedong, p. 57.

65 Ibid., pp. 70 ff.
66 [Mao Zedong], Mao Zedong lun wenyi, pp. 51-52; McDougall, Mao Zedong, p. 72. For a
comparison of Mao's and Qu Qiubai's views, see Pickowicz, Marxist Literary Thought
in China, pp. 225-35.
62 Marja Kaikkonen
weeks in Shanghai. 67 His stay in Beijing when he worked at Beijing Uni-

versity Library coincided with the early folklore movement. It is con-
ceivable that his aversion toward modern popular culture stemmed from
the ideas of this movement; on the other hand, his view of peasant culture
definitely cannot be called idealizing. After all, even urban workers, who
were the core of the "revolutionary masses," consumed the same kind of
urban popular culture as the hateful xiao shimin did, but Mao totally ig-
nores this fact. Perhaps it was for ideological reasons that he refused to
see it: the main force of revolution just could not read "westernized"
popular fiction!
Mao's subconscious attitudes came to have a disproportionate influ-
ence on Chinese cultural life: from 1949 onwards, the culture of the en-
tire nation was given an increasingly rural character, visible, among other
ways, in the fact that the role of literature in printed form was made
weaker and weaker, while storytelling and ballad arts with propaganda
contents were heavily subsidized. 68 After 1949 and until around 1978,
central cultural policies regulated the production and consumption of all
literature in the People's Republic of China. These policies, although
fluctuating somewhat, had one basic tendency: increasingly strict ideo-
logical and political requirements were imposed on all literary produc-
tion, entirely in line with Mao's Yan'an talks.69 This led to an artificial
situation where no clearly identifiable elite or popular culture existed. 70
The development culminated during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
when authorship was in practice replaced by collective committee work,
and the public was paid to consume the cultural products of the time—
during working hours.71
Whatever can be said about cultural revolutionary literature, it was cer-
tainly not elite literature. The politicized products of that period could per-
haps best be likened to formulaic popular literature, were it not for the ex-
tremely radical Maoist ideology they had to reflect. On the other hand, this
67 Jonathan Spence, Mao (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), pp. 32-58.
68 An exception was film. Catering to the need to reach and educate the illiterate masses, it
had an important role to play. Film had also been blessed by Stalin.
69 McDougall, Mao Zedong, pp. 38-41, elaborates on the influence of the "Talks."
70 Chen Sihe (ed.), Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi jiaocheng (A Course on the History of
Contemporary Chinese Literature) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 1999), p. 295.
71 See my book Laughable Propaganda: Modern Xiangsheng as Didactic Entertainment
(Stockholm 1990), pp. 70-119. Although this study deals with comical dialogues, identi-
cal strategies were used in more "literary" production as well. Most writers consequently
preferred silence and were replaced by amateurs and volunteers.
ideological ballast makes them resemble Christian popular fiction in the

west. 72
PRC—a Backlash?
By the last years of Mao's rule, the contemporary cultural discourse was
cleansed of the dichotomy of the elite and the popular. Even the notions
vanished from use. When Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, the ex-
treme political control over cultural matters was eased, and a gradual lib-
eralization and commercialization of cultural production and consumption
ensued. Suddenly the taste of the common people started to matter: the
economic reforms had made profit not only possible but necessary, and the
sheer numbers of ordinary readers and buyers became a decisive factor in
the fiction business. At first everyone welcomed all the cultural products
that suddenly became accessible: traditional, Hong Kong, Taiwan, foreign,
old and new, popular, elite, whatever. But after only a decade or so, a
trench had been dug and many Chinese intellectuals, by then well versed in
modern western theory, expressed a deep contempt of popular fiction and
popular culture.
A shock that agitated the Chinese literary world as nothing had done
before was released around 1990 by Wang Shuo. Having written some
police fiction pieces earlier, he became suddenly famous for some televi-
sion series that turned out to be great hits. Utilising Beijing slang, humor
and irony, he painted pictures of daily life on the margins of urban socie-
ty among cynical young people who had not quite made it to respectable
life, much less attained any revolutionary ideals. Unlike all PRC writers
before him, Wang Shuo had no pretensions about being or becoming a
"great writer" or writing "good literature." Unlike all other writers from
any type of social origin, he refused to identify with intellectuals, whom
he apparently did not particularly admire. He spoke freely about his earli-
er, unsuccessful careers in the army, as a peddler, etc., and his lack of
university education, defying the traditional wish to save face and estab-
72 In contrast to Mao, someone that understood urban culture very well was Jiang Qing, his
wife. Perhaps it was her very understanding and experience of modern urban popular
culture that led Mao to entrust her with running PRC culture during the cultural revolu-
tion. The political controversy over her person and role has so far made it impossible to
reach an objective view of her eventual personal ideas on popular literature. However,
she seems to have been closely guided by Mao's Yan'an talks.
64 Marja Kaikkonen
lish a "respectable" image. Writing successful popular literature, he be-

lieved that he would be able to make money for some time but that such
success would not last for ever, so he was going to take advantage of the
chance but also plan for other activities—thus he was displaying a con-
cern for and calculating attitude towards money that had been practically
taboo among literati ever since the May Fourth Movement. Even worse,
he soon set up a company to take care of his copyrights and develop his
business. On the other hand, he was not interested in stuffy Communist
institutions such as the Writers' Union, usually every author's dream as it
provided a regular stipend.
The literati were flabbergasted and the government had anxious re-
ports written on the "phenomenon" of Wang Shuo. 73 Wang Shuo illus-
trated in one flash an oddity of PRC culture: despite forty years of com-
munist power and proletarian preferences, there were no real worker
writers or farmer writers. As soon as someone was able to author a book,
s/he was more than happy to abandon what one would think was his/her
authentic identity, and join the literati. Mao's definitions of these social
groups' cultural attributes must have acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Wang Shuo provided entrepreneurial urbanites with a cultural icon: suc-
cessful, realistic, bound by neither traditional nor communist habits, dy-
namic and optimistic—and able to write. He made visible the cultural
consumption of the popular reader: with his appearance it was as if xiao
shimin and their culture were at once somewhat rehabilitated. This was
certainly needed, as a rapid urbanization was progressing all over the
country, and the government's standard solution to surplus labor was to
help people start small businesses, a policy which led to the growth of
this group.
On the other hand, the massive disdain with which the literati treated
Wang Shuo's figure and his fiction showed more than clearly that the
challenge he personified was timely: how modern actually were the intel-
lectuals' ideas? Unfortunately, Mao's negative view of xiao shimin has
remained officially sanctioned, hindering liberation from this anti-
modern ideology (at least among conventional individuals), an ideology
directed toward a group whose important contribution to society is no
73 See, e.g., Peng Yun, "Shi lun 'Wang Shuo xianxiang'" ("A Tentative Discussion on
'The Wang Shuo Phenomenon'"), Shenyang shifan xueyuan xuebao (Ke-she-ban) (Jour-
nal of Shenyang Normal Institute [Sci-Soc]) 1 (1994); Donghui Li, The "Phenomenon"
of Wang Shuo: A Historico-Literary Consideration, PhD diss. (Madison: Univ. of Wis-
consin, 1994).
longer questioned. This situation results sometimes in paradoxical, al-

most self-negating rhetorical somersaults. The following passage is from
a preface to a collection of short stories, explaining the difference be-
tween the new term "philistine fiction (shijing xiaoshuo)" and an old one,
"city people's literature (shimin wenxue)" (cf. xiao shimin "petty bour-
geoisie"):
"City people's literature" is an historical concept. It is the literature which

appeared during the feudal period and which arose to correspond to the
needs of handicraftsmen and merchants [...]. "Philistine fiction" is different
from these [...] the biggest difference is in ideology. "City people's litera-
ture" does assail the feudal order, but is itself largely feudal. "Philistine fic-
tion" arose after "May Fourth" and its authors are socialists, consciously or
not too consciously. "Philistine fiction" is socialist literature. The thinking
of the authors of "city people's literature" is on the same level as the char-
acters they describe [...]. The thinking of the authors of "philistine fiction"
lies on a higher level. They survey city people from above, which means
that they can see more distinctly, more profoundly. [...]
There are no epics among "philistine fiction"; they all deal with the
trifles of people in low positions. There are no "heroes" in "philistine fic-
tion," they all deal with extremely ordinary people. [...]
The life of modern city people and their ideological consciousness show
a certain continuity with those of townspeople in history. Their social status
is not high, their economic power is limited, and they labor hard just to fill
their basic needs. [...] these people belong to those with superficial think-
ing. They can only think of how to live (this is not easy for them); but they
cannot think of why humans live (this is too profound for them). Their
thinking cannot rise to the heights of philosophy. They are vulgar. [...]
Their conduct is often ridiculous [...] City people are not a dynamic social
stratum; they are sealed off and conservative. They lack risk-taking and
exploring spirit; most of them have been "abjectly obedient citizens all their
lives."74
According to this Maoist assessment, ordinary urbanites are bound to turn

out poorly even as objects of portrayal!
At the same time, some other interesting developments can be noted from
recent years. The position of early twentieth-century popular fiction, par-
ticularly of the Mandarin-Duck-and-Butterfly school, has been somewhat
reappraised during the 1990s. 75 It is also generally recognized today that
writing popular fiction requires a special capacity, something that many
74 Wang Zengqi, "Xu" ("Preface"), in Yang Dehua, Shijing xiaoshuo xuan (Selection of
Philistine Fiction) (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1988), p. 1.
75 See, e.g., Yuan Jin, Zhongguo wenxue, pp. 188-202.
66 Marja Kaikkonen
elite writers have experienced when trying to earn extra money by writing
for popular journals.
Through the work of Chen Pingyuan at Peking University, the idea that
the literati can legitimately be interested in trivia, such as martial arts fic-
tion, has now become accepted, and has somewhat raised the status of mar-
tial arts fiction. 76 In addition, the placement of the Hong Kong writer of
martial arts fiction, Jin Yong (or Louis Cha), on an influential list of the
best Chinese writers of the twentieth century has, in spite of the controver-
sy, further corroborated the acceptance of popular literature.
These are practical victories, easily supported by today's wider reader-
ship and the positive official attitudes toward popular literature created by
its economic potential, used to subsidize more serious publications.
Among the literati, there is widespread ideological hesitation about how to
view the entire phenomenon of popular culture/fiction, as the above solu-
tion offered by Communist ideology appears outdated. At the same time,
the search for some type of folk expression in the spirit of early twentieth
century predecessors continues to engage theoreticians such as Chen Sihe.77
Discussion
The above sections describe a series of approaches to popular fiction or

popular culture adopted by Chinese intellectuals during the twentieth cen-
tury. This set of approaches illustrates a very gradual but significant devel-
opment, through which a popular cultural form appears to evolve from an
officially despised and prosecuted category to become a controversial but
important market factor.
What is striking in this development is its gradual and moderate charac-
ter: the progression of ideas consisted of small, rather unconspicuous steps
with considerable adherence to traditional ideas. A popular genre which
was not traditionally included in the literary canon could be given legitima-
cy only if it was found to comply with some traditional value. In the case
of fiction, this principle was the interest of the nation, which was pro-
claimed with authority by Liang Qichao, while May Fourth modernist
76 Chen Pingyuan, Qiangu wenren xiakemeng (Eternal Literati Dream of Knights Errant)
(Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1992).
77 See, e.g., his "Minjian de fuchen" ("Ups and Downs of the Popular"), Shanghai wenxue
No. 1 (1994), pp. 68-80.
writers tried hard to put the idea into practice. Both cases represent a tradi-
tional elitist approach, where culture is expected to be produced by the
elite for consumption by the common people.
A second step was the acceptance of the idea that the common people's
culture could be valuable in itself. This comprises a more radical view: the
common people are happy to consume cultural products that they them-
selves have produced. Zheng Zhenduo's view that the common people
were the source of all literary forms seems in fact almost opportunistic, but
its acceptance must have further corroborated the appreciation of the com-
mon people's culture. On the other hand, it returns the agency for cultural-
ly valuable production to the elite. The Marxist heritage of the May Fourth
radicals and Mao Zedong had apparently no positive effect on the accept-
ance or promotion of popular culture, including popular fiction. The com-
mon people were again passivized into the role of mere cultural con-
sumers, while cultural production could only be accomplished under guid-
ance from political cadres. Indirectly, however, the diminishing access to
traditional cultural products during the Mao years of the PRC must have
weakened the position of classical literature and prepared the way for any-
thing new as soon as the politicized fiction of the pre-1978 period was re-
placed. The 1980s popular fiction boom broke the monopoly of elite opin-
ion regarding popular culture, allowed the growing urban middle class to
identify with this cultural form and experience the intoxication of power,
when the sales figures alone for popular fiction proved enough to margin-
alize elite literature and command the attention of the authorities. This only
aggravated elite critics, but in cultural matters, money is power, and, con-
sequently, popular fiction took some shaky steps toward the literary canon.
From the point of view of modernization, we can see the above develop-
ment of attitudes vis-ä-vis popular culture as part of the history of recep-
tion of the egalitarian idea, how elite intellectuals have dealt with the idea
of equality by systematically questioning, doubting and exploring its vari-
ous tenets and practical consequences. This can be applied to China as well
as to Europe, with the difference that Europe has a more definite, received
interpretation of the result, which makes it harder for us to see any alterna-
tive picture. We, the European literati, like to describe our history in terms
of pro-egalitarian, Enlightenment ideas as the only reasonable views that
existed on this question and the only ones that any sensible people, particu-
larly members of elites, would consider having. This received interpreta-
tion neglects the more conservative, elitist, anti-egalitarian views which
68 Marja Kaikkonen
flourished in Europe; they have been comfortably written away in standard

historiography, making Europeans appear all the more progressive, toler-
ant, and modern. This becomes conspicuous when we discuss political dis-
sidence in non-western dictatorships with representatives of such coun-
tries. It gives Europeans a bias, a blind spot, which I think hampers our un-
derstanding of corresponding developments in other parts of the world,
such as China, which have not experienced Enlightenment.
Let us conduct a thought experiment and try to see the matter from an-
other angle: Consider how provoking the egalitarian idea must once have
been for representatives of an elite in a society which for centuries had ex-
plained itself as consisting of a certain fixed set of social strata. A hundred
years ago, the idea of the popular as something more than a lack of positive
elite qualities was still new. When modern ideas were introduced in China,
one of these was the egalitarian view that all humans have a similar basic
value. Traceable to many thinkers of the past, this view met with much op-
position in most parts of the world, but also support. The academic com-
munities, certainly an elite in each society, went out of their way to try to
invalidate the claims to equality by measuring the skulls, noses and ears of
criminals, beggars, "wilds" and others whom people had a hard time seeing
as their peers, in search of differences. When no significant physiological
differences could be found, they turned to factors other than biological.
Even if all humans had similar bodies, their cultures (that is: cultural ac-
complishments) and their groupings (that is: states) were obviously not
equal, they seemed to say. Therefore, with the help of scholars, nation
states and ethnic groups started "discovering" their national cultural histo-
ries and heritages—a process that is still going on in many parts of the
world—and challenged each other to find the most ancient origins for their
own particular culture, as if the oldest or richest culture would win a game.
Social Darwinism, which was probably a western strategy developed for a
similar reason, actually prescribed such activity as a competition. 78 And
yes, it happened that results were in fact faked, so important were they.
The contest was often carried out within the fields of archaeology, linguis-
tics, and folklore. Thus even folk culture became a focal area of national
significance, and the existence of a national historical epic a crucial quali-
fication for "excellence."
78 Cf. James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, MA and London: Har-
vard UP, 1983).
When it was shown that each folk had an ancient and unique cultural tra-
dition and could therefore be seen as equals, 79 it still remained puzzling
that individuals within the same nation could show such striking differ-
ences in accomplishment: how could they be equals? This legitimized so-
cial and behavioral sciences: the study of the behavior of individuals or
groups could hopefully solve the question, and perhaps disprove the idea
of equality in the end. (Symptomatically, perhaps, social and behavioral
sciences were largely banned in Mao's China. 80 ) These studies put the fo-
cus on social strata and revealed that all of them, even the poorest urban-
ites, did have a culture of their own, a culture which was not just a lack of
elite culture or a degenerate version of their traditional folk culture, but an
intricate system that corresponded to their specific needs. This is where the
study of popular culture and popular fiction fits in. —But why has it been
so controversial?
I think we need to place popular culture/popular fiction not just within
this sketchy "historical" framework, but also to focus on the elite vs.
non-elite dichotomy as a struggle over influence in a modernizing society,
in order to explain the controversial nature of popular culture. Popular cul-
ture has never needed any preachers, integrated as it is in the economic,
material and conceptual world of its producers and consumers. The econ-
omic development during the past century has improved the living stand-
ards of a huge number of individuals and created in many countries a large
middle class, wealthy enough to consume plenty of popular cultural prod-
ucts. This has meant that the traditionally more prominent elite culture,
which disseminates elite interests through elite values, has gradually been
marginalized, while various more popular cultural forms have taken over.
It is the proponents of the elite culture (often symbiotic with so-called tra-
ditional culture) that have found their authority and legitimacy questioned,
and who, consequently, have refused to accept the state of things and pro-
tested vehemently by vilifying popular culture/fiction. It is the Chinese
case that in its more concentrated form can illustrate even European histo-
ry, for the enlightenment of us all.
79 It is interesting to note that this conclusion coincides with the growth of international
cooperation; w e can see the forming of the League of Nations etc. as a way in which
people in the world have taken the consequences of the stated lack of fundamental differ-
ences between peoples. The next step is the elimination of the nation as a significant
unit—no wonder w e are talking about globalization today.
80 Chen Guoqiang, "The Chinese People Need Anthropology," in G. E. Guldin (ed.),
Anthropology in China (Armonk and London: Μ. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990), pp. 4 2 - 5 5 .
MARTIN SVENSSON EKSTRÖM
One Lucky Bastard:

On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese "Literature"
The Origins and Function of Poetry in Early China
Contextualizing the Odes: were the ancient Chinese "ontologically

poor"?
Man and cosmos, according to common wisdom, are inextricably linked in
early Chinese poetry and philosophy. Equipped with an "associative intel-
lect" the ancient Chinese sought in Nature and natural phenomena—the
changing of the seasons, the migration of birds and the stars—guidance for
human action.1 This is not an unwarranted claim. Treatises from no later
than the third century BCE include elaborate schemes dictating how to eat,
dress and act in proper accordance with the seasons. 2 The link between
man and nature was, it seems, perceived as very real, immediate and con-
crete.
1 Edward Shaughnessy, in The Composition of the "Zhouyi" (PhD diss., Stanford Univ.,
1983), p. 103, links the Odes to the Zhou Changes: "[a]ll of these employed the
jci'ng-evocation so ubiquitous in the Shijing and so characteristic of the associative intel-
lect of ancient China in general." For the so called jtmg-evocation, see the section "The
nature and function of the Odes in the fourth century BCE" below.
2 See, for instance, the "Almanac" included in Mr. Lii's Annals (Liishi chunqiu S
of 239 BCE. The "Ying tong" chapter of Mr. Lit's Annals indeed describes the objects of
the world as mutually corresponding: "Things of the same correlative category [lei M]
naturally attract one another; things of the same <jf-ether g , naturally come together;
tones that are similar answer [ying J®] each other." For a translation of, and an introduc-
tion to, this book, see John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, The Annals of Lii Buwei (Stan-
ford: Stanford UP, 2000). Mr. Lii's "Almanac" appears also as the "Yue ling ψ ' chap-
ter of the Book of Rites (Liji Ms2). Cf. James Legge's translation "The Yüeh Ling" in Li
Chi: Book of Rites (Rpt.; New York: University Books [1885] 1967), vol. 1, pp. 249-310.
Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 72 ( [2000] 2002) is a special
issue devoted to "Reconsidering the Correlative Cosmology of Early China."
All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
All dates are BCE unless otherwise indicated.
On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese "Literature" 71
And perhaps this did in fact have far-reaching, almost overwhelming

consequences. Perhaps the very earliest forms of Chinese "thinking" were
in fact rooted in correlations of human action with natural phenomena to
such an extent that it would be altogether anachronistic to distinguish be-
tween poetic, mythological, historical, divinatory, or religious discourses.
Perhaps, as indeed it has been claimed, what we today perceive as records
of divination are in fact "songs"; perhaps the famed narration of the feats
of the Sage Emperor Yu is not a historical chronicle but a mythical repre-
sentation of the motions of heavenly bodies; perhaps the intriguing image-
ry we find in the Book of Odes is not metaphors or similes but literal ac-
counts of cosmological correspondences between man and Nature actually
believed to "be out there." 3
So maybe Martin Heidegger was right to say that "[t]he metaphorical"—
i.e. the linguistic and conceptual figure that explains this in terms of that—
"obtains only within Metaphysics," since Oriental thinking sees the con-
nections between different things and phenomena but does not order them
into hierarchies. 4 And perhaps the standard sinological claim is true, that
due to this fondness for correlation ancient Chinese thinking was predes-
tined to stress propriety in human behaviour and action and the necessity to
conform to the Way (Tao) of Nature, in contrast to the more abstract Pla-
tonic tradition which took a step back to ponder the being qua being. Per-
haps, then, the ancient Chinese were ontologically poor.
Yet, by pointing to the sky and the scattered stars that lure human im-
agination to confer upon them common shapes and names, what is the bit-
ter narrator of the catastrophic ode "Great East" doing if not mischievously
throwing the grand cosmological tradition to the winds, suspending it?
3 For the view that the Zhou Changes (Zhouyi, the earliest stratum of the Book of Changes,
Yijing) were songs, see Huang Yushun, jfiEHll, Yijing guge kaoshi (Chengdu: Basi
shushe, 1995). Deborah Lynn Porter's important study From Deluge to Discourse: Myth,
History and the Generation of Chinese Fiction (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1996) builds on the work of John Major and David Pankenier, and holds that
the narrations of "the great inundations of floodwaters and Yii's control of them repre-
sent a tradition based on the obvious changes in time in arrival of certain constellations
on the eastern horizon," p. 31. For a similar interpretation of some myths concerning the
Yellow Emperor, see Edward L. Shaughnessy, "'Qian' and 'Kun' Hexagrams," in
Edward Shaughnessy, Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 209-10.
4 "[d]as Metaphorische gibt es nur innerhalb der Metaphysik," Martin Heidegger, Der Satz
vom Grund (Frankfurt: Klostermann, [1957] 1997), p. 72. Note that the Heideggerian
claim that metaphoricity is typically Occidental is quoted—by way of Jacques Derrida's
"la mythologie blanche"—with approval by Pauline Yu, The Reading of Imagery in the
Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987), p. 17.
72 Martin Svensson Ekström
i In the south there is the Winnowing Basket

-"F* i H M M it cannot be used to winnow
MltfäH- In the north there is the Ladle
^f· R J M i e M f l it cannot be used to ladle wine or congee 5
As we shall see, the useless Winnowing Basket and the illusory Ladle are
uniquely able to inform us about ancient Chinese poetics. The poet's de-
construction of these natural but factitious images is part of a meta-
poetics—a scattered theory of "literature"—that cannot but problematize
facile descriptions of early Chinese poetry as emotional, "spontaneous" or
"unmediated," or as devoid of tropes and figures. 6
5 "Great East" ("Da dong," ode 203). In classical rhetoric, katastrophe names the conclu-
sion of a drama, and the moment of rest and exhaustion ("Ruhelage") after a disaster—a
catastrophe. See Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, 3rd ed. (Stutt-
gart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990), §1194, p. 568.1 refer to each Shijing poem by name in
Chinese and in English translation, and by the sequential number given them in Bernhard
Karlgren's authoritative translation, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far East-
ern Antiquities, 1950). The Chinese edition used is Wang Xianqian Shi sanjia yiji shu
(The Three Schools of Shijing exegesis, collected and annotated; abbrev. SSJYJS) which
contains not only the Mao tradition of Shijing commentary but also the collected frag-
ments of the other three main schools, Han Qi f f and Lu H , that later perished. See
Lin Yaolin's study of the three schools in Xi Han sanjia shixue yanjiu (Taipei:
Wenjin, 1996). For stimulating reflections on the origins of Confucian interpretations of
the Odes, see Jeffrey Riegel, "Eros, Introversion, and the Beginnings of Shijing Com-
mentary," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57:1 (1997), pp. 151 ff.
Other recommended translations of the Odes are James Legge, The She King, vol. IV of
The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena,
and Copious Indexes (Rpt. Taipei: SMC Publishing, [1871] 1992); Arthur Waley, The
Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
1987); Ezra Pound, Shih-ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 1954). Karlgren, Glosses on the Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of
Far Eastern Antiquities, 1964) provides reliable comments on the Odes.
Yang Zhishui, Shijing mingwu xinzheng (Peking: Beijing guji chubanshe), pp. 3 6 3 -
80, discusses the imagery of "Great East" and provides illustrations of ancient ladles and
of astronomical charts. Qian Zhongshu, Guan zhui bian (Peking: Zhonghua, 1999), vol.
1, pp. 153-56, delivers a more literary interpretation.
6 The Sinological commonplace of Chinese shi ("poetry, lyric") as spontaneous and "invol-
untary" is intimately linked to the Heideggerian idea of the absence of metaphoricity in the
Chinese tradition. The Greek poiesis derives from poiein ("make, fabricate") and so sug-
gests that the Greek (or Western) poem is consciously fabricated by a poet (a "maker") in
full control of his raw material. By contrast there is no distance between a Chinese bard and
the object of his making: the Chinese shi "is the writer" (Stephen Owen, Readings in Chi-
nese Literary Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, UP, 1987), p. 27. Western poiesis is thus
characterized by distance and artifice, hence its propensity for calculated figures of speech
such as metaphor and allegory. By contrast Chinese shi is conceived as warm, immediate
and anti-metaphorical. For a critique of this understanding of shi, see my "A Second Look
at the Great Preface on the Way to a New Understanding of Han Dynasty Poetics," Chi-
nese Literature, Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 21 (1999), pp. 1-33.
My ambition, as outlined in greater detail below, is not only to explain

the function and character of shi (song, poem, ode, The Odes) in fourth
century China as spelled out by historical and philosophical narratives of
that time. Nor will I merely perform a close reading of certain Odes in
search of an implicit poetics. I will go one step further and pinpoint a pecu-
liar "literariness" or "poeticness" that appears in certain Odes but is absent
from contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous discourses of high cul-
tural status—most notable the bronze inscriptions, the Classic of Docu-
ments, and the Classic of Changes—which may have influenced, or been
influenced by, the Odes. My definition of the true poetic text as "difficult,"
characterized by moments of suspension and discontinuities that call out
for revision and re-reading, is drawn from the Russian Formalists and their
followers.7
I will show that in these difficult poems form and content are insepar-
ably interlaced, and that they theorize, metapoetically, their own figurality
and mode of being. The historical and philosophical discourses from which
the echt literature of the Shijing sublates itself and emerges as "a lucky bas-
tard" do not—in my opinion—have the gravity, the density or the pull that
mark a truly poetic text. I hope to demonstrate the validity of this assertion
in the course of my argument below.
Methodologically, the present project aims to be concretely text-cen-
tered. One cannot summarize poetics, nor make a detour around it or take a
shortcut to it. Instead one must "go through" it, experience it. Only through
close readings of the primary materials can the student of literature theo-
rize about their meaning, their rhetorical status, and their intertextuality;
only thus can he or she hope to say anything original about texts seemingly
worn threadbare by more than two millennia of analysis.
But let us now contextualize.
7 The three most obvious references here are Jan Mukarovsky, "Standard Language and
Poetic Language," in A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style
(Washington DC: Georgetown UP, 1964), pp. 17-30; Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Tech-
nique," in David Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (London: Long-
mans, 1988), pp. 16-30; Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics,"
in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language (Cambridge, MA: Technology Press of
Massachusetts Inst. Of Technology, 1958), pp. 350-77. It is, however, to Michael Riffa-
terre's development of these scholars' theories of the poetic text in Semiotics of Poetry
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978) that I shall return below.
The Odes as "literature " and as a Confucian Classic

Shijing ("The Classic of Odes") is the earliest anthology of verse in the Chi-
nese tradition. Originally known simply as the Shi ("the Odes"), the collec-
tion contains 305 pieces traditionally considered to have been composed be-
tween the tenth and sixth centuries BCE. 8 Problems immediately arise if we
try to be more specific, or corroborate the traditional dates, and we should
acknowledge rather than obfuscate the gaps in our knowledge. When, where
and by whom were these texts originally composed? 9 For what reasons and
purposes? Other questions are difficult but not impossible to answer. When
and where do we find the first references to the Odes as a complete corpus?
Through which processes and under what historical circumstances did the
Odes—so vibrant, erotic and passionate—become one of the five Confucian
Classics and thus a major vehicle for trite Confucian ethics? 10 How can a
present-day theorist best describe these verses: as "literature" qua independ-
ent aesthetic artifacts and expressions of personal experience, as historical
records, or as religious or mythological documents? And—in the present
context perhaps the most important question—what do the Odes themselves
tell us about their provenance, status and rhetorical modality as literary texts
in fourth century China, the so-called Warring States period?
I will address these questions through close readings of a number of
Odes and of some philosophical, historiographical and commentarial texts
of a Confucian persuasion from the fourth to second centuries in which the
Odes are theorized, quoted or discussed. Particular attention will be given
to the following works:
1. The historiographical chronicle Mr. Zuo's Commentary (Zuozhuan

fourth century) which fleshes out the laconic Spring and Autumn
(Chun qiu an earlier chronicle that relates in anorectic language the
main events in Confucius' home state Lu H between 722 and 491."
8 311 titles are preserved but only 305 actual poems.

9 It is traditionally supposed that the oldest parts of the Classic date from about 1000 and
the latest stratum from the sixth century, but some recent scholarship claims that the
Odes were compiled and "mostly written" from the middle of the fifth century to the
fourth century. The fact of the matter is that we can neither refute nor substantiate such a
claim. It is obvious, however, that by the time of Mr. Zuo's Commentary (fourth century)
the Odes are a corpus of verse. Cf. Bruce and Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Say-
ings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia UP, 1998), p. 9.
10 The others are the Book of Documents (Shujing), the Book of Changes (Yijing), the Rites
(Li) and the Spring-and-Autumn (Chunqiu). For a comprehensive introduction to the his-
tory of Chinese literature, see Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Geschichte der chinesischen
Literatur: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (München: C. H. Beck, 1999).
2. The collected sayings of Confucius, the Analects (Lunyu ||ϊ§§; fourth

century).12
3. Mr. Lii's Annals (Liishi chunqiu a heterogeneous collection
of philosophical treatises compiled in the state of Qin ijl in 239. 13
4. The philologico-exegetical work on the Odes, the "Mao Commentary"
("Maozhuan second century).14
5. The historico-exegetical work on the Odes, the "Mao Preface" ("Maoshi
xiaoxu second century).15
6. The Zhou Changes (Zhouyi MM), supposedly the earliest part of the
Classic of Changes (Yijing JIM) a divination manual of an early but un-
certain date.16
11 The twelve sections of Mr. Zuo 's Commentary are named after the reigns of the twelve
dukes who governed the state of Lu H-, Confucius' home state, 722-481. These sections
are then subdivided chronologically, e.g., "Duke Xi, year 24." Following convention 1
thus give for each quotation from the Commentary the ruler's name and the year from
which my quotation is drawn. I also refer to the English translation by James Legge, The
Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen, vol. 5 of The Chinese Classics: With a Translation,
Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes (Rpt. Taipei: SMC
Publishing, [1871] 1992). In a recent study, Yuri Pines demonstrates convincingly that
the Commentary was "compiled before the second quarter of the fourth century... [and]
did not undergo substantial changes after this date." Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confu-
cian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period 722-453 B.C.E. (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai'i Press, 2002). Bernhard Karlgren's classic study is less precise but
points in the same direction. "The Early History of the Chou Li and Tso Chuan Texts,"
Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 3 (1931), pp. 5 7 - 5 9 and passim.
12 References are to the conventional division of the Analects into twenty chapters and the
subdivisions thereof, as given in Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1938). A reliable Chinese edition is Wang Xiyuan Ξΐ®ί7Ε, Lun
yu tong shi (A Comprehensive Interpretation of the Analects) (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1983).
For textual criticism that is both rigorous and innovative see Brooks and Brooks, The
Original Analects.
13 I follow Chen Qiyou's annotated edition, Liishi chunqiu jiaoshi (Taipei: Huazheng,
1988). For a full translation, see Knoblock and Riegel, The Annals.
14 The "Mao Commentary" has not been translated in full, although it is partly translated or
paraphrased in Karlgren, Glosses and in Legge, The She King.
15 The "Mao Preface" was probably written in the late second century BCE but the exact
date is disputed. Zhu Ziqing's pioneer Shi yan zhi bian (Rpt; Taipei: Kaiming, [1947]
1982) holds that the "Mao Preface" precedes the "Mao Commentary" (Shi yan zhi bian,
p. 58). For the opposite position, see Lee Kar-shui, Shijing di lishi gong an
(Taipei: Da'an, 1990), p. 21. For a monograph on the poetics of the so-called "Greater
Preface," see Hermann-Jospeh Röllicke, Die Fährte des Herzens: Die Lehre vom
Herzensbestreben (zhi) im Grossen Vorwort zum Shijing (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer,
1992).
The Preface is translated by Legge: The She King, pp. 36-81.
16 There are numerous translations of the Yijing (also known as 1-ching). I prefer the bare
rendition in Richard Kunst, The Original Yijing: A Text, Phonetic Transcription, Trans-
lation, and Indexes, with Sample Glosses (PhD diss., UC Berkeley, 1985)
Shi according to Mr. Zuo, Mr. Lü, and Confucius' "allegorical impera-
tive"
Let us begin with an elementary observation. The Chinese character shi If
is habitually translated as "poetry" but whereas the Western concept de-
rives from the Greek poiein ("to make, fabricate") and thus suggests that
poetic discourse is consciously fabricated and by implication cool, intellec-
tual and distanced, the sinological consensus is that shi refers to a spon-
taneous outburst of emotions—and thus is warm, sensuous and immedi-
ate.17 This claim, moreover, feeds into the Heideggerian notion of "the
metaphorical" as a typically metaphysical and Occidental phenomenon,
and to the concomitant assumption that there is a particular Chinese way of
thinking which immediately relates things instead of coolly establishing
the ontological hierarchies necessary for metaphorical thinking. But is this
clear-cut distinction between poiesis and shi accurate or, for that matter,
relevant? In the following I shall hint at the changes in the concepts of shi
that took place over the centuries. Like poiesis, shi was not a static con-
cept.
We should begin by noting that the character shi I f occurs only three
times in the Shi corpus, always with reference to ceremonial recitations ac-
companied by music. "Curving Slope" ("Quan e," ode 252) praises a
nobleman who has gone to court to present his "songs," his "tones" and his
shi. The translation of shi as "ode"—implying both orality and music—is
thus fitting. Furthermore, in "Earl of the Alley" ("Xiang bo," ode 200) shi
is described as a pure and honest discourse among slanderers. "Majestic
and Towering" ("Song gao," ode 259) distinguishes between "recitation"
(song IS), shi and "air" (feng ®), and in this context shi probably refers to
the content of the ode, whereas song refers to the vocal recitation, and feng
to the musical performance thereof. In the Odes, therefore, shi would seem
to denote content rather than poetic form or embellishment. Shi also seems
to denote a discourse with high moral pretensions.
If shi is not a particularly well-defined or prevalent concept in the Odes
themselves, by the second century it has most definitely become the stand-
ard term for "poem" or poetic composition. The Confucian "Mao Preface"
explains each and every ode as a proper response to a particular historical
situation, and on more than forty occasions the "Preface" says that "this
poem j U f f " was "made" (zuo f p or wei or "recited" {fu K ) in order to
remonstrate with an erring lord or to effectuate a change in government.
17 Cf. note 6 above.

For our present purposes it should be emphasized that although shi in the
"Preface" is always bound to a certain historical context, the poems are
never described as "spontaneous" outbursts of emotions but, rather, as a
means of changing the prevailing situation.18 That the "Preface" also ex-
plicitly defines shi as "made" (zuo fp) clearly indicates that the Odes—or
should we say the Poems—were thought to have been consciously com-
posed or fabricated, thus bearing some resemblance to the Greek poiesis.
We shall see presently how the Odes, on the interpretation advanced by the
"Preface" and its precursors, work by means of innuendo, double entendre
and allegoresis.19
It has been frequently and correctly remarked that the "Preface" and
the subsequent tradition of Confucian, moralizing interpretations of the
Odes overdid their case by interpreting all three hundred and five pieces
allegorically. Nonetheless, the Confucian allegoresis of the second centu-
ry was not only anticipated by certain Odes but also by Mr. Zuo's Com-
mentary and the Analects. Both these works can with some confidence be
dated to the fourth century, and both describe the Odes as a means of
courteous communication. One memorable passage in the Analects de-
picts Confucius passing his son in the courtyard. The exchange between
pere et fils Kong is neither long nor particularly tender. Confucius asks
his son if he has studied the Odes. When the son replies in the negative
Confucius curtly says that "you then lack the means with which to
speak." 20
Elsewhere, Confucius says that the Odes bring man knowledge about
the "names of birds, beasts, plants and trees."21 Conversely, not knowing
the Odes severely diminishes man's view of the world: it is "as though he
stood facing a wall."22 That Confucius so closely associated the Odes with
18 See my discussion in "A Second Look."

19 For studies of the Odes as means of ritualized communication, see chaps. 2 and 3 in
Haun Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993); see
also Francois Jullien, Le Detour et L'acces: Strategies du sens en Chine, en Grece (Paris:
Grasset, 1995), and David Schaberg, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chi-
nese Historiography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001). Zhu Ziqing's discussion of
the uses of the Odes in the first part of Shi yan zhi bian, pp. 1-49, is indispensable.
20 Analects 16:13. My translation. The wit, dry humour and sarcasm are not usually associ-
ated with the great Chinese Sage but are brought out in Christoph Harbsmeier, "Confu-
cius Ridens: Humor in the Analects," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50:1 (1990),
pp. 131-61.
21 Analects, 17:9.
22 Ibid., 17:10.
knowledge, wisdom and morality explains why in the philosophical dis-

courses of Mozi, Mencius and Xunzi an ode is often quoted at the end of an
argumentation to exemplify and authenticate the claim being made.23 In
Mr. Zuo's Commentary the Odes are called a "storehouse of righteous-
ness," and it is indeed very much as a repository of sagely insights that the
Odes appear in these philosophical texts.24
But perhaps Confucius' most influential remark is that "one phrase
captures the essence of the Odes: 'in thinking [they] do not digress
" 25 This statement may seem odd when for instance an overtly
erotic poem such as "I Lift My Skirt" ("Qian shang," ode 87) is considered,
but for the allegorizing interpreters of the second century Confucius' re-
mark meant that the Odes were always and everywhere morally unflawed.
And, indeed, what could a chaste Confucian do with tales of explicit lust
and hopeless despair but (mis-)read them allegorically? Consequently,
from Confucius onwards, if an ode speaks of carnal love on a literal level
there must be a moralizing message hidden at another level, and it is the in-
terpreter's task to find it. Let us call this Confucius' "allegorical impera-
tive."26
Confucius' imperative may account for the impulse to transform amor-
ous, and therefore potentially scandalous or even meaningless, poems
into historical documents and allegories of moral perfection. But it is Mr.
Zuo's Commentary that explains Confucius' assertion that "without the
Odes you cannot speak." In the Commentary, the Odes function as a ve-
hicle for decorous and ritualized communication. At international gather-
23 The Odes occasionally also have this function in Mr. Zuo's Commentary, as in Duke
Cheng, year 7; Legge, The Tso Chuen, p. 363 (Legge here excludes the phrase "It is this
situation that this ode speaks of').
For translations and studies of Master Mo (Mozi, fl. 440) see Y. P. Mei, The Ethical
and Political Works of Motse (London: Probsthain, 1929) and Burton Watson, Mo Tzu:
Basic Writings (New York: Columbia UP, 1963). The works of Master Xun (Xunzi,
300-230) were translated into English by John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and
Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988-94). The standard
translation of Master Meng (Mengzi, 372-289) is D. C. Lau, Mencius (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1970).
24 Zuozhuan, Duke Xi, year 27; Legge, The Tso Chuen, p. 201.
25 Ironically, Confucius is here (mis-)quoting "Jiong" (SM ode 297). The character that Con-
fucius renders "thinking" is a particle and the whole line refers to horses running without
straying.
26 I use "allegory" here in the etymological sense of "speaking otherwise." Although alle-
gory and allegoresis are appropriate terms for many Confucian interpretations of the
Odes an "appropriated reading" such as Boyou's quotation of "Quails in Pairs" is, as I
argue below, not allegorical.
ings during the tempestuous Warring States Period, rather than express
their sentiments and wishes in plain speech the diplomats in Mr. Zuo's
Commentary would recite (fu the Odes out of context in ways that
clearly anticipate the figurative and historicizing interpretations of the
second century. 27 As we shall see below, this quotability is characteristic
of the interpretation and use of the Odes in both Mr. Zuo 's Commentary
and Mr. Lii's Annals.
At this juncture, and before proceeding, we should make three additional
remarks. I must reiterate that we cannot determine the provenance of the
Odes. Did they originate as songs gathered from the common people and
shamans, or were they composed by scribes at the courts of the various
states or, again, by various nobles of the Warring States? The question of
origins is here not so much a question of genealogy as a matter of asking
how the ancient Chinese regarded the relationship between what we may
call the "text itself' and the "farfetched" use it was put to when publicly re-
cited. From both Mr. Zuo's Commentary and Mr. Lii's Annals we may in-
fer that the tension between an ode as an integral entity and the same piece
when extracted and applied to another context was indeed appreciated. As
a case in point, Mr. Zuo reports that when a nobleman named Lupu Gui in
545 was chided for marrying a woman of his own clan he replied "Why
should I avoid my own clan? When I recite \fu] the Odes I break off a stan-
za fand quote it out of context], thus taking what I want therefrom. Why
should I acknowledge the [taboo against marrying my own] clan?" 28 Lupu
Gui's conspicuous analogy with incestuous marriages corroborates the be-
lief that the poetry recital in vogue in the Warring States was perceived as a
violation of the thematic integrity of the Odes. In other words, when some-
one recited the Odes out of context in order to "grasp [another] meaning,
qu yi" he knew that this new meaning was secondary, derivative, to wit
parasitic, iahe, fictional.
Secondly, the passage in Mr. Zuo's Commentary that describes a certain
Ji Zha enjoying a musical performance of the Odes (a passage to which I
shall return below) attests that the corpus referred to as the Shi was already
in 544 largely identical with the extant version of the Classic of Odes. The
Odes as performed for Ji Zha were already organized into the familiar tri-
27 Zeng Qinliang, Zuozhuan yinshi, fiishizhishijiao yanjiu (Taipei: Wenjin, 1993) and
Zhang Suqing, Zuozhuan chengshi yanjiu (Taiwan: Taiwan daxue, 1991) include both
insightful discussions of the recitation of Odes in the Commentary and helpful charts of
the poems recited.
28 Duke Xiang, year 28; Legge, The Tso Chuen, p. 541.
partite division of "Feng Μ," "Ya 3£" and "Song £f," and the "Feng" sec-
tion was already divided into the present subdivisions.
Thirdly, Mr. Zuo tells us that in 621 "Renhao, Earl of Qin, died. He
buried Ziehe's three sons Yanxi, Zhongxing, Xianhu alive with him. These
three were Qin's finest. The Men of the State were moanful and for this
reason presented [to the court] (fu M ) 'Yellow Bird.' "29
"Yellow Bird" ("Huang niao") is ode 131 in the present version of Shi-
jing, and stands out in the otherwise largely anonymous collection by de-
tailing a particular historical event:
Small, small are the yellow birds
settling in the jejube-tree
Who follows Duke Mu?
Ziehe's son Yanxi
»Jte^JS Now this Yanxi
is like a hundred men
Facing his tomb
1SS1SÄ« shaking, shaking was his trembling
That blue heaven
mm&x destroys our fine men
Could he be replaced
by other men, it would have to be one hundred
In Mr. Zuo's account, when the "Men of Qin" presented (fu) "Yellow
Bird" they did not recite an already existing ode but a piece that had clearly
been written in response to a unique event. By describing "Huang niao"
thus, Mr. Zuo directly anticipates the historico-hermeneutic style of the
"Mao Preface." 30 Finally, by relating "Huang niao" to the catastrophic
event in 621 the Commentary provides a terminus post quern for the com-
pletion of the Shi corpus. In other words, if we accept Mr. Zuo's account
then in 621 the Odes were still not a fixed corpus.
The nature and function of the Odes in the fourth century BCE
To further exemplify the function of the Odes in the fourth and third centu-
ries, I will now comment upon a few representative Odes, both in their own
right as supposedly independent aesthetic objects, and as they appear in
Mr. Zuo's Commentary in the fourth century and in the "Mao Preface" in
the second century.
29 Duke Wen, year 6; Legge, The Tso Chuen, p. 244.

30 Not surprisingly, the "Mao Preface" to "Huang niao" is a direct paraphrase of the Zuo
Commentary passage. Cf. Legge, The She King, p. 58.
Let us consider one of the shortest and most inconspicuous odes, "The
River is Broad" ("He guang" ode 61):
ISUMS Who says the Yellow River is broad?
I cross it on a reed
fttl^SI Who says Song is faraway?
I see it standing on my toes
ftüMSf Who says the Yellow River is broad?

It cannot accommodate a canoe
ttil^jS Who says Song is faraway?
I'll be there before dawn
The poem may be simple but it is not simplistic. The bonds between
relatives, friends or lovers, this ode tells us, defy the greatest obstacles and
the longest distances, separation and longing being common themes in the
Odes. That which by definition is broad and distant—the Yellow River and
the state of Song—is described as its very opposite.
With reference to Nicholas Wolterstorff's account of presentational
discourse as "presenting, ... offering for consideration, certain states of
affairs—for us to reflect on, to ponder over, to conduct strandwise ex-
trapolation on [last italics mine]," 31 we may say that "The River is
Broad" is a carefully formed expression of a personal experience,
enjoyed a high cultural status, and was seemingly "given over" to the
reader for his or her enjoyment or "extrapolation." 32 Yet, this would be
somewhat anachronistic and skewed. It is hard to see how this poem
could have been incorporated into the Classic of Odes were it not for the
insistence of the Confucian tradition that it was written by the highborn
mother of Duke Xiang of Song, who upon her return to the state of Wei
longed "ceaselessly" (bu zhi) for her son, implying that by writing the
ode she put an end to such unhealthy longing. 33 That the author was al-
legedly an aristocrat thus ensures the "high style" of the poem, gives it its
high cultural value and so merits its incorporation into the Classic. In
other words, it is not so much the theme or the form of the poem—its
rhymes, or the employment of rhetorical questions, paradoxes and hyper-
bole—that makes it valuable, as the fact that it is springs from royalty.
31 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1980),
p. 233.
32 Cf. Anders Pettersson's discussion, in the introduction to this volume, of the modern
Western notion of literature.
33 Following the interpretation in the "Mao Preface."
Moreover, according to the Confucian commentator the poem was writ-

ten not for a reader but to give expression to the author's emotions and so
provide psychological relief. 34
Let us compare "The River is Broad" with "Quails in Pairs" (ode 49),
another short and seemingly uncomplicated ode which could also be read
as a straightforward expression of one person's particular experience.
The quails fly in pairs
^^.MM The magpies fly in twos
A person who is no good
S^ÜH I [must] consider a brother
This poem employs the imagistic construction so typical of the Odes and
which they share with the Zhou Changes, namely the juxtaposition of natu-
ral imagery (lines 1-2) and human action (lines 3-4). The traditional inter-
pretation is suggested by the Odes themselves and takes the natural image-
ry as a description of the situation that obtains in the realm of humans. 35 In
this case, however, the analogy between Nature and Man is negative, or
ironic, for the chaste quails and magpies live in pairs in obvious opposition
to the promiscuous Xuan Qiang of the state of Yong $$ whom this ode
chides, according to the "Mao Preface." As in ode 61 above, the situation
is a paradoxical one, and doubly so. Not only do the birds stand in contrast
to the human situation, but the person whom the author considers "an elder
brother" (Jni xiong) is in fact a bad person.
The disharmony between nature and man is a matter of some impor-
tance. In anticipation of the second part of this article let me for the mo-
ment resume the discussion about correlative thinking that I instigated
above in connection with "The Great East" (ode 203). What rules must
poetic "associations" of Nature and Man obey within a strictly correlative
system? Pauline Yu, the author of the most far-reaching study of Chinese
cosmological poetics to date, claims that early "Chinese thought conceives
of the universe as a spontaneous self-generating organism in which all phe-
nomena exist in orderly, mutually implicating, correlative harmonies." 36
34 This is one of the few instances where the "Mao Preface" actually confirms the so-called
stimulus-response poetics advanced by Pauline Yu. For a sophisticated discussion about
the linguistics of emotion in the Odes, see Ulrike Middendorf, "The Making of Emotive
Language: Expressions of Anxiety in the Classic of Poetry," Ming-Qing yanjiu (2001),
and "Ecstasis, Recession, Pain: Images of Suffering in the Classic of Poetry" (manu-
script 2004).
35 See my analysis of "Zhen lu iStil," ode 278, in section "A first genealogy: the mantic
text" below.
36 Yu, The Reading of Imagery, p. 33
But why does such a system exclude metaphoricity (as Heidegger also im-
plied) and why does it necessarily describe poetic discourse as spontaneous
and non-creative? Yu answers that "the connections between subject and
object or among objects, which the West has by and large credited to the
creative ingenuity of the poet, are viewed in the Chinese tradition as al-
ready pre-established."37 Consequently, if the "connections," "associa-
tions" or correlations between Nature and Man were indeed conceived of
as already pre-established then early Chinese poetics would "naturally"
consider the composer of odes not a creator but an editor of imagistic cor-
relations always already in existence. Metaphor simply does not exist there
since language is always and everywhere a secondary and literal descrip-
tion of pre-existing correlations.
Another inevitable consequence would be, to paraphrase Ferdinand de
Saussure, that within a strictly correlative system there can exist only posi-
tive relations. Hence the surprise when images of harmonious and chaste
birds are paired, not with descriptions of harmonious and chaste men, but
with human recklessness and promiscuity.38 Hence also the amazement
when Nature makes a specious winnowing basket and a ladle appear in the
firmament, as described by the cynical poet of the "Great East."39 An imag-
istic mismatch where natural images contrast, or stand in an ironic relation-
ship, to human action thus deviates from the correlative scheme, and I shall
define the ironical use of natural imagery as a break in aesthetics between
the Classic of Changes and the Odes, between the mantic text and the
poetic-semiotic text.
Just as was the case with ode 61, "Quails in Pairs" is explained by the
37 Pauline Yu, "Metaphor and Chinese Poetry," in Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and
Reviews (CLEAR), vol. 2:2 (July 1981), p. 224.
38 Cf. Saussy's discussion of the negative similes (e.g., "My heart is not a mat / you cannot
roll it up") used in "White Boat" ("Bo zhou," ode 26). Problem of a Chinese Aesthetics,
pp. 133-36.
39 Cf. here Frangois Jullien's Heideggerian statement that "The Chinese do not know the
sceptic experience of the rod which, immersed in water, seems broken; hence they never
had any ideas of a fissure/duplication [dedoublement] between appearance and reality,
between the phenomenon and the one-in-itself." Francois Jullien, Un sage est sans idee
(Paris: Seuil, 1998), chap. 8. This rigid claim, which equates a dichotomy of appearance
and reality with a phenomenon/one-in-itself dichotomy and which is repeated in a
slightly different mode by G. E. R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, is contradicted by the many
tales of mistaken identity, optic confusion and semiotic ambiguity in early Chinese phil-
osophical texts. See my article "Illusion, Lie and Metaphor: The Paradox of Divergence
in Early Chinese Poetics," Poetics Today 23 (2002), p. 260 and passim. See also G. E. R.
Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China
and Greece (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002).
"Mao Preface" as an expression of an individual's experience and, more-

over, as a poem setting forth its author's complaint to the public. The func-
tion (if not the content) of the poem is explained quite differently, how-
ever, when it appears in a passage in Mr. Zuo's Commentary. In 546 the
Earl of Zheng gave a banquet in honour of his guest Zhao Meng of the state
of Jin I f . Zhao Meng asked the congregated dignitaries each to "present"
(K/M) an Ode "from which I may observe [fg guan] your intentions
z/i/]."40 A nobleman named Boyou thereupon recited "Quails in Pairs" to
which Zhao abruptly replied "Words of the bedroom ought not to go be-
yond the threshold, and certainly not be spread across the country." After
the banquet, Zhao commented that "the Odes are used to express intent
[ g ^ l ^ l l ;£]· fBoyou's] intent was to slander his superior and the Duke will
resent him. To think that such behaviour is proper for a guest: could such a
man last long?"41
This example is informative. Like Duke Wei's mother in ode 49 and the
unnamed author of "Quails in Pairs," Boyou expresses his personal opin-
ion to an audience but with the obvious difference of using the ode as a
persona, a mask. If the "Mao Preface" contextualizes the Odes by identify-
ing the author of each piece and explaining the particular historical situa-
tion that spurred the author to poetic expression, the Odes in Mr. Zuo's
Commentary constitute rather a depersonalized communal storehouse of
quotations with which one may converse politely and in accordance with
aristocratic etiquette.42 According to the "Mao Preface" an ode is unique
and private, whereas in Zuo's Commentary it is quotable, adaptable and
endlessly repeatable. And although the second century "Mao Preface" re-
lies on the interpretative techniques established by Mr. Zuo 's Commentary
the eminent quotability of the Odes has disappeared. The word shi
'poetry,' 'song,' 'ode') in Mr. Zuo's formula shiyi yan zhi should therefore
be translated not as "poetry is used to express intent" but rather in the more
specific sense as "the Odes are used to express intent."
In anticipation of our reading of "I Lift My Skirt" below, we should note
that despite the metaphorical undertone of the images of the quails and
magpies, "Quails in Pairs" is not allegorized by Boyou. That is, Boyou
may appropriate another person's words but on no occasion do these word
deviate from their primary sense—the difference between a literal or pri-

42 Cf. "Yellow Bird," which, according to the explanation given in the Zuo Commentary, is
obviously "presented" or composed as a personal statement.
mary meaning, and a secondary and allegorical one does not come into
play here. In Boyou's mouth, "Quails in Pairs" is not an "extended meta-
phor."43
That Zhao Meng wishes to "observe" (M guan) the other guests'
intentions—their political agenda, in modern parlance—also warrants our
attention. First, the term guan designates an objective, proto-scientific "ob-
servation" and interpretation of facts, such as the diviner's observations of
heavenly bodies as portents (as in the Classic of Changes). In the dynamic
dialectics of presentations of Odes, then, guan is the reader's/listener's
hermeneutic response to a recitation (fu): one person uses the Odes as a
code to express his "intention" while the other person decodes that mes-
sage through accurate "observation."
Moreover, guan may also refer to the observation/decoding of the music
with which the Odes were (sometimes) performed. An illuminating pas-
sage in Mr. Zuo 's Commentary records that during a visit to the state of Lu
# in 544, Ji Zha ^ ^ L of Wu ^ requested that he be allowed to "observe
the music of Zhou upon which the lord of Lu had his musicians
sing (ge 1$; not fu the entire corpus of Odes."'"' Ji Zha listened attentive-
ly and from the music alone drew conclusions about the mores of the states
from which it originated. For instance, hearing the Odes from the state of
Zheng HP Ji Zha commented "Beautiful indeed! But Zheng was too fussy
about details, and their people could not tolerate that."45
Most obviously, this passage demonstrates that the Odes were at least on
occasion accompanied by music and that the specifically musical aspects
of the Odes were conceived as being "observable" symptoms of the moral
standards of their place of origin. But it is important for our purposes to
grasp that it is precisely this that separates the musical aspect of the Odes
from their function as /«-presentations, or coded messages. As music the
Odes are transparent, non-manipulatable and reveal the corruption or virtue
of their makers like a Freudian slip reveals the innermost secret of the neu-
rotic. By contrast, when a person recites the Odes to "express his inten-
tions" iyan zhi gf/S), he is in full control both of himself and the poems
43 Following Quintilian, Institutio oratorio, 9.2.46 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1920),
and Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, §895.
44 The Odes are then performed according to the divisions of the present recension. This
constitutes a most important piece of evidence that the Odes indeed existed as a corpus
by the time of the conception of Mr. Zuo's Commentary in (at the very latest) 300.
45 Duke Xiang, year 29; Legge, The Tso Chuen, pp.549-50. This passage is analyzed in
detail in Schaberg, A Patterned Past, pp. 86-95.
that serve both to veil and disclose, whereas music presents him "warts and
all." 46 Of equal importance for our understanding of "literature" in fourth
century China is the relative scarcity of examples of such "observations" of
odes qua music—even the Confucian Analects usually stress the function
of the Odes as means of communication.
That the Odes functioned as a means of ritual communication is thus ob-
vious from the descriptions in Mr. Zuo's Commentary. A few Odes in
themselves bear witness to this particular "poetic function." Let us there-
fore conclude this part by returning to the Odes. In the final stanza of
"High South Mount" ("Jie nan shan," ode 191) the narrator himself sud-
denly appears and presents his aim:
I, Jia Fu, made this recitation ...
to change your heart through these words
to make you protect and cultivate the ten thousand city-states.
According to the "Mao Preface," the "Mao Commentary," and to what this
lengthy poem itself reveals about the situation in which it was vocalized,
its narrator is a noble of the declining Zhou Dynasty addressing the Grand
Master Yin of Zhou, exhorting him, and King You to lead a virtuous
life that the populace may emulate. 47 In the context of the examples drawn
from Mr. Zuo 's Commentary above, "High South Mount" is a remarkable
poem since it is self-explanatory and self-contextualizing. It is a poem
characterized by a strong authorial presence. It is one person's reaction to a
particular historical situation in a poem directed to a particular audience in
properly ritualized—i.e. metaphorical—language.
Since I will devote a fair amount of the remaining part of this article to
questions of literary form, let us pay attention to how this admonition is
carried out and consider the two lines that open the poem:
High and steep is South Mount
With its stones piled high.
A remonstration in ten stanzas directed to one of the most powerful men of

the ruling dynasty would not begin with a literal—and therefore, in this
context, nonsensical—description of a pile of stones. Instead, and most
probably as an accurate reconstruction of the author's intention, Mao inter-
prets the majestic mountain as a metaphor (later called xing) of the grand
46 And, indeed, the above example seems to suggest that Boyou revealed more than he
intended.
47 "Mao Preface"; James Legge, "The Little Preface," The She King, pp. 67, 310.
Master Yin. Thus, just like the fushi practice, the rhetoric of Jia Fu in-
volves metaphoricity and analogy.
A taste of Confucian allegoresis: "I Lift My Skirt" (ode 87)

Inscribed in the Classic of Odes is a tendency to justify the usurpation of
power by the Zhou Dynasty (1100-221) from the previous Shang Dynasty
in 1100, and an entire cycle of ten odes (235-244) praises the Zhou King
Wen and the foundation of the Zhou. Moreover, several odes (e.g.
"Great East," "Mighty South Mount" and ode 264, "Zhan yang") describe
the demise of the Zhou and are articulated from the a-historic and cata-
strophic "now" of the survivor of a disaster: "no one before me/ no one af-
ter me ^ g ^ f t '
Apart from the folksy songs and the sacrificial hymns, the Odes cover a
wide range of topics, from the farmer's almanac in "The Seventh Month"
("Qi yue," ode 154), to the mythological account of the origins of the Chi-
nese race in "Birth of the People" ("Sheng min," 245), and the minister's
remonstration in "Mighty South Mount," as discussed above. 49
I shall now extend my introduction to the Odes by discussing "I Lift My
Skirt" ("Qian shang," ode 87), a poem that at first sight may appear to be a
simple folk song but which on a re-reading is revealed as a "difficult" text
torn apart by a radical ambiguity. Not only will this discussion serve as a
guide to the "world" of the Odes and to the intertextual, polyphonic dia-
logue between a cluster of thematically related poems; it will also provide
a further demonstration of how the Odes were interpreted and (ab)used in
the "Mao Preface" and in the collection of philosophical essays called Mr.
Lii's Annals.50 In particular I hope to show how one interpretation is adopt-
ed and advanced by Mao's "Preface" and another, fundamentally different
48 Cf. "First Month" ("Zheng yue," ode 192); "Gazing Upward" ("Zhan ang," ode 264)
49 For general overviews of the Odes I recommend a cautious reading of Michael Nylan,
The Five "Confucian" Classics (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001; notes posted on the Inter-
net, www.yale.edu/yup/nylan), chap. 2, and of Schmidt-Glintzer's monumental Ges-
chichte der chinesischen Literatur, chap. 2. Martin Kern and Edward L. Shaughnessy
have recently done important work on the performative function of the Odes. The latter
scholar holds that many of the supposedly older Odes were "liturgical prayers ... [with]
no function or meaning apart from that ritual context" (Before Confucius, p. 165). In a
similar manner, Martin Kern, "Shi jing Songs as Performance Texts: A Case Study of
'Chu ci' (Thorny Caltrop)," Early China 25 (2000), analyses ode 209.
50 I have analyzed ode 87 from a different perspective and in a different context in my
"Inscription and Re-reading—Re-reading the Inscribed (A Figure in the Chinese Philo-
sophical Text)," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 74 ([2002]
2004), pp. 125-32.
one, by Mr. Lü, while in fact it is the unresolvable ambiguity itself that se-
duces the reader, the metapoetic and truly masochistic subject.
The sublime object of masochistic desire—the borderline girl and the

borderline poem
The male narrator of the Odes is obsessed with a particular type of young
women—alluring, elusive and impenetrable. Thus the young man in "Cry-
ing Osprey" ("Guan ju," ode 1) loses sleep over, and pines for, a girl he
cannot reach and who is metaphorically described as an osprey isolated on
an islet in a river. Depicted in "Broad is the Han River" ("Han guang," ode
9) is a similarly enticing and unreachable young woman, roaming about in
the Han River where she "cannot be sought." There is in these poems a
veritable cult of the unattainable object of desire, and the melancholic men
who narrate them wallow in unsatisfied lust and masochistic pain like pigs
rolling in so much mud. " H o w could I not long for you?/ Distant, no one
can reach there j a ^ ü t S » J s J i i j t ^ " exclaims the narrator of "The
Bamboo Rods" ("Zhu gan," ode 59), mixing longing with desire in yet an-
other melancholic poem set on the banks of a river.51 In "Quiet Girl" ("Jing
nü," ode 42) the male narrator is dumb-struck when his virtuous girlfriend
fails to show up at a secret meeting:
How beautiful the chaste and pure girl

awaiting me at the nook of the city wall
She is hidden and invisible
I scratch my head and walk back and forth
In lieu of the girl whom he desires he shifts his attention to an object re-
lated to her:
51 "The Bamboo R o d s " is traditionally understood as narrated by a woman. This reading

probably builds on the parallelism in stanzas one and two between the character yuan IM.
("far a w a y " ) which in the second stanza unambiguously describes the "brother, father
and mother" of a girl "on a journey." The person whom the poem addresses, however, is
praised in stanza three for his or her "artful smile" (qiao xiao 1 5 ^ ) and "girdle-gems,"
while the narrator of stanza four sets out on a trip in a cypress boat "to relieve my angst."
It is not possible to arrive at a conclusive reading. One alternative—and the speculative
nature of my suggestion should be plain—is to follow Marcel Granet in taking "Zhu
gan" as a dialogue, where the first and third stanzas are narrated by the man addressing
the girl, while the second and fourth stanza are spoken by the girl. See Fetes et chansons
anciennes de la Chine (Rpt; Paris: Albin Michel, [1919] 1982); pp. 240-49; note, how-
ever, that this is not Granet's own interpretation of "The Bamboo Rods," for which see p.
97.
She g a v e me a red tube ...

[but] it is not you, tube, that is beautiful
y o u are but the gift of a beautiful person.
All the more interesting, then, that in "I Lift My Skirt" the bewitching
river-girl suddenly speaks out about her own desire:
If y o u caringly/obediently 5 2 long for m e
mmm [I shall] lift my skirt and wade across the Zhen river
If you do not long for m e
H o w could there not be other men?
Y o u most foolish of foolish boys
iäSSÄ If you caringly/obediently long for m e

[I shall] lift m y skirt and wade across the Wei river
If you do not long for m e
H o w could there not be other gentlemen?
Y o u most foolish of foolish boys
Again, this poem seems to be "literature" in an entirely modern sense in

that it is a carefully formed, personal poem of high cultural status. More-
over, the ambiguity, and the fact that it was recognized by the Confucian
commentators, seem to suggest that "I Lift My Skirt" was not hermeneuti-
cally overdetermined but to some extent left open and handed over to the
reader for his or her extrapolation. Indeed, a discourse that invites extra-
polation is necessarily obscure, fragmentary, "unwholesome." The ques-
tion, of course, is whether such ambiguity—which so seduces the present
reader—was not only recognized but also appreciated by the Confucian
tradition. It obviously was not. The two commentaries struggle, albeit
somewhat differently, to hem in the poem and tie it to a particular histori-
cal context.
On a quick first reading, the narratrix of "I Lift My Skirt" seems to be
the incarnated nightmare (or secret wet dream) of the melancholic men of
"Guan ju," "Han guang," "Zhu gan," and "Jing nü": a sexually emancipat-
ed woman who does not hesitate to discard her lover if he does not satisfy
her. Conversely, she promises to cross the borderline constituted by the
river if instead she finds the man to her liking.
Yet the happy interpretation of the narratrix as a "strong" woman, a
pre-Confucian feminist who knows precisely what she wants, is countered
by a second reading that instead exposes her as a "hollow subject." My
52 Hui Μ can mean both "caringly" and "obediently," and this ambiguity is fully realized
by the poet.
lapse into psychoanalytical parlance is not unfounded here for the narratrix
in fact promises that she can be had simply on the condition that her hypo-
thetical partner does what he always has done, that is desire (si) her. In this
paradoxical reading, the girl at the borderline is endlessly narcissistic but
lacks a true personality, or psychic kernel; she has no other demand than
that the man whose desire she desires should desire her. She does not look
to him for any positive characteristics, such as good manners, education,
beauty, bravery, noble ancestry. The man she approaches therefore appears
to her, and to the reader, to be as hollow as herself.
Thus, if the first phase of interpretation was seemingly anti-Confucian
and construed the narratrix of "I Lift My Skirt" as a willful and full subject,
the second reading is truly uncanny in its ultra-Confucian, misogynic de-
scription of woman as hollow and devoid of positive characteristics. And
perhaps this is the real nightmare for the young men who elsewhere in the
Odes pine away for their loved ones—that female sexual desire, and
woman herself, may at first glance appear real but in fact turns out to be a
phantasmatic construction. There is "no one home" in the female body.
Any man who wants a woman badly enough can have her. Perhaps, then,
the boy in "Quiet Girl" is better off revering his red tube, and perhaps the
young man in "Guan ju" enjoys his solitary but sweet reverie more than he
would the borderline girl whose willingness to hitch up her skirt would no
doubt terrify him.
Thus far ode 87 itself. I hope I have demonstrated that even the least no-
ticeable of Odes may on a second look turn out to be "difficult," indeed,
"borderline" and in want of a solid hermeneutic kernel. Yet, to modern
sensibility the apparent ambiguity and the two conflicting modes of read-
ing are not problematic but rather appealing as a representation of the
complexity and ambivalence of the human psyche and human sexuality.
And as suggested above, such "openness" of the poetic text would seem
to speak in favour of its being, in the sense introduced earlier, presenta-
tional. Yet it is precisely at the juncture between the open, unfinished
text and the overdetermined Confucian interpretation that the most glar-
ing discrepancy between modern Western aesthetics and Confucian com-
mentary appears.
What happens when a complex poetic text is canonized and integrated
into the Classic of Odes'? How does the allegorical recitation (fu of "I
Lift My Skirt" relate to the Confucian commentary that accompanies the
inscription of the poem into the Canon? The cultural value that this ode
was given in the Chinese tradition was, I suspect, closely related to the use
it was put to in ritualized, diplomatic recitals, as we shall now see.
I claimed above that two conflicting interpretations of "I Lift My Skirt"

were each adopted by one particular commentary. According to the alle-
gorical interpretation of "Qian shang" in the second century "Mao Preface"
this poem speaks of
a longing to be corrected. A foolish youth acted wantonly [and] the
Men of the state [of Zheng 30!] desired to be rectified by a greater state
.HiUEm · ffiS&fr °
In this reading the ambiguity and ambivalence that characterize the poem
itself have completely disappeared. For the original man/woman dualism a
strong state/weak state dualism has been substituted in which the young
woman who in the poem itself so forcefully demands to be desired now al-
legorically refers to the Men of the State (guo ren H A ) , and their rather
more submissive request that they be "rectified" by a greater state which,
in turn, corresponds to the man who "loves and protects" in the original.
This hermeneutic maneuver is both deft and illogical. It is remarkably
economical, for in one sweep the "Preface" manages to transform all com-
ponents of the original into an allegorical unity: the lovers become two
states, the "crazed boy" a perverted ruler, and sexual desire becomes the
longing for political change. Yet the cracks in the allegorical facade are
clearly visible. Most conspicuously, the claim that it is the Men of the State
(who allegorically correspond to the young woman) who "desire" (si is
clearly inconsistent with the implicit analogy between the two lovers and
the two states, since in the original it is the "foolish boy" who desires and
pines for the girl. The "Preface" is here so keen to incorporate all compo-
nents of the original poem into an allegorical whole that it ends up contra-
dicting itself.54
If Mao thus relies on the misogynic reading that defines woman in terms of
lack Mr. Lü, in an interpretation that in its allegorical workings is very sim-
ilar, stresses rather the "strong woman" aspect of "I Lift My Skirt." The
53 SSJYJS, p. 358; Legge, The She King, p. 51.

54 The Confucian technique of hermeneutical overkill, in which certain words and phrases
are simultaneously given more than one interpretation, is perhaps best compared to the
Freudian overdetermination, i.e. the mechanism which invests a psychic formation (a
dream, a slip of the tongue, a symptom) with not one but many meanings.
"Qiu ren > £ Λ " chapter of Mr Lü's Annals describes how "Qian shang"
was recited at a diplomatic meeting between representatives from the states
of Jin # and Zheng $5:
The men of Jin wanted to attack Zheng and so sent the envoy Shu Xiang
WiH to make an official visit and inspect their capacity. The Zheng diplo-
mat Zi Chan recited an Ode:
If you obediently/caringly desire me
I shall hitch up my skirt and wade the Wei river
If you don't desire me
how could there be no other gentlemen?
Shu Xiang returned home and reported: "There are [able] men in Zheng, Zi
Chan is among them. Zheng cannot be attacked for [the states of] Qin and
Chu are nearby. His poem had another meaning [qi shi you yi xin
-JifiiiM'LS alternatively: 'his poem had a rebellious intent']."55
Although the situation described here may appear slightly comical in its
implicit homoeroticsm, it is in fact coolly hostile. That Zi Chan assumes
the persona of a young woman who promises to lift her skirt and wade the
river clearly suggests that if Jin will not offer their protection Zheng will
find other and more caring allies, as indeed becomes obvious to Shu Xiang
when the poem is decoded and properly reinterpreted, hence his report that
"Zheng cannot be attacked for Qin and Chu are nearby." That Zi Chan,
representing the weaker state, assumes the female role indicates that Zheng
is not itself strong (like the woman is not a "full subject") but derives
strength from the alliances that it may form with other states. But although
the "independent woman" reading of this poem is downplayed in favour of
an interpretation that regards the woman as essentially weak and power-
less, she—the state of Zheng— is nonetheless fully capable of assuming
control over the situation. Therefore, Zi Chan's allegoresis differs marked-
ly from Mao's interpretation in the "Preface." Both conceptualize the rela-
tionship between two states in terms of an amorous relationship, but in Mr.
Lü there is no talk of Zheng desiring to be passively "rectified" (zheng IE)
by a mightier state.
We saw in Mr. Zuo's Commentary that Lupu Gui defended his incest-
uous marriage with a reference to the habit of misquoting the Odes. Like-
wise, the most obvious difference between Mr. Lü and Mao's "Preface" is
revealed by Shu Xiang's comment that "his poem had another meaning"
(qi shi you yixin H'LO· This reveals that Shu Xiang recognized the
55 Chen Qiyou, Liishi chunqiu jiaoshi, p. 1515; Knoblock and Riegel, The Annals, p. 581.
non-allegorical, conventional meaning of "Qian shang," and that Zi Chan's

rhetorically double use of the poem created in him a moment of puzzle-
ment and a need to re-read, and interpret the poem anew. 56 And, in fact, the
phrase which designates textual ambiguity is itself relevantly ambiguous.
Thus that Zi Chan's allegorical use of "I lift my skirt" is described by way
of the ambiguous word yi J§| (divergent/double/other/rebellious) comes as
no surprise. With our analysis of "The Great East" in mind we may take
the word yi as an indication that Mr. Lü paradoxically regarded allegorical
(or tropologic or metaphorical) meaning as "weird" and "deviant" and, at
the same time, unavoidable.
Beyond and Beside Presentational Discourse:

The Hybrid and the Difficult Text
Why a Chinese metapoetics?

When prominent sinologists speak of a typically Chinese "associative in-
tellect" or of an ancient Chinese theory of poetic imagery that held that
"the connections between ... objects ... are ... already pre-established,"
then they are teasing out an ancient Chinese poetics that at best was only
implicit in Warring States texts. Neither in the Odes nor in Warring States
philosophy overall, is there a meta-poetic concept of "literature" that
would exhaustively theorize, explain and sum up what took place when the
Odes were created, recited and interpreted. 57 Determined to look for a con-
cept ("literature") which does not exist we will nonetheless find around its
fringes fragmentary concepts which describe, metapoetically, how the
Odes, their composition and function were conceived in ancient times. As I
perceive it, this is indeed both the drawback and strength inherent in the
project, and the discussion that springs from the absent concept of litera-
ture is illuminating. Indeed, nothing stops us from posing the relevant
question of how the ancient Chinese themselves theorized what they were
doing when they created, recited and interpreted the Odes.
56 It is noteworthy that the text here says that "his poem [i.e. the poem in the sense Zi Chan
used it] had an aberrant intention." Cf. Saussy, Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic, pp. 6 4 -
65, for a discussion of conceptions of original vs. allegorical meaning in early China.
57 It could be argued that such a concept, shi, appears in the so-called "Great Preface," the
treatise on the origin and function of poetry that was incorporated into the first "Preface."
See Röllicke, Die Fährte and my "A Second Look."
There also exist, on the one hand, negative definitions of what an ode is
supposed to be: it is not "lies," "dream-interpretation," "divination" or
"drunken talk."58 These linguistic and interpretative activities are men-
tioned in, and in relation to, the Odes but stand in obvious contrast to shi
|vf. On the other hand, there are fragmentary concepts, such as the ambig-
uous e fffc which relevantly refers both to "persuasive" and "mutated" dis-
course, or zeng Ü "gift," song ϋ "recitation," shi Wf "wording," hong g l
"overflowing, unrestrained" which describe various aspects of the Odes,
both as regards their social and literary status.59 Lastly, there are (as in the
final stanzas of "The Great East") several examples of poems that through
their own rhetorical twists and turns comment on their own rhetorical
mode of being. It is to this third group that I will now turn.
A first genealogy: the mantic text

If above I tried to sketch a general picture of the Odes and their role in
Warring States China I shall now draw attention to a smaller group of po-
ems which are literary in a more specific sense. That Zi Chan's allegorical
appropriation of " I Lift M y Skirt" was described as yi JS (otherwise, weird,
devious, double, rebellious) by Shu Xiang is not fortuitous, but hints at a
playful movement of irony and self-reflexivity inherent in some Odes.
I shall, however, first venture a genealogy which relates these difficult
poems to the "associative intellect" to which I referred at the very begin-
ning of this paper. I will exemplify Pauline Yu's cosmological "connec-
tions" and Edward Shaughnessy's "associations," not to deny that such a
correlative thinking did exist in ancient China but to indicate that it was
rather the ideological and intertextual prima materia against which the
poets of the Odes reacted in order to make the poetic text difficult, to
puzzle the reader and to spur him or her to re-reading.
58 The fourth stanza of "Lacking Sheep" ( " W u yang," ode 190) describes how a "great man
divines" a shepherd's dream about a multitude of fish as a portent of future great har-
vests. This hints at an interest in hermeneutical methodology but deviates from what the
Odes (and Mr. Zuo 's Commentary) have to say about the metaphorical and allegorical
qualities of the Odes. In various Odes " l y i n g " and "slander" and "drunken words" are
explicitly opposed to poetic activity, yet often these linguistic activities are paradoxically
described in similar terms. See here my "Illusion, Lie, and Metaphor."
59 For e see my "Illusion, L i e and Metaphor," pp. 275-79 and passim (e is here transcribed
as eh). The "recitation" (yong) of the grand "wording" (shi) is described as a gift (zeng)
in the last stanza of "Soaring and High" ("Song gao," ode 259). And in "Shao's Nimble-
ness" ("Shao min," ode 265) the slander is ambiguously described as "theft" (zei, thus
indicating usurpation) and as AMI, meaning both "unrestrained, turbulent" and "luxuri-
ous." I will explore the metapoetic implications of these conceptual clusters elsewhere.
Edward Shaughnessy spoke about the "associative intellect" in connec-

tion with the Zhou Changes (Zhouyi, the earliest stratum of Yijing, or
I-ching J a M ) . Let us therefore begin with some examples from this text,
which modern sinologists, including Shaughnessy, have described as a div-
ination manual. Both examples "connect" or "associate" natural phenome-
na, first a flying long f | (commonly translated as "dragon") and then a
mingyi-bird, with human action:
A flying Long (Dragon?) in the Sky jRfgiK
Beneficial to see the great man i'JMÂ 60
The mingyi-bird in flight

droops its left wing
The gentleman on a journey
for three days does not eat
What is the rationale for these correlations of Nature and Man? It should be
noted that Shaughnessy does not hold that divinations such as those record-
ed in the Zhou Changes were actually "prompted by the fantastic appear-
ance of a dragon in the sky or any other natural omen." 62 But nonetheless,
elsewhere in Shaughnessy's treatise, the natural phenomena which the "as-
sociative intellect of ancient China" correlated with human events are de-
scribed in terms of "portents" or "omens." 63 Thus, with regard to the sec-
ond example, Shaughnessy allows that the sight of the mingyi "was indeed
considered to be an inauspicious portent" which "portended imminent dan-
ger," and this is a hypothesis which I accept. 64
What is important in the present context is that the correlations are
causal (although cause-and-effect here work in mysterious ways) and
therefore very real. Indeed, Pauline Yu's thesis is quite apt with regard to
the Zhou Changes, and deserves to be reiterated in full: "the connections
between subject and object or among objects, which the West has by and
large credited to the creative ingenuity of the poet, are viewed in the Chi-
nese tradition as already pre-established." And, as I indicated above, the
60 Cf. Kunst, The Original Yijing, pp. 240-41. This is the first of the 84 hexagrams. See
also Shaughnessy, *"Qian' and 'Kun' Hexagrams."
61 Cf. Kunst, The Original Yijing, pp. 310-11. This is hexagram 36.
62 Shaughnessy, Composition of the "Zhouyi", p. 103.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., 226. See also The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civi-
lization to 221 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999). Cf. Arthur Waley, "The Book of
Changes," The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 5 (1933), pp.
121-42.
inevitable consequence is that a positive relation always obtains between a

natural phenomenon (or the image thereof) and human action.
In the Odes, as we have seen, Nature and Man are often correlated in a
manner which in form is identical to the imagistic structure of the Zhou
Changes, and it is Shaughnessy's thesis that both the Changes and the
Odes originated from the scribes-cum-diviners at the royal courts during
the tenth century. For our purposes, the problem with the Odes is that they
juxtapose natural imagery and human action but seldom provide clues
about the character of their internal relation. One important exception is
"Egrets in Flocks" ("Zhen lu," poem 278) which in fact drops an important
hint about the relationship between the natural imagery with which the
piece begins and the human situation, in this case a grand feast, which the
poem describes:
fiÜKTJR In flocks, the egrets in their flight

TiSSid in that western marsh;
S^J^JI: Our guests are arriving -
also having this appearance65
Generally speaking, the most conspicuous rhetorical device of the Odes is
the plain juxtaposition of an image drawn from nature (here, the first two
lines) and the ensuing description of a human situation, without any copula
revealing the exact nature of this relationship. Here, unusually enough, the
function of the natural image, which the Confucian commentators later
named xing J l ("to begin," "to arouse"), is clearly spelled out by the fourth
line which explains the image as a simile likening the "appearance" of the
guests arriving in great numbers to the egrets flying in flocks: the guests
also (yi φ ) have this appearance. The emphasis on the guests' "appear-
ance" (rong i§r) is of the utmost importance, for it indicates that what the
poet intended was merely to show a superficial similarity in outward ap-
pearances. It is thus neither a description of a similarity in character or be-
haviour between egrets and guests, nor a correlation of a seasonal event in
nature (the migration of egrets) with a seasonal ritual (the arrival of noble
guests at the royal court).66 Nonetheless, the correlations of nature and man
are still positive.
65 SSJYJS, pp. 1023-24. lung Ü ("marsh") rhymes with diung § ("appearance"). A simi-
lar example, 200:1 ( S S J Y J S , p. 767) compares slanderous talk to a richly ornate brocade:
"Complex! Interwoven! / Perfected is this shell-brocade / Those slandering men / have
also [y/] achieved that magnitude." Note that the word yi here functions as a metaphoric
copula just as in ode 278.
66 The correlation of seasonal and ritual events was an important part of the correlative cos-
mology that we find traces of in third century BCE texts, such as the "Yue ling" chapter
Deviation
As a preamble to my analyses of "Crane Calls" ("He ming," ode 184),

"The Great East" and "In the Wilderness Is a Dead Deer" ("Ye you si jun,"
ode 23) below, I will now give an example of a poem wherein the negation
of positive correlations signals the shift from the causality and directness
of a divinatory, religious discourse to what one may venture to call an aes-
thetic logic. In my analysis of "Quails in Pairs" I demonstrated that the nat-
ural imagery of the first two lines was negated by what was taking place in
the human realm.
A similar logic obtains in "On the Mountain There Are Fusu-trees"
("Shan you fusu," ode 84). I shall consult not only the "Mao Preface" but
also the contemporary "Mao Commentary" ("Maozhuan and its
reading of the first two lines of this poem:
Uliii^Üi On the mountain there are fiisu-tress

BlîSr^ In the swamps there are lotus flowers
M a o ' s "Commentary" says that what these lines are implying is "that high
and low, big and small all obtain what is appropriate [for them]
i i i T ^ J ^ i g ^ Ü L " 6 7 And in M a o ' s semiotic system the high mountain
is frequently a metaphor for high position and, in particular, of the ruler,
while the low-lying swamps metaphorically refer to the lowly minister.
What the opening lines are describing metaphorically, then, is the fortunate
and appropriate situation where a Superior Man rules and the petty man oc-
cupies a lowly position, just as the fusu-tree and the lotus flower are found
in their natural and proper habitats.
But this order is contrasted to the disorder of the following lines, and the
reader expecting a positive correspondence between Nature and Man is
duly shocked:
ΨΜΨ® I do not see Zi Du

7bH&-S. I only see a mad man!
W e will presently encounter this playful vacillation between norm and de-
viation in "Crane Calls" and even more elaborately in "The Great East."
of the Liji (cf. note 2 above). Note, however, that neither Mao Heng (second century
BCE.) nor Zheng Xuan (second century CE, a time when correlative cosmology had
been in vogue for several centuries) makes any explicit references to such correlations;
SSJYJS, pp. 1023-24.
67 SSJYJS, pp. 354-55.
Michael Riffaterre has, in the wake of the Russian Formalists, described

the poetic text as purposely "difficult." 68 According to Riffaterre, on an in-
itial reading the poetic text is understood semantically, that is grammatical-
ly and syntactically, but is so full of deviations that it forces its reader to
re-read and reevaluate. On the second reading the literariness of the poetic
text appears. What first appeared as disparate deviations are now under-
stood as part of a common code that runs through the text, uniting it and
sublating it.
The appropriateness of Riffaterre's scheme of reading will become ob-
vious in connection with "The Great East" but ode 84 is also based on
the same semiotic model. The "Mao Commentary" comments that "Zi Du
was a person praised and loved by his [generation=] contemporaries
(ibid.). According to Mao's "Commentary," the po-
em's narrator expects to see the throne occupied by the honourable Zi Du
(whose historical identity has never been disclosed), but finds it usurped by
a maniac. The first lines promise order, the following ones deliver only dis-
order; the human world disappoints us by negating the ideal that the natural
imagery had set up. But on a second reading by a reader informed of the
grand topics running through the Odes the mismatch of natural ideal and
human foolishness conforms to the prevalent theme of illusion, and so the
tension between the natural correspondence between high and low and the
deviation from that blessed norm is sublated and turns into a statement
about the deceptiveness of appearances.
The "Mao Preface" acknowledges this by saying that this poem "criti-
cizes befuddlement. What is [praised as] 'beautiful' is not beautiful
M f ä ° P / f H ^ H ^ . " In other words, lines one and two—and thus the
clever poet himself—lie, but with a purpose, since the whole piece should
be understood as a critique of confusion, or conversely, of the inability to
detect the illusion, the rotten core underneath the polished exterior. We
shall see the same rhetorical logic at work in "The Great East."
The resistance of the Chinese imaginary: afigural movement in the Odes

"Crane Calls" ("He ming," ode 184) is one of the most remarkable odes.
By allowing oneself to be seduced by its jumbled logic one can, paradoxi-
cally, find one's bearings within the rhetorical world of the Odes and their
commentators.
68 Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, chap. 1 and passim.

mmÂ^ The crane cries in the Nine marshes

its voice is heard in the wilds;
ft»««« Fish hide in the deep waters
or lie by the islet:
Happy is that garden -
There is a tan-tree
JtTft* under it are fallen fruits;
fifeUU^S Stones of other mountains
BTßiÄi» may be used as whetstones
The crane cries in the nine marshes

» B l · ^ its voice is heard in the heavens;
Fish lie by the islet
l&m&M or hide in the deep waters;
Happy is that garden -
There is a fan-tree
« τ « * under it are gu-bushes;
The stones of other mountains
mj&s. may be used to work the jade'.69
W e shall pay close attention to the use of natural imagery in this poem. The
opening lines describe the crane's call spreading into the wilderness (ye
j£F), the uncultivated premises outside the city-states' walls, a border-line
location for uncultivated and lustful behaviour. 70 The following lines con-
trast the fish diving in the depth with the fish playing in shallow water
around the islets. The next line quite unexpectedly introduces not human
action but yet another natural scene, namely that of the garden, the most
cultivated and sophisticated of all landscapes, and therefore the very an-
tithesis of wilderness. The garden here is anthropomorphically described
as being "happy"—a forceful, yet bewildering statement in contrast to the
plain descriptions of nature that preceded it. How come the garden is hap-
py? The poem answers: beneath it lies fallen fruit. The "happy" garden is
thus in a state of degeneration, neglected by the cultivating human hand
that one would expect to pick the fruit and put it to use. The first stanza
69 SSJYJS, pp. 639-40. Cf. Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 127.

70 Ye was thus the uncultivated and dangerous lands through which one had to travel in
ancient times when going from one state (pun intended) to another. In the Shijing, per-
haps most obviously in the poem "In the Wilderness Is a Dead Deer" (ode 23, see
below), ye connotes the "wilderness" of the female heart, finding herself in both a literal
and mental "wilderness." See also Zhao Shichao's thorough analysis of the discourse in
ancient texts on "states and the wilderness" in Zhoudai guo-ye guanxi yanjiu (diss.,
Sichuan Univ., 1998; reprinted in the Wenjin publishing house's Dalu diqu boshilunwen
series, Taipei, 1993). The seemingly hellenocentric expression "city states" ("cheng-
bang") is taken from Tu Cheng-sheng, Zhoudai chengbang (Taipei: Lianjing, 1979).
ends with a non serviam: stones from other mountains may be used as
whet-stones (the polishing of jade being a common metaphor for the culti-
vating influence of Confucian rituals on raw human nature). 71
As a first, makeshift interpretation of "Crane Calls," we could say that it
celebrates a Taoist embrace of Nature and human passivity, and the rejec-
tion of (both social and agricultural) cultivation. The crane's call is carried
into the wilderness but receives no reply (unlike the bird "searching a
friend's voice" in "Chopping Wood," ode 165); the fish roam around
peacefully, being neither prey nor hunters; the garden is neglected, and is
thus slowly reverting to its primal, natural state, and its fruit—i.e. food,
man's most basic and valuable commodity—is rotting away. The resist-
ance to being used is then repeated in the laconic statement about letting
other stones be whet-stones: it is, we could say, praise of being and rejec-
tion of being an instrument.
Thus far this is a thematic interpretation. Let us now change perspec-
tives and turn to the rhetorical strategy of "Crane Calls." Paradoxically,
this poem is as far as one can imagine from the natural, carefree and artless
state of being it honours. It is a scrupulously well-wrought poem construct-
ed with reference to, and certainly against, a rhetorical tradition which we
will now proceed to reconstruct by way of an intertextual reading. Let me
anticipate my conclusion by saying that it is in this engagement in, and
playful negation of, a rhetorical tradition that I perceive a tendency, in
some Shijing poems, toward true presentational discourse, a will on the
part of the ancient Chinese poem to be an aesthetic object freed from any
ideological use.
Let us take this opportunity to outline what could lie beyond presenta-
tional discourse in its stipulated sense. Wolterstorff's account of presenta-
tional discourse stresses its "offering for consideration ... certain states of
affairs—for us to reflect on, to ponder over, to conduct strandwise extra-
polation on." 72 As I said above, a discourse that invites extrapolation is
necessarily obscure and fragmentary. Being neither informational nor di-
rective it hinders the reader in his carefree pursuit of meaning. In the termi-
nology of Viktor Shklovsky, such "defamiliarizing" discourse intends to
71 Cf. Karlgren's laconic note on the literary meaning of "Crane Calls": "The metaphorical
sense of this is doubtful. Probably it expresses somebody's delight in living in retreat,
enjoying the pleasures of nature, and refusing to come forth and engage in official work:
let the stones of other hills serve as grinding stones—let other men serve as useful tools."
Book of Odes, p. 127.
72 Cf. note 31 above.
"make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception

because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be
prolonged."73 We could thus say that presentational discourse is character-
ized by an awareness of its own rhetorical status, especially in relation to
the tradition in which it appears.
We are now in a better position to appreciate the rhetorical niche that
"Crane Calls" carves out for itself in the Shi corpus. As we concluded
above, the poem praises naturalness and deplores false distortions of Na-
ture, hence the pleasure taken in seeing the garden degenerating. Form-
wise, "Crane Calls" uses the parallelisms and oppositions so typical of
later Chinese poetry. Thus, the crane's call is carried lengthwise into the
wilderness in the first stanza, and altitude-wise to the heavens in the sec-
ond stanza. The depth of the waters in which some fish hide is contrasted
with the shallowness of the waters around the islets. Moreover, the second
stanza by and large mirrors the first with only minor alterations, most not-
ably the inversion of lines three and four in the second stanza.
In this fashion "Crane Calls" very cleverly and playfully employs, as a
means of defamiliarization, the figure called aprosdoketon (Greek "sur-
prise," "the unexpected") by classical Western rhetoricians.74 As "Egrets in
Flocks" (and the Confucian interpretation thereof) has shown us, the natu-
ral image which opens most Shijing poems is commonly correlated with
some human action which it metaphorically describes. Hence the shock
one experiences when line three of "Crane Calls," instead of introducing a
narration of human action, goes on to describe yet another natural scene,
thereby wilfully breaking the expectations set up by the initial image. Like
the screams of the crane which reach out into the wilderness without re-
ceiving a reply, the natural imagery with which the poem opens is never
"answered" by human action.
Very shrewdly, by refusing to let the opening image be followed by an
account of human action, "Crane Calls" manifests rhetorically the refusal
to be used which it takes as its theme. The image of the crane thus resists
all attempts by a poetic or Confucio-hermeneutical project to put it to use,
just like the fallen fruit slowly rotting under the tree is left uneaten and un-
digested by any metabolic system, and like the unattended garden in which
the traces of human cultivation are disappearing.
73 Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," p. 12.

74 Cf. Ulrich linger, Rhetorik des klassischen Chinesisch, p. 40. Unger wisely states that
"the unexpected resists classification." Perhaps for this very reason, Lausberg does not
list the aprosdoketon.
For the benefit of our further discussion, I would like to make two com-
ments at this point. First, as compared to "Egrets in Flocks," this poem
comes much closer to our concept of literature. The fact that the poem is
rhetorically structured in concert with its theme indicates very clearly a
high level of rhetorical self-awareness, i.e. that it is a discourse in which
the mode of expression is as important as the message it conveys. To con-
tinue in Jakobson's terminology, this poem displays such a perfect mar-
riage of form and content that one cannot make a relevant distinction be-
tween "message" and "code." Michael Riffaterre's assertion, in the wake
of Jakobson's theory, that poetic discourse is a repetitious variation on one
and the same theme (a "transformation of the [extratextual] matrix") is also
pertinent for our analysis of "Crane Calls," for on a second reading the
poem comes together as a perfect unity, in which all parts contribute to a
harmonious whole. To use a Freudian term once again, the poem is overde-
termined.75 Secondly, the Verfremdung-effect "Crane Calls" achieves is
due to its playful and conscious deviation from the rhetorical tradition of
the Odes. Not only is this instance of defamiliarization a highly literary de-
vice, which further supports my suggestion that "Crane Calls" is in a rele-
vant sense imaginative literature. By voiding the tradition not only of posi-
tive "connections" or "associations" but of correlations altogether, the
poem also confirms that it is part of that tradition, yet simultaneously a
conscious and elaborate reaction to it and development of it.
It is therefore a self-conscious, figural, and intertextual discourse whose
counterpart we will not find in the Zhou Changes or in the historiographi-
cal bronze inscriptions, or in the ritual parts of the Odes. Perhaps it is here
that metapoetic discourse makes it first appearance in early China.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, by opting to be and refusing to be
used, "Crane Calls" manifests itself as an aesthetic object.
Another genealogy: the historiographical bronze inscriptions

By defining the true poetic text as difficult, deviating, overdetermined, in-
tertextually coded, and in need of re-reading I also define the non-poetic
text as devoid of these qualities. And if the playful negation of the correla-
tions of Nature and Man was one of the means by which the Odes achieved
this complexity, then the other major discourse from which the literary
Odes sublate themselves is constituted by the historiographical works
Spring and Autumn (Chun qiu) and the Book of Documents (Shang shu), as
75 Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, p. 19 and passim.

well as the lengthy texts inscribed on ritual bronze vessels from the early
Zhou period (ca. 900-700).
The connections between the Odes, the Documents and the bronze in-
scriptions appear well-founded. Shaughnessy describes the striking
similarity between traditional bronze inscriptions from the early Zhou Dy-
nasty and the ode "The Jiang and Han Rivers" ("Jiang Han," ode 262).76
The same scholar demonstrates similar stylistic links between the famous
"Lord Mao Tripod" inscription and "The Command of Duke
Wen" ("Wenhou zhi ming ^ M ^ p p " ) chapter of the Documents.11 C. H.
Wang reconstructs five lengthy Odes (nos. 245, 250, 237, 241 and 236) as
parts of an epic (sic!) of the founding of the Zhou Dynasty by King Wen, a
suite of poems Wang consequently names "The Weniad." 78 Despite the
doubt one may feel about the concept of an early Chinese epic, Wang's
study does demonstrate the historiographic tendency of these Odes.
The following text, a typical bronze inscription, was composed by an
aristocrat named Bi on the occasion of presenting a ritual vessel to the
memory of his father and uncle.
B i b o w s and touches his head to the floor [and]
Daring to respond to the brilliant generosity o f the S o n o f H e a v e n
Herewith fabricates this treasured gi/i'-vessel for his illustrious d e c e a s e d
father, and [his] uncle Li
With w h i c h to b e s t o w [upon them] longevity;
M a y it be used for 10 0 0 0 years
In the ancestral Hall 7 9
The present format does not allow for an in-depth analysis of these sources
but I hold that, like the bulk of Odes, these texts are expertly formed and
enjoy a high cultural status.80 Moreover, since many parts of the Docu-
ments and many inscriptions record speeches, or proclamations, by kings
and aristocrats they are also to some extent personal. Yet nowhere do they
break with linear narrative and evolve into the highly complex, ironic and
circular textual structure that I have described above.
76 Edward L. Shaughnessy, Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels

(Berkeley and Los Angeles, Univ. of California Press, 1991), pp. 73-74.
77 Ibid., p. 75.
78 C. H. Wang, From Ritual to Allegory (Hong Kong: Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong Press,
1988), chap. 4.
79 Shaughnessy, Composition of the "Zhouyi", p. 295.
80 For an important study of the prosody of the bronze inscriptions, see Wolfgang Behr,
Reimende Bronzeinschriften und die Entstehung der Chinesischen Endreimdichtung
(PhD diss.; (Frankfurt: Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Univ., 1996).
The piece de resistance: "The Great East" and the illusion of metaphor
Let us return to the poem we started with. On a thematic level, "The
Great East" is part of a cycle of poems that concern political usurpation
and degeneration, personal catastrophe and disillusionment. It is a scru-
pulously composed poem, and no similar rhetorical organization can be
found in the Zhou Changes, the Documents or the bronze inscriptions. In-
scribed into this poem is a movement of ironical suspense, or tension,
followed by a necessity to re-read and revise. And nowhere is the playful
negation of the positive correlations of Nature and Man more obvious
than here.
The seven stanzas begin by depicting ritual vessels full of food and fine
eating utensils for ritual use, images that connect well with the subsequent
lines about the elevated and perfectly straight Way of Zhou (note the
double entendre of dao H : "road," "Way," "Tao"). That a change is about
to happen is, however, intimated by the last lines of the first stanza which
describe the tears that flow from the narrator's eyes.
^mm® Full of cooked grain is the gui'-vessel

long are the thornwood fci-Iadles
jssaanas The way of Zhou is [smooth] as a whetstone
its straightness is like an arrow
[This is] the way trodden by the gentleman-ruler
'bAffiW. [and] looked at by the petty man
Staring, I gaze at it
ifSfÜ» flowingly shedding tears
Why is the poet crying? Because of the destitution of the East, the empty
shuttles and the impoverished people described in the second stanza. The
poem, it appears, is spoken by a bitter yet stubborn adherent of the high
values of the Western Zhou Dynasty which, after a succession of corrupt
kings, degenerated sometime at the beginning of the eighth century, and
whose power was usurped by its former vassal states.
This impression is strengthened in stanza four where the narrator rages
against the parvenus—sons of boatmen and servants—from the Western
states who have acquired both fine clothes and high offices.
The sons of the men from the East
toil without encouragement
'&ΧΖ-Ψ The sons of the men from the West
^^SUS bright and splendid are their clothes
ftThe sons of boatmen,
MMftSS: of black bear and brown-and-white-bear are their
furs
On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese "Literature' 105
The sons of servants

in the hundred offices they are used
The contrast between the happy moment of the first stanza and the sheer
despair of the following stanzas thus seems to adhere to the pattern of order
and deviation discussed above. But the poem is rather more complex and
twisting than that. That bear fur, conventional sign of nobility, is worn by
plebs is a semiotic deviation in that a signifier (fur) is matched with the
wrong signified (commoners instead of noblemen). My reference to semi-
otics is not to suggest that semiotics proper existed in ancient China, but
nor is it to overinterpret, for if there were not an implicit theory of the sign
the lines about the bear fur (as a symbol, or sign, of wealth and nobility)
would simply be incomprehensible.
At this point the reader is still in a state of suspense, and does not under-
stand the function of the initial image of abundance of food and rituality as
anything but a facile contrast to the state of destitution in the East. Not un-
til, that is, he comes to the seventh and final stanza, where the depiction of
eating utensils is resumed in a remarkable envoi:
.itffiWÄ In the south there is the Winnowing Basket

^ "JJitSSSI but it cannot be used to winnow
Mit^M- In the north there is the Ladle
^öJWjSSM but it cannot be used to ladle wine or congee
Suddenly, but belatedly, through the description of the useless Basket and
the illusory Ladle, the reader grasps the thematic unity of the entire piece,
and moves back to the initial stanza to re-read it. Just as "Shan you fusu"
above, "The Great East" thematizes not only the degeneration of ethics but
also the discontinuity between appearance and actuality. And just as in the
former poem, the opening image does not positively correlate to a human
situation since the abundance depicted there is negated by the miserable
situation described by the narrator. The reader now understands that the
initial images of abundance and well-ordered rituals are as hollow as the
celestial Basket and Ladle. The patterns that are apparently in Nature are
not to be trusted, nor are conventional signs such as bear fur, nor poetic im-
agery. This is indeed the lesson our metapoetic reading teaches us: correla-
tions are always and everywhere in suspense, and one cannot approach the
poetic text and expect it to work according to a natural, preset logic. They
are all in need of re-reading, of a second look, hence the narrator's insist-
ence on "looking," "gazing," and "scrutinizing" in the first stanza.
In this manner the theme, the imagery and the rhetorical structure of
"The Great East" all deal with suspense, illusion and re-reading. In meta-
poetic terms, it deals with the deviousness of representation and can cer-
tainly not be accommodated within the cosmological poetics discussed
above. Not only is the theory of pre-existing correlations between Nature
and Man thwarted by the rhetorical organization of the poem, it is also
frustrated at a metapoetic level by the fact that the poem inverts the con-
ventional scheme of correlations, and begins with descriptions of man-
made artifacts and ends, in yet another double movement, with natural im-
ages. On a larger scale, this again connects the poem to "Crane Calls"
which similarly combined form and content in its celebration of useless-
ness and refusal to be used.
Again taking "Egrets in Flocks" (ode 278) as our measure, "The Great
East" is endlessly more complex in its use of figurative language, forcing
the reader to adjust himself or herself several times during the progress of
the poem. And again, Riffaterre's description of the Verfremdung-effeci in
the "semiotics of poetry" is felicitous, for it describes well how the poetic
text constantly tricks the person fumbling his way through it for the first
time, and how the "differing statements, first noticed as mere ungrammati-
calities ... appear as variants of the same structural matrix" on a second
reading.
The Chinese Poetic Text
The eternal return of Eros and Thanatos

"The Great East" is organized as a hermeneutic spiral: primitive under-
standing, puzzlement, suspense, epiphany, re-reading, belated but "whole-
some" understanding. Instead of a conventional conlusion I will demon-
strate how these stages—this textual movement—appear to be interlaced
with the familiar themes of borderline desire and deviation in ode 23, "In
the Wilderness Is a Dead Deer" ("Ye you si jun").
mwm. In the wilderness there is a dead deer
white grass wraps it up
There is a girl harbouring spring in her chest
cf zb!^/^. a fortune-bringing knight leads her
In the woods there are shrubby bushes

in the wilderness there is a dead doe
ft WMM white grass wraps and entangles it
There is a girl like jade
ffMKBtö Slowly! Gently!

Do not move my girdle kerchief
Do not make the dog bark!81
What is most noticable in "In the Wilderness . . . " is the rigid parallelism of
the poem—we return here to a structure that correlates nature and man
positively. The first line describes the dead deer and the second line what
happens to it. The third line tells of a young woman and the subsequent
line describes what happens to her. The associative link between the natu-
ral and the cultured animal is made explicit by the last two words of the
second and fourth lines: both are described as objects of masculine action.
As for the deer, "white grass wraps it up"\ as for the girl, "a good knight
leads her." The deer and the girl are thus linked by their passivity, by
rhyme ("wrap up" fe pog and "lead" Μ ziog) and by their shared pronoun
zhi "it" or "her." With this in mind, a reading made on the model of
"Egrets in Flocks," in accordance with the use of natural imagery as to de-
scribe human action, can only understand the dead deer as a metaphor of
the girl "harbouring spring in her chest."
It is exactly at this moment, when we have crossed the borderline be-
tween literal and metaphorical meaning and between animal and man, that
a "perverse" interpretation takes shape before our eyes. As Hans Frankel
has suggested in a sensitive interpretation (that expounds Arthur Waley's
and Bernhard Karlgren's comments), a metaphorical reading of "Ye you si
jun" reveals the poem's three arch-metaphors: the "good knight" as a
hunter, the girl as the hunter's prey (i.e. the deer) and death as the loss of
virginity. 82
First, why does Frankel—quite correctly—link death with virginity?
In fact, by doing so he unknowingly puts his finger on the hermeneutic
centre of the poem: the description of the girl who has "spring feelings."
At this point we may resuscitate the literal meaning of the phrase "huai
chun" 1 ® # : the girl has spring in her bosom. What may seem vague and
imprecise is, in fact, an economical and psychologically very astute ex-
pression of a young girl's entrance into puberty. "Bosom" draws the at-
tention to the young girl's chest (naturally the focus of a girl-hunter) and
"spring" connotes awakening, the return of the animals to the pastures
81 Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 13 (translation modified.). See also Karlgren, Glosses, "Kuo
feng," p. 105, entries 59-60; "Ta ya," p. 93, entry 931.
82 Cf. Hans Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese
Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1976), pp. 6 - 9 . Cf. also Waley, The Book of
Songs, p. 60; Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 13.
and the vernal mating rites etc. Y o k e d together as a compound, "to have
spring in the bosom" describes the girl's sexual awakening, her vague
and wavering longing for a mate. And although there is little doubt that
the dead deer is a metaphor for the girl, the p o e m ' s topic is, pace Frankel,
not primarily rape as an " e v e n t " or hunting as an "archetypal" image of
courtship but rather the girl and the confusion brought about by her new-
ly aroused sexuality (as intimated by her being "led astray" and being "as
jade"). T h e "wilderness" that holds the dead deer, then, is not only a
physical locality but also the mental wilderness—the borderland between
culture and savagery—that the pubescent "spring feelings" have brought
her to. The fourth line introduces the " g o o d " (ji) knight: with masculine
authority he steps into the poem and "leads" {you) the girl. The pivotal
words are, of course, " g o o d " (or "auspicious") and "lead." W e will keep
to our cautious translation for the moment but, as the poem develops, w e
shall observe how these words undergo a "turning" (tropos) toward the
ironical and the sarcastic.
T h e second stanza does no more than repeat the given plot, intensi-
f y i n g it through minor adjustments. Most important of these subtle alter-
nations is the change of emphasis that occurs in the first two lines. The
dead deer no longer occupies the privileged position as the opening im-
age; that function has been allocated to the description of the forest (lin)
and the "shrubby bushes." Only in the second line does the slaughtered
animal make its reappearance. What does this variation in imagery
mean? First and foremost: that the dead deer has, to an even greater de-
gree, turned into an object. Just as the forest has its bushes, the poem
seems to say, the wilderness has its deer. B y the same token, the transfor-
mation of the girl (metaphorically represented by the dead deer) from
maiden to meat has become more definitive. She has fallen from her ele-
vated position as an animated and cultured human being into a vegetating
existence as only one of the myriad soulless objects in nature. Second,
the movement further away from civilization, from wilderness (ye) to
forest (lin), suggests that the girl's sexual bewilderment has increased.
This growth in confusion, degeneration and violence is mirrored by the
inconspicuous variation that occurs in the third line. In the first stanza,
the white grass was described simply as "wrapping u p " the dead deer. A s
that image reappears in the second stanza, the grass binds and entangles:
the deer-girl becomes increasingly ensnared by the binding fibres of sex-
uality.
We slowly begin to realize the truth about the girl and the knight: she
has not been "lead" in the sense of having been shown "the right way" 83
but mislead, seduced and shown the perverse way that leads from "wilder-
ness" to "forest." The knight who appeared good and auspicious at first
sight now reveals his true colours. And suddenly we, students of the Odes,
find ourselves on a well-trodden path, for if the first stanza promises auspi-
ciousness (ji) and moral guidance (dao) the second and third stanzas
answer with ominousness and seduction. We have come upon the ironical
pattern where what "seemed to be" turns out "not to be." 84 Again, here is
the dialectics of illusion and disillusion, of omens and miscalculations.
Then, as the second stanza draws to an end, the poem assures us that the
girl's virtue is "like jade," that she is virgo intacta.
The ironical turning reaches its acme in the last stanza with a scene re-
lated in its entirety by three exclamations uttered by the girl. It is a violent
scene, fluctuating between rape and seduction, between consent and resist-
ance. Yes, the first line expresses consent, exhorting the ardent lover to go
slow and easy. And then, in the penultimate line, the knight finally suc-
cumbs to his lusts and does what we have anticipated: he oversteps the
limits of decorum by reaching for the girl's girdle-kerchief at her crotch.
This is the moment when the girl realizes that she has been led astray and
that she is about to lose her "virtue." The poem's last line returns to the
ambiguous expression of desire and fear. What does the girl's urging "do
not let the dog bark" mean? Is the dog ("very shaggy" with the Shuo wen
jie zi) her dog that will bark and, hopefully, protect her against the ravish-
ing man? 85 Or does the shaggy beast belong to the knight qua hunter and is
it therefore a weapon against the trembling maid? Or, again, is her final ex-
clamation intended to make the dog silent so that love can be made without
interruption? We cannot know and we must not know for the poem thrives
on this tension between violence and pleasure, rape and seduction, appear-
ance and actual fact. It is an ambiguity the lack of which would render the
poem dull and uninspired.
This is where the text ends, yet the poem does not end here. On the con-
trary it starts over, bites its own tail and breaks up the temporal sequence:
83 As indeed Mao's gloss dao jfi would suggest.

84 I refer here to the formula of "to appear but not be" si-er-fei), used both by the
"Mao Commentary" and the Mencius to describe the discrepancy between appearance
and actuality. See my "Illusion, Lie, and Metaphor."
85 Cf. Xu Shen's t i t X etymological dictionary Shuo wen jie zi (Peking: Zhonghua, 1988),
compiled around 100 CE, as quoted in SSJYJS, p. 114.
the opening line is the result of the violent and carnal scene related in the
final stanza. The deer girl: a scene of post-coital stillness, the girl seduced,
raped, murdered or simply graced by la petite mort, the orgasm. "Ye you si
jun" wilfully mocks and distorts the reader's expectations of narrative
linearity by perverting the order of cause and effect. Furthermore, it makes
the literal and the metaphorical exist side by side: the themes of hunting
and seduction are not mutually exclusive and only on a second reading
does the dead deer appear as a metaphor of a woman raped, murdered or
brought to sexual climax. It is a poem that forces its reader to accept the si-
multaneous existence of different rhetorical levels and a sense of time that
deviates from that of everyday life. It is a text that forever oscillates be-
tween the literal and the figurative, that perpetually comes to a halt only to
set itself in motion again. It is an ode where death is both life's brutal and
inevitable end and an image of sexual climax, and where "wilderness" is
the place for hunting or sexual pleasure as well as a mental wasteland and a
purely fictional location in which a fictional deer serves as a metaphor for
an ill-fated girl.
In hindsight we can amuse ourselves by locating the nucleus of "Ye you
si jun" and, half-joking, reduce the poem to one single character that con-
tains, in terrible compression, its entire message. It is a character that
stands out as an emblem of the overwhelming forces of man's nature and
sexuality. In order to reach this kernel we must, once again, reverse the
metaphorical process and revive the etymology that slumbers in the text. A
painfully literal translation of the first line reads "the wilderness possesses
a dead deer." It is a rendering that tallies well with the theme of male ap-
propriation of female flesh and the description of a girl "possessed" by
wild sexuality. The character represented in our translation by the word
"possess" takes this line of reasoning even further. You W is a depiction of
a hand holding a piece of meat intended for sacrifice, an image that, with
the evolution of the Chinese language, came to represent "possession" in
general. 86 In the present context, the original meaning of you is alive in all
its cruel logic: the wilderness (and the knight) grips the girl's flesh.
86 Shirakawa Shizuka, in Jisö (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1994) defines you as "holding

meat in order to present it to a spirit [in sacrifice]."
GUNILLA LINDBERG-WADA
Japanese Literary History Writing: The Beginnings
Introduction
This essay will focus on the first comprehensive history of Japanese litera-
ture, Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Literature) published in 1890,
which played an important role in establishing a modern concept of litera-
ture and a literary canon in Japan. 1 The period of transition that forms the
historical and societal background to the above-mentioned work will be
briefly described, and the role played in this process by the National Learn-
ing movement, 2 a school of thought that focused on studies of a "purely
Japanese" tradition, will be discussed. It will be argued that, not surprising-
ly, the modern western concept of literature introduced did not more or less
automatically replace whatever similar concepts had existed earlier. 3 The
indigenous term used to translate the western concept retained some of its
earlier meanings, a circumstance also mirrored in the literary canon con-
strued. The philological legacy of the school of National Learning was also
retained. The introductory chapter of the above-mentioned literary history
is presented as a case study illustrating this process. The work is presented
in some detail offering material for reflection on concepts of literature, lit-
erary history writing and the processes of tranculturation.
The Setting
When History of Japanese Literature was written in 1890, the modern

western notion of literature constituted an important point of reference and
inspiration. The setting was Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912) following
the Meiji restoration, which marked the starting point of the transformation
1 Mikami Sanji and Takatsu Kuwasaburö, Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Litera-
ture) (Tokyo: Kinködö, 1890).
2 The Japanese term is kokugaku, § 3 ^ .
112 Gunilla Lindberg-Wada
of Japan to a modern nation state, although this process is considered not to

have been as sudden as it may appear. The 1890 publication of History of
Japanese Literature is a clear example of the cultural impact of this transi-
tion, in which the western world, with its traditions and concepts, took over
the role China and Chinese civilization had played since ancient times in
Japan: as the main source of inspiration and as the counterpart against
which one measured oneself, fought, or conceded to.
The transformation from pre-modern to modern Japan may appear sud-
den, but the breakdown of the preceding Tokugawa system of governance
was a rather gradual process. In spite of its policy of seclusion and the
dominant role played by Confucian ethics, during the Tokugawa period
(1603-1867; also called the Edo period) Japan was by no means a static so-
ciety or totally cut off from the outside world. On the contrary the realm of
schools of thought and cultural pursuits displayed a great plurality and the
social changes during the period were substantial.
The seclusion policy originated in the 1630s, when a series of exclusion
decrees, culminating in 1639, were issued by the Shogun government,
closing the country to foreign trade and travel with a few strictly limited
exceptions. Books in Chinese that might propagate Christianity were not
allowed into Japan, but otherwise trade with China continued through cer-
tain designated ports, such as Nagasaki. The Dutch were allowed trade
with Japan on condition that they confined themselves to Dejima, an arti-
ficial island in Nagasaki Bay with warehouses, trade offices and residential
quarters, originally built in 1634 for Portuguese traders. Each year repre-
sentatives of the Dutch trading company were obliged to pay an official
visit to the headquarters of the Shogun government in Edo, today's Tokyo,
where they were required to provide the government officials with detailed
up-to-date information about conditions in Europe and elsewhere outside
Japan. Governmental interpreters' and translators' offices were set up in
Dejima and Edo. During the reign of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune, 4
which lasted from 1716 to 1745, more widespread studies of western science
were actively encouraged. In 1720 Yoshimune relaxed the ban on books
3 In this essay the term modern western concept of literature will be used in accordance
with the descriptive definition given in the introductory chapter of this volume by
Anders Pettersson as "presentational discourse produced with pretensions to being cul-
turally important, and/or well-formed, and/or conducive to aesthetic experience."
4 In this essay Japanese personal names are given according to the Japanese custom: fam-
ily name followed by first name. The Hepburn system of transcription is used. Long
vowels are marked by a macron.
Japanese Literary History Writing: The Beginnings 113
from China, allowing a wider range of books from the outside world in Chi-
nese translation to be made available in Japan. In 1741 he ordered a number
of scholars to study the Dutch language and in 1758 a dictionary was com-
pleted,5 thus securing the development of so-called Dutch studies,6 standing
for studies of western sciences in the broad sense of the word.7
Regarding scholarship and learning, Confucian studies of the Neo-Con-
fucian school of Zhu Xi constituted the core of learned activities and also
formed part of the state ideology. However, scholarly pursuits were carried
out within a broad spectrum of schools and research traditions, such as the
Wang Yang Ming school, the school of Ancient Learning, 8 Buddhist stu-
dies, Shinto studies, school of National Learning, and Dutch (Western)
studies. Often one and the same scholar would be trained in different tradi-
tions. For example a scholar with Confucian training was often involved in
Dutch studies, and leading scholars of National Learning had their training
in the fields of Buddhist, Shinto and Confucian studies. Traditionally Bud-
dhist temples had constituted centres of learning and scholarship regardless
of research tradition, but during the Tokugawa era education centres set up
by influential scholars became common, often under the patronage of the
local authorities. Not only men but also some women studied at these, as
for example in the school set up in Edo and run for thirty years by Kamo no
Mabuchi (1697-1769), one of the leading figures of National Learning. In
contrast to preceding historical periods, scholarship and learned activities
were not restricted to members of the upper classes, but people of humble
origins also entered the field.9 By the early 1870s it has been estimated that
the Japanese had, on a national average and with great urban-rural varia-
tions, achieved a literacy rate of about 40 percent among males and about
15 percent among females, excluding informal systems of education.10
5 George Sansom, A History of Japan: 1615-1867, (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, [1963]

1990), p. 170.
6 The Japanese term is rangaku, W^.
7 It has been estimated that at any given time by the nineteenth century there were several
hundred who were literate in Dutch in Japan. Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cul-
tural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 272.
8 The Japanese term is kogaku, denoting a branch of Confucianism with Itö Jinsai
(1627-1705) as one of its leading figures, and opposed to the Neo-Confucians.
9 Haga Yaichi, Kokugakushi gairon (Short History of National Learning), (Tokyo:
Kokugo denshujo, 1900), in Hisamatsu, Sen'ichi (ed.), Ochiai Naobumi, Ueda Kazu-
toshi, Haga Yaichi, Fujioka Sakutarö shü (Anthology of Ochiai Naobumi, Ueda Kazu-
toshi, Haga Yaichi, Fujioka Sakuktarö), Meiji bungaku zenshu vol 44 (Tokyo: Chikuma
shobö, 1968), p. 214.
10 Kornicki, The Book in Japan, p. 275.
Bungaku, the Term used to Translate "Literature"
When the modern western concept of literature was introduced into Japan
in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term bungaku (SC^) was used
to translate the word literature. Bun stands for design, pattern, elegance,
decorum, figure of speech, letters of writing, plot, sentence, writings, learn-
ing, art, morals and works of erudition. 11 Gaku stands for learn, learner,
learning, (structured) knowledge, education, science, scholarship and eru-
dition. 12
Originally the term bungaku had been introduced into Japan from China,
probably with the Confucian Analects as its first Chinese source in Japan. 13
In China, where it is pronounced wenxue, this term denoted science, the
classics, the studies of those, and also the wise scholar who devoted him-
self to the study and teaching of the Confucian classics. During the Six Dy-
nasties (222-589), poetry (Shijing in particular) and works with an erudite
form of expression were included in the Chinese concept wenxue. At times
studies of Buddhist and Daoist scriptures and historical chronicle writing
also formed part of this concept in pre-modern China. 14
The earliest extant Japanese source of the use of the term bungaku, de-
noting Confucian scholar, dates back to the year 718 and the earliest extant
Japanese source of bungaku denoting science and scholarship, mainly re-
ferring to Confucian texts and studies of these, originates from the year
751. 15 This denotation subsequently constituted the core of the concept of
bungaku, and it was synonymous with the term gakumon ( ^ H ) . 1 6 How-
ever, in the centuries to follow, the term bungaku in Japan also referred
more specifically to the Confucian classics, and included historical chron-
icles, Chinese poetry, and the Buddhist scriptures. Chinese poetry stood
not only for the poetry composed in China, but also for poetry composed in
11 Ogawa et al. (eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen: Kaiteiban (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1994), p.
445; Andrew N. Nelson, The Original Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character
Dictionary: Classic edition (Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, [1962] 1995), p.
462 (character # 2064).
12 Ogawa et al. (eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen, p. 267; Nelson, Japanese-English Character
Dictionary, p. 309 (character* 1271).
13 Kobori, Kei'ichirö, " 'Bungaku' to iu meishö" (The Term "Bungaku"), Geppö 82, Meiji
bungaku zenshü vol. 79 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, 1975), p. 3.
14 Suzuki, Sadami, Nihon no "bungaku" gainen (The Japanese Concept of "Literature"),
(Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, [1998] 1999), pp. 65-69, 72-74, 79.
15 Ibid., p. 81.
16 Mon in the term gakumon stands for question, inquiry, problem or subject. Ogawa et al.
(eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen, p. 186; Nelson, Japanese-English Character Dictionary,
pp. 920-21 (character # 4944).
Japan in the Chinese language and according to the conventions of Chinese

poetry. Poetry composed in the Japanese language was not included in the
concept of bungaku, but was metonymically related to this concept, as a
genre. Bungaku could also denote erudite penmanship and style in Japan,
but the production of text and the learned activities of Japanese Confucian
scholars constituted the core of the Japanese concept of bungaku, also
throughout the Tokugawa era. 17
In the first two decades following the Meiji restoration in 1868 the scope
and implications of the term bungaku varied, and alternative translations of
the western term literature were also used. The first usage of the term in its
modern sense is often attributed to the influential philosopher Nishi
Amane. 18 In Hyakugaku renkan (Encyclopaedia), published in 1870, he
employs the term bungaku in various meanings, such as humanities, ele-
gant literature, mental civilization, belles-lettres, and rhetoric in combina-
tion with poetry, history, philology and criticism. 19 However, Fukuzawa
Yukichi, one of the prime advocates of modernization and founder of Keiö
university, in his highly influential work Gakumon no susume (An encour-
agement of learning; published in 1871) uses the term bungaku in the nar-
row sense of elegant wording of no practical value, as opposed to practical
learning (jitsugaku), which he appraises as lying close to the needs of
everyday life. 20 In an essay published on April 26, 1875 in the newspaper
Tokyo nichinichi shinbun (Tokyo Daily Newspaper), the term bungaku
was used explicitly in the modern sense of an art genre comprising novels,
drama and poetry, probably for the first time in a printed publication. 21
From around 1877 bungaku was used as an equivalent of the foreign term
literature in official documents from the Ministry of Education and consti-
tuted one of the subjects on the curriculum of the governmental schools of
17 Suzuki, Nihon no "bungaku" gainen, p. 82-105.

18 See for example Haruo Shirane, "Canon Formation in Japan: Genre, Gender, Popular
Culture, and Nationalism," Chapter 2 in Hockx Michel and Ivo Smits (eds.), Reading
East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary Theory (London and New York: Routledge,
2003), p. 37 note 4.
19 Sugaya Hiromi, "Shüji oyobi kabun" no kenkyU, (Research on "Rhetoric and Belles-
lettres"), (Tokyo: Kyöiku shuppan sentä, 1978), p. 168.
20 Kobori, " 'Bungaku' to iu meishö," p. 3. Jitsu in jitsugaku (H^fO stands for reality, sub-
stance or essence, deriving from its more basic meaning of ripening, fruit, truth and seed.
Ogawa et al. (eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen, p. 274; Nelson, Japanese-English Character
Dictionary, p. 317 (character # 1297).
21 Isoda Köichi, Rokumeikan no keifu: Kindai nihon bungeishi (The Rokumeikan Move-
ment: A History of the Verbal Art of Early Modern Japan), (Tokyo: Bungei shunju,
1983), p. 18.
western learning, which had been set up by the Shogun authorities in 1862
and re-established by the new government in 1868. 22 In a translation into
Japanese of Chambers's Information for the People published in 1879, the
subtitle "Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres" was rendered into Japanese as shüji
oyobi kabun ( ί £ ϊ ΐ & 1 | £ ) . 2 3 Shüji has remained the standard Japanese term
for rhetoric to this day, but kabun, where ka stands for flower, blossoming,
lustre, brilliance, decorative and the like,24 never gained currency as an
equivalent of "belles-lettres." Among the public in general bunshö seems
to have been widely used as an equivalent of the western term, literature.25
The introductory chapter of Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Litera-
ture) published in 1890, which will be treated in some detail below, em-
ploys the term bunshö shlka in the sense of "literary texts in
prose and poetry." Since the term shlka unambiguously stands for "poet-
ry," this would suggest that bunshö was generally used in the sense of
prose literature, a usage that no doubt reflected the great popularity at the
time of the genre of the novel. 26 Bundö (JfciS) was also used to translate the
word literature.27 This term implies the traditional pair of virtues character-
22 Sugaya, "Shüji oyobi kabun" no kenkyü, p. 167.

23 Chambers's Information for the People, in two volumes edited by the two brothers Wil-
liam and Robert Chambers, was published in several editions, the first one in London:
Orr and Smith 1835. The first American edition was published in Philadelphia: G. B.
Zieber and Co 1848 and the fifth (revised) edition in London and Edinburgh in 1874.
According to the preface of the fifth edition of 1874, this book was designed for the
people and though adapted for all classes comprised "those subjects on which informa-
tion is of the most importance; such as the more interesting branches of science—physi-
cal, mathematical, and moral; natural history, political history, geography and literature."
It was designed to give everything that was "requisite for a generally well informed man
in the less highly educated portions of society" (italics in the original). Sugaya, "Shüji
oyobi kabun" no kenkyü, pp. 118, 166, 409, 466.
24 Ogawa et al. (eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen, p. 855; Nelson, Japanese-English Character
Dictionary, p. 779 (character # 3955).
25 Shö in bunshö stands for chapter, composition, passage (of prose) or verse (of poetry),
Ogawa et al. (eds.), Kadokawa shinjigen, p. 745, Nelson, Japanese-English Character
Dictionary, p. 955 (character* 5112).
26 Regarding the literary taste of the time and the role of the novel, see Keiko Kockum,
"The Role of Western Literature in the Formation of the Modern Japanese Novel," in
volume 3 of this series, Literary Interactions in the Modern World 1.
27 The fluctuations of the time in the use of the terms bundö and bungaku is well reflected
in the Japanese-English dictionary by James Curtis Hepburn. In the first edition pub-
lished in 1867 "Bun-dö" is rendered as "literature, learning," whereas "Bun-gaku" is
given as "[l]earning to read, pursuing literary studies, especially the Chinese classics." In
the third edition of the same work in 1886 "Bun-dö" is explained as "[l]iterature; learn-
ing; letters; belles-lettres" and "Bun-gaku" as "[literature; literary studies; especially the
Chinese classics." Quotations from Suzuki, Nihon no "bungaku" gainen, pp. 126-27.
ising the gentleman who, in accordance with Confucian ethics, should be

well versed in both literature, bundö, and the military arts, budö (ItiS)· 28
By 1885-1886 the term bungaku as the standard equivalent of the modern
concept of literature seems to have been generally established. 29
Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Literature)
The year 1890 marks the beginning of an intensive period of literary histo-
ry writing and the publication of anthologies of literature in Japan. A na-
tional literary canon was thereby established and made available to the
general public. Three influential works in the field were published within
the span of one year. In April Kokubungaku dokuhon (National Literature
Reader) was published, an anthology of selected pieces of literature edited
by Haga Yaichi and Tachibana Senzaburö. In the introductory chapter of
the book Haga Yaichi makes a short account of Japanese literary history. 30
He starts out with a discussion of the notion of literature and how literature
reflects the world of thoughts of the nation. He goes on to discuss the close
relationship between language and thought and how they mutually influ-
ence each other without one simply originating in the other. Haga identi-
fies two peaks in the history of the national literature, the Heian period
(794—1185) and the Tokugawa era. Regarding the period between these
two he comments that since all writing employed Sino-Japanese (kanbun),
a written language based on the Chinese of the classics but read in accord-
ance with Japanese linguistic conventions, there was no opportunity for
writing in the national language to develop. He divides the history of litera-
ture into six periods, based on political changes, but comments that this is
because of the lack of great "epoch making" authors and concludes that it
is after all quite reasonable since political changes also influence literature.
Haga's division of literature into periods set the normative pattern for sub-
sequent histories of literature: 1) Archaic literature (jöko no bungaku) 660
B C - A D 645, 2) Ancient literature (chüko no bungaku) 645-1185, 3) Lit-
28 This pair of virtues had been promoted for example in the Rules for the Military Houses
(buke shohatto; j t t ^ K i S S ) , issued by the Shogun government in 1615, where the
samurai class was ordered to study and practice the two side by side. Sansom, A History
of Japan, p. 75.
29 Kobori, " 'Bungaku' to iu meishö," p. 3.
30 Haga Yaichi, "Kokubungaku dokuhon shoron" (Introductory chapter in Haga Yaichi and
Tachibana Senzaburö (eds.), Kokubungaku dokuhon (National Literature Reader), Tokyo
1890), in Hisamatsu (ed.), Ochiai, Veda, Haga, Fujioka, pp. 197-205.
erature of the Kamakura period (Kamakura jidai no bungaku) 1185-1336,

4) Literature of the Muromachi period (Muromachi jidai no bungaku)
1336-1604, 5) Literature of the Edo period (Edo jidai no bungaku) 1604-
1867, and 6) Literature after the Meiji restoration (Ishingo no bungaku).
In October of the same year Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Lit-
erature) was published in two volumes. It was co-authored by Mikami San-
ji and Takatsu Kuwasaburö. The book was more than a thousand pages in
length and included numerous quotations of literature from the various
genres treated, making it suitable for use as a textbook in schools. Also
published in 1890 was Kokubungaku (National Literature), by Ueda Kazu-
toshi. This was the first in a projected series of anthologies of selected
pieces of Japanese literature, mainly meant to be taught in school. Only
this first volume of texts from the latter part of the Tokugawa period was
actually published, however. 31 In 1890 through 1892 Nihon bungaku zen-
sho (Complete Works of Japanese Literature) in 24 volumes was pub-
lished, edited by Ochiai Naobumi, Ikebe Yoshikata, and Hagino Yoshiyu-
ki. It comprised tales, diaries and essays written before the fifteenth centu-
ry, accompanied by brief introductions and explanatory notes. 32
Nihon bungakushi (History of Japanese Literature), following Koku-
bungaku dokuhon (National Literature Reader), can be seen as a comple-
tion of the formation of the Japanese history of literature. 33 Below the pref-
ace and the introductory chapter of the book, which is divided into six sec-
tions, are presented in some detail. The word bungaku in the Japanese orig-
inal has been translated by the term literature throughout, even in contexts
where a term like "the humanities" would have been preferable.
Preface
Volume one starts out with a preface of fourteen pages, where the authors
explain the reasons for and background to the book and how it is struc-
tured, and offer some concrete advice about how to use it as a textbook in
school. They point out that it is easier to inform oneself about the literature
of foreign countries than that of Japan, because of the lack of books on
31 Hisamatsu (ed.), Ochiai, Ueda, Haga, Fujioka, p. 426.

32 Michael C. Brownstein, "From Kokugaku to Kokubungaku: Canon-Formation in the
Meiji Period," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47:2 (1987), pp. 4 4 3 - 4 4 .
33 Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, Kokugaku: Sono seiritsu to kokubungaku to no kankei (The Forma-
tion of National Learning and its Relation to National Literature in Japan), (Tokyo:
Shibundö, 1941), p. 241.
Japanese literature. They note that the novel is in great vogue, to the extent
that people in general see literature as synonymous with the novel. How-
ever, the authors argue, since the novel is just one kind of aesthetic litera-
ture 34 a proper progress in literature is not possible without a simultaneous
development of scientific literature, 35 such as that in the fields of history,
philosophy and political science for example. Driven by an urgent need to
foster a consciousness of literature as something to be taken more seriously
than a mere plaything, of literature as a general concept and not just as a
conglomerate of genres and texts, they decided to publish their history of
national literature, the authors explain.
Regarding the structure of the book, a number of histories of literature
and books on the literature of western countries were used in an eclectic
way as reference, the authors state. Basically, they claim, those books
present the masterpieces of great authors, give some critical comments and
explanations and add some biographical facts. However, since there are no
well-ordered collections of literature or books on literature in Japan and the
experts confine themselves to isolated parts of the national literature, the
authors argue, such an approach would make the work difficult to under-
stand for the general reader. They state they have therefore chosen to de-
scribe the development of literature on the basis of concrete examples of
text in a way that will enable the reader to gain an overall view of the na-
tional literature and its characteristics, while at the same time changes over
time are depicted and biographies of the main authors are given. The au-
thors conclude that since their aim is to give an account of the past and an
indication of the future, the time limit has been set to the end of the Edo pe-
riod.
Introductory chapter: section 1 "What is history of literature?"
The introductory chapter comprises 43 pages and is divided into six

sections. Section 1 (pp. 1-6) starts out by explaining that the history of lit-
erature is a kind of history that describes the origins, development and
changes in literature. History, especially the history of civilization, shows
the intellectual and moral development of a country or the world by broad-
ly investigating changes in politics, religion, sciences, art, human feelings,
customs and the like, and clarifies the relationship of cause and effect in
34 The Japanese term translated as "aesthetic literature" here is bibungaku, H3t^.

35 The Japanese term translated as "scientific literature" here is ribungaku,
factual reality, the authors declare, and add that the history of literature of
course makes up part of this. However, they observe, since literary texts in
prose and poetry 36 most skilfully express human ideas, feelings and imagi-
nation, they are unsurpassed as a source of knowledge about the develop-
ment of mankind. Although literature is moved by politics, is influenced by
religion and follows the changes in people's feelings and customs, when
literature thrives and develops it generates a power that will hold sway
over politics, religion, human feelings and customs, they argue, and ob-
serve that some scholars therefore equate the history of literature with the
history of civilization, and some even consider it the only true history. 37
After some comments on the relatively recent development of history
writing also in the west, and observing that not all countries have an unbro-
ken line of literature from ancient times, the authors conclude that when
they summarize the total of the unbroken line of Japanese literature
through two thousand and some hundred years, there are many points
where Japan does not achieve the same standard as the west, but also some
points where Japan is superior. This line of thought is followed up in the
last paragraph of the section, where the authors declare that the history of
literature deepens the patriotic feelings of the people.
The section climaxes in a grand account of the great importance of lit-
erature and the history of literature for the progress of society and the
moral enhancement of the citizens. The authors argue that because litera-
ture is a reflection of the human heart, the history of literature gives access
to the mental and moral development of past times, a knowledge of human
ideas, feelings and imagination through the ages, not to mention a good in-
sight into the customs, tastes and preferences of each time period. The his-
tory of literature not only furthers people's knowledge and broadens their
experience of what people say and think, the authors argue, but it also
gives them an opportunity to learn a lesson and elevate their ideas, feelings
and imagination, heighten their preferences and rid themselves of low cus-
toms and thoughts. Morals will become clear, politics and education will
36 The Japanese term I have translated throughout as "literary texts in prose and poetry" is
bunshö shlka,
37 Regarding the equation of history of literature with history of civilization, the reference
is made to scholars in general, but regarding history of literature as the only true and real
history, " J t ^ S t C I · ? · , ß P t ä Ä d i S S & f ö t l , a specific reference is made to the author
of a French history of literature, whom I have not been able to identify. The katakana
rendering of his or her name, ( 7 7 > 0 — » may be spelled out as something like Van
Röhn, or Van Lohn.
progress, enabling everyone to enter on a path where they can realize the
great purpose of living a genuinely happy life, the authors claim, and they
conclude: "This is because all texts, from history, novels and poetry to pol-
itics, religion and other subjects in the end constitute a means for achieving
this great purpose."
Introductory chapter: section 2 "The difficulties of formulating a

definition of literature. Defining literature"
In Japan in recent times, the second section (pp. 7-15) starts out, cultural
progress has been substantial. Therefore, the authors observe, in every
corner of the lower classes of society, people are reading newspapers and
novels and the word literature is generally used and understood. Arguing
that not only people in general, but also highly educated people, would
however have trouble defining literature, the authors then discuss a number
of definitions and conclude the section by stating their definition of "pure
literature."
Firstly, the original term literature in the west—litteratura as derived
from littera, letter of the alphabet—is treated.38 The authors conclude that
in this case literature can be defined as "anything written." This is however
too broad a definition to be useful, they argue, because in that case every-
thing put down in writing would be called literature, from the lodger regis-
ters at the inns, to bank account books and library catalogues to the census
register.
Secondly, literature defined as "that which expresses human thoughts
and ideas" is mentioned and refuted. The authors argue that since human
thoughts and ideas are also expressed by such means as sign language, pic-
tures, architecture, sculpture, music, written texts and spoken language,
this definition would be too broad to be useful.
Thirdly, the definition of the term literature in China is discussed. It is
observed that the term has been used in various ways, but that it is closely
connected to the Way of the Sages and canonical texts.
Fourthly, the definition of literature in Japan is discussed. In the initial
discussion the term gakumon, learning, is used as a synonym for bungaku,
which had by this time been established as an equivalent of the western
38 In this part of the discussion, Tacitus, Quintilianus and Cicero are also referred to, and
one scholar I have not been able to identify, by the name of Haram, or something similar.
The katakana spelling of the name is A·
term literature. 39 The authors observe that until the end of the Tokugawa
era, learning (gakumon) was synonymous with Confucian learning, and
that there was consequently no learning outside the study of the Confucian
classics and the Way of the Sages. Literary texts in prose and poetry were
considered to be examples of poor craftsmanship by Confucians, who
thought the only merit of literature was as a proponent of moral principles
that could be useful in government and education, they add. The authors
then give an account of contemporary definitions and views of literature:
some regard the main purpose of literature as the annotation of the classics
and study of old words, some define literature as "that which gives insight
into the teachings of the Sages and clarifies how to govern in accordance
with them," some regard poetry and novels as true literature, some find the
essence of literature in comic verses. Each of the above express one part of
what is literature, but not the whole, they conclude.
Fifthly, a definition of literature as a branch of learning is discussed. Re-
cently, the authors claim, learning (gakumon) has tended to be divided into
literature (bungaku) and science (kagaku). 40 They comment that the kind of
learning (gakumon) that investigates the principles and rules of material
things, or investigates these by experiments, falls mainly within the realm
of science (kagaku), whereas literature (bungaku) mainly describes human
affairs by way of imagination and hypotheses. This is still however a broad
and somewhat problematic definition, the authors add, since texts of liter-
ary merit may be found within the field of science (kagaku), and not all
texts within the field of literature (bungaku) are of literary merit.
Sixthly, the authors conclude that since the above definitions of litera-
ture are still too broad, they want to make a definitive definition of pure lit-
erature 41 in the following way:
By literature is meant something that in a specific style of writing skilfully
expresses human ideas, feelings and imagination, which has a dual purpose
of utility and pleasure, and which conveys general knowledge to the major-
ity of people. 42
39 The terms bungaku and gakumon are discussed above under the heading "Bungaku, the
Term Used to Translate 'Literature'."
40 kagaku,
41 The term used is junbungaku marked with furigana spelling out "pure litera-
ture" in katakana letters.
42 Mikami and Takatsu, "Introduction," Nihon bungakushi, vol. 1, p. 13. In Japanese the
definition reads as follows
ϊ 5 * £ λ © Β β . Sit.
The authors then proceed to analyse and explain their definition in the fol-
lowing way. The criteria "in a specific style of writing," which should be
typical of the writer in question, and "skilfully," clearly exclude the lodger
registers at the inns, bank account books and the like from pure literature.
The criteria "expresses human ideas, feelings and imagination" and "a dual
purpose of utility with pleasure" exclude publications within the field of
science (kagaku), since they restrict themselves to expressing human ideas
and treat their subject only from a utilitarian perspective. By conveying
general knowledge to the majority of people literature also distinguishes it-
self from science, the authors argue, since the fields of sciences, like phys-
ics, chemistry, law, medicine and technology, are clearly defined special-
ties.
Introductory chapter: section 3 "The difference between literature and

other branches of learning. The purpose of literature"
In this section (pp. 16-24) the authors discuss what constitutes the differ-
ence between literature and other branches of learning (gakumon), in terms
of a more detailed clarification of their respective purposes and character-
istics. Since branches of learning such as law, political science, history,
ethics, aesthetics and philosophy investigate facts without physical form,
they are dependant on writing, and are therefore often regarded as litera-
ture in the broad sense of the word, the authors argue. Often such texts skil-
fully express human thoughts, feelings and imagination in a specific style
of writing, they add, but conclude that this resemblance to literature is only
superficial, since a text that would read as superb literature would appear
clumsy and unclear if read as a juridical document, or lacking in correct
facts if read as a historical treatise.
Stressing the dual purpose of utility and pleasure as a characteristic trait
of literature, the authors argue that whereas in the other special branches of
learning moral teachings and facts are conveyed in a direct manner, in lit-
erature they are conveyed in an indirect way. Consequently when people
read novels or listen to poetry they are emotionally influenced, and will un-
consciously assimilate moral teachings, learn new facts and gain an under-
standing of scientific theories, they conclude. The authors make a distinc-
tion between the psychological pleasure of reaching the truth through thor-
ough investigation, which they consider common to all branches of learn-
ing, and the kind of general spiritual pleasure which they maintain only
literature can provide.
The section climaxes in an eloquent description of how the people be-

come spiritually enhanced and purified when true literature flourishes. En-
joying a lofty spiritual pleasure in beauty and purity they unconsciously as-
similate important moral teachings and learn useful facts, the authors
claim, and conclude that this is indeed the true purpose of literature.
Introductory chapter: section 4 "National literature "

Starting out with the observation that the definition of literature presented
above would suit any country, especially the so-called "Weltliteratur," the
authors introduce the concept of what is called "national literature" in this
section (pp. 25-29). 43 Closely following Hippolyte Taine's concepts of
race, milieu and moment, the authors present the agents that shape the spe-
cific national literatures as firstly the unique characteristics of the people of
a nation, secondly external phenomena, and thirdly the tendencies and cur-
rents of the time. 44 They state that the task of the history of literature is to
trace how literature is influenced by the factors listed, and refer to Taine as
having equated literary history writing with investigating the psychology
of the country in question.
The section concludes with the authors' definition of national literature
as "the written expression of a people's unique ideas, feelings, and imagi-
nation in their national language." 45
Introductory chapter: section 5 "The origins and development of litera-

ture "
This section (pp. 30-37) starts with the observation that although there are
several means of expressing human thoughts, feelings and imagination—
such as sign language, pictures, architecture, sculpture and music—nothing
43 The terms "Weltliteratur" and "national literature" are spelled out infitriganaalongside
corresponding words in Japanese: and respectively.
Ibid., p. 25.
44 The term "agent" is spelled out infitriganaalongside the corresponding Japanese word
f l t ö . Ibid., p. 26.
45 Translation into English in accordance with Brownstein, "From Kokugaku to Kokubun-
gaku," ρ 451. In Japanese the definition reads as follows:
Äagicûr. s i t . is
m e mzh e> ii υt Λ U.
Mikami and Takatsu, "Introduction" p. 29.
surpasses human language for expressing complex mental phenomena in a

detailed and thorough way. After briefly noting the close relationship be-
tween language and thought, with a reference to the famous Sanskrit
scholar and founder of the comparative discipline of linguistically oriented
theology, Max Müller, the authors embark on a description of the advance-
ment of human knowledge, intellect and literature in the evolutionary
terms typical of their time. They draw parallels between the advancement
of society and human thought into more complex and elaborated systems
on the one hand and the development of writing systems and the growth of
literary genres on the other. They place literary genres on a ladder of ad-
vancement starting with poetry as the original genre of literature, and ad-
vancing into various prose forms such as scholarly theses, historical chron-
icles, diaries and novels. This process is placed in parallel with a develop-
ment from the unenlightened stages of mankind in the past to the enlight-
ened stage of the age of the authors; poetry is connected with the violent
feelings and absurd imagination the authors attribute to the former, and
prose to the rational reasoning power and imagination attributed to the lat-
ter. The authors conclude the section by observing a close connection and
interdependence between the advancement of human knowledge, lifestyle
and sense of aesthetics on the one hand and the process of writing and
reading literature on the other, which they maintain squarely places litera-
ture on the path of progress, in every country in the world.
Introductory chapter: section 6 "Kinds of literature"

This section (pp. 38-43) deals with genres of literature from a macro per-
spective and refers the micro perspective of the subject to the field of rhet-
oric and to the main part of the two volumes of history of literature to fol-
low. The two macro genres described here are prose and poetry. Prose is
described as "expressing in writing human ideas, feelings and imagination
in a direct way." This is what is called in everyday language bunshö, the
authors add.46 They explain that prose can be subdivided in accordance
with structure into different types of discourse, and in accordance with in-
nate characteristics into novel, diary, travelogue, legend and history, and
philosophical, judicial, religious and political literature. Some kinds of
texts constitute mainly analytical discourse, some deal mainly with facts
46 The term bunshö is discussed above under the heading "Bungaku, the Term Used to
Translate 'Literature'."
and others mainly with imagination the authors add, and conclude that
there are those that mix all three.
Poetry, or bound form (shlka), also expresses human ideas, feelings and
imagination, but not in the same direct manner as is the case with prose, the
authors argue. Broadly speaking poetry can be divided into two categories,
they explain, the first comprising poetry that is composed in accordance
with a fixed pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, and the second po-
ems that are composed in accordance with a fixed pattern governed by the
number of morae, or moras. Generally speaking people with a language
with stressed and unstressed syllables adhere to the rules of the former cat-
egory and mostly use rhyme, the authors state, whereas people with a lan-
guage without this difference in syllable stress adhere to the latter pattern,
in which case a good rhythm is created by the composition of stanzas of
fixed numbers of morae. For example the poetry of China, India and Eng-
land adhere to the former kind and the poetry in Japan and France to the
second kind, they conclude.
Since poetry gives expression to human thoughts, feelings and imagina-
tion it can be divided into categories in the same way as prose, such as the
epic style, chronicle style, dissertation style, narrative style, and legend
style, the authors explain. However, they argue, since poetry is originally
based on human emotion rather than thought, it has more of narration than
dissertation, more of imagination than of facts and has actually been called
the language of imagination. In the west the bound form is therefore rough-
ly divided into three kinds of poetry, namely lyrical, epic and drama poet-
ry, the authors observe, but conclude that this distinction does not general-
ly apply to the poetry of Japan.
* * *
Japanese literary history writing was carried out in close connection with
the academic environment of the University of Tokyo, established in 1877.
In 1882 a Classics Training Course was set up aimed at students who had
not received a formal education because they grew up in the turmoil ac-
companying the Meiji restoration. This course was continued until 1888,
producing two classes of graduates. A number of those graduates 47 together
with graduates from the newly established Department of Japanese Litera-
47 Ikebe Yoshikata, 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 2 3 , Hagino Yoshiyuki, 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 2 4 , Ochiai Naobumi, 1 8 6 1 -

1903, and Sasaki Nobutsuna, 1 8 7 2 - 1 9 6 3 .
ture at the same university 48 played an important part in establishing liter-

ary studies as an academic discipline. 49
By tradition the study of the Japanese classics had been carried out with-
in the field of kokugaku, National Learning. Konakamura Kiyonori, the
University of Tokyo professor who organized the Classics Training
Course, was trained in the National Learning tradition 50 and evidently the
teachers on this course and in the Department of Japanese Literature saw
themselves as the kokugakusha (scholars of the school of National Learn-
ing) of their time, as did their disciples, including the authors of the first
books on and histories of Japanese literature. They lived in the midst of the
formation of the modern Japanese nation state, and were also well in-
formed about western learning, as demonstrated in the introductory chapter
of History of Japanese Literature presented above. Their writings seem to
reflect an awareness of participating in a movement that was instrumental
in achieving the transition from the old to the new Japanese society. A typ-
ical and influential member of this group of scholars was Haga Yaichi,
who characterised himself and his fellow scholars as the kokugakusha of
the Meiji era, in a lecture he held in 1904 at an alumni meeting at Koku-
gakuin University, a private university in the tradition of National Learn-
ing established in 1890.51 Between 1899 and 1902 Haga had spent a period
of study in Germany, and drawing on this experience, in the above-men-
tioned lecture, entitled Kokugaku to wa nan zo ya (What is National Learn-
ing actually?), he introduces the European research tradition of philology
in some detail, and eloquently argues that the tradition of kokugaku in fact
constitutes the philology of Japan. Haga and his fellow scholars of Na-
tional Learning felt a need to repair the drawbacks of the traditional Na-
tional Learning. In his Kokugakushi gairon (Short History of National
Learning), published in 1900, Haga criticised earlier scholars of National
Learning for not studying in a very scientific way, as for example when the
phoneticians paid no attention to how the organs of speech are constructed,
studies of literature were not backed up by psychology, or one historical
epoch was concentrated on as a timeless ideal instead of their subject of
48 Haga Yaichi, 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 2 7 , Ueda Kazutoshi, 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 3 9 , and Mikami Sanji, 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 3 9 .

49 Brownstein, "From Kokugaku to Kokubungaku," pp. 4 3 6 - 4 3 8 .
50 Ibid., p. 437.
51 Hisamatsu (ed.), Ochiai, Ueda, Haga, Fujioka, p. 235. The lecture was published in Feb-
ruary 1904 under its title, Kokugaku to wa nan zo ya (What is National Learning Actu-
ally?) in the university bulletin Kokugakuin zasshi, ( H ^ R r c i t i i ) · Reprinted in Hisa-
matsu (ed.), Ochiai, Ueda, Haga, Fujioka, pp. 2 2 6 - 3 5 .
study being historicized. 52 Since the Meiji era was a time of great plurality
regarding schools of thought, ideologies and political movements, 53 the
disciples of National Learning probably overestimated their role in society
at large. However, they were obviously crucial in the formation of a Japa-
nese literary canon and a Japanese history of literature, both as concepts
and as academic subjects. Their concept of national literature has been
characterized as an amalgamation of the literary consciousness and con-
sciousness of the Japanese(ness) of the time, and the Japanese literary his-
tory writing of the time as driven by a combination of literary conscious-
ness and a wish to uncover the underlying national mentality (kokumin
seishin). The idea of showing how literature developed in a historical pro-
cess was certainly new, but the subject of Japanese literature still built on
the tradition of National Learning, and the attitude that a pure Japanese
mentality or spirit constituted the core of the object of research remained
more or less unchanged. 54
The criteria for what was to be included in History of Japanese Lit-
erature of 1890 and what was not were by no means clear-cut or self-evi-
dent. Not only did the kind of texts that should be considered to be of liter-
ary value have to be decided on, but also what was meant by the national
language in the definition of national literature made in the introductory
chapter of History of Japanese Literature. In the preface the authors state
that in accordance with the definition of literature presented in the intro-
ductory chapter of the book they have not included texts written in Sino-
Japanese (kanbun). 55 Considering the authors' close connection to the
school of National Learning, it might be surmised that when they defined
national literature as "the written expression of a people's unique ideas,
feelings, and imagination in their national language," they visualised in the
case of Japan a form of Japanese language that displayed a minimum of
foreign influence. Kamo no Mabuchi, for example, had invented a pastiche
of an ancient style of writing (gikobun), which came to be frequently used
in the novels written in the Tokugawa era. It was based on the language of
the Manyöshü, a collection of Japanese poetry compiled in the middle of
the eighth century, which he considered pure Japanese, untainted by
52 Haga, Kokugakushi gairon, p. 225.

53 See for example Carol Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985).
54 Hisamatsu, Kogugaku, pp. 240, 243, 2 4 5 - ^ 6 .
55 Mikami and Takatsu, "Preface," Nihon bungakushi, vol. 1, p. 11.
foreign influences. 56 In general, however, it was also common among the

scholars of National Learning to use the Sino-Japanese style of language,
which continued to be used in academic and official texts well into the
modern era in Japan.
The History of Japanese Literature was written during a time of lan-
guage reforms, which were partly triggered by the need to create a written
language that was comprehensible to ordinary citizens in connection with
the establishment of general education and general literacy. Traditionally,
the Japanese language scene may be described as a hybrid state of affairs.
The text world has displayed through the centuries a rich variety of linguis-
tic traits and text styles and the men of the educated, literate classes have
generally been competent within an array of linguistic variations. Not only
should they be able to read texts written in classical Chinese and produce
texts in Sino-Japanese, but they were also expected to be masters of poetry
composition both in the Chinese and Japanese traditions, and prose in the
classical literary Japanese style of writing. In addition they used of course
the Japanese vernacular of their time.
What then was the literary canon like that was established by the 1890
publication of the History of Japanese Literature? Basically, regarding the
text world preceding the Tokugawa era, the preferences of their predeces-
sors within the school of National Learning were strongly reflected. Re-
garding the text world of the Tokugawa period, the high status their time
placed on the genre of the novel, in combination with the modern concept
of literature in general, resulted in quite a substantial re-evaluation of
texts. 57 The high prestige of the novel also influenced the evaluation of the
literature of the Heian period, as illustrated in Kokubungaku zenshi heian-
chöhen (Complete History of the National Literature: the Heian Era; pub-
lished in 1905) by Fujioka Sakutarö, based on a series of lectures on the lit-
erary history of the Heian era (794-1185), which he held in the period
1901-1904. This was the first time the literature of the Heian era was treat-
ed on such a big scale and in such depth of detail. 58 In his introduction to
56 Regarding Kamo no Mabuchi see further under heading "Kokugaku—National Learn-

ing" below.
57 Regarding canon formation, see for example Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki (eds.),
Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, (Stanford:
Stanford UP, 2000); Stephen D. Miller (ed.), Issues ofCanonicity and Canon Formation in
Japanese Literary Studies, Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies,
vol. 1 (West Lafayette: Purdue Univ., 2000); Shirane, "Canon Formation in Japan."
58 Hisamatsu (ed.), Ochiai, Ueda, Haga, Fujioka, p. 431.
Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) authored by Murasaki Shikibu prob-

ably in first decade of the eleventh century, he praises this work as the first
and foremost novel of Japan, the primary novel not only of the Heian pe-
riod, but of all times. 59
Kokugaku—National Learning
Hisamatsu Sen'ichi gives three definitions of the term kokugaku in his

Kokugaku: Sono seiritsu to kokubungaku to no kankei (The Formation of
National Learning and its Relation to National Literature in Japan): firstly
local schools in the national system of education in ancient times, secondly
studies of Japan within all fields of research— synonymous overseas with
Japanology or Japanese Studies—and, thirdly, the science that has as its
explicit goal to clarify and reveal what is purely Japanese, from a clearly
Japanese point of view, which in the time immediately preceding modern
time flourished around scholars such as Kamo no Mabuchi and Moto'ori
Norinaga. The term kokugaku, or National Learning, is usually understood
in the terms of the third definition above and is used in that sense through-
out this essay. The scholar of National Learning was expected to distance
himself from a point of view considered Buddhist or generally "foreign"
and from the influence of such, with the aim of clarifying and revealing
that which is "purely Japanese." In this endeavour the subject of research
was therefore to be restricted mainly to ancient written sources that had
been exposed to minimal influence from the outside, and the research was
to be carried out in a spirit characterised by a "Japanese point of view,"
employing a strictly philological method. Although Mabuchi and Norinaga
were also Japanese language scholars, the focus of their research was on
the language as the first and foremost means of understanding the sources
written in this language. For scholars of National Learning the study of the
Japanese language as such was therefore not the final aim of their endeav-
our. 60
The school of National Learning goes back to the seventeenth century.
In Kokugakushi gairon (Short History of National Learning) Haga Yaichi
59 Fujioka Sakutaro, Kokubungaku zenshi heianchöhen (Complete History of the National

Literature: The Heian Era), Chapter 8, in Hisamatsu (ed.), Ochiai, Ueda, Haga, Fujioka,
p. 315.
60 Hisamatsu, Kokugaku, pp. 2 - 4 .
introduces Kada no Azumamaro (1669-1736)—whom he claims also

coined the term kokugaku in its current meaning—Kamo no Mabuchi,
Moto'ori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane as the four founders and leading
figures of the school. 61 Hisamatsu Sen'ichi in the above-mentioned work
also includes Keichü (1640-1701) in the group of founders of the school,
arguing that whereas Azumamaro institutionalised the discipline and clari-
fied the purpose of National Learning, it was Keichü who established the
philological method and was the first to work in the spirit of the discipline
and with the attitude characteristic of the school. 62
Okabe Mabuchi, better known under the name Kamo no Mabuchi
(1697-1769) was praised as an incredible stylist both in prose and poetry
and, as mentioned earlier, created the pastiche of the ancient style of writ-
ing called gikobun. His influence on scholarship was substantial, but he
also exerted a great influence on contemporary literary writers who studied
at his school, such as Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) who wrote novels, and
Hiraga Gennai (1728-1779), a prolific writer who also wrote puppet plays
(jöruri). Apart from practising poem composition in the style and language
of the Manyöshü his students developed their skill in gikobun in general.
The ancient language was studied as a tool to reveal the Way of the An-
cients (inishie no michi wo akirameru). Mabuchi's great specialty was
Manyöshü, but such works as the historical chronicle Nihon shoki and
topography Fudoki from the eighth century were also studied at his school,
and works of the Heian court of the eleventh and tenth centuries such as
Genji monogatari and Tosa nikki were annotated. 63 In Mabuchi's opinion
the strongest characteristics of Manyöshü was the masculine style of its
poetry, which he termed masuraoburi, a style that he claimed represented a
tense and intensive spirit that, while characterised by strength, originated
in the straightforward expression of true feelings. Mabuchi also coined the
antonymic term tawayameburi, a style he deemed representative of the
modest and composed feminine beauty of the literature of the Heian era,
which he characterised as not straightforwardly expressing true feelings. 64
Mabuchi's appreciation of Manyöshü had a decisive impact on the reading
tradition of this anthology of poetry well into modern times.
Moto'ori Norinaga (1730-1801), who further developed the philological
tradition of Keichü, was one of Mabuchi's most influential disciples by far.
61 Haga, Kokugakushi gairon, pp. 209-21.

62 Hisamatsu, Kokugaku, pp. 11-15.
63 Haga, Kokugakushi gairon, pp. 213-15.
64 Hisamatsu, Kokugaku, pp. 102-03.
Until his time it was common among scholars of National Learning with a
thorough training in the Chinese classics to study Nihon shoki, which con-
stituted the base for studying Japanese history and the Way of the An-
cients. In Norinaga's opinion the facts of history were distorted and much
was left out in this work, since it was written in Sino-Japanese. Instead he
advocated the use of Kojiki, a historical chronicle of Japan written in a lan-
guage considered less heavily influenced by Chinese and therefore of a
"purer" Japanese kind. Norinaga saw the study of the Japanese mentality
and soul as his goal and considered Kojikiden, his exegetic masterpiece on
Kojiki, his life's work. 65 While Mabuchi studied the masculine style of
Manyöshü with related concepts, Norinaga's analysis dealt on the one hand
with the Way of the Gods (kaminagara no michi), based on Kojiki, and on
the other hand with mono no aware, based on Genji monogatari. Norinaga
did not invent the concept of mono no aware, but he developed it as a no-
tion of aesthetics. Literally mono no aware may be translated as "the pa-
thos (aware) of things (mono)" Aware stands for the deeply moving im-
pact on the sensitive, refined beholder of an aesthetically and emotionally
moving scene or phenomenon, and mono for the concrete phenomena of
the outer world, which inherently possess the deeply moving quality of
aware, that in turn causes the emotion of aware inside the mind of the sen-
sitive and refined beholder. Norinaga regarded literature as an autonomous
entity, separate from religion or morals, and equated knowing mono no
aware with knowing "the heart of existence (mono)."66 Norinaga was a
prolific writer, and his works were distributed and read widely much
thanks to the publication industry. His books spread swiftly and exerted
great influence on a wide spectrum of readers, writers and fields of study. 67
His annotations of and writings on Genji monogatari and other classical
works of the Heian period constitute an important basis for research even
today, and mono no aware as he defined it remains a valid aesthetic con-
cept.
Among Norinaga's more than 500 students we find the fourth of the
founding fathers, Hirata Atsutane (1773-1846), although he only entered
the school shortly before the death of Norinaga. Atsutane was to play an
important role in the political branch of the National Learning movement,
65 Haga, Kokugakushi gairon, p. 216.

66 Hisamatsu, Kokugaku, pp. 107, 119. In Japanese Norinaga's definition reads
Ibid., p. 121.
67 Haga, Kokugakushi gairon, pp. 2 1 7 - 1 8 .
which met the mounting threats and demands from the western powers for
Japan to open up to the outside world, with the slogan "Reverence for the
Emperor and expulsion of the barbarians." 68 The National Learning tradi-
tion from the Meiji era was divided into three academic subjects, namely
those of national literature, national language and national history. 69
As was obvious with Mabuchi, composition of poetry as such consti-
tuted an integrated important part of National Learning. The works that
were studied by the scholars of National Learning were those from ancient
time to the middle ages, that is mainly from the beginning of the eighth to
the end of the fourteenth centuries (jödai kara chüko), with Nihon shoki,
Kojiki and Manyöshü as the core works. It should be noted that Nihon
shoki, which was studied by Atsutane and others as an important tool for
revealing the Way of the Ancients and as a source of Shinto doctrines, was
never regarded as literature, nor was Kojiki, except maybe for the poetry it
contained. It was only when Mikami, Haga and others wrote their histories
of literature that these works were first treated as literature. 70
Concluding Remarks
The literary canon and the division into periods established by the 1890
History of Japanese Literature set the normative pattern for literary histo-
ries to come well into the twentieth century. The philological mainstream
research tradition has been contested by and complemented with other
schools of study, with for example a socio-historical, Marxist, or ethno-
graphical inclination. In addition to the term bungakushi for literary histo-
ry, the term bungeishi is also used (shi stands for history). The term bungei
may be translated literally as "verbal art" and the literary histories termed
bungeishi focus more specifically on the literary work, on transitions in
language expressions and reading traditions.
During the last few decades of the twentieth century in particular, the
structure and contents of the literary histories published imply that the lit-
erary canon and the view of what the national language stands for are un-
dergoing a gradual re-evaluation. For example in Iwanami köza: Nihon
bungakushi (Iwanami Lecture Series: History of Japanese Literature); pub-
68 Ibid., pp. 2 2 0 - 2 1 .
69 Hisamatsu, Kokugaku, p. 147.
70 Ibid., pp. 220, 224.
lished by Iwanami Publishing Co Ltd. in eighteen volumes between 1995

and 1997) texts in Sino-Japanese are an integrated part, and children's lit-
erature, popular genres and oral literature are also included, as well as the
literature of the Ryükyü and Okinawa islands, and of the Ainu minority.
Various approaches and perspectives are also applied, including a text-
centred approach and a gender perspective.
GUNILLA GREN-EKLUND
The Pleasure of Poetry—Sanskrit

Poetics and kävya
"...[que] un systeme de logique (et a fortiori une langue) est

encore un des modes d'expression d'une culture qui ne peut
etre etudie en dehors d'elle et [que] les valeurs de cette cul-
ture s'y repercutent d'une maniere ou d'une autre." *
Introduction
The picture of literature as an ocean 1 might properly be applied to Indian

literature. The Indian languages are numerous, and the literatures of India
are various. A general definition of Indian literature could be given, as is
often the case, to include everything written, and even spoken, in India, in
both past and present times. Historically, and certainly today, there is in the
Indian sub-continent a plurality of languages and dialects, written and spo-
ken, or even only spoken. As in other cultures of the world, there is today
in India a movement directed to safeguarding minor languages from ex-
tinction by creating their own written literatures. It could thus be accurate-
ly maintained that today there are hundreds of Indian literatures. 2 In pre-
senting Indian literature as a whole, all available texts from the past must
* Madeleine Biardeau, "Jäti et lakjana," in G. Oberhammer (ed.), Beiträge zur Geistesges-

chichte Indiens: Festschrift für Erich Frauwallner = Wiener Zaitschrift für die Kunde
Süd- und Ostasiens und Archiv für Indische Philosophie, vols. 12-13 (1968), p. 76.
1 The metaphor is well known in classical India for intellectual experiences, the ship being
knowledge and learning. As applied to poetry, cf. Danijin, Kävyadarsa 1,12. Editions by
S. K. Belvalkar and Rangacharya B. Raddi (Part 1), Bombay Sanskrit and Prakrit Series
74 (Bombay: Department of Public Instruction, 1919) and by R. R. Shastri, Government
Oriental Series, Class A, 4 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1938).
2 Without committing myself to a specific use of the term, I shall, at least initially, refer to
any textual material as "literature" or "literatures."
136 Gunilla Gren-Eklund
be included. From at least two and a half millennia texts have been record-
ed in different stages of various, continuously changing languages, repre-
senting a rich, written literature, reminiscent throughout of oral perform-
ance. An upper time limit cannot in fact be established at all, since even the
early evidence of verbal culture available to us exhibits much still earlier,
inherited material. 3
In any manifestation of intellectual life, there is continuity, unity and in-
terchange, which invariably bring into existence a particular pattern of
common heritage. This is apparent in India from the fact that the expres-
sions of culture largely share motifs, ideas, pictures, metaphors, ethics, re-
ligious goals and many other less tangible elements. The intertextual web
is intricately woven.
In discussing more closely the forms and the subjects that appear in the
written evidence of Indian culture, we must take into account that they
have followed a pathway of integration over time. 4 Changes are evident,
but they occur continuously so that ancient patterns may be recognised
anywhere during the development. No obvious breaks can be determined
in the series of observable changes. The arrival of modernism through the
introduction of Western patterns into Indian literature during the nine-
teenth century did not mean totally abandoning the inheritance. Since that
time, the debate about every part of culture and society has been focused
on how Western and Indian notions should be integrated.
Initially the following study intends to make literature in the Indian set-
ting in general understandable by way of such concepts as are compatible
with indigenous ideas on literary genres, forms and the production of texts.
For this purpose, it is necessary to start by presenting the wider historical
context, and from there, to seek materials that may be found relevant for
further discussion.
In the following pages some major issues about texts from classical In-
dia will be considered. The notions of spoken and written texts and the ex-
tensive space occupied by Sanskrit in the Indian literary culture are impor-
tant, thus necessitating a short survey of the world of Sanskrit texts. The
3 The ancient Vedic texts (vide below, on item a in section on "Sources and Convergent
Flows of Indian Literature") are for the philologists a source of knowledge of the lan-
guage and culture of pre-Indian time.
4 Sheldon Pollock, "Introduction," in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History:
Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: Univ. of Califor-
nia Press, 2003), pp. 1-36. Pollock refers to the "antiquity, continuity and multicultural
complexity combined" of the literatures of South Asia (p. 2).
The Pleasure of Poetry 137
second point will be to present Indian poetics, as it was established in texts

during classical times. This genre belongs to the learned tradition of India
and may thus serve as a means of identifying indigenous ideas about litera-
ture. The notions of the poetics will introduce the final part of the paper,
which aims to describe the most essential concepts of literary composition,
according to Indian poetics. As an illustration some basic, indigenous defi-
nitions will be presented, in samples of texts from poetics in Sanskrit, of
the concept of kävya—here chosen as most suitably matching the modern,
Western concept of "literature." 5
The paper may thus turn out to present, by way of the passages quoted
from Sanskrit texts, a brief description of a possible idea of Indian litera-
ture, comparable to Western notions, but it will not culminate in definitive
conclusions. Discussion on the matter has to continue. There are, however,
ultimately obvious similarities, as well as obvious differences, in the In-
dian tradition of poetics and the Western tradition, particularly as regards
the basic and historically original ideas. 6
The Languages and Texts of India—Some Remarks

One basic feature of the texts of classical India is that the boundaries be-
tween what is oral and what is written are not clear-cut, either in the most
ancient, or even in later times, when writing gradually developed and be-
came common. 7 It would probably not be too bold to propose that oral tra-
ditions survived, in that the texts were continuously performed, which had
a strong influence on written versions even in medieval and modern times.
Philologists have studied Indian literature in the wide sense for a couple of
5 Cf„ e.g., V. K. Chari, "The Genre Theory in Sanskrit Poetics," in P. C. Hogan and L.
Pandit (eds.), Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Cul-
ture (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1995), pp. 63-69: "The Sanskrit equiva-
lent of 'literature' is kävya" (p. 64). More convenient, anyhow, kävya will henceforward
be referred to as "poetry," when the term is translated. It should be underlined that the
formal claims on poetry in this sense are not in the vein of metrical form; kävya and its
poetics include prescriptions also for what to us is a kind of counterpart, viz. certain
forms of prose.
6 No thorough, comparative study of Sanskrit and Greek poetics is available and the com-
parison of Indian attitudes in poetics especially with those of Aristotle and Horace would
certainly be rewarding for both sides.
7 The date of the introduction of writing in India has been extensively discussed, but the
middle of the last millennium BC is commonly favoured. However, the development of
the social and practical functions of writing has to be taken into consideration, as well as
the phenomena connected with its extension in time.
centuries and a continuous interplay between the written and the spoken
records has been taken for granted but seldom analysed. The further study
and analysis of the manifestations of Indian literature in this respect, using
modern instruments, remains to be carried out. So far, it is obvious that
there are texts that were mainly created in written form, that there are
others that are mainly based on orality and, furthermore, that there are
many layers in most individual texts which in various ways display fea-
tures from both oral and written sources. It would be interesting to identify
more closely various types of texts that might be classified as genres when
scope and setting differ. A selection of texts and an identification of ele-
ments as basically belonging to oral or written traditions would provide the
necessary, further knowledge and understanding of Indian texts. However,
it would probably not reveal any borderline between the different genres,
because Indian literatures generally seem to display a combination of the
properties of the two kinds, oral and written.
Another feature of Indian texts, closely connected with the question of
written and spoken literature, is that their main function has consistently
been to present the shared common memory and tradition. 8 This is surely
an inherent feature in any culture, 9 but it may nevertheless be recognized as
an obvious feature of Indian literature, perhaps more so than it has ever
been in the West, all the way from classical Greek literature to modern
texts. The collective function of the Indian texts seems to have been con-
stantly predominant and a change in customary ideas and practices is great-
ly restricted. Even if certain texts may be ascribed to authorities they are
before the modern era hardly charged with any individualised genesis and
do not even present any personalised function. Summarily, and basically, it
must be stated that the literary heritage of India up to modern times has pri-
marily been what was handed down to people, not what was created for, or
by, individuals.
8 The word "tradition" might be considered as something "static," but within it there are
gradual changes in customary practices. The culture and history of India is a good
example that history must not merely be seen as development and controlled by an axis
of time; there are also the particular events. With regard to the claims of accurate herme-
neutics, historians have pointed out the difference between tradition and custom: Eric
Hobsbawm, "Introduction," in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tra-
dition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), pp. 1 - 1 4 (p. 2). Pertinent is also the discus-
sion by the historians of religion on myth, collective memory, ritual and repetition. See,
e.g., Peter Jackson, The Extended Voice: Instances of Myth in the Indo-European Corpus
(Uppsala: Dept. of Theology, 1999), pp. 149 ff.
9 About oral literature as functional, cf. Leif Lorentzon's article on the literariness of East
African orature in this volume.
The Significance of Sanskrit
In any overview of Indian literature and culture attention has to be drawn

to one special aspect, which is essential to the mixed heritage of living
traditions recorded in written and oral communication. Even though there
are other, parallel, and quite extensive, literatures in existence, the main
sources for tradition, and for creative recycling, up to modern times have
been found particularly in texts in the Sanskrit language. This language de-
veloped from the dialects of Vedic time during the first millennium BC,
when the agrarian society became urbanised. Gradually Sanskrit became a
standardised language but for many centuries it was not quite fixed in its
form, since in this early era it was a kind of intellectual lingua franca, spo-
ken alongside the vernacular languages. At the same time, Sanskrit was a
living language in the sense that varieties of it were introduced for different
literary styles. The process of fixing the linguistic forms of Sanskrit was
not completed until the middle of the first millennium AD. By then, San-
skrit had become a prestigious language at the royal courts of certain dyn-
asties because of their ambitions to conquer other societies eventually lead-
ing to the inclusion of various language groups within their boundaries of
power.
The length of time during which the intellectual tradition of Sanskrit
texts was influential is impressive and the text tradition is coherent. The
impact of the early stages of the Sanskrit texts on later literature in what-
ever Indian language is obvious. That is why a historian of Indian literature
is obliged in the study of any text to seriously trace its background in older
texts and in older stages of the languages, looking especially into the San-
skrit legacy.
Even if the core of Indian literature may be found in the Sanskrit texts,
the time limits of this substantial corpus is unclear, because the origin of
the texts is to be found in a common heritage not connected with individ-
uals. There are collections, which gradually became canonical recensions
of composed works, restructured versions of classical works in vernacular
forms, mutual interchanges or borrowings of motifs and formulas, etc., all
of which complicate the picture. The only obvious boundaries that can be
found are those between what may be called different traditional genres,10
which are only identifiable intra-culturally. More precisely, such genres
10 Cf. Anders Pettersson on genres in volume 2 in this series.

c o u l d o n l y b e d e f i n e d synchronically by the particular functions o f the dif-

f e r e n t t e x t s in t h e i r a c t u a l c u l t u r a l s e t t i n g s . "
T h e historical function o f the genres o f Sanskrit literature m a y b e under-
l i n e d b y t h e f o l l o w i n g q u o t a t i o n , w h i c h h i n t s at t h e c o n c e p t o f e c l e c t i -
cism:
In the history o f Sanskrit (or any other) literature there are virtually n o
e x a m p l e s o f n e w generic f o r m s making a sudden historical appearance.
T h i s w o u l d be a logical absurdity g i v e n the degree o f intertextuality a s s o c i -
ated with the rise o f any n e w genre. M o r e than this, almost all—I hesitate to
say all—Sanskrit literature is commentarial in respect o f its predecessors. It
u n c o n s c i o u s l y or c o n s c i o u s l y s h o w s an awareness o f this earlier literature
and s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y s e e s itself as a d e v e l o p m e n t from it. It may b e a c o m -
m o n p l a c e to say that every p i e c e o f literature depends on a substantial b o d y
o f other literature, w h i c h has preceded it. 12
W h a t has b e e n stated here c o n c e r n i n g a c o m m o n heritage f r o m pre-classi-

cal and early c l a s s i c a l t i m e s , i.e. u p to the m i d d l e o f the first m i l l e n n i u m
A D , a b o u t t h e c o r p u s o f S a n s k r i t l i t e r a t u r e a n d its i m p a c t is t o s o m e e x t e n t
a l s o a p p l i c a b l e in t h e l a t e r p h a s e o f c l a s s i c a l a n d e v e n m e d i e v a l s t a g e s t o
m o s t l i t e r a t u r e s , in a n y I n d i a n l a n g u a g e , w h e t h e r t h e y are w r i t t e n o r oral.
M a n y o f t h e "higher" literatures in m o d e r n Indian l a n g u a g e s h a v e their
o r i g i n a s far b a c k a s t h e t w e l v t h - t h i r t e e n t h c e n t u r i e s a n d w e r e b r o u g h t
a b o u t a n d h a v e , n o t o n l y at t h e o u t s e t , d e v e l o p e d in c o n s t a n t , c l o s e c o n t a c t
w i t h S a n s k r i t l i t e r a t u r e . 1 3 F o r t h e s e l i t e r a t u r e s , w r i t t e n d o w n in w h a t are
11 The lack of a literary criticism in the Western sense should be remembered in this con-
text. Edwin Gerow, Indian Poetics, A History of Indian Literature 5:3 (Wiesbaden: O.
Harrassowitz, 1977) points out that "[a]lso the theory of literature little helps the chrono-
logical interpretation of literature itself, both because the literature presents itself as
largely anonymous and authorless, and because the literature as well as the theory takes
for granted that literature, being Sanskrit, is a paradigmatic creation, whose reality is
therefore in the relation to the model, or norm, rather than in the accidents of its origin"
(p. 218).
12 Greg Bailey, Ganesapuräria, Part I, Upäsanäkhanda: Introduction, Translation, Notes
and Index (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995), p. 5.
13 The meaning, beginnings and end of Sanskrit literary culture are outlined by Sheldon
Pollock in his "Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out," in Pollock (ed.), Literary
Cultures in History, pp. 39-130. Even though he emphasizes "Sanskrit's literary
decline" as entropic (p. 101), he has also suggested a cause for such a process. "Sanskrit,
the idiom of a cosmopolitan literature, died over the course of the long vernacular mil-
lennium in part, it seems, because cosmopolitan talk made less and less sense in an
increasingly regionalized world" (p. 102). This is not the same as to say that an outdated
literary activity is not still in some ways influential on contemporary culture; the texts do
still exist.
termed modern Indian languages, 14 the impact of Western culture and lit-
erature from the nineteenth century onwards is, of course, a most impor-
tant, but to the more or less overt indigenous cultural values an additional
element. 15 It should not be forgotten that even in the last few centuries the
internal heritage in all its aspects has never been totally rejected, not even
in times of modernity.
Classical Literature and Sanskrit Texts
In most of the cultural expressions of India, there has been a characteristic

reference back to early sources and often an explicit claim to be reliant on
authority and tradition. The homogeneity in this sense of the classical texts
of India may facilitate the revelation of some general and underlying ideas
about literature and literary culture. The major reason, however, for choos-
ing to study literature through Sanskrit texts is that in such texts, no matter
what kind, theoretical, conscious reflections on intellectual processes can
be traced. What is more, scholarly texts in Sanskrit include those that are
devoted to the craft of literary production. This does not mean that a glance
at the main classical sources of both aesthetic and scientific experiences,
written in Sanskrit, would tell the whole hermeneutically faultless truth.
But they open a track, worth following both through the earlier and the
later stages of classical Indian literature, oral and written, as well as in the
vernacular literatures during the centuries from at least the sixth century
BC up to the eighteenth century AD.
The Western term "literature" is most often delimited by denoting, viz.
enumerative, definitions, for example by indicating genres as quantified
fractions of a totality. 16 The main problem in using such definitions for
14 The common definition is that modern Indian languages, both the ΝΙΑ (New
Indo-Aryan) languages of North India and the major, literary, Dravidian languages of
South India, developed from about AD 1000, when they started to develop a written lit-
erature.
15 There is no evidence of any pre-colonial influence from the West affecting the Indian
way of looking at and creating literature. India in fact neglected Western culture and
society before colonial times. See Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in
Philosophical Understanding (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990). (German ed. 1981;
American ed. 1988.) The predominant contacts and dialogues were carried on within
Asia, a situation that has been revived in post-colonial times.
16 The concept of genres is here used in its most basic meaning, as classificatory; cf.
Anders Pettersson on genres in volume 2 in this series.
comparison between cultures is that the "fractions" or genres do not corre-

spond and are not of equal importance in the literatures of different cul-
tures. As a result, a superior term such as "literature" does not correspond
either. On the basis of a description of various contents, "authentic" genres
within Indian texts can be identified, a contention which is probably ap-
plicable to any culture distant in time and geography. A descriptive survey
of the literature of an area may possibly provide at least some connoting,
viz. analytical, definition of the concept of literature for practical purposes.
A sketch of existing genres may thus provide a fair picture of the content of
the culturally specific world of texts.
In trying to give a short and well-ordered survey of the world of Indian
texts, I will in this part of the paper use the concept of "Indian literature" in
a conventional way. The problem of using this term has long been obvious
to modern indologists. In the introduction to the multipart work Λ History
of Indian Literature, Gonda, the editor, hints at the manifold nature of texts
when he touches upon the terminology, saying that:
.. .the present editor is fully aware of the fact that those scholars who study
so-called modern literatures of the West often exclude all non-connotative
usage of a language from the sphere of their interest, or limit themselves
practically to lyrical poetry, novels and other forms of fiction. However,
while dealing with "genres" and subjects which are nowadays in the West
not generally included in surveys of literature we have not departed from
what in describing Indian literature is long since usual ... The works on
various religious and scientific subjects, which in Sanskrit outnumber the
belles-lettres many times, have had a greater cultural value than the latter.
Religious hymns, ritual handbooks, special works on arts and sciences,
complicated philosophical treatises discussing transcendent reality will
arrest no less attention than epics, dramas, fables, narratives or grand
court-poetry, over-elaborated prose novels or records of the past composed
by men who were more interested in the patterns of events than in the
events themselves. 17
It seems necessary to sketch a survey of the special kinds of Indian texts,

from the beginning, in order to identify the material which would be rele-
vant for a discussion of the concept of literature from a wider comparative
17 Jan Gonda, in Jan Gonda (ed.), Vedic Literature: Samhitäs and Brähmanas, A History of
Indian Literature 1:1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975), p. 5. There follows (p. 6) a fur-
ther justification of the whole project of presenting the major work A History of Indian
Literature in the vein of "Literature—in the broad sense of the term—being one of the
most important products of a people's intellectual activity, will always remain by far the
most essential source of knowledge of a civilization."
perspective.18 In the corpus of manifold texts, certain of them might be

more narrowly identified as "literary," at least according to conditions
given in the present project.19 Other texts will be indicated as relevant for
finding a theory of literature and quotable for the purpose.
Sources and Convergent Flows of Indian Literature
The society that was established by the Indo-European immigrants in

northern India during the second millennium BC was built on the earlier
tradition that they brought with them. They seem to have adhered tightly to
their old traditions during the first centuries of expanding settlement in the
Ganges valley. Yet they gradually adapted their traditions through their
contacts with other peoples, autochthones or earlier immigrants. These
phases of prehistory are rather obscure, but it must be recalled that the so-
ciety was never static and the result of the progressive events is actually
visible, though indistinctly, in the texts handed down.
The preserved literary corpus is extensive enough to allow us to recog-
nize certain major trends of the intellectual resources already in the most
ancient stages. The texts of various origins were later written down and
sorted out into what might be identified as different "genres." 20 Some
parallel and, to a certain extent, confluent currents—at least three—might
tentatively be identified, each possessing their own history of development
and with ties to different social settings.
a) The first one is the whole current of authoritative, holy texts and their
sequels, religious and ritual, together with exegetical and ideological se-
quels. This body of texts has survived and constitutes an authoritative basis
18 The subsequent discussion of the development of literatures in Indian languages will

adopt a rough periodisation, no matter how contentious any question of fixed times may
be. The Vedic period started with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans about 1500 BC and
gradually became a Brahmin period during the first half of the last millennium BC. An
early classical era, with developing scientific literature, might be defined from about 500
BC up to AD 200. The real classical period could be said roughly to cover a time-span
from about AD 200 up to AD 1000, even though the centuries from 600 to 1000 would
better be referred to as "post-classic." The following period is the medieval period, AD
1000 to 1500, followed by the colonial period. The period of modernity, interpreted as
the meeting with and the impact of Western culture, began in the nineteenth century.
19 Cf. the discussion by Anders Pettersson in the introduction to this volume.
20 In this case, the concept should be seen in the sense of being "communicatory," cf.
Anders Pettersson on genres in vol. 2 in this series.
for later religious and non-religious processes in the Indian subcontinent. 21

The contents of these texts, as they developed during the early classical pe-
riod, concerned dogmatics, philosophy with grammar and logic, as well as
science. Adopted by the early and long-lived Brahmin tradition, they con-
tain discussions, interpretations and commentaries on the basic texts. The
Vedic religious texts, the hymns of the Rigveda and the texts on early reli-
gious practice remained the core from which mainly scientific texts devel-
oped. It is not impossible to discern a continuous development, even prior to
the time when writing was introduced, i.e. before the middle of the first mil-
lennium BC. These texts were obviously originally based on orality, as evi-
dent by their primary forms being religious hymns and texts used in rituals.
The consequence was that the message of the hymns for worship, in
written but probably also in oral forms, passed through ritual and philo-
sophical expositions and ended up in the vast written literature of learning.
An analytical discourse came into being in the soil of ancient Vedic hymns
and Brahmin expositions of religion and cult. This led in the middle of the
first millennium BC to the establishment of Upani§adic philosophy, as well
as to the more or less revolutionary religious movements of Buddhism,
Jainism and other sectarian religions.
The Vedic and the Brahmin literature thus ended up in such texts that
were indigenously classified within a corpus of sästra ("learned texts"),
which was formed during the last century BC and the first century AD.
This was the era when the scholars in the religious, philosophical, linguis-
tic, medical and scientific, etc., fields produced basic texts for their ideas,
which would be used for centuries to come. One field, that of politics and
administration is conspicuously poorly represented among the surviving
texts. 22 The original, scholarly texts were later to serve as the basis for an
intense, intellectual debate, represented by an abundance of exegetical
21 Owing to the system of society, the body of holy texts was a conspicuous corpus and was
promoted as central by older and traditional philological research, even though other lit-
erature was as important in the ancient Indian, everyday world.
22 The preserved ancient scholarly texts on secular matters in Sanskrit are the manuals of
law and social behaviour, closely connected with religious ideas, especially the Dhar-
masästra. Cf. J. Duncan M. Derrett, Dharmasästra and Juridical Literature, A History
of Indian Literature 4:1 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1973). There are very few on
political/economical matters (arthasästra). In spite of all the political events, there are
rather quite a few indications in the existing texts and commentaries that other texts with
such aims were actually composed during classical times or earlier. The general didactic
texts were used both for educational purposes and in the service of politics. The lack of
indigenous references to such texts is, of course, not conclusive of a total lack of political
discussions in society.
commentaries, mainly in Sanskrit. Such treatises were produced in a living

tradition up to at least the nineteenth century. Though it was in general the
learned men of the upper castes who wrote down the explanations of reli-
gion and life, it seems that such recorded knowledge was not socially re-
stricted, but was used, at least to a certain extent, as instruction in everyday
life. The art of discussing and commenting upon every earlier text was
characterised by the same great consciousness and high esteem of "the
word" as pervaded any kind of intellectual and religious activity in pre-co-
lonial Indian society.
The tradition of poetics belongs to the scholarly texts from classical times,
the sästra texts, or rather to the part of them that was overtly concerned with
verbality,23 and to their commentaries. The poetics started as a nätyasästra, a
concept that came to signify both a school and an ongoing, textual tradition
probably originating from as early as some centuries BC.24 The term
nätyasästra may be translated as "the doctrine of performance," including
drama, music, etc. and its reception, as well as the creation and the perform-
ance of verbal expression. Within this tradition is found the original textual
evidence for the tradition of poetics from early classical times. During classi-
cal times, more elaborate texts concerning theory of poetry were singled out
and regarded as belonging to kävyasästra in general, the learning about com-
posing "poetry," and many of them also in a specified sense to alamkärasäs-
tra, the learning about the literary figures.25 The concept of nätya came to be
more or less confined to representing enacted drama.
b) A second tradition, also inherited from far back in the past, comprises
the narrative texts in a wide sense, i.e. epic texts, fables, and so forth.
Such texts have the additional characteristic of carrying messages, existen-
tial and moral. Both sacred and profane ideas are expressed and the lan-
guage used is adapted to the contents. The culture of Vedic and Brahmin
times was based on the activities of certain groups, mainly priests, but the
rulers in the developing urban society also participated in it. Concurrently
there existed, of course, as in any society, a widespread and abundant in-
herited tradition of narrative character for the use of any social group. Sto-
ries, parables, myths, etc., were told and retold in the vernacular languages.
There is clear evidence of the existence of a selected group in society espe-
23 The origins of the most important, scholarly terms in these fields are closely connected
with the idea of "speech, word, sound." The importance of "the word" is also treated
below, in the section on "The Forms of kävya and Ideas about 'the Word'."
24 See below, section on "Some Basic Notions...."
25 To be further explained below, ibid.
daily involved in this tradition, viz. people who provided and handed
down the narrative material and, in so doing, acquired high prestige as
story-tellers or bards. The roles of parables and stories in society made
their occurrences in any text quite familiar to everyone in society.
The development of the phenomenon of story telling led in classical times
to terminological differentiation between certain kinds of texts. 26 With the in-
troduction of writing in the middle of the first millennium BC, the epics,
fables, stories and so on were largely transferred into the prestige language,
Sanskrit, even though later on—during the first millennium AD—they re-
appeared in the vernaculars, at that stage also in written form. The narrative
tradition in India, as in other cultures, probably started with secular motifs
and only gradually became more influenced by the religious sphere thereby
achieving another position in society. The didactic scope of story telling also
developed. It is in this domain of a developed narrative tradition that the
great Sanskrit epics of India are found in the form in which they were codi-
fied some time at the beginning of the Christian era. Certain special stories
and poems as well as sästric and educating texts with a genesis outside the
story-telling realm, also found their main abode in the codified tradition of
epics, presented as integrated parts of the great composite epics. 27
The Mahäbhärata and the Rämäyaria are the two, great, surviving epics
of India written in classic Sanskrit. 28 The Mahäbhärata is the story of the
battle for what became India, disguised as both a heroic narrative and as
mythology, or even as a national myth, ending up as the "history" of the
development of Indian society. The Rämäyana is the story of an individual
hero, repressed, displaying different strategies for survival, avenging him-
self on his enemies, and his quest to fulfil both private and official duties
and loyalties. This epic is closer to the private community, as can be seen
in the many versions in the vernacular, as well as those in other, later, offi-
cial and literary languages than Sanskrit. It was from the Rämäyaria that in
early classical times the tangible poetical material was derived at the start
26 Generally the story telling in the Vedic tradition was called äkhyäna (basically meaning
any kind of "communication") but later on, within the traditional classification of genres,
the narrative texts in any kind of story telling fell under the same label, i.e. as belonging
to itihäsa (a noun derived from the phrase in Sanskrit "so it was").
27 The Mahäbhärata contains, for example, such well-known, independent parts as the tale
of Nala and the book of religion and morals, the Bhagavadgltä.
28 Surviving in the sense that they are, both as regards the plot and many of its parts, even
to-day popular and c o m m o n knowledge. They are widespread in their vernacular forms,
something that has led to continual discussion about the complicated interrelations of
various versions in different Indian languages.
of a theory of kävya. This epic was defined as the kävya par preference, the
mahäkävya ("the great kävya").29
As already mentioned, the established versions of the ancient epic texts
include many kinds of texts, recycled to fit into the epic framework. It was
probably their multifarious origins in many different layers and functions
of texts that made them so suitable for both recycling and for analysing as
well. Thus they gave rise to a poetic craft that could display various aspects
of poetics, both in the practice and in the theory of poetry.
c) Texts belonging to a third tradition are also discernible, roughly a body
of texts of ancient, popular origin. The two, first-mentioned, literary tra-
ditions—one being the high-society tradition of Vedism and Brahmanism,
and the other a chiefly narrative tradition—were originally brought to India
by the Indo-European speaking immigrants of the second millennium BC
and were more or less gradually influenced by indigenous culture. How-
ever, certain kinds of oral and written texts have a less clear origin. An
eminent example of these is the puräna texts.30
Such third tradition texts were written down much later, but obviously
had their origin far back in popular literature and oral traditions. One of the
major purposes of such texts, when written down, seems to have been to
manifest a living heritage of popular religious practices. Hymns to the
gods, instructions about how to act in daily life, narratives from divine
mythology, and so on, were probably through every period of time written
and performed in vernacular languages. Like the narrative tradition, these
texts were gradually written in the prestige languages, Sanskrit or the MIA
languages, when these latter languages had finally acquired a sufficiently
high social status during the first millennium AD.31 At a certain stage, such
29 kävya, on which this paper will later focus, is derived from kavi, a word with cognates in
other Indo-European languages. In Indo-Iranian it means "wise, sage," and in Sanskrit it
especially designates a "seer," later on a "poet," in the sense of a "composer of kävya."
30 One passage from Agnipuräpa, containing a conception of basic poetics, will be quoted
below in the section "Some Passages..." There is a comprehensive treatment of the cor-
pus by Ludo Rocher, The Puränas, A History of Indian Literature 2:3 (Wiesbaden: Har-
rassowitz, 1986). The genesis, handing down and reception of the puräija texts as a genre
are disputed matters. Cf. Bailey, Ganesapuräna.
31 The Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) languages (commonly also Prakrit) are the vernacular
languages which were unquestionably used in Vedic times and already acquired more
prestige and literatures of their own in early classical times. It should be noted that such
languages were the main medium for the extra-Brahmin religions, like Buddhism and
Jainism. Dandin, Kävyädarsa 1,32-28, states that the same conditions and rules for
belles-lettres refer to both Sanskrit and the MIA languages, of which the präkfta dialects
are mentioned by name.
texts belonged to the material that was performed orally by certain "bards"
or chroniclers at the royal courts of classical India.
It must be emphasized that there was a continuous interaction between
the three currents of literature, here roughly delineated, and between their
various kinds. The basic texts were the sources for a growing world of
various texts, which gradually developed into distinct types. There was an
ongoing process, which led to the incorporation of every kind of text into
that part of Indian literature which is commonly called "Sanskrit litera-
ture." The representation of the three traditions appears as more or less
complete in the Sanskrit language, even though their origin, survival and
development were also linked to other languages and occurred in other,
less prestigious layers of society than the Sanskrit community.
Indian Poetics
Even though multi-language orality is an original and constant feature of

the world of Indian texts, most of the layout and the elements are written
down in the vast corpus of Sanskrit literature. This is the major source of
the stream of written words in India and at the same time a place of return.
The literati have always been conscious of this fact and opposition to it has
been minor.32 It is thus in the Sanskrit texts devoted to poetics that it is
possible to learn about the indigenous conception of Indian literature. The
object of the texts in poetics is both the written and the performed (spoken)
word and a clear consciousness of the craft of creating the arts has been
vividly expressed in the works on poetics through many centuries.
The poetic tradition from Sanskrit also seems to have been closely fol-
lowed in corresponding texts in other literary languages.33 The interest in
32 Even to-day, when the question of the revival of ancient traditions has become a major
political issue, few participants in the discussion totally reject the dependence on traditions.
33 The poetic tradition from Sanskrit appears to be faithfully reproduced for both Prakrit and
Pali texts, as discussed by Pollock, "Sanskrit Literary Culture" (esp. pp. 61 ff.). Siegfried
Lienhard, A History of Classical Poetry: Sanskrit-Pali-Prakrit, A History of Indian Litera-
ture 3:1 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1984) accounts for the spread of kävya traditions. It
has also left some marks on Tamil poetics, when at a late stage there was an integration into
that tradition which from the outset was independent and of different nature (p. 50). The
special attitudes towards literature in ancient Tamil texts are presented by Kamil V. Zve-
lebil in Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature, Handbuch der Orientalistik,
Sect. 2, Compl. Vol. 5 (Leiden, New York, Copenhagen and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1992)
chap. 5. A closer look at the special conventions of Tamil poetry is given by Zvelebil, Lit-
erary Conventions inAkam Poetry (Madras: Institute of Asian Studies, 1986).
the forms of belles-lettres displayed in the texts of Indian poetics was

closely connected with the contemporary discussions on, and the recording
of, theoretical issues that took place in the Sanskrit cultural setting con-
cerning both grammar and linguistic philosophy. The various scholarly
texts, among them the texts on poetics, share a disposition to both analyse
and prescribe in most fields of human behaviour. The texts in poetics may
be characterised as both descriptive and normative. In telling how the
kävya is, there is also a pedagogical component in the detailed descriptions
of how the creator of a kävya should act. A twofold aspect clearly appears
as soon as the texts focus on the blemishes {άοξα) and the good properties
(guna) of the kävya, and the "beauty" of poetry is often referred to.
The texts in poetics, the classical ones and their tradition dating back to
at least some centuries before our era, have left certain marks on contem-
porary discussions about what is now termed "literature." 34 Many concepts
in modern Indian discourse on literature are still introduced by their San-
skrit designations, even when deliberating Western aesthetic notions, thus
still reminding us of the ancient tradition of poetics. 35
In accordance with the scope of this paper, the main question to be put to
the material chosen is whether such a traditional, internal discussion of lit-
erature would reveal any distinctions of the same or a similar kind as those
made by the theorists of literature to-day, to begin with those of a Western
tradition. The answer that it does is clear—but of course, mutatis mutandis.
Most often the Indian—or rather Sanskrit—texts on poetics start by sorting
and classifying the material of the textual tradition in general. In the course
of time, they almost unanimously focused on such genres as would easily
and formally be recognised as belles-lettres or as verbal art,36 even though
the discussion of the matter then followed other paths than the Aristotelian
tradition. In the enumeration of the alleged, traditional "genres" at the be-
ginning of the works on poetics, it is evident that the main kinds of texts
that could be called "verbal art" and "presentational" are "poetry" (kävya)
and drama (näfaka). 3 7
34 More on the borrowing of Sanskrit terminology in modern times in the section "kävya as
'Verbal Art'" below.
35 Nalini Natarajan (ed.), Handbook of Twentieth-Century Literatures of India (Westport,
Conn, and London: Greenwood Press, 1996) explains why it is necessary to know and
understand Sanskrit poetics: "In modern times, the classic poetics, on one hand, has
defined regional prose and poetry in India, and, on the other, it has been adapted,
expanded, and even radically reformulated for various aesthetic, social, and political
agendas in contemporary literatures." (p. 403)
36 Cf. below on the terminology in the section "kävya as 'Verbal Art'."
37 The word used for drama, nätaka, is akin to nätya, dramatic art.
As soon as this is established, it is of the greatest interest to stay with the

question of the indigenous concepts. Is it possible to discover the internal,
traditional, Indian view of literature, conceived as an artistic performance
of certain texts, in these scholarly treatises? Obviously it must constantly
be kept in mind that these texts about poetics are part of a traditional and
enduring cultural setting. Accordingly, they must—besides being treated
for the sake of cultural comparison—be explained with regard to their gen-
eral and synchronic conceptual frame.
Within a specified Indian setting, certain aspects of literary performance
and cognitive notions explicitly guide the authors of the texts of poetics,
such as are also found in other manifestations of their intellectual and spiri-
tual culture. Without pretending to give a complete picture, some basic and
recurring features of the classical Indian culture have to be mentioned,
such as are exhibited in the written texts from the period. Some of these
features are common myths, certain ideas about "the word," common reli-
gious goals and, in addition, a quite specific idea of ideological "accept-
ance," which is important for how new ideas are received and integrated. 38
Some recurring features of the formal representation of analytical dis-
course should be mentioned, such as an aptitude for systematizing, sym-
bolic designations, enumerative inclusion of every part of any matter and,
indeed, also the method of debate. 39
When the use of translations of Sanskrit texts, literary or "non-literary,"
and not least the scholarly ones, is necessary certain warnings must be
sounded. Translators actually reconstruct into "presentational" texts many
texts which in their own original culture could rather be termed sheer "in-
formational" texts. 40 The ground for this is, of course, the fact that the texts
are regarded as "exotic" when they express a distant culture. Both style and
form tend to be aestheticised in a translation. 41 Owing to the problem of
transferring semantics, this also affects the way of interpreting the inten-
38 The notion of "inclusivism" is widely accepted by the indologists and is best defined by
the creator of the concept, Paul Hacker. See Gerhard Oberhammer (ed.), Inklusivimus:
Eine indische Denkform, Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Occasional
Papers 2 (Wien: Ε. J. Brill, Gerold and Co; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983). In English
translation "a peculiar mixture of doctrinal tolerance and intolerance ... a form of reli-
gious self-assertion." Cf. further Halbfass, India and Europe, chap. 22. This is one of
many reasons for complications in any study of the intertextuality in the Indian heritage.
39 Some features of the indigenous discourse of analysing and defining are reported below
in the section "Poetics: An Example of the Indian Discourse ..."
40 Terminology according to Pettersson in introductory paper to this volume.
41 The effect of versification of translated texts is mentioned below; see the section on "The
Forms of kävya ..."
tion of texts. This may be observed in most translated Indian texts, even in
those that treat philosophical and existential issues.
The tradition of Sanskrit poetics includes more than twenty, well known,
individual texts, commented on and often referred to over the centuries.
The preserved, elaborate, classical texts cover a period from at least the
sixth to the fifteenth century and are commented upon even during more
recent centuries. They display a discussion on poetry, going back to earlier
but more anonymous texts, as well as a continual development of different
approaches to literary matters.
Some Basic Notions in Indian Traditional, Poetic Theory
Before describing the impact of texts from poetics on the indigenous cul-
ture and in search of the key concepts, an overview of the main topics of
traditional poetic learning is necessary, and may also provide a certain
functional perspective. 42
Two main directions of Sanskrit classical poetics are historically per-
ceivable. 43 Both are inherent in the preserved initial work on poetics,
Näfyasästra, a text attributed to Bharata. 44 Both are actually based on ideas
about "the word" and its "meaning." The first one concerns how "the
word" is treated in the text, mainly how it is formally used. It can be de-
scribed as an elaborate discussion on the "embellishments" (alamkära),
which have been applied to the art of creating certain texts. 45 Within this
42 A source for understanding the special concepts is R. C. Dwivedi (ed.), Principles of Lit-
erary Criticism in Sanskrit (Delhi, Varanasi and Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969).
43 Cf. p. 14 in Paul Hacker, "Grundlagen der indischen Dichtung," in P. Hackert, Grundla-
gen indischer Dichtung und indischen Denkens, ed. Klaus Rüping, Publications of the de
Nobili Research Library 12 (Wien: E. J. Brill, Gerold and Co; Delhi: Motilal Banarsi-
dass, 1985).
44 According to Gerow, Indian Poetics, p. 245, "a compendium on the theatre and the
dance which is usually dated not later than the sixth century, but may contain elements as
old as the 2"J B.C." Cf. also Christina Nygren's essay on the drama in volume 2 of this
series.
45 In accordance with a fairly accepted convention in translating the concept of alamkära
the word "embellishment" will be used henceforward, in order to avoid equivalcence
with the Western notion of "rhetorical figure." Jacobi suggested the expression
"poetische Figur" for alamkära; see Hermann Jacobi, Schriften zur Indischen Poetik und
Ästhetik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969). Cf. Hacker, "Grundla-
gen," pp. 2 0 ff. For the preceding historical background to this Sanskrit tradition, cf.
H.-R. Diwekar, Les Fleurs de rhetorique dans I' Inde: Etude sur devolution des
"alankära" ou ornements stylistiques dans la litterature sanskrite (Paris: Librairie A.
tradition, there is to be found something resembling a connoting definition

of the kävya, the art of poetry, as well as of the art of drama in classical
Sanskrit, näfya.46 The texts on poetics in this tradition are mostly con-
cerned with describing the art of poetry and only to a certain extent with
defining it.47 The definitions turn out most often to be hidden in enumera-
tion and in descriptions of the types of poetry. The methods of definition
follow certain indigenous methods applied all through any tradition of In-
dian learning. The texts on poetics frequently start by establishing certain
traditional genres, in accordance with the bias towards enumeration. 48
The second direction of poetics may be seen as the basis for the follow-
ing development of the theory of aesthetics. It starts off with the concept of
rasa, a word basically meaning "essence, taste"; in the theory of poetry and
drama it is commonly translated as 'sentiment' or 'flavour' (designating
certain properties—traditionally numbering eight—of the object of the aes-
thetic experience, closely bound to or even covering the corresponding
emotional state of the subject, bhäva).49 In the discussion of this concept, a
certain perspective of the meaning as well as the intention of the text is in-
cluded, at least as regards how a text conveys a certain impression. In this
case, it may be allowable to talk about a connoting definition. In the texts
on poetics according to this second tradition, there is not the same care as
in the first mentioned tradition about defining formal concepts or identify-
ing different traditional genres or subtypes of texts.
Maisonneuve, 1930). A full survey of the alamkäras with regard also to the rhetorics of
the ancients is provided by Gero Jenner, Die poetischen Figuren der Inder von
Bhämaha bis Mammafa: Ihre Eigenart im Verhältnis zu den Figuren repräsentativer
antiker Rhetoriker, Schriften des Europa-Kollegs Hamburg 5 (Hamburg: Ludwig Appel
Verlag, 1968). He points out certain similarities between the figures of the two cultural
settings (pp. 96-100).
46 As far as the verbal part is involved, näfya is subject to the same rules as kävya, but it is
at the same time mentioned as a divergent traditional genre by most poeticians, which
does not prevent them from drawing a great deal on the dramas in their examples when
discussing both alamkäras and rasa. Cf. I. Shekhar, Sanskrit Drama: Its Origin and
Decline (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), p. 63.
47 Another way of phrasing these circumstances is given by Gerow, Indian Poetics: "The
theory of literature that developed on the Indian soil might... provide some independent
check on the literature, but is itself exclusively concerned with purposes and forms of lit-
erature, and not with its occasion: it is, in other words, literary philosophy or aesthetics,
rather than criticism" (p. 218). The importance of being distinct on this point is indicated
by T. Todorov, "Structuralism and Literature," in S. Chatman (ed.), Approaches to
Poetics (New York and London: Columbia UP, 1973), pp. 153-68.
48 The concept of genres is brought up above, in the section "The Significance of Sanskrit."
49 Cf Hacker, "Grundlagen," pp. 26-27. "Das Wort rasa hängt in der Tat zwischen dem
Subjektiven und dem Objektiven" (p. 26).
In order to understand the tradition of classical Indian poetics in full, one

special issue should be mentioned, which developed during the later
stages. In the second tradition of poetics, 50 the understanding of kävya as a
combination of word and meaning was not judged to be quite satisfactory,
especially after the first millennium when the intended message of poetry
came to be mainly religious. Certain special, additional ideas, which were
principally inherited from early times, about text and performance
re-emerged and became more significant during post-classical times." The
idea of rasa was promoted and other important technical terms are dhvani
(approximately "sound, tone" or "resonance") and sphofa (basically
"bursting, flashing," referring especially to how "sounds" affect the per-
ception by the mind). 52 Such terms, as well as their exposition, indicate the
constant presence of the idea that the perception of words is not unlike the
perception of music. There is a close connection between drama, song and
music throughout the cultural history of India, from ritual performance to
modern drama with its dance and music, a tradition also established in folk
culture.
kävya as "Verbal Art"
The genuine idea of kävya is of major interest for a discussion of a tradi-

tional Indian view of the notion of literature in the sense of belles-lettres.
There is a double reason for this: it is the main object of Indian poetics and
kävya, when theoretically discussed as a term, seems to come rather close
to the concept of literature as (a kind of) "verbal art."
The narrative tradition of India is in itself a special kind of literature.
Aims, motifs and ideas of belles-lettres—or Kunstdichtung, a not uncom-
mon translation of kävya—were derived from this tradition. The motifs
and even, to a certain extent, the forms (especially the metaphors) of kävya
are consciously and normatively recycled from epics which belong to the
second of the three currents of Indian literature mentioned above.
50 See above, in section on "Sources and Convergent Flows ..."

51 Most of these special concepts are studied in the essays in V. Raghavan and Nagendra
(eds.), An Introduction to Indian Poetics (Bombay, Calcutta etc.: Macmillan and Co.
Ltd, 1970).
52 The use of such terms links poetics closely to the philosophy of language at that time. Cf.
the debate on the subject in K. Kunjunni Raja, Indian Theories of Meaning, The Adyar
Library Series 91 (Madras: Adyar Library, [1963] 1969), pp. 275-315.
Thus singling out kävya as a main candidate for "literature" in a narrow

sense does not exclude other indigenous genres, both contemporary and
preceding. Because kävya in this way reflects an older tradition of texts,
mainly of an epic and narrative nature, it would be natural in this cultural
setting to also include these older genres in the definition of a literature as
verbal art. It must also be observed that the narrative, epic tradition in its
early form was constrained by certain special formal claims. Drama could
also easily be referred to as verbal art and, as far as the texts are concerned,
subject to the same poetical demands as kävya and even the theories of the
performative aspect of drama have had an influence on the poetics of
kävya.
It is however the explicatory texts of the first category—the Vedic tra-
dition of learning—that contain what has been written on how to make
poetry and drama, i.e. the tradition of poetics. 53 The texts of poetics fulfil
the formal pattern of the sästric tradition, which belongs to the first current
of the Indian world of texts, mentioned above, 54 but they do actually treat
literature from the narrative tradition and, at least in later manuals, quote
extensive examples from it, thus providing a true picture of the inter-
mingling of the classical textual traditions.
At the same time, it is in the texts of poetics that a scholarly approach to
verbal art is to be found. The sästra of poetics is set out as a phenomenon
parallel to other scholarly texts and, according to the regular outline of
such texts, it turns out to be both descriptive and prescriptive. Furthermore,
owing to the meeting between the two fields of texts, the "literary" and the
theoretical, a process of development started that changed the character of
the whole narrative tradition into a "verbal art," in such a sense that in the
course of time it could very well be called "presentational." The students
of poetics clearly had a great impact from the beginning both on the theory
and on the practice of creating literary pieces, i.e. in early classical times,
but it is difficult to grasp in detail. From the historical point of view the
course of development is not at all clear.
A definition of literature as "verbal art" and "presentational" is, never-
theless, amazingly suitable for application to the kind of texts called kävya
by the Indians themselves, who have chosen these as the core of texts for
53 kävya as a parallel phenomenon to drama, näfya, has often been translated as "poetry"
and, in spite of the wider sense of the word, the modern term for poetry may be kävya,
but kavita, a cognate word, is also used. For "lyric" various expressions are used to-day,
although words derived from gitä, "song," are most common.
54 See the section "Sources and Convergent Flows ..."
submission to poetic study. The kävya texts (defined as texts subject to the
demands of kävya poetics) may really claim to be "culturally important,
and/or well-formed, and/or conducive to aesthetic experience."55 The use
of a term thus defined would certainly make it necessary to rule out much
of what has commonly been called Indian literature, as being mostly rather
"informational" and "directive"—and nor are such texts indigenously con-
nected to kävya 56 Thus, the definition seems to provide a suitable approach
to the main question discussed here, viz. the internal Indian understanding
of literature in the sense of verbal art.
From considerations made and subsequently corroborated by the ad-
duced passages from Sanskrit poeticians it would be appropriate, at least
briefly, to deliberate on the terminology of modern Indian studies of litera-
ture. A widespread judgement is that sähitya is the notion to be used for
"literature," especially in the sense of belles-lettres in Indian languages.
sähitya is also a term used officially in India to-day. 57 It is important to
point out that this term was introduced in this sense merely as a translation
of the word "literature" during the late nineteenth century, which certainly
validates its use, at least to-day, for modern Indian literature, when identi-
fied as belles-lettres. Such a limitation in time of its use does not mean that
the concept did not exist earlier and it was certainly, as will be shown be-
low, closely bound to ideas of poetry, kävya. In the ancient view of litera-
ture sähitya gradually became important but maintained a single special
and not a general meaning. In fact, its value for the indigenous, classical
comprehension of kävya cannot be overrated, since it is the prerequisite for
any definition of poetry.
The term as used for modern literature is thus surely taken from the stu-
dents of poetics and the main source is duly claimed to be the stanza by
Bhämaha 1,16 "kävya is word and meaning combined." 58 At a certain point
the saying of the poetician Bhämaha was quoted as an abstract noun, "to-
getherness, combination." Commonly, the poeticians Kuntaka and Bhoja
are regarded as responsible for the transformation of the meaning to a su-
55 See Anders Pettersson, article in this volume.

56 Lienhard, History of Classical Poetry, p. 13: "Sanskrit poetics is fond of referring to the
difference that is clearly appreciable between sästra and kävya, i.e., between didactic
writing and poetry. The two sorts of writing show fundamental differences. The former
is purely informative and monosemic in style; the latter is a linguistically complex,
organic whole which, although built up on the same linguistic foundations, is loaded
with meaning down to the last detail and is frequently polysemic."
57 Sähitya Academy, "India's National Academy of Letters," was established 1954.
58 Quoted in the section "Some Passages ..." below.
perior one.59 It should, however, be noted that during the development of

Sanskrit poetics it has been accepted that sähitya is nearly synonymous
with kävya and in this sense even translatable as "poetry" rather than "lit-
erature."60 The claim that sähitya refers to poetics61 seems to emanate from
implicitly curtailing the sähityasästra (scholarly text on sähitya), which
also happens, more seldom, to kävyasästra (scholarly text on kävya), two
concepts where the difference of meaning is not unequivocally estab-
lished.62
The basic etymology of the word sähitya might tell us something about
its conceptual basis as being derived from a verb that roughly means "to
put something together" (cf. "compose" which would lead to the noun
"composition").63 In Sanskrit textual tradition such a meaning is more of-
ten conveyed by the expression samhita. As a background, it may be con-
sidered that the traditional indigenous term for the collections of Vedic
hymns is the same adjectival word (in the feminine form, probably as at-
tributed to /r, 'hymn, sacred text'), samhitä. This latter word of a similar
genesis would be "a text treated according to euphonic rules (esp. the real
continuous text of the Vedas...)." 64
In summary, it goes without saying that it cannot be concluded from the
"modern" term sähitya, as used for "literature," that its more precise mean-
ing is the same as or similar to a genuine, inherited concept, even if the
59 Pollock points out ("Sanskrit Literary Culture," p. 46) that sähitya is "a term used to sig-
nify kävya as an object of theoretical reflection.". In the same sense K. Krishnamoorty,
"What Is 'Sahitya'?" The Mysore Orientalist (1970), pp. 55-61, summarizes the use of
the term sähitya in Sanskrit poetics to be "the very principle of aesthetic harmony under-
lying all poetic utterances" and "the first principle of the literary art" (p. 60).
60 A thorough discussion on the subject is found on pp. 82-104 of V. Raghavan's Bhoja's
Spigära prakäsa (Madras: Vasanta Press, 1963). It is shortly summarized by the author
on pp. 9 6 - 9 7 .
61 V. Raghavan does not seem to consistently keep apart the notions of poetry and poetics;
see V. Raghavan, "Sähitya," in Raghavan and Nagendra (eds.), Introduction to Indian
Poetics, pp. 82-93, and Raghavan's earlier Bhoja's S/ngära prakäsa, e.g. p. 93.
62 Cf. below, in section "Some Passages ...," the quotations from Räjasekhara, Kävyami-
märiisä, ed. C. D. Dalai and R. Anantakrishna Shastry, Gaekwad's Oriental Series 1
(Baroda: Nirnayasagar Press, 1916).
63 The idea seems to be comparable to concepts in classical poetics in the West, such as
Greek synthesis and Latin compositio. But a closer look reveals that these concepts refer
to prose and not poetry. Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik
(München: Max Hueber Verlag, 1960), §911. "Die compositio ist die prosaische
Entsprechung des poetischen Versbaus"—sc. versificatio (my remark). The rules given
pertain only to the discursive system and word order.
64 M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1899 etc.),
sub voce.
word was basically drawn from the old texts of poetics. The procedure of
borrowing ancient, cultural and technical words is well established in most
cultures. In India Sanskrit survives as the most living source. The modern
content of the term must be regarded as a construct, even though based on
a certain definition—or description—made by ancient Sanskrit students of
poetics. However, it was only when thus used, under given conditions, that
it corresponded to the rather more central notion of kävya.
Additionally, it should be recalled that sähitya is not the working term
for literature in every modern Indian language. Some Indian languages
have chosen other concepts and words for literature from the ancient texts
on poetics, such as vänmaya,65 while a variety of ancient Sanskrit notions
are used for "novel," "short story," "play," etc. 66
The Forms of kävya and Ideas about "the Word"
One criterion of what "literature" is—not in the sense of texts, but as

belles-lettres—is sometimes pointed out as being a formal one. In doing
this, a distinction between the "word" as function and the "word" as form
has to be observed. Focusing on the form of texts, it must be noted that
verse and metre are visible/audible categories, and serve as denotational
means of identifying literature or literary genres. Such a way of defining
by form is known in the texts of Indian poetics only as a means of catego-
rising, but not as a relevant definition of poetry. 67
Some indigenous concepts might be mentioned, which when described
with regard to their contents, correspond to our notions of metre, rhythm
and composition. Verse in metrical form (sütra), however, is not at all re-
stricted to poetry as a part of Sanskrit belles-lettres. It is even more closely
65 Classical poeticians include in this term both sästra and kävya, cf. Räjasekhara,
Kävyamimämsä, chap. 2 (first passage quoted from him below, section "Some Passages
...")• This designation for "literature," already to be found in the introduction of Dantjin,
Kävyädarsa 1,5, is used in, e.g., Marathi. In Urdu, Sindhi and Kashmiri the term for "lit-
erature" is taken from the Muslim world in the form of the Arabic adab. For the term in
Tamil see below, note 70; cf. also note 33.
66 Examples of such terms are upanyäs/kädambari for novel, kathä for short story and, in
an uninterrupted tradition, näfaka for drama. Cf. N. Krishnaswamy, "Indian Rhetoric,"
in Ε. Τ. O. Sloane (ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP,
2001), pp. 384-87 (p. 387), and further entries and glossaries in Natarajan (ed.), Hand-
book of Twentieth-Century Literatures of India.
67 Cf. Chari, "Genre Theory," p. 65.
tied to the didactic and scientific types of Sanskrit texts, as well as to texts
of other origins that have attained a certain cultural prestige. 68 Such formal
features are part of an inheritance from fairly ancient times, and especially
from sacred texts. For early Indian literature it is impossible to apply the
(late) Western dichotomy of prose and poetry on formal grounds, which is
why using certain formal criteria of poetry, such as being metrical, would
obviously be misleading. In this connection, it is necessary to point out that,
by translating any non-literary, versified, Sanskrit text into a versified Eng-
lish version, we implement, in our view, the idea of a certain kind of "liter-
ary" quality in the target text which is not really present in the source text.
In view of the whole textual tradition of India, it is important to note that
almost every intellectual phenomenon is focused on the "word." The
"word" and its functional qualities are consciously referred to and fre-
quently discussed as a religious and metaphysical entity, as well as being
analysed as the core of speech, song, invocation, narrative, ritual and so
forth. There is in particular an uninterrupted tradition of grammar and lin-
guistic philosophy in India, expressly discussing the "word" in every as-
pect. 69 The concentration on the "word" in poetics is manifested by the fact
that the whole tradition of poetics in India is actually included in grammar
and appears in many cases as an extension of it.70
In fact, in every text about poetics, its praxis is intermingled with ques-
tions of language and grammar. 71 The science of verbal art in classical In-
68 Cf., e.g., the puräna texts presented below, section "Choice of Textual Material ..." in
connection with Agnipuräna, as well as comments on the quotations from various texts
in the section below, "Some Passages ..."
69 The most notable terms are väc ("voice, talk, word"), sabda ("sound, word"), pada
("word as segment of a phrase"). The most judicious description of the ideas developed
concerning language is given by Raja, Indian Theories. It should, however, be noted that
one special interest in linguistic aspects of the "word" is in fact missing in Indian culture,
the same as that which is one of the most prominent features of the Western traditions
developed on the soil of Greece, viz. the explicit rhetorical function of "the word". Cf.
Hacker, "Grundlagen," p. 14.
70 The same is true for in certain respects the different and in other respects the similar tra-
dition of poetics in Tamil, where the matter is treated in the handbooks of grammar as
integrated chapters. Cf. Krishnaswamy, "Indian Rhetoric," p. 386. Moreover, the Tamil
word for "literature" is ilakkiyam. Skr. lakfyam, "what should be designated," and the
word for "grammar" is ilakkanam, Skr. lakfanam, "what is designating." This denomina-
tion survives in modern Tamil literary scholarship (cf. Zvelebil, Companion Studies, pp.
129 ff.), but in the other Dravidian languages the lack of an indigenous tradition of
poetics is made conspicuous by their use of the term sähitya.
71 Pollock, "Sanskrit Literary Culture": "what makes kävya different from everything else
has essentially to do with language itself, and ... accordingly, literary analysis must
centre on language" (p. 46).
dia is not basically connected with the science of logic, nor with any gen-
eral theory of aesthetics, in the way that it emerged in the West from Aris-
totle onwards. Instead it is the grammar that is observed as its foundation.
It has to be noted that one of the basic and substantial presumptions of In-
dian poetics is that in composing poetry, at least as regards the traditional
genre of kävya, no violations of the rules of grammar and linguistic forms
are allowed. 72 There is in Indian poetics truly such a demand on verbal art
and it may be used as a connoting definition. To some extent, a literary lan-
guage is separated from the language of daily life, 73 which is also described
by the grammarians, but not unconditionally regulated. Such a claim for
correctness seems to deviate from Western ideas about how language is ac-
tually used in literary activity. According to the Western concept, at least
in modern times, grammar can very well be taken over by creativity, e.g.,
in poetry, while, on the other hand, the normal demand on ordinary lan-
guage would be for strict grammatical correctness. 74
The following discussion and the survey of textual evidence will thus
concentrate on how Indian poeticians openly or covertly define their main
subject, the kävya. For the purpose of presenting a reliable picture of "lit-
erariness" in Indian terms, it is necessary to map the definitions or descrip-
tions in the words of certain poeticians themselves.
Even though the terms would allow of comparisons the issue is not with-
out complications when examined in more detail. In a preliminary attempt
to understand the idea of kävya from the inside, we already arrive at the
72 For example, Bhämaha, Kävyälamkära 1,10: "Not in any case a single, faulty word
might be recited. Badly reputed people are reproached for a kävya as well as for a bad
son." Editions by Batuk Näth Üarma and Baldeva Upädhyäya, Kashi Sanskrit Series 61
(Benares: Vidya Vilas Press, 1928) and by Naganatha Sastry, 2"J ed. (Delhi, Varanasi
and Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970).
73 Another difference between the everyday language and undertakings on the one hand
and such literary activity that is conditioned by poetics on the other is "the insight that
literature for-its-own-sake can provoke and is uniquely adapted to a peculiar pleasure not
associated with other-oriented uses of language" (Gerow, Indian Poetics, p. 219).
74 How to use the word is of course an important topic also in the Western tradition of
poetics. But it seems already at the beginning to have been discussed from a different
aspect of the literary medium. Aristotle, when describing certain grammatical functions
in his Poetics, seems to have judged the importance of the word differently. The "dic-
tion" (λέξις) is only the fourth element in tragedy: Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. S.
Halliwell, Loeb Clasical Library (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1995), p.
53. When "diction" in general has been discussed with special references to "sound"
(φωνή) further on in his text, Aristotle mainly describes its parts in their capacity of bear-
ing a semantic content (pp. 99 ff.), stating that the diction should be "clear" (σαφή) but
never touching upon the question of correctness.
difficulties that semantics and translation present, just as in the case of al-
most any term from a foreign culture. According to the indigenous enu-
meration of texts and possible subdivisions, following the contents of rit-
ual, didactic and narrative texts, the concept of kävya seems most easily to
be defined as what remains when other such kinds of texts have been dis-
carded. 75 But this is not enough to make the notion understood. The func-
tion of kävya must also be exemplified, in order to tell us something about
the connotation of the term and in order to provide a basis for comparison
with the modern concept of literature. Not only the definition of a concept
of "literature" in a non-Western setting, but also its function must be stu-
died through the judgements of indigenous thinkers. The approach to the
material, the texts of poetics, should be not to look at them as ready-made
corpora, but to apply hermeneutic methods, together with a historical point
of view.
Poetics:
An Example of the Indian Discourse of
Analysing and Defining
At the outset, it is necessary to realise that, owing to basic differences in the

discourse, direct comparisons of definitions are not possible. Any account
of the view of literature must follow the demands of the indigenous presen-
tation of the subject.
The methods of presenting the topic of poetry vary in the different texts
of poetics. 76 Before presenting a material of text samples, which contain in-
75 The concept of kävya, which would be a traditional genre expressly used by the Sanskrit
theorist of literary art, should in our understanding and analysed in certain subtypes, be
regarded as a relative concept in view of the genre. In such a classification in our terms it
would roughly include drama, minor epic texts and poetry. Traditional works on the his-
tory of Indian—specifically Sanskrit—literature follow this pattern. Cf., e.g., A. Ber-
riedale Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature (London: Oxford UP, 1920). The species
suggested by the Indian poeticians are of another order as will be evident from the pas-
sages of text below, section on "Some Passages..."
76 T. G. Mainkar, "Some Observations on the Definition of Poetry," in Dwivedi (ed.), Prin-
ciples of Literary Criticism, pp. 114-28, who has studied the central definitions of kävya,
says (p. 114): "It must not be supposed that it is the severe logical expectations and tests
that have made these problems [of defining poetry] so difficult, for in their very nature
the problems are difficult to be solved, and admit of different explanations, since what is
being discussed is essentially a subjective problem: what do I understand by poetry and
why do I like it."
digenous definitions of the art of poetry, a short description of the state of

the art of analysing and defining in Sanskrit texts must be briefly pre-
sented, in order to make the passages chosen understandable. The art of de-
fining is a main concern of the well-developed, classical logic of India. In
scholarly texts—including texts on poetics—which more or less have pre-
tensions to following accepted logical methods, there is a convergence be-
tween methods defining concepts through their denotation and through
their connotation.77 Both methods, however, are intended to delimit con-
cepts.
In the first place, in Indian treatises and commentaries there is a merely
enumerative method of defining. The information about the concepts is not
analytical but reduced to their being located within a sequence of enumer-
ated, related concepts, most often also located within hierarchies. On the
other hand, there is another, connotative method, by which instead some
information is given about the individual concept, its pragmatic position in
a system is shown through properties, functions, etc. Both strategies are
present in the texts of poetics, but the first one is usually the more elabor-
ate. The two methods are often applied in combination, so that properties
may be assigned in passing to different types of concepts within an enu-
meration.
Such are the methods applied in the introductions to many of the works
on poetics, commonly in combination but often in a simplified form.
Sketchy treatment of the definitions is explained by the fact that the texts
are based on a quite deeply rooted and unchallenged, common tradition
concerning poetics. Certain traditional definitions were already established
when they were presented in the classical texts preserved.
There is a basic stock of analytical, connotation-based definitions, which
recur in most of the texts of poetics from the sixth century onwards. One of
the two initiators of the proper classical poetics, Dandin, claims as early as
in the initial stanzas of his famous text on poetics Kävyädarsa ("The mirror
of kävya") that he is going to give a definition of kävya.78 Then follows a
77 According to the tradition of logic from John Stuart Mill, a concord between the con-
cepts of denotation and logical extension, as well as between connotation and logical
intension, is supposed. Biardeau discussed the concepts in an analysis of the meaning of
Sanskrit jäti and lakfana respectively (Biardeau, "Jäti et lakjana"). She rejected such a
dualistic view in Indian logic.
78 Dan<Jin, Kävyädarsa 1,2, uses the Sanskrit term lak$ana, which would approximate to
the connoting kind of definition.
eulogy of the "word" and the need to treat it well; 79 even beauty is a re-
quirement and the metaphor of a picture or mirror is hinted at. The prom-
ised "definition" follows: "[T]he body [of the kävyas] is a series of [gram-
matical] words \pada\, which is divided by the intended meanings."80 After
this statement, he returns to classifying such series of words according, for
example, to whether their form is metrical or free, as different kinds of
texts, and whether they are executed in various languages.
Another, more elaborate way of connoting the concept of kävya is most
often referred to as first authorised by Bhämaha, who was a contemporary
of Dantfin.81 His main definition was a common one, but his wording was
certainly to be important to many of the poeticians, especially those en-
gaged in the "embellishments" (alamkära) of kävya. Most of these thus be-
gin their treatises by saying that kävya is "word and meaning which have
good qualities, are 'blameless' and are endowed with embellishments." 82
Some of the poeticians do not elaborate on the inner qualities of kävya
but find it necessary to say only that "kävya is understood from the embel-
lishment, and embellishment is beauty."83 For some others the beauty and
the impression of the poem have the basic property of being vakrokti, a
concept explained by "striking," or sometimes "evasive speech" which is
closer to the etymological meaning "twisted, ambiguous sayings."84 When
79 Ibid. 1,5, Darujin says that because "[A]fter having obtained anything that is given voice
[verbal art, vähmaya, see the section "kävya as 'Verbal A r t ' " ] as a mirror of the fame of
the sovereignty, it does not, when having seen itself [in the mirror], be destroyed even
when they [the poets] are not [no longer] present."
80 Ibid., 1,10.
81 The original stanza by Bhämaha, Kävyälamkära 1,16 (one of the samples in the section
on "Some Passages . . . " below) about "word and meaning combined" introduces the sub-
sequently important terminology sabda (word), art ha (meaning) and sahita (combined).
The first two of these concepts and their relation are also at the core of the discussion on
philosophy of language, cf. Raja, Indian Theories, p. 25.
82 Hemacandra, Kävyänusäsana, ed. Sivadatta and K. P. Parab, rev. W. L. S Panslkar, 3rd
ed., Kävyamälä 71 (Bombay, 1934), p. 19. (In the commentary it is not called a defini-
tion or a means of identification of kävya but is introduced as having a "nature of its
own.") Another edition of Hemacandra's work ("Instruction about kävya," ca. 1140) is
Τ. S. Nandi's: L. D. Series 123 (Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology, 2000).
83 Vämana, Kävyälamkärasütravi tti ("Explanation of verses about embellishments of
kävya," ca. 800) 1,1-2. Edition by B. Jha, Kashi Sanskrit Series 209 (Varanasi:
Chowkhamba, 1971).
84 Already mentioned by Bhämaha as an inner property of kävya, and claimed by Vämana
to be the main essence of poetry. The main promoter of the concept was Kuntaka, tenth
century, who supplemented the traditional definition or kävya with vakrokti as a necessary
property in Vakroktijlvita 1,7. Edition by S. K. De, 3rd ed.(Calcutta: Firma Κ. L. Mukho-
padhyay, 1961). Cf. passages from Kuntaka below, the section on "Some Passages . . . "
"sentiment" (rasa) became an important topic in the theory of verbal and

performative art through Änandavardhana (ninth century), with the ex-
haustive exegesis of his oeuvre by Abhinavagupta (c. 1000), certain stu-
dents of poetics chose to use rasa as a main definition. Visvanätha, who
wrote an extensive tract on poetics, Sähityadarpana85 ("Mirror of composi-
tion") in the twelvth century states firmly in 1,3 "kävya is an expression
endowed with rasa."
Most of the successive traditional poeticians after the beginning of clas-
sical poetics proper in the time of Dan<Jin obviously found it rather easy to
define with the help of quotations. In some of the works, the definitions of
kävya, however, are more deliberately expressed and may thus provide a
better understanding of the view of the idea of verbal art. The selection of
passages below is derived from such Sanskrit poeticians from different pe-
riods who, at least in passing, show a concern about defining kävya accord-
ing to its properties, not just its role in the textual tradition. Most of them
belong mainly to the tradition which is concerned with the "embellish-
ments" (alamkära), but some have also integrated ideas about the emotion-
al qualities of poetry in their systems of poetics. 86 The examples will be
presented in the form of exegetical translations or explications.
Choice of Textual Material from Sanskrit Poetics
According to the most widely accepted systematisation and chronology of

texts of Sanskrit poetics, 87 certain stages may be discerned. The texts are
presented chronologically in this section. In the following section short
85 sähitya is a term used only in the title of the work by Visvanätha, Sähityadarpana.
According to Gerow, Indian Poetics it could hardly be "here used for the first time in the
sense of 'literature' rather than 'poetry' " (p. 282), because it is never explained or even
mentioned in the work. The topic of Visvanätha is kävya, as perceived earlier in the
tradition of poetics. Visvanätha's work was edited by J .R. Ballantyne and P. D. Mitra
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, [repr. of ed. Calcutta 1875] 1994). On the concept of
sähitya, see above, section "kävya as 'Verbal Art'."
86 Diwekar, Les Fleurs de rhetorique, imagines a change of focus in poetics from alamkära
to other qualities of poetry (pp. 123 ff.). The traditions, however, seem to lead parallel
lives in classical and postclassical times.
87 Sushil Kumar De, Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London:
Luzac and Co., 1923-1925); 2nd ed. entitled History of Sanskrit Poetics (Calcutta,
1960); P. V. Kane, History of Sanskrit Poetics, 4th ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1971); Gerow, Indian Poetics (cf. its p. 218, footnote 2).
passages from the chosen texts are translated that expressly propose to in-
troduce the idea of kävya.
The works chosen are as follows. 88
(1) Agnipuräna ("The old text of Agni,"89 ascribed to a mythological au-

thor, Vedavyäsa) is one of the 18 basic puränas,90 which belong to the third
group of texts above in the general survey of currents of Indian literature,
i.e. popular literature.91 They have, however, to be classified sui generis;
puräria means "ancient," to be interpreted as "ancient traditions." Agnipu-
räna is one of three that have been described as popular encyclopaedias. 92
The date of a complex and anonymous text such as the Agnipuräna is
rather uncertain and a matter of ongoing discussion. Most often, a period
from the eighth to tenth century is mentioned.93 Even though probably
compiled rather late, the text contains ancient, varied material of an un-
known time and origin. The section on poetics in Agnipuräna provides a
popular summary of the prevailing concepts of early Sanskrit poetics, as
based primarily on a widespread, but perhaps somewhat superficial knowl-
edge of a preserved work that can claim to be the textual overture to Indian
poetics, viz. the famous Näfyasästra by Bharata.94 This indicates that there
was already an interest in this matter in the early centuries of our era. The
older poeticians, such as Bhämaha and Dandin, also seem to have been
known to the compilers of Agnipuräna.
88 So far, the texts have been chosen on the criterion that they represent both common and
individual definitions. Citations from certain other authors on rhetoric and poetics could
be added here (Dandin, Rudrata, Vagbhafa, Visvanätha), but they seem not to be quite as
explicit, nor very pioneering in their views.
89 The name of honour and the authority of this special encyclopaedic text refer it to Agni,
a surviving god from Vedic times, who embodies "fire." Editions by Baladeva Upäd-
hyäya, Kashi Sanskrit Series 174 (Varanasi: Chowkhamba, 1966) and by M. N. Dutt, 2
vols., Chowkhamba Sanskrit Studies (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office,
1967).
90 The "great puränas" (mahäpuräna), cf. Rocher, The Puränas, p. 67.
91 See above, section "Sources and Convergent Flows . . . " The date of the text as written
down and distributed is difficult to establish. Rocher, ibid. p. 227, says "fixed probably
in the eighth century." Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, argues "that at least sometime before the
third and fourth century A.D. there was a recast made by one man" which gradually
received additions (p. 23).
92 Rocher, The Puränas, pp. 79, 134-37. Bailey, Ganesapuräna, pp. 60-61, prefers to clas-
sify such texts from the point of view of treating "practical matters."
93 Rocher, The Puräijas, pp. 136-37.
94 This text—or possibly this compilation of earlier texts—in the name of Bharata is the
most ancient one on the topic preserved, commonly dated back to before A D 300. Cf.
footnote 44 above and Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, p. 47. Edition by Κ. N. Ramakrishna and
J. S. Pade, vol. l - ( B a r o d a , 1926-).
(2) Kävyälamkära ("Embellishment of poetry") by Bhämaha dates from

about 700 AD. The text is often referred to by later authors and is regarded
as a serious authority. The author's name, Bhämaha, is most frequently
mentioned together with his contemporary, Dandin, with whom he seems
to have had a certain dialogue. These two authors usher in the genuinely
classical period of the learning of poetics whereas the only predecessor
whose text is preserved is the aforementioned Bharata. An important am-
bition of Bhämaha, in addition to his description of the qualities and the
blemishes connected with the "embellishments" (alamkära) of kävya,
which he shares with Dandin, seems to be to reconcile the identification of
the concepts of poetics with the current discourse of grammar and logic. In
this regard, some have contended that he was a Buddhist. 95
(3) Vakroktijlvita (lit. "The life of the twisted expression") by Kuntaka

was written some time around AD 1000. "His work is one of the most in-
dependently conceived in the history of Indian poetics." 96 The concern is
with the activity and skill of the poet. Kuntaka's main thesis is that kävya
uses, and should use, expressions that from the grammatical point of view
are "twisted," because it is essential for both the definition and also for the
charm of poetry. The idea is not a new one in the story of poetics and was
probably widely accepted even before Bhämaha 97 and Dandin. Kuntaka
however refers the application of vakrokti, "twisted expression," to all
levels of the language. He introduces the abstract term vakratä ("twisted-
ness") to describe his favourite idea, but after he has given a definition at
the beginning of the work, the contention that poetry is for the effect of
"colourfulness" (vaicitrya), he seems to use the two abstract words "as in-
terchangeable terms." 98
According to the introductory parts, Kuntaka's aim in his work was ob-
viously to include and describe all alamkäras according to their effect as
vakrokti, but until the whole text by his hand is recovered we are unable to
know if he in fact did so.
(4) Kävyamimämsä ("Examination of poetry") by Räjasekhara is a

Schoolbook on poetics probably from the first half of the tenth century. The
written works by Räjasekhara include dramas, four of which have been
95 Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, pp. 83-84.

96 Gerow, Indian Poetics, p. 262.
97 Bhämaha expresses in Kävyälamkära 2,85 that vakrokti is a discrepant meaning and
what would the embellishment be without it?
98 De's edition of Vakroktijlvita (see note 84 above), p. XXVI.
preserved. His contribution to the corpus of poetics is an early treatise with

the character of a comprehensive account of a preceding tradition in the
field.
This work is concerned then with the prerequisites of poetry, rather than
with poetry per se ... Räjasekhara is an absolutely essential contributor to
the formulation of the Indian poetic tradition, more valuable for his rarity
and iconoclasm."
The work has also been characterised as "a practical handbook for poets"100
and said by others to be an encyclopaedic puräna text, transferred "into re-
spectable academic format.'" 01 It has also been seen as "atypical" and "a
socio-history of poetry.'"02 Regarding the background of literary tradition
Räjasekhara's focus is largely on the motivation and activity of the poet
(kavi). Moreover, Räjasekhara was occupied with the question of how to
classify the whole corpus of literary records, which he did with reference
to many earlier authorities, thus making his own contribution to systemati-
sation somewhat imprecise. He seems mainly to be a representative of
those scholars who continually attempted to classify texts and describe
well-known rules, rather than a true theoretician of poetry and poetics.
Thus he followed the track of earlier scholars, in line with the duty of an
author of a Schoolbook. Classifying literature had started early, in pre-clas-
sical, perhaps even in late Vedic times, when the upavedas (secondary
Veda texts amongst which poetics was to be counted) were frequently dis-
cussed.103
Because of the pedagogical purpose of the text, the author was not
obliged to use the usual metrical form, sloka, but did so in quotations, ac-
cording to the rules of learned works, a device intended to provide authori-
ty for the text.
(5) Srngäraprakäsa ("Elucidation of love") by Bhoja. The author is
traditionally identified as the rajput king Bhoja of Malwa in western cen-
tral India. He resided in Dhärä, where he reigned AD 1010-1055, known
for his promotion of art. He was known, and referred to, by later poeticians

100 Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, p. 216.
102 Ibid, p. 271.
103 Paul Horsch, Die Vedische Gäthä- und Sloka-Literatur (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1966),
the first part of the work, entitled "Die Randgebiete der Vedischen Literatur."
as the author of one large work on poetics, Sarasvatikan(häbharana.m But

his later major work recovered in the West is Sffigäraprakäsa, "described
as the largest known work in Sanskrit Poetics.'" 05 Bhoja follows the tradi-
tions, but has added an individual view on the kävya.m In 36 extensive
chapters in non-metrical form, Bhoja outlines poetry as a whole, largely re-
ferring to and citing from the poets of kävya and his forerunners in the field
of poetics. It would perhaps be appropriate to call the work eclectic but it
also stands out as rather original in its structure and has a personal ultimate
objective. The first third of the work contains an eclectic expose of com-
mon ideas up to the point where Bhoja discloses his main and somewhat
personal purpose, which is to show that the "sentiment" (rasa) is the real
soul of poetry; among the codified rasas he especially promotes love
(srhgära) which, in his opinion, should encompass all other sentiments.
(6) Kävyaprakäsa ("Elucidation of poetry") by Mammata dates from a

time shortly before 1100 AD and belongs to a period of Sanskrit poetics
which has been termed "scholastic," i.e. in the sense of establishing a cer-
tain interpretation of traditions. The theories are developed in a personal
way in this famous and most comprehensive work ("the whole field of Po-
etics is traversed'" 07 ). The reflection on rasa is included, as well as many
concepts from a philosophy of language developed during the preceding
centuries. Creating kävya, as well as any possible definition of the topic, is
presented in a not too systematic way.108 The intention of the author seems
to be "attempts to comprehend and integrate the various extant doctrines of
Indian poetics in the light of one of them, the dhvani theory" but in such a
way that "a better term than 'systematic' might be 'synthetic.'" 109 The
scholastic turn is evidenced by the aim to combine descriptions of kävya, as
104 Sarasvattkanfhäbhararia means "The necklace of SarasvatT"; the goddess SarasvatI was
considered the goddess of eloquence. Kane describes it (Sanskrit Poetics, pp. 157 ff.) as
"a voluminous work, but it is more or less a compilation" with an abundance of examples
to the rules that govern kävya.
105 De, Sanskrit Poetics, vol. 1, p. 147. Syhgäraprakäsa edited by V. Raghavan, Harvard
Oriental Series 53 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1998).
106 Bhoja is by Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, p. 259, contended to follow Agnipuräna on his topic,
a view further promoted by Gerow, Indian Poetics, pp. 269-70. Gerow agrees also with
De (Sanskrit Poetics, vol. 2, p. 267) concerning an in my opinion not quite fair negative
judgment on both of Bhoja's works on poetics when he characterises them as "uncritical
compilations of the most diverse views."
107 Kane, Sanskrit Poetics, p. 266. Edition (2 vols.) by R. C. Dwiwedi (Delhi, Patna and
Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966-1970).
109 Ibid., p. 272. For the concept of dhvani, see above, section on "Some Basic Notions..."
the creative process and the duality of word and meaning (sabdärthau),
with ideas about "sentiment" (rasa), "tone" (dhvani) and "hint, suggestion"
(vyangya).
(7) Rasagangädhara ("The ocean110 of rasa") was presented at the Moghul
court in the seventeenth century by the prolific poet Jagannätha. His
oeuvre bears witness to the ongoing process of Sanskrit scholarship of po-
etics over at least a millennium. It is a piece of work which has been highly
esteemed, both by Indian and by Western scholars. "[Stylistically and in-
tellectually it is indeed a classic.'" 11 Most of the discussion about kävya is
systematically treated, formally in prose as being most suitable for an argu-
mentative discourse. He argues, with logic as his instrument, against each
existing definition and presents a theory of his own in which he introduces
a cognitive link between the grammatical and performative domains of
kävya. The author's focus throughout is cognitive, even emotive, and at the
start he already adds to his topic in addition to the commonplaces a dimen-
sion of metaphysics. Like other poeticians Jagannätha does not, however,
seem to differentiate between the emotive properties of kävya and its re-
ception by the audience.
Some Passages on the Idea of kävya
Owing to the methods of the scholarly texts, the passages cited below can-
not provide direct definitions of a concept such as "literature." What they
mean to suggest instead would be an idea of the indigenous discourse on
the matter. Even the absence of certain questions in the Indian texts might
indicate differences from Western notions. Owing to semantic discrepan-
cies certain Sanskrit terms are also better kept in the translations.112
The demand on the textual form of classical, scholarly tracts, as well as
of the puränas, is that they should normally be presented in the most com-
mon kind of metrics, originally applied both in epic and didactic texts, the
110 gangädhara means "the receptacle for the Ganges."

111 Gerow, Indian Poetics, p. 287. Suman Pande, "Jagannatha's ramaniyatä," in Dwivedi
(ed.), Principles of Literary Criticism, pp. 190-94, calls Jagannätha "the last luminary in
the galaxy of literary critics" (p. 190). Edition by C. Chatterjee, vol. 1, Bibliotheca Indica
Series 316 (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1992).
112 There are no codified and reliable translations to quote as would be possible for Western
classical texts; the translations have thus been made by myself attempting to balance two
obvious claims, fidelity to the source text and comprehensibility of the target text.
sloka. A sloka, as metrical form, consists of 2x8 syllables and a combina-

tion of two such lines is the verse, also designated sloka.n3
(1) Agnipurapa
in the following extracts displays a common and inherited view, compre-
hensively presented, of what kävya as well as näfaka are, with arguments
and mostly sets of enumerative definitions.
Agnipuräna 337, 1-5, 7, 9.

Now I shall tell about the figures of kävya ["poesis"] and näfaka ["perfor-
mative art"], vähmaya [what is "speechable"]114 is considered to be that
which sounds, letters, word, and sentence. The three [genres] accomplish
the expressions of sästra [texts of erudition] and itihäsa [narratives]; in
sästra the prime is sabda [= the word in general], in the narrative it is the
conclusion [= the content], kävya is different from these two since its prime
is abhidhä [= the individual use of the word].115 To be a man in the world is
difficult and also knowledge is difficult to acquire in it. It is difficult to be a
poet in it and it is difficult to acquire the power [of kävya, i.e. to master it].
Creativity is difficult in the field [and] discrimination is difficult in it. All
erudition sought by those who are not of good knowledge does not succeed
... kävya has obvious ["outbursting"] adornments and is free from blem-
ishes of the perfect... kävya etc. is acknowledged as threefold, it is prose,
verse and a mixture of these.116
The subsequent discussion turns out to be an identification of different

kinds of prose, which in this case are certain kinds of narratives without
metrical form. Their contents are scheduled in certain ways, as eulogies
and such topics as exhibit the right kinds of "style" ( r i t i ) u l or "modes of
performance" ( v r t t i / p r a v f t t i ) . The metrical form of the poetry is referred to
as obvious, but the kävya par preference, also in the case of its adornments
requires characteristic descriptions of certain natural, emotional and social
113 The fimction of this metrical form may to a certain extent be comparable with that of the
hexameter in classical Greek and Latin literature.
114 The word was used at the earliest in the history of poetics by Danîn and has been trans-
lated and used in modern times as a term for literature. See above, section "kävya as
'Verbal Art'."
115 "The primary meaning of the word," according to Raja, Indian Theories, there treated as
the topic of his chap. 2.
116 Cf. Darujin, Kävyadarsa 1,11 ff.
117 The "styles" are usually referred to by denominations according to different geographi-
cal and social prerequisites. Some of the poeticians made such styles a major property in
defining kävya. The concept is further presented in an essay from 1969 by. A. P. Mishra,
"The Contribution of riti to the Excellence of Poetic Composition," in Dwivedi (ed.),
Principles of Literary Criticism, pp. 145-52.
phenomena. Finally the effect of "sentiment," rasa,11* is acknowledged for

kävya, even though the discourse or rather the mastering of the speech is
appreciated as primary.
(2) Bhämaha
relates kävya to concepts well-known in Indian philosophy, but he is main-
ly occupied by that part of poetics which focuses on the "embellishments"
(alamkäras)n9 with regard to the norms for creating the right literary prod-
uct.
At the beginning of the book, Bhämaha declares the importance of
kävya.
Bhämaha, Kävyälamkära 1, 4
What is fame without good behaviour, what is the night without the moon?
Of what kind is skilfulness in speech without a real skill in composing
kävya!
After the praise of the highness of poetry and the everlasting fame it con-
veys, Bhämaha describes what is comprised in kävya.
Bhämaha, Kävyälamkära 1, 9 - 1 0
A speech of kävya should be regarded as word, metre, word-meaning, plot
as the refuge of narrative, the world, argument and art. Practising of the per-
formance of kävya should be made after having learnt to know the word and
what is denominated [by it], [as well as] after having made reverences to
those who know it and after having regarded other compositions.
The following stanzas by Bhämaha contain what is supposedly the original

phrasing about kävya as a combination of word and meaning. Later poeti-
cians often expressly quote the words as being pronounced by him. To cor-
roborate his statement Bhämaha does not elaborate on it as a definition, in
spite of its subsequent usage as such, but immediately proceeds by telling
the species of kävya.
Bhämaha, Kävyälamkära verses (sütras) 1,16-17.

kävya is word and meaning combined, and it is twofold as prose and metri-
cal form. It is threefold as regards Sanskrit [arranged language], Prakrit
[natural dialects] and otherwise Apabhrämsa [spoken dialects]. Also kävya
is divided in four, when it comes to praise of the actions of gods etc., fiction
[literally, invention of reality], topics of art and of science.
118 See above, section on "Some Basic Notions..."

119 Ibid.
Subsequently Bhämaha describes the types of kävya and enumerates and

discusses five subgenres, plays, certain narratives and collections of stan-
zas. The most important is defined as such pieces of verbal art as consist of
a certain kind of sections (sarga), viz. the great kävya (mahäkävya), in
which are included the epics. Such texts, he claims, should be qualified by
noblesse, meaningfulness, and should be adorned, but also devoted to real-
ity.
(3) Kuntaka
Kuntaka, Vakroktijlvita 1, 7-10
Presenting his main idea about the "twisted expression," vakrokti,
Kuntaka says at the beginning of his work:
Word and meaning combined are at hand in a composition that is supplied
with the poet's twisted [verbal] activity. Even when [you say that] "the
meaning is to be expressed, the word is the expressive" there is actually a
higher import of these two in the [here presented] method of kävya. Even if
there are other ones [expressive words], the [used] word is something that
expresses the intended meaning, is the agreeable by its activity in itself,
bringing an emotional delight. The two are embellishments [and] the
twisted expression (vakrokti) in its turn is said to be an ornament of the two,
a roundabout and skilful [kind of] speech.
Kuntaka's auto-commentary refers back to 1,3, where the author has stated
that his aim is "to establish the state of something variegated, which has
the effect of an uttermost charm." Now he explains that vakrokti is "a term
for something strange—variegated [vicitra, lit. 'of various colours']—
which surpasses the expressions already established." This seems to make
Kuntaka a critic of the more common kind of poeticians who mostly de-
scribe the right and wrong expressions and the embellishments of poetry.
In some later stanzas he elaborates further on the idea that there is some-
thing more to poetry than merely "word and meaning," even though the
combination of the two is basic.
The procedure of merely describing types is of course common, and to
the poets, who read the handbooks, the examples are just enough to estab-
lish the pattern.
Kuntaka, VakroktijJvita 1, 16-17

Word and meaning [rightly] composed are always recognised by brilliance;
[but] how do they perform the new [what was not there before] when com-
bined? The togetherness of the two is, with regard to inherence of beauty, a
certain basis, enjoyable through complete absence [non-reduncancy] of
anything beyond.
To these explicit questions there is no other answer than an explanation of

how this should be effected: "there are six means of the 'twisting' (vakra-
tva) in a poet's activity." For every one of them subtypes are then recorded.
Thus Kuntaka does not actually abstain from recommending the same
procedures as other poeticians, but merely transfers them to other aspects in
order to identify not what poetry has in common, but what is special about it.
(4) Räjasekhara
Räjasekhara, Kävyamlmämsä (extracts from) chapter 2.
The second chapter accounts for the position of kävya within the sästra
tradition, and in doing so touches on some ideas about the concept itself. In
this conceptual frame there are hints at definitions of "literature" when the
author systematises vähmaya, kävya and sästra.120
In this connection namely, vähmaya ["what is given voice/literature"] is
both sästra [scholarly texts] and kävya. Because of the precedence of
sästra, one should devote oneself to the sästra texts in the first place.
Because those who do not have their light in advance do not inspect the
troop of real things. And this [the corpus of sästra] is twofold, the
non-human one and the human one. (Ed. Dalai, p.2.)
The clearest identification of kävya is thus its delimitation as in itself not

being texts of the sästra traditions, which is a basic, shared opinion.
The text then continues with the following passage that, in contrast to
tradition, assigns an important role to poetics in the way it treats the
rhetorical figures, the "embellishments," i.e. the alamkärasästra. Other-
wise, this kind of scholarly text is commonly counted as a part of the
kävyasästra, which should, according to Räjasekhara, not be classified
among the divine but among the "human" texts.
The teachers [talk about] six parts [= limbs], viz. phonetics, ritual, gram-
mar, etymology, examination of metres, astronomy. According to
Yäyävariya121 "embellishment" (alahkära) is the seventh part because it is
for service.122 And because of the knowing of their right forms [there is] the
comprehension of the purport of Veda. (Ed. Dalai, pp. 2-3.)
One comment made by Räjasekhara about the sästra texts is that "even if a
person lives for fully a thousand years he is not able to come to an end of
120 See the passage from Agnipuräifa above.

121 The name is often said to be a self-reference by Räjasekhara, who belonged to the clan
(gotra) called Yäyävara. It is just as probable that he is quoting some other member of the
clan, to which famous poets and scholars belonged. Cf. De, Sanskrit Poetics, vol. 1, p. 124.
122 The parts mentioned serve for the interpretation of the holy text, the Veda.
the sites of knowledge." For that reason, there must be a resume for the
sake of those who are not fond of books (grantha). m At the end of the
chapter the author finally turns back to the introduction and mentions
kävya as a special category in the following words:
The knowledge/science of sähitya [composing] is knowledge of precisely
the togetherness of word and meaning. The secondary sciences [upavidyä]
are 64. The clever discourse is [exactly] these, which are arts. This is the
supply of kävya ["what kävya lives on"]. (Ed. Dalai, p. 5.)
The author promises to treat other things that have to be told about kävya
and sästra later in connection with the "upani§adic" matters. This probably
refers to the subsequent general expositions, where learning is appreciated
as a kind of secluded knowledge, given by teacher to pupil. How to deal
with kävya as performed art—a general concern for poets—is treated by
Räjasekhara mostly in relation to the description and prescriptions of
grammatical issues.
(5) Bhoja
By way of introduction to his work Bhoja comprehensively accounts for
well-known views on the grammatical relation between word and mean-
ing, in both syntactic and semantic terms. He even touches upon certain
concepts from the current philosophy of language. Bhoja's practical use of
a logical language and of its grammatical forms is rather subtle and at the
outset he points out the relation between word and meaning as an inde-
pendent category, using an abstract noun "togetherness, combination"
(sähityam), derived from the adjective "combined" (sahita), according to
the traditional definition of kävya. One other special aspect that follows
Bhoja throughout his work is already presented at the outset, viz. the close
connection between drama and kävya.
Bhoja, Srngäraprakäsa (extract from chapter 1)

Because of the actors of drama we highly respect the poets, and because of
the dramatic action the kävya. That is what they mean is a combination of
word and meaning. This is according to [the saying] "kävya is word and
meaning combined." What is the "word"? It is that through which, when
uttered, the meaning is understood; it is twelvefold ... What is the "mean-
ing"? It is that which is caused to be understood by the word; it is twelve-
123 The word for "book" has been discussed but might most probably originally refer to
"what is strung together" and it may be used both as a designation of the concrete book
(referring to the binding together of palm-leaves) and metaphorically. It could thus in
certain cases be used as a term for "literature" in a broad sense.
fold ... What is [their] combination? It is that which is a relation between

word and meaning; it is twelvefold ... (Ed. Raghavan, p. 6.)
What follows is the presentation of all subsets of the three concepts, ex-
tending through eight chapters. The presentation of sähityam prepares for
the later introduction of "sentiment" (rasa) through presenting it as
"power/potentiality" (sakti). 124

The twelve relations between word and meaning are called "composition"
(sähitya). Among these the "name" is the power of the word which enacts a
meaning. (Ed. Raghavan, p. 353.)
There follows an account for the possible powers of the word to be used lit-
erally, metonymically and metaphorically. As is common in the Indian
philosophy of language Bhoja does not count metaphor etc. in its deeper
sense as a merely rethorical device.
Narrowing down his account to poetical composition, he presents tradi-
tional views on poetry, including the whole set of accepted embellishments
(alamkära). Bhoja advocates a strict attitude towards the use of poetics,
opening with a quotation from the most influential work on the philosophy
of language (Mahäbhä$ya) that "one and each word, properly used is wish-
fullfilling in heaven [and] on earth" and he adds
Bhoja, Sffigäraprakäsa (extract from chapter 9)

On the other hand, when [it is] badly used, it leads to lack of [social/reli-
gious] merit (adharma). Its proper applications are accomplished when
there are lack of fault, use of qualities, devices of embellishments and not
apart from sentiment. (Ed. Raghavan, p. 473.)
After a meticulous account of the first three commonly accepted properties

of kävya, the author makes his transition to the main objective, the necessi-
ty of the "sentiment" (rasa) in the kävya. Now and then he refers to the
topic discussed as "the body of kävya (kävyasarlra)."

The most prominent means [of poetry] is [now] brought out as not in want
of "sentiment" [rasa] in the completion of eminence of beauty of the body
of kävya—a body of a loving woman—faultless, endowed with qualities,
embellished. (Ed. Raghavan, p. 662.)
124 The idea of sakti is connected with the philosophy of language, in which it is an impor-
tant concept, pertaining to the issue of whether or not the meaning of a word is perma-
nent and related to God. Cf. Raja, Indian Theories, p. 23.
The discussion that follows after some quotations tells that "joy" (rati) and
the other "sentiments" (rasa) are not "the richness of the sentiment," but
that love (srhgära) is the origin of all other sentiments.
(6) Mammata.
Mammata, Kävyaprakäsa 3-4
In the rise of it [the kävya] the effective cause consists of ability and skilful-
ness from a consideration of sciences referring to the world as well as to
kävya and the like, and of practice through training with persons knowing
kävya. It (kävya) is word and meaning that are without defects, with good
qualities, and, moreover, in certain places embellished [with rhetorical fig-
ures]. When the suggested surpasses the meaning of the expressed there
appears the best [of the kävya], by the learned called dhvani ["tone"].
In the two previous initial stanzas of Kävyaprakäsa Mammata has intro-

duced kävya as a means of achieving all the benefits of the world. In the
third verse, the contention is that the actual choice of words in composing
kävya must be observed, but it is not the idea of an individual creative
process that is introduced when describing the "rising thereof' (tadud-
bhave). The expressions used clearly indicate that kävya only appears on
certain external conditions.
The commentator 125 stresses that in this verse Mammata is speaking
rather about a cause of kävya and not so much about kävya as such. The
aim is more general than simply to describe the process of making poetry
or giving instructions about how to make it. The wording seems further-
more to hint at a presupposition that kävya precisely by definition is good
kävya.
Another idea is presented in the following stanzas, that in a mediocre
kävya a suggestive meaning is inadequate towards its referent; the inferior
kind of kävya is in fact devoid of any implicit meaning, even if it is distin-
guished as to word and what is expressed.
Mammata, Kävyaprakäsa 6
Then the word would in this case be expressive, indirectly indicating, sug-
gestive. The real meanings of it are the things expressed and so on. In the
opinion of some [others] there is also a meaning, which is intended to be
higher.
125 The edition by Dwivedi contains the commentary (fikä) Sampradäyaprakäsim ("[A
commentary] illustrating the tradition") by Srlvidyäcakravartin, probably from the four-
teenth century (De, Sanskrit Poetics, vol. 1, p. 201).
The stanza refers directly to the first one quoted above, and at the same
time develops the idea about the word (sabda) and its meaning (artha) by
the joining of which kävya is here defined, according to custom. Mammata
finds it important to stress that these are two different, but simultaneously
parallel aspects of the same phenomenon, kävya.
Mammata, Kävyaprakäsa 48
There is the aspect of word and of meaning, as earlier mentioned as being
two kinds of kävya. When there are at hand basic elements of quality, there
is an establishment of conspicuous meaning and [conspicuous] word as
well.
Mammata apparently distinguishes between the word {sabda) and its

meaning (artha) in the sense of form and content. Having expressed (in
sutra 6, above) that the meaning is the sentence (väcyam) and so forth, he
nevertheless contends that it is revealed by the word (in sütra 20). Their
combination is present on the condition that the kävya is endowed with the
right qualities.
Evidently, Mammata does not subscribe to other ideas about poetry
whereby the embellishments of the word and of the meaning are independ-
ent. To him they seem rather to influence each other.
(7) Jagannätha
Jagannätha, Rasagangädhara 1
kävya is the word that provides a pleasant sense (ramanlyatä) 126 ... the
pleasure is the same as the field of knowledge that produces the delight of
the higher world ... kävya is a word that produces a mental disposition for a
special sense of wondering (camatkära). (Ed. Chatterjee, pp. 6-7.)
In order to develop these ideas, there follows an astute, logical discourse in

which Jagannätha rejects the classical definitions, such as kävya being a
combination of word and meaning and recognisable through embellish-
ments (ed. p. 8) or through rasa (ed. p. 15). Among other things he poses a
logically based question about the classical dictum that word and meaning
combined constitute kävya.
Is it something not apart or perceived each for itself that marks a function of
the word kävya in [the duality of] word/meaning? ... It is the capacity of
being established as "word" that belongs to the [connoting] definition of
kävya as well as it so is for veda and puräna. (Ed. Chatterjee, p. 11.)
126 Cf. Pande, "Jagannatha's ramamyatä."

Although it seems that Jagannätha gives preference to "meaning," he still

does not rule out "word" as important to poetry. But he does not admit of
any duality in the individual kävya, arguing for a value in the "word,"
which is bound only to its individual representation. The "word" is then
not valid in the general sense, as was stated in the earlier, grammatically
based definition of a combination of word and meaning. Instead he gives
another turn to his message.
The cause of the kävya is the imagination (pratibhä),127 which is solely to
be referred to the poet. There is the presence of word and meaning like [a
heap] solid ground for the action of kävya. This imaginativeness belonging
to him [the poet] is a special [denoting] definition and a non-analysable
quality, applied as a definition delimiting the [actual] cause of kävya. (Ed.
Chatterjee, p. 16.)
In the subsequent sections, accordingly* good and bad poetry and various
types of implied sense are thoroughly discussed. Even though the author
has rejected the definition of kävya as being endowed with the quality of
rasa, on the ground that any kävya about tangible matters would then be
excluded, he nevertheless surveys each established rasa exhaustively with
examples and an introductory argument, returning to the idea of poetry be-
ing pleasant.
In the "tone" (dhvani), which is of five kinds, rasa dwells because of its
pleasantness in the one, which is the "tone" of rasa. (Ed. Chatterjee, p. 49.)
Final Remarks
A particular world of texts has been reported above and some indigenous
ideas about them have also been presented. The original intention was to
search for something in India that would be comparable to Western notions
of "literature." The material presented provides the reader with some sug-
gestions to consider. The concept of kävya was chosen mainly because it
serves as a well-defined entry to certain Indian texts, which certainly have
a belletristic character. The kävya theorists are obviously engaged in issues
similar to those that exercise the theorists of Western literature. The ex-
haustive textual records of the Sanskrit poeticians must be exploited ad-
vantageously in further studies. Much more detailed discussion is required
127 Literally meaning "a shining forth," a capacity rather of the object than of the subject.
pratibhä is an essential concept in the philosophy of language.
before the hints given here can be accepted as tenable; still more similari-
ties and differences—internally between the various poeticians as well as
externally between the poeticians of India and Western literary culture—
have to be accurately recorded, which so far has been undertaken by few
scholars and often only in passing.
From the passages of poetics texts adduced above, however, it is poss-
ible to deduce the questions which concern the Sanskrit poeticians. Spe-
cifically, certain definitions are available in the texts, when we turn to the
main question i point here:
What signifies kävya, i.e. "literature" in the sense of verbal art, according
to indigenous discussions of the topic?
The first answer, commonly agreed upon, is that kävya is a linguistic com-
position. But how then can it be distinguished from any linguistic activity?
The poeticians in general apply the criterion of the genesis of any piece of
poetry as its being dependant on the poet, as it might be put: "it is the
poet's peculiar way, the work of his genius, Kavi Vyäpära [activity], that is
the Viseja [the special quality, sc. of kävya}."12* The two basic criteria—
word and meaning—are furthermore most often regarded as the "soul"
(ätman) of the literary composition, the kävya, and is expressed as its "real,
individual form" (svarüpa) by the exegesis. On this basis, the poeticians
set about, often at length in their texts, what most of them considered being
their main didactic task. This was to describe, or even prescribe, how to
bring out—produce and appreciate—the kävya with its inherent and pecu-
liar properties, i.e. good qualities, lack of blemishes and proper embellish-
ments. Added to this in certain cases, is the acknowledgement and observa-
tion of the specific aesthetic functions of poetry, such as not on hand in
other kinds of texts. Such functions are, however, in general clearly re-
ferred to the competence of the poet. They are a matter of judgment and
could be seen as the counterpart of "literary criticism" rather than some-
thing belonging to the conceptual basis of the theory of poetry.
Owing to differences in language and in the sources of culture, the ques-
tion of comparison between Western and Indian notions of verbal art, how-
ever, could not be easily settled by any general statement. It should be re-
membered that the main point of departure for judging the possibility of
comparisons is the recognition of such a difficult matter as the universality
of the human mind.
128 Raghavan, Bhoja's Spigära prakäsa, p. 84.

Si Ton doit un jour arriver ä mettre en evidence l'universalite de la pensee

humaine, ce ne sera sans doute pas en convertissant les differences en iden-
tites, mais en les rendant rigoureusement comparables. Cela ne sera possi-
ble que si les differences apparaissent au sein meme des ensembles dont
elles font partie.129
The alphabets used for Indian languages make use of letters for more sounds than
the Latin one. The standard transliteration for Indian languages is followed in this
article. This transliteration is phonemic, i.e. the graphemes represent distinctive
sound types. The following diacritics are employed.
line above vowel lengthens it and is applied to ä, ϊ, ü, sometimes also used to the
vowel /"
dot below the stops (, 4 and the nasal ρ signals retroflex pronunciation, viz. the
tip of the tongue is bent a little more backwards than in common English dentals
(cf. heart, hard, born)
dot below ft brings about a weak pronunciation of h, similar to an expiration
dot below r signals a vocalic form or r, which might be pronounced with a slight
colouring from the vowel i
acute accent above s indicates a palatal fricative sound close to that which occurs
in the German ich
dot below $ indicates a retroflex pronunciation of the palatal fricative s (Eng. show)
dot above th nasalises the preceding vowel
dot above Λ is mostly found preceding k and g and is pronounced as a velar nasal,
cf. Engl, sing
129 Biardeau, "Jati et lakjana," p. 83.

B O HOLMBERG
Adab and Arabic Literature
The translation of Thousand and One Nights (or The Arabian Nights) from
Arabic into French by Antoine Galland in the early eighteenth century
(1703-1717) marked the beginning of "one of the most remarkable success
stories in the history of publishing." 1 The French translation was soon fol-
lowed by translations into many other Eurpoean languages. The fabulous
stories of the Thousand and One Nights captivated the European imagina-
tion and were thought to represent something typical and genuine in Arabic
literary culture. For many non-specialists in Europe the Thousand and One
Nights is still the only Arabic text—apart from the Qur'än—which is rec-
ognized as "Arabic literature." This is truly ironic, since in Arab culture
popular folk-tales of this sort have traditionally not been accorded any par-
ticular esteem. This explains why orientalists, such as Edward Lane, had a
hard time in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries finding manuscripts
containing these tales. They were oral narratives that could be improvised
and did not have a fixed form. The manuscript copies that did exist were
not meant for public circulation, but were mnemonics intended for the use
of the hakawäti, the story-teller, in his function as a reciter of stories at
various social events. It was not until quite recently, with the growing
spread of Western ideas associated with disciplines such as anthropology,
folklore, narratology, and semiotics, that the Thousand and One Nights and
similar popular narratives were reassessed by Arab literary critics.
The conflicting opinions about the importance of the Thousand and One
Nights illustrate a significant aspect of every effort to write about the "lit-
erature" of a non-European tradition from a modern European standpoint.
The etic understanding of (oral and) written texts in Arabic from a modern
European view has to be distinguished from the emic understanding of the
same material from within indigenous Arabic tradition. This general issue
1 Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of its Genres and Criti-
cism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), p. 278.
is discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume. 2 The etic approach cannot

be avoided but it has to be paired with an awareness of the emic categories
in question. As we shall see further on in this article, traditional Arabic cul-
ture did not have a word for "literature" in its modern European sense. To-
day the word adab is used in Modern Written Arabic as a near to equiva-
lent to "literature," but this is a recent feature connected with the Western-
ization of scholarly discourse in the Arab World over the past two centu-
ries. In the pre-Modern Arab World adab had a series of meanings shifting
over time according to historical circumstances and the changing tastes and
predilections of those concerned with it. None of the various understand-
ings of adab exactly tallies with the modern notion of "literature."
If there is no word for "literature" in pre-Modern Classical Arabic, is it
then at all meaningful, or even possible, to discuss the notion of "litera-
ture" in that context? This question has philosophical implications that will
not be analysed in detail here. It may suffice, perhaps, to mention a few
concepts of this kind pertaining to the Arabic literary heritage that have
been discussed, or at least observed, in recent works on the Arabic literary
heritage.
A concept closely related to "literature" is "literary criticism." In Mod-
ern Written Arabic, the adjectival form of adab is used to modify the tradi-
tional Arabic word for "critique," naqd,3 to form the expression an-naqd
al-adabl as in Ihsän c Abbäs' authoritative work on the subject Tärikh
an-naqd al-adabl cinda l-cArab (History of Literary Criticism among the
Arabs).4 This expression, however, is a neologism and is not found in Clas-
sical texts. In fact, the evaluation of adab in its various applications was
never per se a concern for the nuqqäd (i.e. "those who practise naqd").
They distinguished good poetry or prose from bad in the context of a spe-
cific branch of "science" such as grammar, philology, logic or exegesis.
Naqd as such was not considered a specific area of knowledge, but denoted
rather a methodological approach. As Wen-chin Ouyang has convincingly
2 See Anders Pettersson's introduction to the volume.

3 The root meaning of this word is to pick up a coin in order to examine it and weigh it. In
a transferred sense it was then used to signify a process of evaluation, of separating good
writing from bad. See Edward W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1863—
1893), p. 2836, and Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Lit-
erature, 2 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 472.
4 Ihsän c Abbäs, Tärikh an-naqd al-adabl cinda l-earab: naqd ash-shicr min al-qarn
ath-thänl hattä l-qani ath-thämin al-hijri (History of Literary Criticism among the
Arabs: Poetic Criticism from the Second Century to the Eighth Century A.H.) ( c Amman:
Dar ash-shurüq li-n-nashr wa-t-tawzi', 1993) (Revised edition; first published in 1971).
182 Bo Holmberg
shown in his Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture,5 this

does not imply that there were no "literary critics" or no "literary criticism"
in say the ninth or tenth centuries. In Ouyang's words it merely confronts
us with "the paradox of medieval Arabic literary criticism: that despite its
widespread practice it was not recognised as a specialised area of knowl-
edge"; 6 this paradox he tries to explain by examining the history of the de-
velopment of literary criticism in the Arabic context.
Another case is the concept of "autobiography" which was recognised as
a broad category of literary production by European scholars such as
Goethe, Herder and Dilthey in the wake of Romanticism in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. In modern Arabic literature autobiographical
works have been popular at least since Jurjl Zaydän's Slrat hayätl (Biogra-
phy of My Life), published in 1908. The most famous work of this kind is
Tähä Husayn's al-Ayyäm (The Days) which eventually appeared in three
volumes but was first published serially in the periodical al-Hiläl in 1926/7
and was the first product of modern Arabic literature to gain international
recognition and to be translated into numerous languages. In Modern Writ-
ten Arabic autobiography is called tarjama dhätiyya or slra dhätiyya (both
expressions can be translated as "personal biography") and may take the
form of memoirs (mudhakkirät), diaries (yawmiyyät) or autobiographical
novels (riwäyät at-tarjama adh-dhätiyya). In Classical Arabic, however,
there is no term for "autobiography" as distinct from "biography" (tarjama
or slra), which has been one if the most durable genres of literary expres-
sion in Islamic civilisation. 7 This does not mean that autobiographical ma-
terial cannot be found in the Classical Arabic literary tradition. On the con-
trary, modern scholars such as Franz Rosenthal 8 and more recently Dwight
F. Reynolds in Interpreting the Self9 have unearthed autobiographical ma-
terial in classical texts and demonstrated the value of research of this kind.
A third example of a notion which is named and defined from an etic
point of view but appears to be lacking as a separate category in an emic
5 See Wen-chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The

Making of a Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997), pp. 5 ff.
6 Ibid., p. 13.
7 For a recent treatment of the subject, see Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biogra-
phy: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma'mün (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2000), especially the introduction (pp. 1-23) which traces the development of the genre.
8 See Franz Rosenthal, "Die arabische Autobiographie," Studia Arabica 1 (1937), pp. 1 -
40.
9 Dwight F. Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary
Tradition (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: Univ. of California Press, 2001).
perspective is "nostalgia." Even in Modern Written Arabic it seems one

has to resort to circumlocutions in order to express the idea of "nostal-
gia." 10 N. S. Doniach's Arabic-English Dictionary11 gives the following
explanation of the word: shu°ür järif bi-l-hamn ilä l-awtän wa-cuhüd
al-mar' al-mädiya ("violent emotions of longing for home countries and
times gone by"). In al-Mawridn we find the following entry: (1) al-
wutän: al-hamn ilä l-watan; (2) at-tawq ilä l-mädl: tawq ghayr sawI
li-l-cawda ilä l-mädi aw ilä isticädat wad0 yatacadhdhar isticdäduhu
("[1] 'homesickness': longing for the home country; [2] yearning for the
past: a disharmonious yearning for a return to the past or for a recovery
of an irretrievable position"). The word wutän, which has been translated
here as "homesickness," is probably a neologism formed out of the root
WTN in the word watan ("home," "home country") by adjusting it to the
morphological pattern denoting diseases. 13 Although there is no exact
correspondence to "nostalgia" in Classical Arabic, 14 nevertheless this
mood—as Robert Irwin 15 among others has pointed out—is a dominant
feature in the typical qaslda, i.e. the polythematic ode, which as a poetic
genre has been cultivated by poets from pre-Islamic times to the present
day. The typical qaslda has three main thematic centres: (1) the theme of
loss and yearning (naslb) when the poet evokes the deserted campsite or
dwelling place; (2) the travel section (rahll) when the poet expresses his
fatigue as he journeys by camel; (3) the themes of the poet's praise of
himself or his tribe (fakhr), his panegyric praise of others (madlh), or
satirical invective (hijä J ). It is in the nasib section that the poet expresses
a nostalgic mood. 16
10 The English word nostalgia is derived from Greek νόστος, "return home," and άλγος,
"pain."
11 N. S. Doniach, The Oxford Arabic-English Dictionary of Current Usage (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1972).
12 Munir Ba'albaki, al-Mawrid: A Modern English-Arabic Dictionary, 16u' ed. (Beirut,
1982).
13 For the morphological pattern, see William Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language,
y* ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1896-1898), vol. 1, p,175D.
14 The expressions al-hamn ilä l-awtän ("longing for the homeland") and hubb al-watan
("love of one's homeland"), however, cover much the same ground as the word "nostal-
gia." See Angelika Neuwirth et al. (eds.), Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic
Figures in Arabic literature: Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach, Beiruter Texte und
Studien 64 (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 3-84.
15 See Robert Irwin, Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic
Literature (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), p. 5.
16 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical
Arabic Nasib (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993).
184 Bo Holmberg
But nostalgic sentiments are important in Arabic tradition even apart

from in the classical ode. Much of Arabic writing during the first three
Islamic centuries was produced in the urban centres of conquered territo-
ries by writers of Arab ethnic descent with distant—or even symbolic—
memories of desert life. From an early date it became a habit among
poets and philologists in the towns to go out into the desert to spend time
with the Bedouin in order to improve their Arabic and receive orally
transmitted tribal lore. 17 This convention of desert fieldwork—as we
would call it today—was obviously still practised even in the late nine-
teenth century when we find Sulaymän al-Bustänl (1856-1925) under-
taking journeys to the Arabian peninsula to study poetry and Bedouin life
which helped him to translate H o m e r ' s Iliad into Arabic. 1 8 When the
Arabs finally lost Andalusia to the Christians in 1492, this became an oc-
casion for nostalgic lamentation for the vanished glory of Cordova, Gra-
nada and Seville. The grandest work of nostalgic antiquarianism of this
sort was al-Maqqäri's (1577-1632) history of Andalusia. 1 9 Graffiti
scratched on walls of ruined palaces are not normally considered litera-
ture. But, naturally, themes such as exile, alienation and nostalgia make
themselves known in this form. 2 0
So, although the Classical Arabic of the pre-Modern era does not have
words for "literary criticism," "autobiography," or "nostalgia," these etic
categories may still be of use, and are even perhaps indispensable, when
we study the Arabic literary heritage. In the same way, a modern European
notion of "literature" can be used to study and describe Arabic textual tra-
dition, but one has to be aware of the distinction between etic and emic cat-
egories and try not to blur them in a misleading way.
There are, of course, many ways to define "literature." "A modern Euro-
pean notion of literature" in the above paragraph is meant to signify "litera-
ture" in the restricted sense as described in The Oxford English Dictionary
as "applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the grounds of
beauty of form or emotional effect." 2 1 The implications of this restricted
17 See Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 232, and Irwin, Night and Horses, p. 123.
18 See Albert Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), p.
176.
19 See Irwin, Night and Horses, pp. 308-309.
20 See Patricia Crone and Shmuel Moreh (eds.), The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic
Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia Attributed to Abu l-Faraj al-lsfahäm, trans. Patricia
Crone and Shmuel Moreh (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publisher, 2000); see also Irwin,
Night and Horses, pp. 307-308.
21 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2"J ed., prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner,
vol. 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 1029.
definition of "literature" have been discussed in the introduction to the

present volume.22 In dealing with "Oriental literatures" we also have to
consider the more inclusive definition of "literature" as found in The Ox-
ford English Dictionary: "Literary productions as a whole; the body of
writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in gen-
eral."23 It is this wider notion of "literature" that dominates much—if not
all—histories of Arabic literature which do not restrict themselves to the
modern period.
The key expression in the introduction to Carl Brockelmann's Ge-
schichte der arabischen Litteratur (History of Arabic Literature), where he
discusses the task of the historian of literature, is "die Entwicklung der
menschlichen Kultur,"24 i.e. writings that are important for the develop-
ment of human civilisation should be considered as literature. Since, ac-
cording to Brockelmann at least, the most significant contribution of Arab
writers to the development of human civilisation has been in the various
fields of "science," this is what the historian of Arabic literature should
emphasise in the period prior to the modern era. In dealing with modern
times, though, the historian of Arabic literature may apply a more restrict-
ed definition of "literature": "Daher muss der Historiker der arabischen
Literatur alle diese Erscheinungen in seinen Bereich ziehn und darf sich
erst in der Neuzeit, die auch die Islämwelt der europäischen Kultur immer
mehr angleicht, auf die Wortkunst im engeren Sinne beschränken." 25 Con-
sequently, in Brockelmann's survey writings which would normally not be
considered as "literature" in the narrower sense are given a prominent
place, e.g. hadith (reports on the Prophet Muhammad's sayings and deeds),
jurisprudence, Qur 3 än exegesis, religious dogmatics, philology, philoso-
phy, history, geography, mathematics, astronomy and astrology, and medi-
cine. The same goes for Fuat Sezgin's ambitious multi-volumed Geschich-
te des arabischen Schrifttums (History of Arabic Writing), which purpose-
ly avoids the word "Literatur" in favour of "Schrifttum." 26 The two works
share a concern for cataloguing manuscripts in cases where printed edi-
tions are unavailable.
22 See Anders Pettersson's introduction.

23 Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 8, p. 1029.
24 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur: Zweite den Supplementbänden
angepaßte Auflage (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1937-1949), vol. 1, p. 1.
25 Ibid., pp. 1-2.
26 Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden, 1967-).
186 Bo Holmberg
A different approach is taken by The Cambridge History of Arabic Lit-

erature in five volumes, 27 which is so far the most comprehensive and
scholarly survey of the subject. Here experts in various specialised fields
of research have collaborated in giving an over-all view of literary produc-
tions in Arabic from pre-Islamic times to the late twentieth century. The
emphasis is not so much on individual writers and individual works, but
more on the form and content of types of literary manifestations. Yet, the
definition of "literature" adopted is again the inclusive one: "virtually
everything that has been recorded in writing, apart from inscriptions and
purely archival material." 28
Numerous other examples of literary histories pertaining to the Arab
world and adopting—explicitly or implicitly—the wider definition of "lit-
erature" could be adduced. 29 Perhaps it suffices to reflect for a moment on
the justification of the inclusive approach to Arabic writings of the past
(some of it also applies mutatis mutandis to other cultural spheres such as,
for instance, India and China). The study of "Oriental languages" in Eu-
rope has from its very beginning (and as far as Arabic is concerned this
means going back to the Middle Ages) been driven by a philological con-
cern with manuscripts and textual variants. One important motive for
learning Arabic was the existence of Arabic Bible translations, which
could shed light on the Biblical texts. The study of Arabic as an academic
discipline was "the maiden of Theology." In the course of time, it became
the auxiliary discipline for a growing number of other disciplines. Maybe
the peak in this process was reached in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Due to the specialisation of scientific research during the twen-
tieth century, the role played by Arabic philology has been restricted to the
history of the Islamic world and to the historical branches of other disci-
plines. Who could, even today, study the history of the Arab world without
knowing what textual sources have survived and without access to
text-critical editions of these sources? What would the study of the history
of medicine be if scholars had no recourse to medieval Arabic treatises on
medicine, made available in printed and text-critical editions by Arabists?
27 The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983-2000):

A. F. L. Beeston et al. (eds.), Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period
(1983); Julia Ashtiany et al. (eds.), c Abbäsid Belles-Lettres (1990); M. J. L. Young et al.
(eds.), Religion, Learning and Science in the cAbbäsid Period (1990); Maria Rosa
Menocal et al. (eds.), The Literature ofal-Andalus (2000); Μ. M. Badawi (ed.), Modern
Arabic Literature (1992).
28 Beeston et al. (eds.), Umayyad Period, p. xi.
29 E.g. Nicholson, Gibb, Huart, Nallino.
Apart from the general tendency in the past to define "literature" in a wide
sense, the philological background of Oriental studies, and in this case spe-
cifically Arabic studies, makes an important contribution to explaining the
attitudes adopted by Brockelmann, Sezgin and The Cambridge History of
Arabic Literature.
In this respect, Roger Allen's The Arabic Literary Heritage30 represents
an effort to break with the past. Leaving behind the philological phase of
the history of Arabic literature studies in the West, he professes himself an
adherent of a more belletristic one:
I would venture to suggest that the field [of the history of Arabic literature
studies in the West] has now moved from what I might term a philological
phase into a more belletristic one, but the shift is relatively recent. It is the
contributions of a sparse but gradually growing population of scholars and
critics in the Middle East and the West to this particular phase in the devel-
opment of Arabic literary research that inevitably form the primary basis of
this volume and thus the decision to use a belletristic definition of litera-
ture.31
Before turning to the concept of adab and the various interpretations of

it—a discussion which is crucial, as it is in Roger Allen's study, for every
serious effort to apply a belletristic definition of literature to the Arabic
material—a few points need to be made with regard to some impediments
that face the scholar who sets out to understand the Arabic literary tradi-
tion, regardless of whether a wide or a narrow definition of "literature" is
adopted.
The most material obstacle is the sad fact that the bulk of texts that were
written in Arabic no longer exist. Many of the reasons for this are of course
trivial: the ravages of time have effaced the letters from parchment and pa-
per; wars and disasters have buried manuscripts under ruins; libraries have
burned down by accident; less conscientious librarians have used the folios
of manuscripts as fuel in the cold of winter, and so on. The Spanish Inqui-
sition is a contrast to this in that books written in Arabic were deliberately
burned—one of the reasons for al-Maqqäri's nostalgic mood in his history
of Andalusia. 32 Even those Arabic manuscripts that have survived are not
always easily available to the scholar. Only a fraction of the extant manu-
scripts have been published and among those published, not all editions are
30 See note 1 above. An abridged version of the original book appeared a few years later:
Roger Allen, An Introduction to Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).
31 Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 3-4.
188 Bo Holmberg
text-critical. There is still work to do for Arabic philologists! Not all manu-
scripts are even catalogued. In this precarious situation, early biographies
and bibliographies are immensely important in that they give us an idea of
what books were written and copied and were available at a certain time in
the early Islamic centuries. The Baghdad! book-seller Ibn an-Nadlm's
(fourth/tenth century) 33 list of books in al-Fihrist gives us an idea of the
extent of what is missing. For instance, regarding the Umayyad secretary
c
Abd al-Hamld (d. 132/750), who is one of the earliest Arabic prose
writers of the chancery style which is so important in the development of
the concept of adab, Ibn an-Nadlm states "[t]here is a collection of about a
thousand leaves from his epistles." 34 Today a mere five percent of what
was available from c Abd al-Hamld's hand in the tenth century has been re-
trieved and published by Ihsän c Abbäs. 35
Another obstacle for a modern scholar who seeks to understand the
Arabic literary tradition and especially those manifestations that from an
emic standpoint have claim to consideration on the ground of "beauty of
form," 36 is "the authentic strangeness of the medieval Arab past, and its
sheer alienness." 37 This observation is not necessarily an expression of an
Orientalist craving the exotic. It seems that even within the indigenous tra-
dition there was a problem understanding and interpreting contemporary
texts, particularly those most esteemed.
The first thing to be noted in this respect is that much Arabic literature is
referential in character and rarely self-contained. There is an old tradition
in Arab culture of writing commentaries to received texts. This is a tradi-
tion Arab culture has in common with the Jews. Even today in the Arab
world an old text is often published together with one of the commentaries
to it in the margin. Visually, the primary text may be set in the centre of the
page with the commentary running on all four sides. Sometimes there is
even a commentary on the commentary, producing something like a series
of Chinese boxes. One of the backgrounds to the commentary tradition
33 Dates are given according to both the Islamic calendar and the Common Era (CE).
34 Ibn an-Nadlm, The Fihrist of al-Nadtm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture,
trans. Bayard Dodge, 2 vols. (New York and London: Columbia UP, 1970), vol. 1, p.
257.
c
35 Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahyä al-Kätib wa-mä tabaqqä min rosä'ilihi wa-rasä'il Salim Abi
l-cAlä' ( c Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahyä al-Kätib and What Remains of His Epistles and the
Epistles of Sälim Abi l-'Alä 3 ) ed. Ihsän c Abbäs ( c Ammän: Dar ash-shurüq li-n-nashr
wa-t-tawzr, 1988).
36 See note 21 above.
37 Irwin, Night and Horses, p. χ.
may well be sought in the transmission of poetry in pre-Islamic and early

Islamic times. Every important poet had at least one bard or transmitter
(räwl) associated with him. The räwV s primary task was to preserve and
recite the poet's verses, but he also provided a context and commentary for
the poem and explained the enigmatic verses. The referential character of
the Qur 3 an is also a telling example. 38 In a rhapsodic manner people and
situations are referred to in short disjointed passages. It is obvious that the
original audience was supposed to fill in the gaps from what was stored in
their memory. But the earliest Qur D än commentators were already often at
loss concerning the actual reference of theses cryptic allusions. Typically
they line up a series of possible explanations and end up with the not very
enlightening statement "God knows best" (Allähu aclam).
The second thing to be observed is the tendency in the high literature,
i.e. the literature most esteemed by the Arab critics, to stress the formal and
equilibristic qualities of poetry, but also of prose. The increasing recourse
to a continuously growing number of rhetorical figures and stylistic embel-
lishments associated with the "moderns" (al-muhdathün) and their follow-
ers from the beginning of the c Abbasid caliphate in the mid-eighth century
(CE) contributed to this tendency. The term badic (literally "something
novel, original") was used by Arab literary critics to denote this feature in
the "modern" poetry of that time and it gradually evolved, as a technical
term, into a collective noun meaning "rhetorical figures." 39 An additional
trend during this period which added to the strangeness of much high lit-
erature was, what one might call, the cult of the gharib,4Ü i.e. strange and
obscure words. The poets were supposed to excel in the use of a rare and
unusual vocabulary. The equilibristics of Arabic literary style reached one
of its peaks with al-Harirl's (d. 516/1122) maqämät (literally "places of
standing," but gradually acquiring the sense of "occasions for the delivery
of an uplifting message"), 41 a distinct genre of narration in ornamental
rhymed prose (saj c ) with a common plot and two constant protagonists: the
narrator and the hero (Abü Zayd in al-Hariri's maqämät).42 Robert Irwin's
short summary of this work merits quotation:
38 See e.g. W. Montgomery Watt, Bell's Introduction to the Qur'an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
UP, 1970), pp. 69-85.
39 See Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, p. 122.
40 See Irwin, Night and Horses, p. 117.
41 See Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 26.
42 See Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, pp. 507-508.
190 Bo Holmberg
In the sixth maqama alternate lines are written in letters which have or do
not have the dots that define letters of the Arabic alphabet. The sixteenth
maqama is devoted to palindromes. The seventeenth is full of riddles. The
nineteenth is about the language of food. The twenty-second is a munazara
debate on the respective merits of accountants and secretaries. The
forty-ninth celebrates the gloriously disreputable life of the Banu Sasan.
Only in the fiftieth and final maqama does Abu Zayd repent.43
It goes without saying that some of these maqämät are impossible to trans-
late into any other language. In fact, al-Harirl's maqämät is the Arabic
book—next to the Qur'än—that has attracted the greatest number of com-
mentaries, due to its combination of popularity and elusiveness.
A third type of impediment that renders a proper understanding of Ara-
bic literature and its history difficult is concerned with certain biases on the
part of both the Western scholar and the indigenous critical tradition. One
such bias concerns the periodisation of the history of Arabic literature, and
particularly the so-called "period of decadence" covering roughly the four
centuries between 1400 and 1800. In the nineteenth century, the advocates
of the Arab renaissance movement (in Arabic an-nahda, literally "awaken-
ing") sought to purify the literary language (al-fushä) from colloquialisms
and non-Arabic loan-words (especially of Turkish origin) by publishing
grammars and dictionaries and by composing poetry and prose in a style
reminiscent of the hallowed masters of past times. This negative attitude
towards the four or five centuries preceding the early nineteenth century
has become part and parcel of the study of the history of Arabic literature
in Europe as well as in the Arab world and has led to a widespread igno-
rance of the non-religious literary writings of this period. It is not until
quite recently that scholars, such as Roger Allen, 44 have begun to identify
our perception of Arabic literature during these centuries as an optical illu-
sion. Having said this, one should not, on the other hand, over-emphasise
this recent trend. 45 There actually appears to have been a decline in both
quantity and quality of original writings in Arabic during the pre-modern
period, at least as far as non-religious works are concerned. Reasons for
this decline may be found in the fact that during this period most of the re-
gion was under the rule of non-Arabic speakers, which led to the disap-
pearance of an Arabic-speaking court elite among whom writers could
seek patronage. It has to be remembered that although these centuries per-
43 Irwin, Night and Horses, p. 187.

44 See Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 5 - 6 .
haps saw a decline in Arabic literature, the period was not one of decline
for Islamic culture as such. On the contrary, three great Islamic centres
flourished during this time: the Ottoman Empire in Turkey (and a large
part of the Arab world), the Safavid Empire in Persia, and the Moghul Em-
pire in India.
Another bias concerns the interpretation of the adjective "Arabic,"
which in less informed European discourse tends to have both too wide and
too narrow an application. Although English has three words ("Arab,"
"Arabian," "Arabic") where the Arabic language contents itself with one
(carabi), this is no guarantee against misconceptions. The term "Arabic"
literature primarily refers to a linguistic category. The protagonists in the
history of Arabic literature were by no means all ethnic Arabs or descend-
ants of the Bedouin from the Arabian peninsula. On the contrary, a surpris-
ing number were non-Arabs with the Persians being perhaps the most sig-
nificant single people to contribute to Arabic literature. Even "the father of
Arabic grammar," Slbawayhi (second/eighth century), was of Persian ori-
gin, and the cultural and literary shucübiyya (an adjective formed on
shucüb, "peoples") 46 movement during the early c Abbäsid caliphate pro-
vides evidence for a strong non-Arab current. Nor were all the protagonists
in the history of Arabic literature Muslims, though Islam is, certainly, a vi-
tal force from an early date and throughout this history. But the strict,
pietistic Sunnite Islam was not a dominant feature during the early centu-
ries. Quite a few famous writers, such as al-Jähiz (d. 255/869), were mem-
bers of the Mu c tazilite school of thought which advocated a rationalist ap-
proach to theological discourse and had its heyday under the sponsorship
of the °Abbäsid state during the first half of the third/ninth century. The
Mu c tazilites were still Muslims, but there were also writers in Arabic who
belonged to other religions, notably Jews and Christians. 47 Though the bulk
of their writings is religious, philosophical and historical, they exemplify
literary composition in its narrower sense. Further, one should not over-
look, particularly not when a belletristic notion of literature is adopted, the
fact that much of the highly esteemed poetry and of the entertaining adab
46 See Η. T. Norris, "Shu'übiyyah in Arabic Literature," in Ashtiany et al. (eds.), 'Abbäsid

Belles-Lettres, pp. 3 1 - 4 7 .
47 For Jewish writing in Arabic, see Paul B. Fenton, "Judeo-Arabic Literature," in Young et
al. (eds.), Religion, Learning and Science, pp. 4 6 1 - 7 6 . For Christian Arabic literature,
see Samir Khalil Samir, "Christian Arabic Literature in the c Abbasid Period," in Young
et al. (eds.), Religion, Learning and Science, pp. 4 4 6 - 6 0 , and especially Georg Graf,
Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 5 vols., Studi e Testi 118, 133, 146,
147, 172 (Cittä del Vaticano, 1 9 4 4 - 1 9 5 3 ) .
192 Bo Holmberg
works is distinctly profane and secular. The settings of these works are the
courts of caliphs and princes and their cultured elite.
There are also biases of a more general kind, not restricted to the Arab
world, for instance the predominance of male at the expense of female
writers and critics, a feature common to all patriarchal societies. We have
reason to believe that there was literary activity going on behind the closed
curtains of the women's quarters, not only during the last two centuries,
but also in earlier periods. 48 In certain contexts women were allotted a pub-
lic social role and in these cases some of their names have been immortal-
ised. The most famous of Arabic poetesses is al-Khansä 3 , who lived in the
early first Islamic century (seventh century CE) and belonged to the gener-
ation that bridged the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. 49 She is the leading
female exponent of the genre of elegies ( r i t h ä a single lament is called
marthiya and a number of laments maräthl), i.e. the recitation of laments
on dead heroes, an area where women poets were thought to display more
intense feelings than their male counterparts. 50
The male bias of earlier accounts of Arabic literature is also related to a
dominant concern for the writings of a literate elite. This concern is a re-
flection of the values cherished in the indigenous tradition of literary criti-
cism. Popular and orally transmitted tales of the sort found in the Thousand
and One Nights have not been considered a part of the Arabic literary
canon until quite recently. Popular literature is ignored by most Arab
critics, but the North African historian Ibn Khaldün (d. 808/1406) is a not-
able exception to this rule, including within his frame of reference, in his
famous work al-Muqaddima, sympathetic accounts of popular tales. By
way of contrast, Ibn an-Nadim could be mentioned. He certainly mentions
popular fiction, but reveals a grudging attitude towards it.51 Though the
stories of the Thousand and One Nights are the best known in the West,
this is only one of several major narrative collections. 52 Many of them take

49 This means that she was a mukhadrama, the fem. for mukhadram, which signifies a poet
who lived both in the pre-Islamic jähiliyya period and in the time of Islam.
50 See Alan Jones, Early Arabic Poetry, vol. 1, Maräthl and Su c lük Poems (Reading: Ithaca
Press, 1992), pp. 25-26, and Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak:
Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1993), pp.
161-205.
51 See Ibn an-Nadim, The Fihrist, vol. 2, pp. 712-15; also quoted in Irwin, Night and
Horses, pp. 151-53.
52 See M. C. Lyons, The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Story-Telling, 3 vols. (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995).
the form of lengthy epics and centre on a hero or a tribe. One of the most
famous, and perhaps most accomplished in literary terms, is Sirat cAntar
(The Romance of c Antar), which gathers together stories loosely based on
the adventure of the real-life poet and warrior c Antara ibn Shaddäd of
pre-Islamic times.
Along with the lack of appreciation of popular tales in the Arabic critical
tradition, we also meet with a fairly common bias against prose fiction as a
whole. While poetry has always been accorded a very high status, prose
fiction is scarcely counted as literature. This of course is not the case in the
present day Arab world where, on the contrary, the fictional novel, and
particularly the short story, have become the most popular genres. But as
late as in 1913, the Egyptian writer Muhammad Husayn Haykal (d. 1956)
had to publish his novel Zaynab, sometimes considered the first real Ara-
bic novel and filled with nostalgic descriptions of the Egyptian country-
side, under a pseudonym, apparently due to the ambiguous status of fiction
in the minds of the upper-class intelligentsia. 53 This denigrating attitude to-
wards prose fiction has a long history in Arabic literary criticism, and not
least pietistic circles were strongly prejudiced against telling stories that
were not true. The tales that were compiled in anthologies had to be pre-
sented as true narratives about people who had really existed. Ibn an-
Nadlm's grudging attitude towards prose fiction has been noted, but there
were also writers who favoured prose over poetry, such as Ibn al-Athir (d.
637/1239), literary critic and theorist as well as historian. However, as he
was himself a prolific prose writer, his predilection for prose may reflect
his own personal proclivities. 54
The low status of prose outside the domains of religious and scientific
discourse is in a way a reflection of the very high status accorded to poetry
in general and to the pre-Islamic ode (qaslda) in particular. The latter has
traditionally been regarded as one of the twin foundations of Arab-Islamic
literary culture. 55 The other basis is the Qur'än, which, though not in itself
literature in a strict sense, has had an impact on all genres of Arabic litera-
ture (in both its wide and narrow sense) that cannot be overestimated. The
impact of the Qur 3 än has been adroitly described by the contemporary
Arab poet and critic Adonis ( c Ali Ahmad Sa c Id) when he states that "the
Qur'än was the focal point of all the controversies relating to rhetoric and
53 See Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 296, 304.

54 See Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 389-90.
55 See Stetkevych, Mute Immortals, p. xi.
194 Bo Holmberg
the aesthetics of speech in general, and to poetry and prose in particular." 56

Even the pornographic manual ar-Rawd al-cätir β nuzhat al-khätir (The
Perfumed Garden) 57 by an-NafzäwI (fifteenth century CE) contains quota-
tions from the Qur'än. Although the ever-present dependence on the
Qur'än should not perhaps be considered a bias on the part of Arab writers
and critics, it is nonetheless a most significant trait of Arabic literature
which has to be assessed if a proper understanding of this literature is to be
achieved.
The readiness to quote the Qur°än at all times is partly attributable to the
wide-spread practice of learning it by heart which has always been a fea-
ture of Islamic education. A vivid account of this is given by Tähä Husayn
in the first volume of his al-Ayyäm. The same Tähä Husayn, who was
taught to recite the entire Qur 3 än by heart, was later to experience the dan-
ger of questioning its divine authority, as well as the authenticity of the
jähiliyya poetry, when his work Fi sh-shicr al-jähill (On Pre-Islamic Poet-
ry) was withdrawn from public reading in 1926. But the practice of memo-
rising the Qur 3 an is in itself, of course, the result of the importance accord-
ed to it at the very beginning of Arab-Islamic culture. Not only does it con-
stitute the foundation of written discourse in an environment dominated by
oral tradition, but it became the paradigmatic text, the yardstick by which
everything else was measured. The doctrine of the inimitability of the
Qur'än (icjäz al-qur^än) secured for it a supreme position as different
from and superior to all literary genres composed by humans. In the first
belletristic prose narratives to emerge, such as the secretary c Abd
al-Hamld's writings from the last twenty-five years of the Umayyad
caliphate, copious citations from and allusions to the Qur°an are found. In
his epistle describing the flooding of the Euphrates, overt reference is
made to the bursting of the dam of Ma°rib in South Arabia by direct cita-
tion of words from süra 34:16/15. 58 The tenth-century grammarian ar-
Rummänl (d. 384/994) considered the Qur 3 än's i3jäz the highest of three
categories of balägha ("eloquence"). Another specialist on this subject,
al-Bäqillänl (d. 403/1013), sought to prove the Qur 3 än's superiority by
comparing it to the works of the prominent poets Imru 3 al-Qays (pre-Is-
lamic) and al-Buhturi (d. 284/897). Apart from concluding that the Qur 3 än
56 Adonis, An Introduction to Arab Poetics, trans. Catherine Cobham (London: Saqi

Books, 1990) (first published in French in 1985), p. 41.
57 an-Nafzäwi, The Perfumed Garden, trans. Richard Burton (London, 1886).
c
58 Abd al-Hamld, ed. c Abbäs, p. 197, line 6.
is in fact superior, he also noted that the Qur°än could not be counted as
poetry, despite parts of it being in metre, since there has to be a desire to
produce poetry for the writing to be considered as such.59 The major figure
in Arabic literary criticism, c Abd al-Qähir al-Jurjäni (d. 471/1078 or
474/1081), bases his entire linguistic and literary theory as propounded in
Asrär al-balägha (The Secrets of Eloquence) and Dalä°il al-icjäz (The
Features of Inimitability) on an analysis of the Qur'änic text.60
It has already been stated that the Qur3an marks the beginning of written
discourse in an environment dominated by oral tradition. In fact, it was the
Qur°än and the need of the early Islamic community to understand the
divine written revelation that supplied the motivation for recording the
pre-Islamic poetic tradition in written form. The Qur'än and the pre-
Islamic poetry share a great deal regarding style and imagery, and the poet-
ry was collected and studied in order to interpret opaque words and phrases
in the revelation, a procedure that sometimes meant that the obscure was
interpreted in the light of the even more obscure. Nevertheless, this dual
event within written corpora, the Qur 3 än and pre-Islamic poetry—"the
twin foundations of Arab-Islamic culture"—occurring against the back-
ground of oral transmission, brings the question of orality vs. literacy to the
fore.
Throughout the history of Arabic literature, there is a tension between
the oral transmission of words and the words that are written down. There
is a constantly increasing number of texts being written down from the
time of the early c Abbäsid caliphate and onwards. Several factors com-
bined to stimulate this trend. Some of the caliphs, such as Härün ar-Rashld
(d. 193/809) and his son al-Ma'mün (d. 218/833), were ardent patrons of
scholarship and encouraged the appropriation of "foreign" (Greek, Indian
and Persian) sciences and learning. Expensive papyrus—not to mention
even more expensive parchment—was soon replaced by much cheaper pa-
per, which the Arabs learnt how to produce from Chinese prisoners of war
after the battle of Taläs in 133/751. At the same time there was a rapid
spread of literacy. Nonetheless, Arab society continued to be basically oral
in several respects. The Bedouin legacy of oral transmission could not so
easily be erased. As evidence of this, one could mention the continuing
practice of learning huge amounts of text by heart. Not only was one sup-
59 Cf. Irwin, Night and Horses, p. 32, where this position is noted as an interesting early
example of the theory of intentionality.
60 S e e Adonis, Arab Poetics, pp. 4 3 - 4 9 .
196 Bo Holmberg
posed to know the Qur'än by heart, it was also a merit to have memorised
as much poetry as possible. Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) encouraged the
poets of his time to commit to memory the poems of their great predeces-
sors. The Andalusian grammarian and linguist Athlr ad-DIn (d. 745/1344)
knew by heart STbawayhi's (d. 177/793) monumental work on Arabic
grammar al-Kitäb (The Book), a text covering about 900 pages in a mod-
ern edition. The widespread practice of committing long texts to memory
is a crucial feature of the Arabic literary milieu which is easily overlooked
in a modern extremely text-oriented view. In medieval Arab society, as
Robert Irwin has put it, "[l]iterary men were walking, talking books." 61
Further evidence of the importance of oral tradition is the fact that even af-
ter the spread of literacy, written works retained many of the characteris-
tics of oral transmission, such as the practice of introducing a story by
mentioning the source of information, sometimes even a complete chain of
authorities. This is, of course, reminiscent of the hadlth technique of sup-
porting the veracity of a Prophetic saying or deed by citing a chain of au-
thoritative oral transmitters (the isnäd). It seems also that many writers felt
the need to justify the truth of their stories through taking pride in having
collected their stories from oral sources. If the source was oral, the state-
ment was more likely to be true than if it had been taken from a written
source (or even worse, invented by the writer himself)· The tenth-century
at-Tanükhi (d. 384/994) was keen to stress that the collection of anecdotes
in his Nishwär al-muhädara (Shared Conversation) was derived from oral
sources.
The desire to justify one's writing by pointing to oral sources leads us on
to a wider and more complex issue concerning Arabic literature and its en-
vironment, namely the writer's relation to his predecessors and to his con-
temporaries, and questions of legitimacy, originality and plagiarism. An
excellent treatment of the subject is to be found in Abdelfattah Kilito's col-
lection of essays entitled The Author and His Doubles.62 In the classical pe-
riod of Arabic culture it was common to regard one's own time and its
achievements as clearly inferior to those of times gone by. Many authors in
the tenth century CE, such as at-Tanükhi (d. 384/994) and at-Tawhidi (d.
411/1023), speak with disdain about their own times in terms of "the rot-
tenness of the age" (fasäd az-zamän). In the introduction to his Kitäb
61 Irwin, Night and Horses, p. 354.

62 Abdelfattah Kilito, The Author and His Doubles: Essays on Classical Arabic Culture,
trans. Michael Cooperson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2001) (L'Auteur et ses doubles,
Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985).
al-Bukhalä5 (The Book of Misers), al-Jähiz (d. 255/869), a most famous

adab writer (i.e. adlb, pi. udabä3), complains about the decline of hospital-
63
ity in his own time. A telling allegory of the history of poetry attributed to
the renowned Umayyad poet al-Farazdaq (d. 110/728) shows that as early
as in his time the standards of poetry were perceived as being in constant
decline:
Poetry was once a magnificent camel. Then, one day, it was slaughtered. So
Imru'ul Qays came and took his head, 'Amr ibn Kulthum took his hump,
Zuhayr the shoulders, al-A'sha and al-Nabigha the thighs, and Tarafa and
Labid the stomach. There remained only the forearms and offal which we
split among ourselves. The butcher then said, 'Hey, you, there remains only
the blood and impurities. See that I get them.' 'They are yours,' we replied.
So he took the stuff, cooked it, ate it and excreted it. Your verses are from
the excrement of that butcher.64
The general perception of a progressive decline in literary standards is re-

lated to the common feature in Arabic literature of disclaiming one's own
authorship of a piece of writing. The typical adib is a compiler who col-
lects and puts together pieces of poetry, aphoristic wisdom (hikma), and
anecdotes in prose, attributing every piece to someone else. In some cases
this is probably only a literary convention designed to give credence and
legitimacy to what in our days would be called invention. Another example
of a literary convention of this type, is the habit of writing "letters," or
epistles (sg. risäla), to notional and fictional addressees. 65 Innumerable
works in Arabic that have the word risäla in the title, are presented as let-
ters written at the request of the addressee as an excuse ( c udhr), even
though they are intended for a public audience. Nevertheless, the presenta-
tion of a written text in compiled form, used especially in the context of
adab books, challenges us to adjust our concept of authorship and original-
ity, in order to include in it the compilers of these works. 66
In a culture where literary standards are perceived of as constantly de-
clining and where originality is regarded with suspicion, literary critics
naturally discuss questions of literary borrowing, allusion and creative
63 See al-Jahiz, The Book of Misers, Al-Bukhala\ trans. R. B. Serjeant (Reading: Garnet
Publishing, 1997).
64 Quoted from Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), p. 98.
65 See Peter Freimark, Das Vorwort als literarische Form in der arabischen Literatur
(Münster, 1967).
198 Bo Holmberg
stealing. 67 The topic of plagiarism is also a reflection of the tensions in a

society moving from a culture that relied on oral communication to one
that stored its information in written form. The Arabic literary critics often
reckoned with (at least) three degrees of plagiarism, conveniently charac-
terised in the following paragraph by Abu Hiläl al- c AskarI (d. after
395/1005):
I've heard it said that anyone who adopts a concept word for word is a
[full-scale] plagiarist; anyone who takes part of one is [designated] an
inserter; and anyone who takes one and adorns it with words that are better
than the original is more worthy than his predecessor.68
The first category mentioned here is plagiarism (sariqa) which is not

necessarily an act to be condemned, since the literary critics paradoxically
speak of both "good theft" (sariqa hasana) and "laudable theft (sariqa
mahmüda).69 The "inserter" in al- c Askari's paragraph is involved in tadmln
("incorporation"), which is normally nothing but a direct quotation with a
citation of the original author. 70 The final category refers to the process
known as mucärada (literally "opposition, confrontation"), 71 the technical
term for the imitation or emulation of a literary text.
In the above account of some basic observations that must necessarily be
taken into account for a proper assessment of Arabic literature (in its wide
and its narrow sense), both obstacles and biases have been identified.
Among the obstacles pointed out are the lack of extant texts (this, of
course, has to be seen in relation to what has been produced over the centu-
ries; in absolute terms a considerable amount of text has survived) and
text-critical editions, as well as the "sheer alienness" of Arabic literature
(especially in its narrow sense as verbal art) due to its often referential
character and its equilibristic qualities. The biases and prejudices of Euro-
pean scholars as well as those inherent in the Arabic critical tradition ap-
pear to be numerous. Some identified in this context are preconceptions
about the periodisation of the history of Arabic literature, in particular "the
period of decadence" (c. 1400-1800 CE), the implications of the adjective
"Arabic," gender imbalance, the domination of a literary elite, and the dis-
paraging of popular tales and prose fiction. The other characteristics of
67 See Kilito, The Author and His Doubles, pp. 67-77 (Chapter 7: "The Confessions of a
Forger").
68 Quoted from Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 378.
69 See Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, pp. 690-92.
70 See ibid., p. 659.
71 See ibid., p. 534.
Arabic literary culture outlined above may also be regarded as biases 72 in a

sense: the importance attributed to the Qur'än and its momentous impact
on all genres of Arabic literature; the appreciation of orality; the view of
history as a progressive decline in quality; and the interpretation of author-
ship, originality and plagiarism.
Turning to the notion of adab, which in Modern Written Arabic signifies
belles-lettres and roughly equals the modern European concept of litera-
ture in its restricted sense of verbal art, the history of the term is a rather
complex issue, reflecting—as one would expect—the political, economic
and social changes in Arabo-Islamic civilisation.
In comparison with "literature," adab is both wider and narrower, as
Wolfhart Heinrichs has pointed out in the introduction to the volume of
Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft edited by him. 73 Since adab
may signify "culture in general" 74 it is obviously a great deal more inclu-
sive than any modern notion of literature. Even when conceived of as
learned studies in humanities it is too wide and corresponds rather to the
meaning of the English word "literature" as "[a]quaintance with 'letters' or
books; polite or humane learning; literary culture" which The Oxford Eng-
lish Dictionary lists as rare and obsolescent. 75 Furthermore, adab includes
works in genres which a modern understanding of literature would normal-
ly exclude, such as history, biography and geography. It is to be noted,
however, that not all historical, biographical and geographical works are
regarded as adab. What matters, in this context, is the literary style em-
ployed by the writer. At an early stage, only hadith-traintd theologians
(culamäsg. c
älim) wrote history and biography. When non-theological
scholars ( u d a b ä \ sg. adib) started to write in these fields, they used a
mode of writing they were familiar with. Hartmut Fähndrich calls these
works "adabisierte Werke." 76 These "adabised" works constitute a link be-
tween adab literature in a more restricted sense and purely scientific
72 For the concept of "bias," see Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Under-
standing, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan 3 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 244-67.
73 Wolfhart Heinrichs, "Einführung," in Klaus von See (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Lite-
raturwissenschaft (Wiesbaden: AULA-Verlag, 1972-2002), vol. 5, pp. 13-30 (see par-
ticularly p. 17).
74 See Carlo-Alfonso Nallino, La Litterature arabe des origines ä l'epoque de la dynastie
umayyade, trans. Charles Pellat, (Paris: Editions G. P. Maisonneuve, 1950), p. 17.
75 Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 8, p. 1029.
76 See Hartmut Fähndrich, "Der Begriff 'adab' und sein literarischer Niederschlag," in von
See (ed.), Neues Handbuch, vol. 5, pp. 338-39.
200 Bo Holmberg
works, and they include geographical listings of itineraries such as Ibn

Khuradädhbih's (third/ninth century) Kitäb al-masälik wa-l-mamälik (The
Book of Routes and Realms) and historico-biographical records such as
al-Khatib al-Baghdädi's (d. 463/1071) Ta'rlkh Baghdäd (The History of
Baghdad). Heinrichs' own example of an adab genre that makes the adab
concept too wide, namely the artistic epistles of secretaries, is somewhat
questionable and perhaps only demonstrates the lack of an indisputable
definition of what a modern notion of literature really is.
But adab also differs from a belletristic notion of literature in being too
narrow to serve as an equivalent. Genres that might pass as literature in a
modern sense, such as allegories and poetry by philosophers and mystics,
are not adab, since these writers were normally not regarded as udabä0. As
Roger Allen puts it, "[t]he contribution of Sufi writings to the development
of Arabic prose literature is immense and generally underestimated." 77 He
then goes on to use Sufi terminology in describing the patronised activity
of the udabä3 as the lähir ("external, evident") trend in Arabic literature,
while many Sufi writers focused on that which is bätin ("internal, hidden")
and in so doing emphasised the more personal and individual level which
led to new modes of expression and imagery that greatly enriched the lit-
erary repertoire. 78 One of the greatest Sufi poets and prose writers was Ibn
al- c Arab! (d. 630/1240) and it would be strange not to include his poetic
masterpiece Tarjumän al-ashwäq (The Interpreter of Desires) and at least
parts of his two major prose works al-Futuhät al-makkiyya (The Meccan
Conquests) and Fusüs al-hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom) in a survey of
Arabic literature. Another category of literature that does not fulfil the re-
quirements of adab is folk tales such as those met with in the Thousand
and One Nights and similar collections, rarely found in manuscripts since
they were mostly transmitted orally. The cultured elite, who decided what
was adab and what was not, had a problem with these popular tales and ap-
pear to have mostly denigrated prose fiction on the whole. From a Western
point of view, it would be difficult not to regard the Thousand and One
Nights and heroic epics such as Sirat cAntar (The Romance of c Antar) as
literature.
The emic notion of adab, then, is both wider and narrower compared to
the etic concept of literature as belletristic verbal art. What we can do is to
point out the difference between the two concepts and map out those writ-
77 Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 266.

78 See ibid.
ings on which they disagree. It cannot be our task to redefine the emic no-
tion of adab in the way S. A. Bonebakker does in his contribution to The
Cambridge History of Arabic Literature.19 He wants to rescue the word
adab from being abandoned as empty and anachronistic by suggesting a
more restricted definition based on "one particular aspect of the c Abbäsid
meaning of adab, such as the 'passive' meaning of 'the literary scholarship
of a cultivated man' presented in a systematic form." 80 In this concept of
adab, Bonebakker excludes not only "pure miscellanies and undigested
scholarship," but also "original literary productions, despite many learned
allusions to older literature," such as the maqämät of al-Hamadhänl (d.
398/1008) and al-Harlri (d. 516/1122). It cannot, however, be in the inter-
est of scholarship to meddle with and redefine emic concepts. Bonebakker
also describes adab as a genre in itself. But adab is not a genre; it can ra-
ther be seen as an approach to writing, in which certain themes and aims
have their place. 81
The first detailed Western analysis of the word adab was presented by
Carlo-Alfonso Nallino in a series of lectures at Cairo University in the
1940s.82 Nallino's survey of the different meanings of adab, which subse-
quent scholars—except, perhaps, Bonebakker—seldom find reason to ar-
gue with, traces the diachronic development of the term from its earliest
occurrences up to the twentieth century. Though Bonebakker 83 contests the
early dating of some of Nallino's first textual evidences of the term, he ba-
sically agrees with Nallino in identifying "custom," or even "ancestral cus-
tom" as an early meaning of adab. The word seems to have been a syno-
nym of sunna, which in Islamic discourse was (and is) the habits of the
Prophet, i.e. his words and his deeds, as a model for respect and emulation.
In this early stage, adab was behaviour in conformity to tribal social norms
encoded in proverbs (mathal, pi. amthäl), aphorisms (hikma, pi. hikam),
stories of intertribal conflicts (ayyäm al-carab, "the [battle] days of the
[Bedouin] Arabs"), and poetry (shi c r).
As for the etymology of the word adab, Nallino 84 agrees with Karl
Völlers, 85 who considered that the plural of adab, i.e. ädäb, was formed
79 See S. A. Bonebakker, "Adab and the concept of belles-lettres," in Ashtiany et al. (eds.),
c
Abbäsid Belles-Lettres, pp. 16-30.
80 Ibid., p. 30.
81 See H. Kilpatrick, "adab," in Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, p. 56.
82 See Nallino, La Litterature arabe, pp. 7-34.
83 See Bonebakker, "Adab," pp. 17-19.
85 See Karl Völlers, Katalog der islamischen [...] Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek
(Leipzig, 1906), p. 180, note 1.
202 B o Holmberg
from da°b ("custom, habit"), and that the singular adab was then derived
from this plural in conformity with a well-known singular-plural-pattern in
Arabic morphology. This etymology, of course, fits well with the earliest
meaning of adab as "custom." The Arabic lexicographers, though, derive
adab from the root 3 DB meaning either "marvellous thing" or "invitation
[to a meal]."
From the initial sense of "custom," the ethical and practical content of
adab was soon to be emphasised: "high quality of soul and the result of
good upbringing." 86 The early conquests brought the Arabs into contact
with other communities and thus changed Arab society in a radical way.
By the end of the Umayyad caliphate, adab in its ethical and practical
sense almost corresponded to "the Latin urbanitas, the civility, courtesy,
refinement of the cities in contrast to Bedouin uncouthness." 87 This so-
cial and ethical dimension of adab was current throughout the c Abbäsid
caliphate. The most extreme example of adab as sophisticated urban
code is the mannered ways of the larlf (pi. ûrafäa person who is
marked by iarf, i.e. personal elegance and refinement, implying such
qualities as culture, urbanity, ethics, aesthetic sensibility, courtesy and
amiability. 88 The larlf was a connoisseur of dress, fine objects, poetry
and wit. He was a dandy and an arbiter of taste. The Kitäb al-Muwashshä
(The Book of Brocade) by al-Washshä 3 (d. 325/937) is virtually a manual
of iarif etiquette. In a less sophisticated manner, the etiquette of various
social activities, such as eating, drinking, dressing, travelling and study-
ing, were treated in separate books or as chapters in encyclopedic works.
The great scholar al-Ghazäll (d. 505/1111) includes numerous etiquette
manuals of this sort in his Ihyä3 culüm ad-din (The Revival of Religious
Sciences). A colleague of the larlf was the nadlm (pi. nudamä3, "boon
companion"), an important functionary in medieval Arab court society.
The task of the nadlm was to accompany and entertain the ruler in his
solitary moments, at his private literary and musical gatherings—soirees
(musämarät), sessions (majälis), and conferences (muhädarät)—and
drinking parties, while playing games (e.g. chess) and hunting. The
fourth/tenth-century poet, polymath and adlb Kushäjim (d. ca 360/970)

87 F. Gabrieli, "Adab," Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), vol.
1, p. 175.
88 See L. A. Giffin, "zatf," in Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, p.
821.
wrote a handbook for courtiers such as the nadlm and the zarif entitled
Adab an-nudamä3 wa-latäcif az-zurafäc (Etiquette of the Boon Compan-
ion and Refined Jests of the Elegant).
Apart from manuals for special activities and the etiquette to be ob-
served in certain situations, we have manuals for various professions and
offices. Kushäjim's handbook for courtiers is actually a book of this kind.
Other examples are Ibn Qutayba's (d. 276/889) Kitäb adab al-kätib (The
Book of the Culture of the Scribe) which offers guidance, mostly on
philological matters, for secretaries, and a series of books on the culture of
judges (qädl, pi. qudäh), viziers (wazir, pi. wuzarä0), and so on. In these
instances, adab has acquired an intellectual, in addition to the primary eth-
ical, meaning. This represents an extended meaning of the term and im-
plies the sum of knowledge which makes a person courteous and urbane, in
other words profane culture, as distinct from religious learning (cilm).t9 At
first, this humanist concept of adab was strictly national. During the
Umayyad caliphate, the adlb, in this sense, excelled in knowledge about
ancient poetry, tribal lore and the accounts of intertribal conflicts. During
the c Abbäsid caliphate, the assimilation of Hellenistic, Indian and Persian
elements of tradition extended the intellectual understanding of adab into
humanitas in a broader sense.
An early exponent of this enlarged concept of adab was the Persian sec-
retary, translator (from Middle Persian) and prose writer Ibn al-Muqaffa c
(early second/eighth century). In addition to works on political maxims
and counsel addressed to the caliph, such as Kitäb ädäb al-kabir (The
Grand Book of Conduct) and Risäla fi s-sahäba (A Letter on the Entou-
rage), he is particularly famous for his collection of didactic fables Kalila
wa-Dimna, which is actually an augmented translation from Middle Per-
sian of animal fables from Indian story-books such as Pancatantra and Hi-
topadesha. As a store-house of political wisdom, the Kalila wa-Dimna was
designed to teach eloquence and grammar and to educate princes in good
behaviour. In this sense the Kalila wa-Dimna marks the beginning of a
genre of Arabic mirrors for princes, or guides for the ruling elite, of which
Sibt ibn al-JawzI's (sixth/thirteenth century) Kanz al-mulük fi kayfiyyat
as-sulük (The Treasure of Princes or the Fashion of Behaviour) 90 is a good
example from the days of the Mamlüks in Egypt.
89 See Nallino, La Litterature arabe, pp. 14, 16-17.

90 Sibt ibn al-JawzI, Kanz al-mulük fi kayfiyyat as-sulük: The Treasure of Princes or the
Fashion of Behaviour, ed. G. Vitestam (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1970).
204 Bo Holmberg
The mirrors for princes point to the court of caliphs and princes as one of
the most important milieus of adab writings throughout the c Abbäsid
caliphate. Both the nadim and the zarif were court functionaries. But the
court also attracted poets and litterateurs who sought patronage and finan-
cial support under the protection of caliphs and princes. This tradition
started as early as in Umayyad times, but it reached its peak during the
Büyid rulers who came to control most of Iraq and western, central and
southern Persia for over a century (320/932-454/1062) at a time when the
political power of the c Abbäsid caliphate had virtually collapsed. During
their time Baghdad and the various provincial courts of the family, most
notably Rayy, became outstanding centres of Arabic literature and science.
One of the udabä3, who started out as wandering scholars before being en-
rolled under the patronage the Buyid rulers, was at-Tawhidi (d. 411/1023).
In his Kitäb al-imtäc wa-l-mu'änasa (The Book of Enjoyment and Conver-
sation), he relates the conversations of thirty-seven evenings spent with a
senior Buyid administrator. During the course of these evenings (layla, pi.
layäli), the two men covered a great range of literary and intellectual
topics. But they also indulged in frivolous gossip. This book by at-Tawhidi
is a typical example of the adab compiled work in several regards. He has
not invented the stories, they are all derived from other sources which are
not written, but oral. Anecdotes, witty remarks, poetry and serious philo-
sophical arguments are intertwined. The object is both to educate and to
entertain. The rapid shift from one topic to another and from one genre to
another is employed in order not to bore the reader. Seriousness (jidd) and
joking (hazl) are placed side by side.91 In a sense, the Kitäb al-imtäc
wa-l-mu3änasa is a high literature counter-part to the Thousand and One
Nights. Other examples of compilatory multi-genred adab works are Ibn
Qutayba's (d. 276/889) cUyün al- akhbär (Sources of Narratives), al-Jähiz'
(d. ca 255/869) Kitäb al-hayawän (The Book of Animals) and Ibn c Abd
Rabbihi's (d. 328/940) al-cIqd al-farid (The Precious Necklace). In addi-
tion to these compilations on various topics, there were also monographs
devoted to a specific topic—the more rare and obscure, the better—such as
blind people, lepers, fools and sticks. On the last-mentioned topic, Usäma
ibn Munqidh (d. 584/1188), better known for other works, wrote Kitäb
al-casäh (The Book of the Stick) in which he collected anecdotes and
91 For the significance of this juxtaposition of jidd and hazl as a typical trait of adab works,
see Fähndrich, "Der Begriff 'adab'," 337-38.
poems about all manner of sticks—walking-sticks, crutches, wands,

cudgels, herdsmen's crooks, and so on.
Ibn al-Muqaffa c and the mirrors for princes also point to another impor-
tant context of adab scholarship, namely the chancery of scribes and other
bureaucratic officials. Ibn al-Muqaffa c was himself a secretary, and his
slightly older contemporary c Abd al-Hamid (d. 132/750) is one of the earli-
est prose writers in Arabic literature. His epistles on various topics—
among them the earliest example of a mirror for princes—are written in a
sober but artistic prose. They reflect a situation where the need to study
prose style and give instructions about it were strongly felt. On the whole,
the secretary (kätib, pi. kuttäb) was not only a vital figure in the adminis-
tration of the caliphate, he was also, in most cases at least, per definition an
adlb, an advocate of polite learning.
Although the concept of adab changed in meaning during the course of
time, certain ideas were present from the outset and remained important
throughout the centuries. Adab always involved intellectual nourishment,
manners and education. It was something that could be studied, taught and
learned. It was the business of a cultured literate elite with connections to
the chancery and the court. The language was the cultured written Arabic
of al-carabiyya al-fushä. Its textual expression was the written compilation
of poetry and anecdotes in prose on a wide array of subjects. Its functions
were both to instruct and to entertain.
LEIF LORENTZON
Let the House Be Dead Silent:

A Discussion of Literariness in
East African Oral Literature
"Cultural particularities are accidental. What defines the hu-

man species are the universals of culture."
Kwasi Wiredu*
Introduction
African literature has always been dominated by the oral tradition. This
largely remains true, even if it is the written literature that is read, and
awarded literary prizes, outside the continent. But in Africa orature (oral
literature) is a living tradition, even if it also has moved from the village
hut and the market place to urban streets, the stage, radio and recording
studios. Many writers of modern African literature have their roots in oral
storytelling, and utilize this in their modern writings, an aspect that has
been studied at great length. These writers of course never question the lit-
erariness of African orature; nor has the question of literariness been ad-
dressed in most collections of African orature.
The earliest collections of oral literature from Africa, from as early as
the mid nineteenth century in South Africa, were published chiefly by mis-
sionaries, linguists, ethnographers and anthropologists, who rarely, if ever,
had any interest in the literariness of the "folklore" they collected. 1 There
* Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural Universals and Particulars (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996),
p. 20.
1 At the time it was remarkable enough for someone to claim that "African savages" had a
literature. See Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,
1970), pp. 30-31 for a discussion of this.
Let the House B e Dead Silent: Literariness in East African Oral Literature 207
are many questions that could be directed to these collections: who really
decided what was included and omitted, the collector or the society it was
collected in/from? Is it literature in its oral conception, its telling, or when
it is printed in a book? What happens to African orature when it is tran-
scribed, and also most often translated? What about everything that is lost
from the storytelling situation?
This essay will only touch upon these questions since it chiefly is an at-
tempt to discuss the literariness of African oral literature, to bring into fo-
cus what oral utterances African oral societies consider worth preserving,
and why. Is it because of their literary quality? If so, what may it be that
constitutes the literary quality of some African oratures, what is it that
makes some oral "texts" literary and others not? It appears that this query
interests not only this essay; two articles in Research in African Literatures
raise the issue of the literariness of African oral literature, one only in pass-
ing and one as the major theme of the article. The latter is Karin Barber's
discussion of "quotedness" and "object-like properties" of certain Yorübä
oral texts, an article I will return to.2
From a Swedish perspective and without direct access to any African
oral literature, one has to be very modest, conceding a lack of first-hand
knowledge of any African orature. This study relies on the results of other
scholars and their first-hand account of African oral literature. It begins
with a look at how studies of oral literature from various parts of Africa ad-
dress, or at least touch upon, the question of literariness. As a result of my
own preference for English, and the chosen language of the scholars I rely
on, particularly in the concluding part of my study, the perspective in what
follows is predominantly Anglophonic.
In order to be able to present something of value, I shall in the latter part
fix on the oral literatures of East Africa. This orature has not attracted the
same kind of critical attention from outside the region as that of West Afri-
ca, the Sahel, and South Africa, although there are some notable excep-
tions, particularly Peter Seitel's research. East Africans themselves, how-
ever, have collected and studied their own oral literatures and published
the result of these endeavors locally. It is to these publications I intend to
turn to see how, if at all, the regional scholars have not only tackled the no-
tion of literariness, but also the closely related question of genre, in their
2 Karin Barber, "Quotation in the Constitution of Yorübä Oral Texts," Research in African
Literatures 30:2 (1999), pp. 17-41; see also Olabiyi Babalola Yai, "The Path is Open:
The Legacy of Melville and Frances Herskovits in African Oral Narrative Analysis,"
ibid., pp. 4 - 1 2 .
208 Leif Lorentzon
own orature. I also wish to see if it is possible to reveal indigenous discus-

sions and definitions of the literariness of these oral literatures.
Some Remarks on the Text World in Africa
In introductory surveys of African literature it is common to consider only

sub-Saharan cultures. I admit that yet again in this article the cultures north
of the Sahara are omitted. In this sketchy view of the early written litera-
tures in Africa it becomes quite embarrassing not to mention the early lit-
erature of ancient Egypt. I am aware that scholars today consider this an
African literature and culture, and that contemporary North African and
sub-Saharan African literatures are moving closer to each other, making it
possible to talk of (if one wants) the literature of the whole continent, with-
out the divide of the Sahara. Nevertheless I shall restrict myself here to the
African literature south of the Sahara. I do this as I am not discussing writ-
ten literature, ancient or modern, but oral literature: an orature that is pre-
dominantly steeped in the local, regional culture and history and religion of
a people. In North Africa this orature context is dominated by Islam, with
perhaps also a gaze north towards the Mediterranean, rather than south to
the sub-Sahara area. In black Africa there is another gaze and other reli-
gions.
When Africa is, or hopefully was, considered a continent without writ-
ing, it is false. Nor is it true to claim that no indigenous scripts were devel-
oped in sub-Saharan Africa, that it was the Arabic and Latin alphabets
which provided Africa with a script. Yet, of the more than 2000 languages
found on the continent few traditionally have a written language. 3
However, there are old literatures in African languages to which intro-
ductions of African literature have rarely given much attention. Conven-
tionally it is the modern written literature in the colonial languages that has
been introduced. Because of the prominence of the language-question
(what language to write in: vernacular or colonial?) and the fact that more
contemporary writers are starting to use their mother tongues, the vernacu-
lar literatures have attracted more critical attention. Today it would be im-
possible to publish a survey of Africa's literature without including litera-
tures in African languages, both oral and written. But it is primarily the
3 Barbara Gimes (ed.), Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 13th ed. (Dallas: Summer
Inst, of Linguistics and the Univ. of Texas at Arlington, 1996).
Let the House Be Dead Silent: Literariness in East African Oral Literature 209
scholarly interest in the orature of the continent in recent decades that has
resulted in several new studies.
The written literatures in African languages, particularly older litera-
tures, are still largely neglected by the academic world. There are, of
course, exceptions. Two major efforts published in the early 1980s are our
main sources for pre-modern written literatures in African languages. 4
Here we can read about the ancient classical Ethiopian language, Ge'ez
(Giiz), an epigraphic script which was the official language, written and
spoken, in Ethiopia from the fourth to the eleventh century. It is older than
the introduction of Christianity into Ethiopia, which indicates its local, Af-
rican genesis. 5 While Ge'ez remained the official written language until the
middle of the nineteenth century, Amharic became the spoken language
during the thirteenth century. The early Ge'ez literature is religious and
comprises mainly translations from Greek and Arabic, but there were also
court chronicles and some poetry.
In other parts of Africa some indigenous writing systems appeared in the
nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, largely as a response to
the domination of Arabic and Latin scripts. One of the more successful
ones was Vai in Sierra Leone. But neither it, nor any other script, had a
chance of establishing any influence once Islam and Christianity, at differ-
ent times, had introduced script to many of the languages that thitherto had
not had a written language.
With the spreading of Islam in West Africa in the seventh century this
large part of the continent acquired a written script. When Timbuktu was
an Islamic center in the thirteenth century, much religious poetry as well as
scientific works were written. During a second Islamic onslaught in the
seventeenth century indigenous languages, such as Fulani, Hausa and
Wolof, began using the Arabic alphabet. The literature was still however
poetry, both religious and secular, following the Arabic tradition of strict
rules of prosody and rhyme.
In East Africa, Swahili had a written script as early as the fourteenth cen-
tury, using the Arabic alphabet. But the oldest surviving literature is from
4 B. W. Andrezejewski, S. Pilaszewicz and W. Tyloch (eds.), Literatures in African Lan-

guages (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985); Albert Gerard, African Language Lit-
eratures (Harrow: Longman, 1981); see also Robert Cancel, "African-Language Litera-
tures: Perspectives on Culture and Identity," in Oyekan Owomoyela (ed.), A History of
Twentieth-Century African Literatures (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1993), pp. 285-310.
5 See Stanislaw Pilaszewicz, "The Rise of Written Literature in African Languages," in
Literatures in African Languages, p. 50.
210 Leif Lorentzon
the eighteenth century, versified religious epic literature. The moderniza-

tion of the Swahili literature began with the reform of 1925, introducing
Swahili as a lingua franca for British East Africa.
The Bible and John Bunyans's The Pilgrim's Progress in Christian
dominated Africa parallel the influence of the Koran on early Swahili lit-
erature, as well as that in Sahel. This is particularly apparent in southern
Africa. Three languages, Xhosa, Sotho and Zulu, established a written lan-
guage, due to missionaries, as early as 1823. The missionary presses pro-
duced chiefly religious literature, but fictive literature from African writers,
mostly with a religious theme, soon began to flourish. The same develop-
ment can be seen in Nigeria.
It is significant that this took place in British Africa. Little indigenous
written literature appeared in French administered Africa, and still less in
the Portuguese colonies. While the British encouraged writing in the ver-
naculars, the French wanted their subjects to assimilate and become
Frenchmen and thus never encouraged indigenous literature.
Studies of African Orature and Literature
However one looks at it the oral literature is far richer than the written in
traditional pre-Second World War Africa. Ever since the nineteenth centu-
ry scholars have collected African oral literature, and sometimes also stu-
died what they have collected. Very rarely, however, does one find a dis-
cussion of literary quality. If these scholars were trained in literary studies,
which until post-war times was seldom the case, they followed a Euro-
American literary critical tradition. This caused problems, as the literature
they encountered was most often radically different from the one they were
trained to study. So what these scholars did was to collect, document and
describe a particular genre and contextualize it against its social back-
ground. These genres were chiefly studied sociologically, and "end up re-
affirming a European view of what a literary work should be." 6 Seldom, if
ever, is there a discussion of the notion of literature or the criteria that have
guided them in their work; these collectors unreflectively adopt an essen-
tialist and Western concept of literature.
6 Karin Barber, I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in α Yorübd
Town (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991), p. 308.
In 1970 Ruth Finnegan published her seminal Oral Literature in Africa,

which was the first major effort to cover orature from the whole of sub-
Saharan Africa. Finnegan however also divides her study according to a
Western concept of genres. After introductory chapters she divides her study
into poetry and prose. The poetic forms discussed fall into such well-known
categories as panegyrics, elegies, religious, lyrical, etc. The chapters on
prose also follow traditional Western ideas of typology. Later studies have
shown the shortcomings of such a strategy. Finnegan is however aware of
this dilemma when she writes, after having presented her categories, that
"they are likely to prove inadequate for future detailed research."7
There is also a discussion of oral art as literature in Finnegan's first
chapter, which is fairly representative of such discussions in works on Af-
rican oral literature until very recently; it is concerned with defending ora-
ture as literature. She firstly maintains the right to use the term literature, in
spite of its etymology, for texts produced and preserved orally. It is also
concerned with defending the quality of orature in comparison with, and in
contrast to, literature. The reason for viewing them as equals is that "it is
misleading as well as unfruitful to attempt to draw a strict line between the
verbal art of literate and of non-literate cultural traditions." 8 This is
Finnegan's basic assumption throughout her book. From this assumption
follows no analysis of, and very little interest in, the literariness of the texts
considered. Principally it is a matter of answering the charge of triviality in
oral literature as resting on ignorance. When she addresses the matter of
what counts as literature and what does not, she firstly claims, in line with
seeing no essential chasm between written and oral literature, that this
problem is the same for both kinds of literature. Then she turns to her
Western training: "Some cases are clear-cut. These are instances when the
accepted characteristics of 'literature' are clearly applicable, or when Af-
rican examples are clearly comparable with literary genres recognized in
familiar European cultures." (my italics)9 She does however admit that
when this is not the case "one criterion must be the evaluation of the partic-
ular societies involved."10 This is more than most scholars of oral African
literature had allowed in the late 1960s.
In the aforementioned Polish volume on literatures in African languages,
there is also an essay on oral literature. Here Andrezejewski reveals his
7 Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa, p. 78.

8 Ibid., p. 16.
9 Ibid., p. 23.
10 Ibid.
212 Leif Lorentzon
Eurocentric perspective when discussing "a universal classification" of

genres. He finds no problem in dividing prose from poetry, in contrast to
later more African-trained scholars, particularly with regard to the term
"prose."11 The terms he uses for his discussion are those we have been fa-
miliar with since Aristotle. Then he continues: "In contrast with the diffi-
culties involved in any attempt at universal classification, it is relatively
easy to work out specific classifications of genres found in individual cul-
tures, particularly since they are usually reflected in the vocabulary of the
language."12 Andrzejewski here indicates the way in which scholars have
worked when they have studied a single genre in one culture and thereby
avoided the superfluous question of a universal typology.
There are numerous such studies and most of them only implicitly ad-
dress the question of the literariness of the oral texts they study. No one,
however, questions the literariness of the material. Even the earliest studies
from South Africa, in the mid nineteenth century, never doubted that it was
literature that they collected and published, and they certainly never re-
flected on their own concept of literature.
One of the earliest scholars to actually address the matter of literariness,
if not his own concept, is J. H. Nketia in his influential book Funeral
Dirges of the Akan People from 1955. The sixth chapter is called "The
Dirge as a Literary Expression," and here he discusses the dirges as poems,
since they are short, compressed by means of allusions and the main stylis-
tic devices are repetition and parallelism. They are not individually created
but belong to all and there to be quoted:
The dirge is a traditional literary expression in a more or less finished state
and is capable of being used in different funeral situations. Faced with a
funeral, a woman mourner need not rely on her own creativeness in order to
sing appropriate dirges: the material and the accompanying conventions are
provided by tradition and it is for her to draw on them.13
We shall recall this passage as it precedes Karin Barber's notion of

"quotedness," to be discussed below. However, the songs are not of
course called "dirges" in any of the Akan languages/dialects Nketia has
gathered his material from. The term is "representative of the kind of
11 For a discussion of "prose" see Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature (Blooming-
ton: Indiana UP, 1992), pp. 163, 350-51. Finnegan also acknowledges this as a problem:
cf. Oral Literature in Africa, p. 76.
12 B. W. Andrezejewski, "Oral Literature," in Literatures in African Languages, pp. 44—45.
13 J. H. Nketia, Funeral Dirges of the Akan People (New York: Negro UP, [1955] 1969), p.
110.
utterances that one is likely to hear in many Akan areas in the situation of
the funeral.'" 4
Later scholars will prefer to use the indigenous terms for the genres they
study. All the many books in the Oxford Library of African Literature
(OLAL) series do this. Francis Mading Deng's study of the role of songs in
Dinka society in the Sudan is an interesting case. Among the Dinkas songs
are events, in that they cannot be understood outside their functional force.
Hence the songs are identified according to their use. Based on indigenous
terminology Deng groups them according to their social significance: ox
songs, war songs, women's songs, age-set insult songs, etc. The same
method is used when referring to a single song. No title is used, but indi-
vidual songs are identified "in descriptive or possessive terms. Thus an ox
song is referred to by the ox about which it was composed." 15
Another OLAL book is Babalola's pivotal study on the Ijala poetry of
the Yorübä-speaking people. Babalola was one of the first African scholars
to study the oral literature of his own people. But he was also of course Eu-
ropean-trained; thus his view of Ijala as literature largely corresponds with
that of the other studies in the OLAL series. The fifth chapter deals with
poetic formulas, devices and sound, which manifests his schooling, while
also making it clear that this is quite elaborate oral poetry by any defini-
tion. Yet he largely contextualizes the Ijala; it is more a sociological than a
literary analysis of Ijala poetry—but it is an insider's gaze!16
Another insider's gaze is provided by Daniel Kunene's study of the He-
roic Poetry of the Basotho in South Africa. A Sotho-native himself this is
more of a literary/linguistic analysis, while being very much informed by
the performance-centered theory of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. In his
Introduction Kunene polemically promotes oral literature:
What to call this art then b e c o m e s a technicality, and our enlightenment—
nay, our liberation—leads us, in turn, to liberate the term "literature" from
its erstwhile over-literal definition, and by c o m m o n consensus "literature"
c o m e s to be used for all verbal art.17
Here we see Kunene enlarging the concept of literature to what I will later
call the inclusive, wider sense of literature that really does not correspond
with a post-Romantic Western definition of Literature.
14 Ibid., p. 1.
15 Francis Mading Deng, The Dinka and Their Songs (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973), p. 90.
16 S . A . Babalola, The Content and Form of Yorubd Ijala (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966).
17 Daniel P. Kunene Heroic Poetry of the Basotho (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971), p. xi.
214 Leif Lorentzon
Harold Scheub uses a related strategy when studying an African orature:

he writes that the "ntsomi" tradition is not a literary tradition, but a per-
formance. 18 More than most he has emphasized the importance of body and
facial gestures in the performer's manipulation of her audience; her, be-
cause "ntsomi" is largely a female genre, powers of dramatizing and evok-
ing the narratives are more important to the success of the performance
than mere narrating. Scheub nevertheless discusses at length the poetic lan-
guage, the core-images used and the structural compositions of the "ntso-
mi," and the prominence of repetition in the tradition.
An indigenous perspective is most common when studying a single
genre. Also if one investigates a whole culture's narratives, as the Hersko-
vits' did, this is the strategy most often used. 19 If a system of classification
ought to be based on the system traditionally recognized by the people who
use it, it is obviously not an easy task. Most of the studies mentioned here
revert to a Western nomenclature in their analysis of subgenres. At least
one critic, while discussing Herskovits' book, has recently advanced his
categorical criticism of such articulations: "Such reputed universale as
'myth,' 'poetry,' 'fable,' and the like should not be used in analyzing Afri-
can oral literature without being problematized in the sense of testing their
relevance in specific African cultures." 20 Such awareness is of course more
common today than it was in the late 1950s.
In Ode Ogede's study of Igede praise poetry, the poetic quality is ad-
dressed head on when Ogede refers to Wellek and Warren and R. N. Egudu
in order to view poetry as "a mode of impassioned utterance that empha-
sizes its prosodic features dramatically [by means of] imagery, rhythm, and
sound effects." 21 Some thirty pages later Ogede points to the complex qual-
ity of the Igede praise poetry, its ability and its inclination to express many
different matters simultaneously. 22 Ogede emphasizes the difference be-
tween oral poetry and other oral utterances when he opines that normal
speech rarely does this, among the Igede or anywhere else. And he follows
this with a long exemplified discussion of how this is realized in the praise
and vilification poetry of his own people.
18 Harold Scheub, The Xhosa "Ntsomi" (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975), p. 16.
19 J. Melville and Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative (Evanston: Northwestern
UP, 1958), p. 16: "Our discussion will respect the Dahomean classification."
20 Yai, "The Path is Open," p. 7.
21 Ode Ogede, Art, Society, and Performance: Igede Praise Poetry (Gainesville: Univ.
Press of Florida, 1997), p. 51.
22 Ibid., p. 82.
Just because a study is recent does not guarantee a use of indigenous ter-
minology. In a study of the oral literature of the Wolof people in Senegal,
from 1995, Samba Diop insists on using Western terminology when classi-
fying African orature: "It is necessary to analyze the many facets of this lit-
erature [African literature at large] and then move on to the question of
genres and the equivalents of literary terms (terms as they are defined in
European languages and what their equivalents are in the African lan-
guages)."23 This apparent dependence on Western critical criteria is surpris-
ing to see in a work from the 1990s.
In a particularly illuminating article Kwesi Yankah discusses the "dilem-
ma of choosing between cross-cultural typologies and indigenous taxons in
the study of African oral art."24 He illustrates this with the Akan praise
poetry Apae, and decides firstly to remain with the term "praise," while ad-
mitting deviations, as praise is the dominant feature of this poetry. But
Ogede has shown that vilification, at least among the Igede, is also found in
this kind of appellative poetry. Yet even Ogede remains with "praise,"
whereas he could have used Yankah's newly coined term "referential poet-
ry"; referential as it seems to Yankah that "the primary emphasis in the use
of appellations is not praise or otherwise, but rather referential focus."25 In
his article Yankah then illustrates this in analyses of Apae. It is intriguing
for my further discussion that he talks of "the recitation of appellations as a
genre" (my italics).26 We saw that Nketia in his book on Akan dirge also
used an argument close to the one Barber would produce years later. That
both of these precursors studied the same language culture is, I believe,
simply coincidental. There seems to be as much recitation of more or less
fixed oral poetry elsewhere in Africa.
The last century has seen a growing interest in Africa's oral literature, par-
ticularly in the epic form. In a sense it all stems from Ruth Finnegan's cate-
gorical denial of the existence of the epic in Africa.27 This denial provoked
several answers pointing to existing epics in Africa. Since her study ap-
peared, numerous critical studies of African epics have been published. It
is particularly in West Africa that the epic appears to be found; one study
talks of "an 'African Epic Belt,' running across the Sahel and down into
23 Samba Diop, The Oral History and Literature of the Wolof People of Waalo, Northern
Senegal (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), p. 261.
24 Kwesi Yankah, "To Praise or Not to Praise the King: The Akan Apae in the Context of
Referential Poetry," Research in African Literatures 14: 3 (1983), p. 381.
25 Ibid., p. 382; see also Ogede, Art, Society, and Performance, p. 23.
26 Yankah, "To Praise," p. 383.
27 See Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa, pp. 1 0 8 - 1 1 0 .
216 Leif Lorentzon
Central Africa." 28 The Sunjata epic from the Mande world of West Africa
is the most widely spread epic, and the one that has attracted most critical
attention. Some 30 versions are recorded and many of them are published
and readily available even to ordinary readers. The canonical Sunjata text
is D. T. Niane's version in French from 1960 (English translation in 1965).
"Since then it has been dominant, influencing curricula around the world
and feeding back into the oral tradition" (my italics). 29 Traces of Niane's
text of Sunjata have been found in later recorded versions; an interesting
case of the oral printed text influencing the oral tradition it itself is meant
to represent.
In all this literature on the epic there is, however, hardly any discussion
of its literary quality. Generally the scholars are more interested in the his-
torical background. In the 1970s Gordon Innes published three versions of
Sunjata in one volume where he does not hesitate to call them epics, i.e.
works of literature. In another book on Mandinka narratives he is satisfied
with calling the texts he has translated historical narratives, the reason ap-
parently being that they almost totally lack imagery. 30 Yet later in the intro-
duction he insists that these narratives are "items of Mandinka oral litera-
ture whose subject matter happens to be historical." 31 Epics they are not as
they do not correspond to C. M. Bowra's classical definition of the heroic
epic, which Innes finds "highly appropriate to the Sunjata epic." 32 He
nevertheless adds a reservation: "I would not of course suggest that these
texts are comparable in literary achievement with Homer's poems." 33 Later
critics would suggest precisely this, insisting on the grandeur of the African
epic, if seldom in direct comparison to Homer's verse.
In his book on the epic in Africa, Isidore Okpewho defines the African
epic:
28 John W. Johnson, Thomas A. Hale and Stephen Belcher (eds.), Oral Epics from Africa
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997), p. xv.
29 Stephen Belcher, Epic Traditions of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999), p. 109. For
further information on the Sunjata epic one must consult Ralph A. Austen (ed.), In
Search of Sunjata (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999).
30 Gordon Innes, Kaabu and Fuladu: Historical Narratives of the Gambian Mandinka
(London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), p. 18.
31 Ibid., p. 27.
32 Gordon Innes, Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions (London: School of Oriental and Afri-
can Studies, 1974), p. 9. Another scholar of African orature who refers to Bowra is
Daniel Biebuyck: "The Nyanga epics admirably fit the standard definitions and charac-
terizations of epic literature (Bowra, 1952; Chadwick and Chadwick, 1932, pp. 20 ff.)."
Daniel Biebuyck, Hero and Chief: Epic Literature from the Banyanga (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1978), p. 3.
33 Innes, Sunjata, p. 2.
A n oral epic is fundamentally a tale about the fantastic deeds o f a man or

m e n e n d o w e d with something more than human might and operating in
s o m e t h i n g larger than the normal human c o n t e x t and it is o f s i g n i f i c a n c e in
portraying s o m e stage o f the cultural or political d e v e l o p m e n t o f a people. It
is usually narrated or performed to the background o f m u s i c by an unlet-
tered singer working alone or with s o m e assistance from a group o f a c c o m -
panists.' 4
The performance and the social importance of the epic are emphasized
here, in the light of Albert Lord's performance theory. Nothing is said of its
literariness, or the concept of literature implicitly used by Okpewho him-
self. Elsewhere in his book on the African epic Okpewho does discuss
form, structure, and style, but consistently in a Parry and Lord tradition.
This seems to exclude a more direct discussion of literary rhetorics. Ok-
pewho's view is largely echoed by Ralph A. Austen when he claims that
"for analytical purposes, the Sunjata epic could perhaps be most accurately
described in current anthropological terminology as a 'literary practice,'
i.e. an institutional performance." 35
John W. Johnson comes closer to a pursuit of literariness in his answer to
Finnegan, where he defines the African epic according to four universal
and four not necessarily so universal qualities.36 He elaborates his discus-
sion when he later introduces his translation of Sunjata. After having pro-
nounced that "Epics are, by definition, poems,"37 and thus implicitly brim-
ming with literary qualities, he stresses the multi-generic quality of the
Mande epic tradition; it has three modes: the narrative, the song and the
praise-proverb mode. His discussion is echoed in later studies of the epic
issued by the Indiana University Press, particularly in the wonderful book
on the griot-tradition of West Africa by Thomas A. Hale. While Hale
agrees with Johnson regarding much of the nature of the epic from the epic
belt, he has reservations about other African epic traditions. "A reading of
some of these other epics reveals not only recurring features such as those
described by Johnson but also, as one might expect, a full range of the more
common poetic characteristics familiar to readers of epic around the world:
34 Idisore Okpewho, The Epic in Africa (New York: Columbia UP, 1979), p. 34. Okpewho
would later quote himself in his critical introduction to The Ozidi Saga, collected and
translated by J. P. Clark-Bekederemo (Washington DC: Howard UP, 1991), p. xi.
35 Ralph A. Austen, "The Historical Transformation of Genres: Sunjata as Panegyric, Folk-
tale, Epic, and Novel," in In Search of Sunjata, p. 70.
36 John W. Johnson, "Yes, Virginia, There Is an Epic in Africa," Research in African Lit-
eratures 11:3(1980), p. 312.
37 John W. Johnson, The Epic ofSon-Jara (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), p. 7.
218 Leif Lorentzon
metaphor, comparison, parallelism, repetition, metonymy, and dialogue." 38

Hale follows this with a brief discussion of the characteristics, without
touching on the question of literariness. However, in an earlier book, where
he uses "an expanded view of literature" in order to compare three very dif-
ferent African narratives, one being an epic, he lists various devices which
"add to what the Western world calls epic—a long poetic narrative." 39
Of the many new studies of African oral literature, and particularly the
epic, Stephan Belcher's book from 1999 is the one that most directly in-
volves itself in a discussion of literariness. In the introduction Belcher
seems to evade the question when he defines the epic and only implicitly
includes its literary nature. On the same page however he finds that the
question of poetic form, mentioned in definitions of the epic, is problem-
atic. Its standards are based on written material with expectations of me-
tered regularity, whilst the African epic is an oral performance: an oral per-
formance where "the complex interplay of voice and music can be com-
pounded when the language is tonal. These features raise possibilities un-
foreseen in most handbooks of prosody and still insufficiently analyzed in
the field." 40 Belcher therefore decides not to insist on the criterion of poetic
form. Usually poetic form is one of the major features when we look for lit-
erariness in a work. Belcher here dismisses this, which is rather radical,
when most other critics insist on poetic form for African orature.
Further in his excellent survey of the epic in Africa, Belcher nevertheless
distinguishes non-literary narrative from literary ones, and largely on crite-
ria one can very well understand as poetic form—even if still only implicit-
ly. In his early chapter on elements of the epic, he distinguishes historical
narratives from the more amplified and structured folktale; a folktale is
common property, while "epic performances come from specialists [...]
The crucial difference lies in the skill and artistry brought by the performer
to the performed version of the story." 41 This distinction permeates Bel-
cher's analyses throughout the book, where he recurrently shows how
chiefly historical narratives, but also hunters' poetry, transform in a per-
formance tradition into epic tales, and how this is related to the folktale.
In the same early chapter Belcher brings up the praise poem, a genre he
claims is almost universal in Africa. It is also found in most epic traditions,
and sometimes in great abundance as in the Sunjata epic. The praise song is
38 Thomas A. Hale, Griots and Griottes (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998), p. 137.
39 Thomas A. Hale, Scribe, Griot, and Novelist (Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1990),
p. 66.
40 Belcher, Epic Traditions of Africa, p. xiv.
41 Ibid., p. 7.
not connected to the narrative, but rather "disrupts the narrative and creates
space for different relationships and perceptions among performer, audi-
ence, and performance." 42 Since the praise song is certainly verbal art in its
own cultural environment, this intrusion appears to add poetry to the epic
narrative.
Even if Belcher does not enter into a comprehensive discussion of the lit-
erariness of the epic material he presents, there is more evidence here of
such an interest than in most other works. The reason may well be that he
embraces literature from almost all of Africa.
If one is actually interested in the oral literature of more than one culture,
if one has a more comparative perspective on, let us say, a whole conti-
nent's oral literature, there is at least a need to discuss genre. Dan Ben-
Amos is one folklorist who has addressed this matter more than most in a
series of articles. In one particularly enlightening article he compares an
"analytical" with an "ethnic" approach to folklore. The former has "fol-
lowed four distinct paths: thematic, holistic, archetypal, and functional." 43
He discards all four for various reasons, before discussing ethnic genres.
His purpose is not comparative, but only to suggest a paradigmatic model
based on features that exist within a single genre. He wishes to describe "an
ethnic genre as a verbal art form consisting of a cluster of thematic and be-
havioral attributes and to formulate the relationships between the various
elements of the folkloric system in the form of a paradigm." 44
One of the analytical approaches that Ben-Amos is critical of is used by
Isidore Okpewho, the next critic after Finnegan and Andrzejewski to en-
compass orature from the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Okpewho, being a
comparativist, finds the universal (Western) approach unacceptable now
(1992) but the single, culturally bound approach will also make it imposs-
ible "to see each society in relation to another," 45 in short hinder the com-
parative view. Indigenous categories, Okpewho insists, are often far too
elastic for modern literary comparative criticism, and the terminology of
one society rarely corresponds with that of another. Instead Okpewho de-
cides to use a thematic strategy "by examining the basic themes or con-
cerns of these pieces of oral literature—rather than make a futile effort to
reconcile the numerous local systems of classification across the conti-
42 Ibid., p. 26.
43 Dan Ben-Amos, "Analytical Categories and Ethnic Genres," in Ben-Amos (ed.), Folk-
lore Genres (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1976), p. 216.
44 Ibid., p. 231.
45 Okpewho, African Oral Literature, p. 127.
220 Leif Lorentzon
nent." 46 After an introduction to the nature of songs and chants, he looks at

major themes and thereby manages to classify and cover most oral poetry
found in Africa under the themes of "love," "praise," "criticism," "war"
and "death."
In his survey of narratives Okpewho initially shuns the distinction be-
tween prose and poetry, as it does not, in his view, make much sense in the
study of oral narratives (Ben-Amos surprisingly takes the distinction for
granted in folklore: "the primary prosodic distinction between prose and
poetry" 47 ). According to Okpewho, it is more the diction, the way a story is
told, or sung, or voiced that indicates whether we should consider it a nar-
rative or a song. 48 Trying to classify narratives Okpewho first suggests four
options: it should be done according to protagonist, on the basis of the pur-
pose of the tale, in terms of some characteristics of the story, or on the ba-
sis of content or occasion. Then he proceeds to sort his survey of oral nar-
rative into three categories: legend, explanatory tale, and fable. 49 He also
has a chapter on "witticism" and one on musical and dramatic forms.
In one chapter Okpewho looks at the style of the "text itself," but he
never reveals what constitutes this text, or why one specific text is chosen
and not another. 50 Presumably this text is a literary one, so the devices he
discusses are those that make these texts literary, they constitute part of the
text's literariness. Being strongly influenced by the performance-centered
approach, he is concerned with "style and technique of presentation," and
"especially those aspects that make oral literature as an art form somewhat
distinct from written literature." 51 It is thus orature's distinction from writ-
ten literature that is the topic, not what makes oral utterances literary as
such. Here he follows earlier arguments among experts on African oral lit-
erature. We learn that repetition is one of the most fundamental features of
oral literature; that parallelism as a formulaic device allows great diversity,
so central to orature in Africa; that piling and association are both central to
the performance, a performance which is oral, hence the importance of
tone, ideophones, music and dramatization. Okpewho also mentions the
relevance of plot digression, and such literary devices as imagery, symbol-
46 Ibid., p. 130. Cf. Ben-Amos's discussion of the thematic approach in "Analytical Cate-
gories," pp. 216-19.
47 Ben-Amos, "Analytical Categories," p. 236.
48 Okpweho, African Oral Literature, p. 164.
49 Ibid., pp. 181-82.
50 On the first page of his book he "accepts the idea of literature as creative text," and oral
literature as creative text "derived by word of mouth." Ibid., p. 4.
51 Ibid., p. 70.
ism and allusion. When these "styles and techniques of presentation" are
found in an oral text, so the tacit argument runs, then we have oral litera-
ture.
The few considerations of the literariness of orature that we can find
argue like Okpewho; it is a matter of distinguishing oral literature from
written literature, rather than oral literature from other oral utterances.
This scholarly lacuna stems from the fact that none of the researchers real-
ly discuss their own notion of literature. Had this been done, the question
of the literariness of some oral utterances, and not others, would inevitably
have been addressed. As it stands, it is a Western concept of literature that
permeates these studies, even when the scholar is from Africa.
This essay is an attempt to bring into focus the literariness of oral litera-
ture—while unable, and indeed unwilling, to find a conclusive answer.
There are however critics, chiefly outside an Africanist discourse, who
have tried. Bakhtin does not address the matter directly, but points to a
possible reasoning. He, for instance, differentiates "between primary
(simple) and secondary (complex) speech genres."52 All literary texts are
secondary genres, while utilizing primary ones. But all complex speech
genres are naturally not literary texts or utterances. In his insistence on ut-
terance being the real unit of speech, Bakhtin of course also includes oral
literature. And the difference between any oral utterance and a literary one
appears to be that "here the individual style enters directly into the very
task of the utterance [...] into the intent of the utterance," and this is not the
case in most speech genres.53 When he also insists that some kind of finali-
zation of an utterance is necessary for reaction, he forebodes a discussion
of the finalization of orature that I will consider later in this paper.
Tzvetan Todorov discusses the concept of literature in the first chapter
of his Genres of Discourse. Todorov, however, does not try to find a uni-
versal definite answer, but discusses two ways of viewing literature: the
functional and the structural. Most studies of African orature use a func-
tional approach, looking at what literature does, rather than what it is. To-
dorov asks: "What distinguishes literature from what is not literature?
What is the difference between literary language and nonliterary use?" 54
52 Μ. M. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," in his Speech Genres and Other
Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1986), p. 61.
53 Ibid., p. 63.
54 Tzvetan Todorov, Genres in Discourse, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, [1978] 1990), p. 9.
222 Leif Lorentzon
He cannot arrive at a satisfactory answer: "If one opts for a standard view-
point, each type of discourse usually labeled literary has nonliterary 'rela-
tives' that are closer to it than are any other types of 'literary' discourse.
[...] The result of this investigative path may seem negative. [...] The
functional [notion of literature] may or may not be legitimate; the structur-
al notion cannot be." 55 While finally pointing to a highly inclusive idea of
literature, or discourse as he prefers, he indicates hope for the comparative
critic.
Below, this essay, being interested in the literariness of African oral lit-
erature, will address the questions Todorov poses. I shall discuss them by
looking at two theories, one chiefly functional, one chiefly structural,
while also maintaining, but not without a discussion, an inclusive concept
of literature.
Literariness and Two Theories/Methods That May Help
It is rather surprising to discover that Todorov's questions, which I have

hitherto searched for without much success in material on African orature,
are found in W. H. Whiteley's introduction to his anthology of African oral
prose, from 1964: "What constitutes the distinction between literature and
non-literature in societies where the whole continuity of the group is ex-
pressed in speech and other actions?" 56 Whiteley follows Laurence Le-
rner's discussion from 1960, where Lerner distinguishes amongst three
kinds of definitions: literature as knowledge, literature as the expression of
emotion, and literature as the arousing of emotion in reader/listener. It is
the second criterion that Whiteley prefers, together with Lerner's insist-
ence on an individual author/recitor. Whiteley thus arrives at the following
criterion of literature for the African oral prose of his book:
If the expression and arousing of emotion is due, not to the individual

reciter, but to the material itself, then one still has not got literature but only
the stuff from which literature is created. Literature, it s e e m s to me, requires
the imposition of individuality o f composition or contribution on to the
anonymous, but institutionalized, body of tradition. 57
55 Ibid., p. 11.
56 W. H. Whiteley, A Selection of African Prose: I, Traditional Oral Texts (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1964), p. 4.
57 Ibid., p. 6.
Since his collection is of oral prose, Whiteley has to distinguish it from

poetry, a task that we have seen most scholars of African orature have
problems with. There simply does not seem to be a completely satisfactory
procedure. Whiteley does not like to use a metrical distinction, for the same
reasons that Belcher in his book on the epic discarded the poetic criterion.
Instead, Whiteley prefers to use the divide between what is sung and what
is spoken in his collection. He is, however, well aware that many genres
switch between song and speech and some genres can be considered hybrid
forms. "It is perhaps preferable that one should regard the prose/verse dis-
tinction in terms of points on a single scale of 'patterning,' with metrical
verse at one end and everyday speech towards the other." 58
Whiteley's inquiry into the literariness of oral material is echoed two
years later by Janheinz Jahn when he repeats the question: "How is oral lit-
erature to be distinguished from mere speech?" 59 In his discussion he ar-
gues against Whiteley's insistence on an individual author/reciter, which
would correspond with the performance-centered theory found later in
most studies on African orature. Jahn looks more to the tradition, the mate-
rial: "If an actor recites a text according to a fixed tradition, this surely pre-
supposes a 'literary' basis." 60 Without clearly revealing a personal distinc-
tion Jahn, however, stresses the formal and structural nature of literature.
He argues that Whiteley's and Lerner's criteria are those of sociology try-
ing to define literature by its social functions only. "Unless there is an aes-
thetic element and a principle of form, there can be neither art nor litera-
ture." 61
What is surprising is that Janheinz Jahn, writing in 1966, anticipates Karin

Barber's more recent discussion in Research in African Literatures when
he asserts that the Fulani storyteller "recites" his material. Much like Bar-
ber he also uses the proverb as an illustration of this "reciting" of material,
of literature. It seems that these two scholars, in their respective times, took
exception to the performance-centered theory. Jahn in opposition to
58 Ibid., p. 2. In connection with this I would like to point to Professor Kulikoyela Kahigi,
with whom I also discussed this while visiting Dar es Salaam University in April 2002,
w h o once exclaimed to Peter Seitel: "I can't imagine how you can have a line in an oral
tradition." Peter Seitel, The Powers of Genre: Interpreting Haya Oral Literature
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999), p. vii.
59 Janheinz Jahn, Neo-African Literature, trans. Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehrburger
( N e w York: Grove Press, [1966] 1969), p. 57.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid., p. 58.
224 Leif Loren tzon
Whiteley and Lerner, and Barber chiefly to Richard Bauman, as most later
critics of oral literature have followed Parry, Lord, and Bauman's lead.
In her article Karin Barber locates the literary quality of orature in the
"object-like property" of the Yorübä oral poetry she studies: "quotedness,
or quotability is not only characteristic of a whole class of utterances, but is
also acknowledged and represented as such by the practitioners of those
genres." 62 This sounds quite like Jahn when he writes about the Fulani sto-
ryteller.
In her seminal book on oriki of the Yorübä-tradition, Barber already re-
volts against the dominance of performance-analysis. Unlike many schol-
ars on oral literature she discusses literariness, the difference between lit-
erary utterances and ordinary speech:
Literary texts, whether written or oral, offer a [...] concentrated, "worked-
on" character. Literary texts are often described as having involved greater
thought or effort than other kinds of utterances, as being more premedi-
tated, or as undertaking to exhibit a greater degree of skill. [...] A literary
text is more detached from the immediate context than other utterances,
having the quality of repeatability and the capacity to be recreated in a vari-
ety of situations.63
In the last sentence of this passage she anticipates her later text on "quota-
bility." She also has a whole sub-chapter on oriki as literary text, a kind of
reasoning which, as we have seen, is not common in studies of oral litera-
ture. However, Barber's use of the terms "literary" and "literary text" re-
mains undefined, as in most studies of (African) orature. This is perhaps
not so surprising, since her study is not a reflection on literariness as such
in Africa, or in Nigeria, but on one specific Yorübä genre. From that
Yorübä perspective, via speech act theory, she asks what oriki tell us about
Okuku, as a small town in Nigeria. It is a matter of what oriki are doing,
saying; hers is a pragmatic, if undefined, use of the term literature.
Oriki are not comparable to much of the literature that Barber's Western
schooling trained her to study: there is no closure, no boundaries, no center
or overall design, or whole shaped by a single consciousness; it is poly-
phonic. "The 'whole' is like a string of beads, a long chain of interchange-
able parts, which can be extended or broken off at will without significant-
ly altering its form." 64 Searching for a strategy, a theory and method
through which to approach oriki, Barber rejects Western literary criticism
62 Barber, "Quotation," p. 21.

63 Barber, I Could Speak, p. 3.
64 Ibid., p. 23.
in all its variants, since it is, even as deconstruction, developed to deal with
texts that are intended to be formal units, and would not reach the nucleus
of oriki. Lord-Parry's conception of composition in performance also har-
bors presumptions of unity that preclude a full comprehension of oriki
texts. Instead Barber turns to Volosinov/Bakhtin's Marxist language-phil-
osophy of "seeing literary texts as utterance, and utterance as attaining
meaning only in and through the concrete contexts of real social existence.
By asking precisely what kind of utterance oriki is, and in what social con-
texts its meanings are achieved, it becomes possible for us to see how the
fluidity and fragmentation of the Oriki text actually work." 65
The analytical approach Barber chooses is probably not advisable for the
study of all orature, as she herself admits. It is the disjunctiveness of oriki
that demands the use of this strategy. Many other oral texts are of course
not as fragmented as oriki, certainly not the long narrative or epic. Barber
nevertheless already shows a willingness here to discuss the literariness of
a verbal art in its specific cultural context.
In another text she returns to Volosinov/Bakhtin, when insisting on the
"first indispensable step of interpreting the text 'on its own terms.' [She
continues:] meaning belongs neither to the speaker nor to the hearer: ra-
ther, it inhabits the zone between them [...] The text, then, has to be under-
stood first of all as the instantiation of an intention to be understood—an
expectation of being heard—reciprocally anticipated and endorsed by
listeners."66 Also here it is apparent that she places the oral text in focus,
certainly in its communicative context, and not solely in the performative
context.
In her article in Research in African Literatures she returns to this matter
and is initially very polemical concerning the domination of the perform-
ance-centered approach. It is a more inclusive concept of text as "any con-
figuration of signs that is coherently interpretable by some community of
users,"67 which makes it possible for her to concentrate on the text, the oral
text, and its potential literariness. It is also again in Yorübä verbal art that
she finds arguments in support of her theory: "There is a class of texts, in
Yorübä culture, that are constituted to have object-like properties, that is,
65 Ibid., p. 25.
66 Karin Barber, "Obscurity and Exegesis in African Oral Praise Poetry," in Duncan Brown
(ed.), Oral Literature and Performance in South Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), p.
27.
67 W. F. Hanks, "Text and Textuality," Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989), p. 95, as
quoted in Barber, "Quotation," p. 17.
226 Leif Lorentzon
to attain a certain solidity, a susceptibility to comment, and a partial de-

tachment from the immediate context of utterance. The words of these
texts are experienced as durable formulations that transcend time." 68 Once
again Barber is pragmatic as hers is a Yorübä view. The people who expe-
rience these texts as "durable formulations that transcend time" are not
Barber or me, but the Yorübä-speaking people in Nigeria. These texts are
regarded as intrinsically valuable objects that even when uttered by a poor
performer attain identity and a certain value. Barber then argues for the no-
tion of quotability maintaining that certain texts have an "independent
identity outside the context of utterance." 69
Unlike her previous studies I have referred to, Barber here actually dis-
cusses literariness as such, mentioning possible criteria for literature such
as foregrounding the words, deviation from norms, fictivity and perform-
ance features. Then she writes: "There is no indigenous Yorübä category
corresponding to a contemporary European notion of 'literature,' 'text,' or
'verbal art,' and it is not my intention to invent one. [...] But within this
field of genres and registers, I think that quotedness, or quotability, is not
only characteristic of a whole class of utterances, but is also acknowledged
and represented as such by the practitioners of those genres." 70 In her study
she then proceeds to analyze why certain utterances are quoted, recited,
what it is in them that makes them "durable formulations that transcend
time" among the Yorübä.
I wonder, in passing, if one cannot extend Barber's perspective to also
include the oral narrative, even the epic. I would like to suggest this, using
narratology's cardinal dichotomy between what is narrated, story, the nar-
rative events, and how it is narrated, narrative, the discourse that narrates
the events. 71 From such a perspective it is the story that is "quoted" in each
performance of, for instance, Sunjata. It is the Sunjata story that has the
"object-like property" that transcends time, and is capable of being repeat-
ed and recreated in each new performance (discourse/narrative). What we
read in the many versions in print, or hear/see if we are so fortunate, is one
"quotation" of the Sunjata story.
Before continuing, I would like to stress one point of significance in
Barber's notion of quotability, because even if one is skeptical, and I be-

69 Ibid., p. 19.
70 Ibid., p. 21.
71 For a handy table of the terminology of this dichotomy, see Dorrit Cohn, The Distinc-
tions of Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999), p. I l l , note 7.
lieve linguists will be because of the importance they place on quotation

markers, Barber has temporarily, as it were, detached the oral text from the
performance. "Presenting text as a quotation means insisting that it has an
independent identity outside of the context—that it is recognizable as a
verbal formulation. Quotation implies that what is quoted was already there
before the present speaker used it."72 Now that we are aware of the impor-
tance of the individual performance for the creativity of verbal art, thanks
to scholars like Bauman, I believe, with Barber, that we can study the ver-
bal "text" in order to look for its literariness also in the "text," apart from
the performance. There are benefits in both strategies, and they comple-
ment one another; it all depends on what one is interested in. If one is con-
cerned with the literariness of oral literature, how it differs from other ut-
terances, Barber's perspective may be preferable. Here I believe lies one of
the great benefits of Barber's theory; it makes it reasonably possible for a
Swedish scholar to discuss the literariness of verbal art from East Africa, as
found in collections made by East African scholars.
Yet one must remember that "text alone cannot constitute the oral
poem," as Ruth Finnegan reminds us.73 The art of verbal art may well be
found in the orality. Thomas Hale gives a good example of this. Discussing
genealogies he finds that in the printed text there seems little "art" in such
writings, "but in performance the genealogy takes on a particular rhythm
when it is called out, one that is quite distinct from other genres."74 He
finds that the art of genealogy lies in the oral incantatory repetition and
parallelism that creates a hypnotic effect, as well as in the synergy of word
and gesture, all absent from the printed text. So whatever results one
reaches through text analyses, it, the "text," must then be restored into its
"frame," as Finnegan calls it, for a comprehensive understanding of an oral
poem or narrative.
Peter Seitel, another theoretically oriented scholar on African oral litera-
ture, who has studied Haya verbal art in Tanzania, also turns to Bakhtin in
order to find the appropriate tools with which to investigate orature. Bakh-
tin contrasts finalization with unfinalization; the former producing mono-
logue, a mode of discourse associated with centralized, coercive authority,
the latter producing dialogic, polyphonic discourse, according to him the
highest form of art. Seitel finds that it is finalization that is most suited to

73 Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, [1977] 1992), p. 28.
74 Hale, Griots and Griottes, p. 123.
228 Leif Lorentzon
the study of oral literature, since most forms of speech, and indeed also lit-
erary expressions, certainly oral ones—with the exception of oriki, per-
haps—still aspire to various kinds of finalization. According to Bakhtin
genres reach their particular finalizations in three dimensions: composi-
tion, style, and theme. Viewing oral literature from this perspective, "final-
ization is an artistic achievement by the collectivity of performers in a tra-
dition [...] also an artistic achievement by individual performers [and] the
achievement of engaged, informed audiences."75 For Seitel and his generic
approach, finalization "is the tool for creating and interpreting artistic vi-
sions of communal cultural potentials, for achieving individual and collec-
tive insight, and for formulating carefully phrased, historically situated
commentaries on the human condition."76
Here we have two possible answers to the question of what turns an ut-
terance into a literary utterance, i.e. its object-like quotability, and the fi-
nalization of composition, theme, and style. I shall utilize both in my dis-
cussion of East African orature. Considering the fragmented nature of the
oriki chant, one would assume that the two possible answers were not com-
patible, but I think they are—or perhaps complementary would be the bet-
ter adjective. It seems to me that logic, thematic and stylistic finalization of
an oral utterance, such as a proverb, is one reason why it is remembered,
quoted, has attained its object-like property and is considered a formula-
tion worthy of being recited. This may be the closest societies such as the
Yorübä or the Haya come to the concept of literature we use in Western
critical discourse today.
Much of the Yorübä and Haya verbal art does not however fare so well
in a contemporary Western notion of literariness. Earlier in this volume
Anders Pettersson associates literature in the modern Western sense with
one of three discursive modes: the presentational, the informational and
the directive. He would include African oral literature in his delineation
of literariness if it is "presentational discourse produced with preten-
sions to being culturally important, and/or well-formed, and/or condu-
cive to aesthetic experience."11 All the African oratures that have been
mentioned, and those to be studied below, are culturally important,
well-formed and conducive to aesthetic experience, according to their
own culture.
75 Seitel, The Powers of Genre, p. 18.

76 Ibid.
77 See Anders Pettersson's introduction to this volume.
In studying African oral literature it is, however, unlikely that the pres-
entational mode will be found to dominate the other two. African orature
has a long tradition, and one germane reason for attaining its quotability is
that it is also informational: it asserts facts about myth and history, about
the environment in etiological tales and riddles. It may also be directive, as
in proverbs and riddles, but particularly in fables told by the elders to chil-
dren. Longer narratives and epics, such as Sunjata, are certainly presenta-
tional, but also informative about the history of Mali, and in parts also
slightly directive.
It is perhaps a matter of what we understand by the dominant discourse of
an oral text. This is dependent on by whom, how, when and where the oral
text is encountered. When I in Sweden read a Sunjata text, or a collection of
Haya fables, or oriki chants, particularly when translated, their directive and
informational discourses are probably lost to me. It is different in Mali, Ni-
geria and Tanzania, particularly for a Mandinka, a Yorubä and a Haya.
Many have also pointed to a more inclusive concept of literature, such as
Daniel Kunene in the passage quoted above. It seems to be a matter of what
discursive mode dominates in each oral utterance as understood by individ-
ual cultures. This really indicates that one must be descriptive and not nor-
mative in intercultural comparative studies of literary cultures.
East African Oral Literature and Literariness
In this part of my paper I turn to East Africa. I will look at locally pub-
lished collections and studies of regional verbal art, to see what thoughts
on genre and the literariness of orature the scholars I depend on reveal.
While these scholars are renowned academics and researchers, these books
are not primarily meant for research, but more for "students of oral litera-
ture at School Certificate level, Advanced Certificate level, and universi-
ty," and are "useful for both students and teachers at secondary schools,
college level and especially for those undertaking undergraduate work." 78
Nevertheless I believe that taken together these studies will reveal some-
thing of the nature of the view of literariness in orature among these East
African scholars.
78 Naomi Kipury, Oral Literature of the Maasai (Nairobi: East African Educational Publ.,
1983), the back cover; and Okumba Miruka, Encounter with Oral Literature (Nairobi:
East African Educational Publ., 1994), the back cover. I was reminded of this fact when
giving a talk on these matters at the University of Nairobi, April 4, 2002.
230 Leif Lorentzon
Allow me first to present a brief sketch of the text world of East Africa,
which of course is different from other parts of the continent, and the
world. There are three linguistic cultures that have produced and shaped
the literary scene of twentieth-century East Africa: that of the vernacular
(oral), of Swahili and of English.
The English linguistic culture is here a more contemporary tradition
compared to South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana. When East African coun-
tries became independent in the early 1960s very little had been published
in English. The growing literary output in the sixties was a result of the
newly independent governments' literary programs. In Kampala the British
had founded Makerere University in 1949, where the first African Writers'
Conference was held in 1962, a landmark in the development of literature
in the whole of the sub-Saharan continent. Nairobi and Dar es Salaam got
their universities in 1961. Many of the writers who were to emerge in the
sixties were students and later teachers at these universities, promoting
writing and studies of indigenous literature rather than the English canon.
Next to this literature in English, there is, as in other parts of Africa, a
large output of popular literature, chiefly novels. 79 The same is true of con-
temporary Swahili literature. Since the eighties there has been a great out-
put of popular fiction in Swahili from small local publishing houses. This
fiction is no different from the popular fiction in English. And just as in
English there is also a more elitist, intellectual literary production, mainly
by university lecturers and teachers, where the themes are rather more seri-
ous; the clash between traditional rural life and modern urban life domi-
nates the prose.
As has been mentioned above, Swahili poetry has a long written tradi-
tion, and of course also an oral one. Classical (eighteenth and nineteenth
century) Swahili literature is predominantly from the coastal areas of East
Africa and the island of Zanzibar. Court poetry, religious and secular, was
the main genre and Hamziya is noted in the handbooks as the oldest surviv-
ing poem from 1749.80 But its language and meter suggest a poetic tradition
79 For some insight into East African popular fiction see Stephanie Newell (ed.), Readings
in African Popular Fiction (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), section two, pp. 8 1 - 1 3 3 .
80 This is the year mentioned by Gdrard, African Language Literatures, p. 96, referring to
Jan Knappert, Traditional Swahili Poetry (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967). Other handbooks
give other years: Douglas Killam and Ruth R o w e (eds.), The Companion to African Lit-
eratures (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), p. 279: 1652; Rajmund Ohly, "Literature in
Swahili," in Literatures in African Languages, p. 470: 1728; Ali A. Mazrui and Moha-
men Bakari, "The Triple Heritage in East African Literature," in Albert Gerard (ed.),
European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa (Budapest: Akademiai Kiadö,
1986), p. 1054: 1828.
much older than that. The link with Arabic literature and Islamic culture is
well established and has given Swahili poetry a prosody which precluded
influence from oral traditions, in spite of it being a Bantu language.
The oldest surviving manuscript, however, is an epic narrative, uten-
zi/utendi, from 1728, a historical narrative concerned with the attack by
Mohammed's troops on the Byzantine empire in the seventh century. 81 The
classical period also ended with two epics. One deals with the German con-
quest of the Swahili coast, and the other with the Maji Maji rebellion
against the Germans in 1905-07. These epics, together with an autobio-
graphical poem from 1902 and the first Swahili novel from 1895, are con-
sidered to mark the advent of contemporary Swahili literature. 82
This literature is predominantly from Tanzania and its hinterland. Ken-
yans more often write in English or vernaculars. This is also true with re-
gard to drama. While dramatic performance has a long tradition in Africa,
Western-type theatre is a new genre. Traditional African theatrical per-
formances were a social activity that involved the whole community, de-
picting known subjects and full of dance, song and ritual.
European drama is chiefly a post-Second World War phenomenon in
East Africa, and certainly when it is in Swahili. Prior to independence this
theatre tradition was completely dominated by the British canon. After in-
dependence this was replaced by a more African repertoire. Most notable
is perhaps Ngugi wa Thiong'o's plays in Gikuyu at the Kamiriithu Cultural
Centre in 1977 and 1982, which constituted frontal attacks on the govern-
ment and resulted in his imprisonment and the closing of the people's
open-air theatre. In Swahili, theatre began with farces and it was in schools
where theatrical groups were formed producing plays, also in English of
course. 83
After this brief sketch of East Africa's text world, against which the fol-
lowing discussion of literariness of oral literature is meant to be under-
stood, it is time to turn to the orature itself.
The question of what differentiates an oral literary utterance from a non-lit-

erary one is raised by only one of my East African informants, Okoth
81 Girard, African Language Literatures, p. 97.

82 For argument and titles see Rajmund Ohly, "Literature in Swahili," pp. 4 7 3 - 7 4 .
83 For insights into Swahili drama see Elena Bertoncini, Outline of Swahili Literature,
Prose, Fiction and Drama (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989). For a general view of Swahili lit-
erature see the many publications of Jan Knappert's, also Rajmund Ohly, and Albert
Gerard, African Language Literatures, and Μ. M. Mulokozi., History of Kiswahili
Poetry (Dar es Salaam: Institute of Kiswahili Research, 1995).
232 Leif Lorentzon
Okombo. This is done in a theoretical paper, where he writes that "the key
question in oral literature [...] has to do with the separation of art from
non-art in the texts that emanate from our oral cultures." 84 He does not sug-
gest an answer, however, only asserting that students of orature should use
an ethnomethodological approach, which stresses the importance of dis-
covering and describing, not only the art, but also a community's criteria
forjudging that art.
That the question of literariness is missing in other East African studies
of oral literature is not surprising, as we have not found it in most studies
of orature we have encountered. An interest in literariness is perhaps most
visible among the East African scholars when they stress entertainment,
the artistic, aesthetic quality of oral literature, in contrast to apparent ele-
ments of didacticism and functionalism. One critic writes that the story-
teller "has to remember that he is dealing with art and, therefore, avoid
preaching." 85 In a study of one particular Kenyan storyteller Wanjiku Mu-
kabi Kabira writes:
Like a good artist, Kabebe does not stop in the course of his narrative to tell
the audience what they are expected to learn from his narratives. He does
not have a direct didactic method and prefers to let the set of images he
develops comment on each other. These image sets reveal the underlying
message or messages in the narrative artistically and convincingly. 86
Implied in such comments is an understanding of orature as different from

other oral utterances, both for the critics and the indigenous society. The
former further explicate this when discussing the nature of oral literary
genres.
In the introduction to their selection Kavetsa Adagala and Kabira reveal
qualitative, aesthetic criteria when selecting stories for their book; they
would not include stories with "inherent contradictions, [where] characters
were not well-developed, the language was not rich and the narrator could
not fully involve the audience." 87 There certainly seem to be criteria here
that we would not bother with in non-literary articulations. I have not
84 Okoth Okombo, "The Place of Ethnomethodology in the Study of Oral Literature," in

Okoth Okombo and Jane Nandwa (eds.), Reflections on Theory and Methods in Oral Lit-
erature (Nairobi: Kenya Oral Literature Association, 1992), p. 28.
85 Ciarunji Chesaina, Oral Literature of the Embu and Mbeere (Nairobi: East African Edu-
cational Publ., 1997), p. 22.
86 Wanjiku Mukabi Kabira, The Oral Artist (Nairobi: East African Educational Publ.,
1983), p. 27.
87 Kavetsa Adagala and Wanjiku Mukabi Kabira, Kenyan Oral Narratives (Nairobi: East
African Educational Publ., 1985), p. x.
found such an explicit qualitative and selective yardstick in other collec-

tions of East African oral literature. The point, however, is that these crite-
ria would absolutely not be found in books on normal speech.
Most of the critics from East Africa that I have turned to do in their dis-
cussions of their material disclose an artistic, literary nature within the ora-
ture and communities they study. Quite often it is the narrator that is taken
to task; among the Maasai he or she must "evoke strong emotions in the
audience, be they feelings of anger, apathy or humor." 88 The same stress on
the storyteller and performance is found among other scholars. What per-
haps indicates literariness, or indigenous, ethnic thoughts on literature
more clearly is the fact that each oral "text within it, has literary character-
istics which give it a unique identity as a text or a literary category." 89 Here
an underlying notion of indigenous genre distinctions appears evident.
Ciarunji Chesaina writes in a book on Kalenjin orature that "each genre of
oral literature has its own special characteristics just as each piece will
have aspects which it does not share with other material from the same
genre."90
Every study, also in their discussions of style, points to the same devices
we have discovered in other critical studies on oral literature. The argu-
ment presented in passing, or rather implicitly, is that this differentiates the
oral literature from other oral utterances. That story telling at least is not
like ordinary speech is signaled by the occurrence of certain formulaic
overtures before the actual story telling commences. Okumba Miruka dis-
closes that among the Luos "stories are told in the siwindhe, the hut of
'Pim,' an old grandmother," who, when satisfied with the gathering, calls it
to order:
Ot mondo odhi kwath Let the house go grazing
Ot mondo odhi tung' Let the house go to the end
Ot mondo oduog diere Let the house come to the centre
Ot mondo oling' thi Let the house be dead silent91
There is also a closing formula in most peoples' story telling sessions, so

also among the Luos. Ben-Amos calls these opening and closing formulas
part of folklore's expressive features, "verbal markers which distinguish
88 Kipury, Oral Literature of the Maasai, p. 11.

89 Chesaina, Embu and Mbeere, p. 11.
90 Ciarunji Chesaina, Oral Literature of the Kalenjin (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1991), p. 8.
91 Okumba Miruka, Oral Literature of the Luo (Nairobi: East African Educational Publ.,
2001), pp. 1 2 0 - 2 1 ; see also his Encounter, p. 153.
234 Leif Lorentzon
the speaking of folklore from non-folklore." 92 These markers certainly alert

us to literature, or at least to something other than mere speech, if we are
present, and to what specific 'texts' that are 'quoted' and thus worthy of
our attention as literary scholars.
I have heretofore touched upon the dilemma of what categories to use

when discussing genre, cross-cultural ones or indigenous generic ones.
This controversy is also found among the East African scholars and collec-
tors of verbal art, and may implicitly reveal a concept of literature.
There seem to be chiefly two strategies, not surprisingly, but perhaps
those who have chosen their own third have fared best. In their selection on
Kenyan oral narratives Adagala and Kabira name the two methods of clas-
sification "academic" and "generic" (largely corresponding to Ben-
Amos's analytical and ethnic), two terms that reappear in most East Afri-
can studies of orature. 93
The academic classification is for cross-cultural perspectives, when two
or more cultures are to be compared. This method could easily also be
called the universal, or Western, since it involves a terminology we are
used to finding in a Western critical discourse of verbal art. The generic
classification Adagala and Kabira also call the natural one, as it is the one
found among the people themselves. While they prefer the generic, at least
for the initial stage of study, they opt here for a thematic division—quite
like Okpewho—among the narratives they have selected: communal-ori-
ented and feudal-oriented narratives. The first involves narratives where
the social relationships within a society are depicted, exhibiting the com-
munal nature of that society; the latter narrates more a feudal society's
class hierarchies, featuring kings, warriors, etc., instead of family or clan.
The tales they have collected are found in different societies in Kenya. The
more feudal ones are predominantly from among the coastal people of the
country. There is no division of narratives in the book, but after the intro-
ductory essays, when reading the stories, one can see where they more or
less belong in this dichotomy.
In another book, on Gikuyu oral literature, Kabira, together with Karega
wa Mutahi, again opts for the generic classification. They dispute the argu-
ments of those who categorize according to the main character of the story.
92 Dan Ben-Amos, "Introduction: Folklore in African Society," in Bernth Lindfors (ed.),

Forms of Folklore in Africa (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1977), p. 9.
93 Adagala and Kabira, Kenyan Oral Narratives, p. xi.
This is "not appropriate because all stories are based on the society that
creates them" the argument runs. 94 They then acknowledge five genres
among the Gikuyu: ng'ano (narratives), nyimbo (songs/dances), marebeta
(poetry), thimo (proverb), and ndai (riddles). The first three are then di-
vided into various sub-genres using different principles: main character,
age of audience, and sex of performer, respectively. It is apparent that they
wish to avoid a Western academic terminology, even when their categories
largely correspond to those most often used in Western oriented critical
works.
Naomi Kipury, however, in her book on Maasai oral literature uses the
categories that Kibera has termed "academic." She initially claims that she
will classify according to function, and she does so with the longer forms,
narratives and poems. With proverbs and riddles she uses thematic criteria,
in order to "facilitate easy reading and layout." 95 She never refers to an in-
digenous division of genre, but there must surely be one as the different
genres she presents are given Maasai names in the presentation. This is
also evident in A. C. Hollis's book The Masai from 1905. Hollis includes
no discussion about the verbal art that he has collected, but he divides it
into stories (n-atinin), proverbs (n-depen), enigmas (l-oyetyani), myths and
traditions (l-omom li-opa) and songs (singoliotin). 96
In one of two books Ciarunji Chesaina manages to synthesize both strat-
egies so far discussed here: "In this book, we have opted for academic ge-
neric classification of oral literature in order to contribute towards the
study of oral literature as an academic discipline." 97 It seems to me that not
only is this the most traversal path, it is also the one chosen by most East
African scholars, even if the order is reversed in Chesaina's statement; it is
crucial that generic comes before academic, since "it is always best to start
with the categories of the specific society and then compare it with oral lit-
erature of similar societies." 98 Done that way it may appear thus:
There are four major genres of Embu and Mbeere oral literature as concep-
tualized by these societies: ng'ano (oral narratives), nyimbo (song or oral
poetry), nthimbo (proverb) and ndai (riddles or puzzles). The classification
of texts in their appropriate types, gives each type recognition of its own
94 Wanjiku Mukabi Kabira and Karega wa Mutahi, Gikuyu Oral Literature (Nairobi:
Heinemann, 1988), p. 5.
96 A. C. Hollis, The Masai: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905).
98 Adagala and Kabira, Kenyan Oral Narratives, p. xii.
236 Leif Lorentzon
peculiar artistic characteristics which acts as justification for its inclusion in

the realm of oral art. It follows then that each category or sub-category, and
each text within it, has literary characteristics which give it a unique iden-
tity as a text or a literary category."
I quote this as an example of how most of the East African scholars reason,
using an academic, Western terminology based on indigenous classifica-
tion. In her earlier book on Kalenji orature, Chesaina was more dependent
on the so-called academic classification. 100
In 1994 Okumba Miruka published Encounter with Oral Literature, four
years after he had published A Dictionary of Oral Literature together with
Leteipa Ole Sunkuli. These publications are an indication of Miruka's
more theoretical concern. In Encounter he has divided his book into four
generic parts: riddles, proverbs, oral poetry, and narratives. Each section
has a sub-chapter on classification, which constitutes a large part of the ar-
gumentation. With each genre he first discusses the various options avail-
able, before choosing his own. Riddles are "grouped according to the form
or structure or the challenge under four basic categories namely: Declara-
tives, Interrogatives, Epigrams and Phonologues." 101 Here he uses a struc-
tural-stylistic method, which in the ensuing discussion seems highly appro-
priate for his material. He does the same with proverbs.
With oral poetry he reasons differently. Having run through the terms
and criteria used in classification, Miruka rightly claims that none of these
are exhaustive, but all are complementary. He suggests two ways out of the
dilemma: to combine criteria, or "to engage in the task of tabulating each
poem against all the criteria and noting the relevant points on each." 102 Af-
ter this he cites a poem and gives it marks in a diagram he entitles: Classi-
fication Table Illustration. It is highly informative, illustrative, but cumber-
some if one is interested in cross-cultural comparisons.
When discussing narratives Miruka cannot avoid the term myth, how-
ever much it may be linked with Western categories: "the word 'myth' has
persisted and continues to be used. It is therefore self-defeating to attempt
truncating it from African Oral Literature lexis. Rather, it needs a delimita-
tion for clarity of reference.'" 03 After looking at some East African delinea-
tions of the term, Miruka decides that myth encompasses narratives of cre-

100 See Chesaina, Kalenji, pp. 20-28.
101 Miruka, Encounter, p. 6.
102 Ibid., p. 106.
103 Ibid., p. 139.
ation, deities, and natural and cultural features in the environment, includ-
ing both secular and sacred etiological accounts. He then discusses differ-
ent approaches to narrative classification based on plot, content, social
function or institution, principal character, and tradition. The last is the
most indigenous perspective. Miruka further warns that while this reaches
the root of the material, it will never satisfy the comparative student. He
does not choose one over the other, but suggests that is concerned with the
object of the research. Whatever position is taken, Miruka insists that clas-
sification must be consistent regarding criteria, pointing to what happens
when this is not so.
This brief survey of the discussion of genres among some East African
scholars seems to indicate that a rather pragmatic approach to oral genres
predominates. This may have to do with the pedagogical perspective of
some of these publications—the books are mindful of the classroom situa-
tion in which they may be used.
One envisages from their arguments genre divisions in respective cul-
tures. They are probably not as distinct or conscious as the scholars would
wish for their comparative discussions. In the aforementioned dictionary of
oral literature Miruka and Sunkuli write: "Classification of the different
forms of Oral Literature has never bothered the performing community." 104
It is the scholar who is keen to discover relationships and divide works into
classes for inter-cultural purposes. Therefore the so-called generic, ethnic,
or indigenous classification will never be exhaustive.
In order to illustrate this and the various ways of defining a genre, I will
now turn to one genre and the many related arguments found in different
scholars. I chose the proverb as being perhaps the most widely found and
frequently used genre on the continent, and the one genre discussed in
most of the East African books, as well as by Seitel and Barber.
In her book on Maasai verbal art Kipury informs us that proverbs are
very important to the Maasai as they summarize their wisdom. This is indi-
cated by their own term for the proverb: ndung'eta-e-rashe (which does
not correspond at all with Hollis' Maasai word for proverb), a periphrastic
metaphor meaning "the cutters of fine, thin leather." 105 She characterizes
the Maasai proverb as a maxim, epigram or aphorism. It is, as always in
Africa it seems, used by the elders, indicating great wisdom and experi-
104 Leteipa Ole Sunkuli and Simon Okumba Miruka, A Dictionary of Oral Literature (Nai-
robi: Heinemann, 1990), p. 105.
238 Leif Lorentzon
ence. Kipury reluctantly classifies proverbs according to theme, since "it

tends to limit the application of proverbs, and by so doing reduces their
flexibility and value.'" 06 Here she illustrates the deficiency of her classifi-
cation, particularly when she ends up with 35 different thematic classes of
proverbs.
Chesaina, in both of her books that are considered here, is satisfied with
ten classes of proverbs based on theme. The proverb itself she defines as
"aphorisms or wise sayings expressed in a terse, concise and metaphorical
manner.'" 07
Miruka for his part is more thorough. He firstly places proverbs among
the shorter forms of literature, together with riddles. Then he takes a look
at some previous definitions of proverbs before arriving at his own: "a
brief statement full of hidden meaning, accepted and used by a community
and an expression of truth or wisdom.'" 0 8 This definition is also echoed, if
not word for word, in the Dictionary. He also looks at various indigenous
terms for proverbs among some of the larger languages in Kenya, Uganda
and the Fulani in Nigeria. After a brief presentation of other possible crite-
ria for classifying proverbs, he opts for a structural-stylistic classification
and the three classes directives, epigrams and allusions.
From a community's point of view there is no need for a taxonomy of
proverbs, nor to articulate precise definitions. None of the studies I have
investigated reveal indigenous definitions or sub-classes that would stand
up to scientific scrutiny. As Miruka and Sunkuli wrote there simply seems
to be no need within the oral community for the kind of critical examina-
tion we are used to in academia. It is however important, if for no other
reason than comparison, that scholars organize corpora. If there is no ge-
neric classification of proverbs, the academic or thematic approaches are
the only ones available.
In his book on the powers of genre in Haya orature, Peter Seitel writes
that "definition and description of corpus are not the end but the beginning
of interpretation; they provide a focus for analysis, a rich topic for critical
dialogue." And he continues with a warning that by "ignoring the place of
a text in a generic corpus, interpretation can miss thematic irony, hierar-
chy, and other relationships.'" 09
106 Ibid., p. 149.

107 Chesaina, Kalenjin, p. 13.
108 Miruka, Encounter, p. 47.
109 Seitel, The Powers of Genre, p. 15. On the same page he offers his definition of genre:
"genre is a collective memory for how to do important, recurring things with language."
In order to illustrate how his method, based on "the powers of genre,"

may be applied, Seitel devotes a chapter to proverbs. The finalization of
proverbs is observable on nine levels, combining a local (quoted proverb)
level, the verbal (utterance) context, the social (performance) context with
thematic, stylistic and compositional levels. After presenting them in a
table he discusses these nine finalizations in one Haya proverb: "The cow
that goes slowly drinks well." Seitel's reasoning is elaborate, but he arrives
at three findings that are pivotal for his arguments: "The same kind of com-
positional finalization occurs in many different works, [...] a generic logic,
[...] the relationship between composition and theme is constant, [...] the
relationship between style and composition is not constant."110 In this ana-
lysis of proverb Seitel claims to have found that compositional finaliza-
tions are characteristic of every genre, and that this has enabled him to
charter the flexibility of generic compositional form in relation to theme,
and lastly that it equips him "to begin the exploration of functional rela-
tionships in the artistic dialogue between composition, style, and
theme.'" 11 He then commences to discuss folktales and interpret one Haya
epic ballad.
To return to the pivotal question here regarding proverbs: Are they lit-
erature? According to Seitel, and his analytical method, they certainly
seem to be. The proverb with which he illustrates his argument is finalized
on all nine levels. Although the issue for Seitel is not to differentiate it
from normal speech, or non-literary utterances, it is apparent that this is
what he actually does.
As we saw Seitel talks of the "quoted proverb," and so does Karin Bar-
ber: "Öwe (proverbs) are the paradigmatic case of texts cited as quota-
tions.'" 12 She refers to several studies where proverbs are regarded as a
quintessential case of quoting. But is this literature? Both Seitel and Barber
suggest that it is, even if they never address the matter directly. One of the
accepted criteria for literature is linguistic patterning, producing a grammar
unlike everyday speech, the foregrounding of words and elaborate lan-
guage. According to Barber, however, this is not enough, since quite a few
non-literary genres also exhibit such deviations and foregrounding. She
also rejects the distinction between fiction and non-fictive utterances as a
valid criterion for literature. As already mentioned she is not out to invent a
110 Ibid., pp. 4 1 - 4 2 .

111 Ibid., p. 48.
240 Leif Lorentzon
Yorübä category of literature, but rather to describe how certain oral 'texts'
are set aside from normal speech as durable formulations that transcend
time. In her Yorübä material it is the quotability of orature that distin-
guishes it from other utterances.
Yorübä textuality is consciously presented as a forest of citation. It is in this
way that texts aspire to transcend time, become a mark, a "durable inscrip-
tion of a sign" (Derrida) and take on object-like properties, while exploit-
ing, sometimes to the very limits of possibility, the fluidity, infidelity, and
emergent properties of oral performance.113
None of the East African scholars have questioned the literariness of prov-
erbs; they attest to their literary relevance and quality, so also do Finnegan
and Okpewho. They all also affirm the social function of the oral literature
they studied: "Proverbs, especially about human relations, are didactic." 114
This is evident in most critical work on African orature. But since this is
art, there is no preaching, as Kabira points out about one Kenyan storyteller
in the passage quoted above. There is perhaps no better literary genre to in-
form and direct wisdom than the proverb, in spite of its terseness. In Afri-
ca, as elsewhere I assume, it is the older people, chiefly men, who present
them to the younger ones, in a type of teacher-pupil conversational situa-
tion. Although considered art by its community, the directive mode seems
to predominate.
We shall illustrate the proverb's literariness using Seitel's Haya proverb:
"The cow that goes slowly drinks well." The theme of this proverb must be
understood in its social context, where Seitel can help us. It tells the Haya
youth to take care; it implies that the quick cow reaches the watering place
with the others and drinks muddy water, whereas the slow cow gets there
when the others are done, and therefore drinks clear water, not stirred up
by all the other hoofs. There does not seem to be much presentational dis-
course here: there is matching reality, but it is not meant to be valuable in
itself as a source of experience, which is what distinguishes the presenta-
tional discourse. Nor is it a statement of fact, an assertion to inform us of
the state of the world. Instead it intends to be of value in regulating the ad-
dressee's behavior. The directive discourse predominates.
If one combines Barber's notion of quotability with Seitel's of finaliza-
tion, the proverb can easily be conceived of as an instance of an object-like
quote, with an autonomous identity outside the performance situation.
113 Ibid.
114 Chesaina, Embu and Μ bee re, p. 49.
With Seitel, we notice the short proverb's thematic finalization, found in

its normative quality, but also a linguistic one in its mnemonic, terse and
metaphoric finalization. This points to it being something other than ordi-
nary speech, literature perhaps. If so it must be in a more inclusive, wider
sense of the term literature than the one normally used in Western literary
critical discourse.
The proverb is one of the shorter forms of orature, and as such is more
easily handled; it is more difficult to deal with longer texts, wherefore we
will also examine a folktale. Space does not allow for more elaborate dis-
cussions of examples, a brief look at a shorter narrative from East Africa
will suffice:
A woman and hyenas (Mbeere)

Long long ago, there was a woman who lived in a certain village. Once
upon a time, the villagers decided to migrate to another land. That woman
decided she was not going to move. She said she did not need to be both-
ered. Now when the woman was left alone, she developed a very big wound
on the leg. After many years, she also grew old. Then in that area, trees and
bushes grew so that the whole neighborhood was bush and forest. One day,
hyenas came to force the woman to open the door so that they could eat her.
However, the woman heard the hyenas before they got to the door. So she
sang in a loud voice:
You sleeping ones
Wake up and take your swords
Hyenas have invaded us
The hyenas are at the doorstep.
When the hyenas heard that song, they were afraid so they ran away. The
hyenas used to come every day in order to find out with whom the woman
lived. Now they investigated very thoroughly and found out the woman's
secret. They found out that the woman just sang to disguise the fact that she
lived alone; she did not live with anybody. The hyenas knew the woman
had neither a husband nor children. One day the hyenas came to eat the
woman. The woman sang the song. The hyenas replied:
Woman in this house

We have realised you live alone
And you have a big wound on your leg
Today you cannot escape!
After completing their song, the hyenas broke into the woman's hut and ate
her up, including her bones.
A person who lives alone dies alone." 5
115 Ibid., pp. 88-89.

242 Leif Lorentzon
Using Barber's notion of quotability for oral literature is not so far-fetched

as it may at first seem; at least two scholars use such a term as recitation
when discussing story telling, and "Luo stories are recited in siwindhe or
the house of a widowed grandmother.'" 16 Reciting is not the same as quot-
ing, but it implies a finished text, or a version that the narrator remembers
and ... recites. Returning to the differentiation between what is narrated,
the story, and how it is narrated in the single narrative at hand, we can talk
of quoting, or at least reciting, even in oral narratives. If we understand this
story as the quotation, the object-like property that the oral storyteller
quotes in the narrative, it is again available for textual analysis outside of
performance.
The story of this Haya narrative, using narratology's differentiation,
would then run something like this: a woman refuses to move with her
people, remains alone; hyenas come to eat her; she tricks them at first but
is finally out-smarted and eaten. Being a short narrative, this story is not so
different from the narrative; it is remembered, it is allegoric, it is didactic,
and thus culturally important, and also conducive to aesthetic experience,
according to Chesaina.
With Peter Seitel we can look at how finalization of the tale is achieved.
Using the method and terminology he presents in his chapter on the folk-
tale, compositional finalization of "A woman and hyenas" would run
something like this:
After a formulaic opening, which is absent in this written rendering,
there is an "initial setting" of a lone woman long ago in a village left be-
hind as she is reluctant to migrate. Then follows "displacement": woman
attacked by hyenas; "attempted mediation": woman sings to trick the ani-
mals; "successful mediation": hyenas dupe the woman; "punishment": the
woman is eaten, "closing": narrator's moral in the form of a proverb.
Seitel's point with this kind of Proppian analysis of compositional finali-
zation is that it "provides a critical way into a text, indicating logical hierar-
chies between episodes, defining its set of stylistic features, and indicating
where dominant themes are to be found."117 Here we need not discuss
whether or not he is correct, since we are primarily interested in the liter-
ariness of oral literature. But we can appreciate that Seitel's analysis un-
veils a quality of the oral narrative that is probably not easy to find in other
116 B. Onyanga Ogutu and A. A. Roscoe, Keep My Words: Luo Oral Literature (Nairobi:
East African Educational Publ., 1974), p. 24; as we have seen Miruka finds it acceptable
to use the verb "tell" when discussing the same narrating.
117 Seitel, The Powers of Genre, p. 81.
kinds of oral texts, i.e. in non-literary ones: the thematic articulation in

compositional finalization at the level of genre.118 The theme is enunciated
in a favored unit, or component; in Haya folktales it is the "attempted me-
diation." It is here, at least in the case of Haya folktales, that the dominant
theme is located, and it is the locus of comparison with other verbal arts.
Next we can ask what discursive mode dominates this Mbeere tale. It is
certainly culturally important, carefully formulated and, according to
Chesaina, also conducive to aesthetic experience. Yet it is quite clear that
this story is out to teach something, namely that it is perilous to live alone.
Whether this predominates over the presentational is perhaps difficult to
determine outside its social setting, but Pettersson writes: "in presentation-
al discourse, unlike the other forms, the content is principally meant to be
valuable in itself as a source of experience, not mainly intended to be valu-
able from the informational or directive point of view.'" 19 In using such
reasoning this Mbeere story would primarily be understood as being valu-
able as a directive source. It is the directive mode that predominates; thus it
does not qualify as verbal art according to a confined Western definition,
while a more inclusive notion, such as Chesaina's, would be happy to view
it as literature.
It is apparent, even if not explicitly expressed, that most of the East African
studies I have consulted endorse a wider notion of literature, largely corre-
sponding to the one Daniel Kunene presents in the passage quoted above.
My investigation of East African scholars' studies and collections of local
oral literature has perhaps only indicated indigenous notions of literature,
while pointing to the object-like quality of various genres, and why they
have attained this quotability in each community. The scholars have, in
part, shown a dependence on Western literary categories. This is not sur-
prising since we almost always, whether we like it or not, use European
languages when discoursing about African literature, oral as well as writ-
ten: a good example of linguistic imperialism.
We, that is scholars interested in comparative literature, could confine
ourselves to describing individual "literary" cultures, rather than literature
per se: what "texts" various "literary cultures in history'" 20 consider worth
118 Ibid., pp. 77-82.

119 See Pettersson's introduction to this volume.
120 Sheldon Pollock, as cited by Walter D. Mignolo, "Rethinking the Colonial Model," in
Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdis (eds.), Rethinking Literary History (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2002), p. 166.
244 Leif Lorentzon
preserving. In doing this we should be able to indicate why certain "texts,"

and not others, have been preserved, that is the conception of literariness of
individual cultures. And the term literature, in spite of its etymology and
Western affiliation, is as good a starting point as any, perhaps the only one
available.
Using such a cautious approach it may be possible to resolve the dilem-
ma concerning what constitutes literature in orally transmitted "texts," at
least within each community. Even if this is not possible, we will continue
to talk of oral literature as if there was no problem of terminology. And we
do this for very good reasons. Literature, and art, may not be essential to
human social life, but they appear to be an inevitable outcome of matters
that are, and there seems to be no society on earth that is without a litera-
ture of a sort.
The inclusive notion of literature, recommended by Kunene and most of
the scholars I have consulted, and what Pettersson calls "literature-in-the-
wide-sense" in his introduction to this volume, will allow such a compara-
tive perspective. Together with analytical methods and theories, such as
Seitel's and Barber's, this inclusive notion affords us a good chance of ac-
tually saying something constructive in a cross-cultural critical discourse,
all the more so as cultural particulars are only accidental.
TORD OLSSON
Experiences of Orature in Sahelian West Africa
Introduction: The Oral and the Written
In African societies intellectual life, religion and verbal art have been af-
fected in various ways by the interrelationship between orality and literacy.
Oral expression is generally considered to have been predominant in the
pre-colonial period, although in some parts of the continent literary cul-
tures in Arabic had developed—not only in North Africa, but also south of
the Sahara, in West Africa and on the East African coast. The imported
Arabic script was also employed in many societies to create the so-called
ajami literatures in their own languages, and long before the colonial pe-
riod these had led to complex interactions between written and oral cultural
expressions in these regions. Recent studies have led to a general re-evalu-
ation of the importance of orality and oral literatures, and a recognition that
the dominance of the written in the construction of ideas of civilization is
itself only a partial view of more complex cultural practices. Even within
societies that are generally characterized by literate culture we find vigor-
ous oral cultures, rap and "slam poetry" for example, as well as mediated
forms such as actors' readings of poetry broadcast on the radio, or, in the
Muslim world, the art of reciting the Koran. The evidence thus suggests
that the cultural life of societies is "neither entirely and exclusively oral nor
singularly literate.'" Indeed, ideas about development from an oral to a lit-
erate culture, if expressed in such terms as "transformation and substitu-
tion, even more than transition and passage, tend to obscure the coexist-
ence and reciprocity of oral and written languages that characterize most
societies, regardless of their degree of technology." 2 For instance, among
1 Eileen Julien, African Novels and the Question of Orality (Bloomington and Indianapo-
lis: Indiana UP, 1992), p. 22; Bill Ashcroft, Bill Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Key Con-
cepts in Post-Colonial Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 165-66.
The quotation comes from Julien, p. 22.
2 Julien, African Novels, p. 22.
246 Tord Olsson
the Bambara in Mali the orally transmitted word is generally considered

predominant, and yet there is a proverb saying: Seben ye hakili mara yörö
ye, "Writing (or paper) is the place where memory (or thought) is pre-
served."
In post-colonial Africa, the dominance of writing in perpetuating Euro-
pean cultural assumptions and Eurocentric notions of civilization, as well
as the view of writing as the vehicle of authority and truth, has on the one
hand led to an undervaluing of oral culture, and on the other hand to the as-
sumption that orality was a precondition for post-colonial writing, which
subsequently subsumed it. Both of these misperceptions are rapidly being
redressed in recent theory. 3
The recording of oral forms of literature, which was mainly carried out
by anthropologists, sometimes contributed to this process of undervaluing,
and in spite of the collectors' good intentions helped "to convey the im-
pression that the oral was not as socially or aesthetically valuable as the lit-
erary. In classic anthropology, orality was often designated as 'traditional'
in a discourse that opposed it to the 'modern,' and it was assumed to be
both of the past and immutable. The practice of transcription also involved
fixing the forms of the oral in ways inimical to its essentially performative
mode, although recent anthropological accounts have sought to address
and redress both of these limitations. In an attempt to combat this limited
perception of oral 'texts' as social documents rather than complex aesthetic
constructs, alternative terms were coined, such as orature, which sought to
suggest that verbal and performative arts were as aesthetically rich and
complex as written literature." 4
On the other hand, to exalt orality, oral traditions and orature at the ex-
pense of the written word can ultimately be as sterile and blinding as ma-
ligning them. 5 Thus it can be argued that the exaggerated dichotomy be-
tween the orality of Africa and the writing of Europe failed to dismantle
the dependency model involved in the relationship between the two terms.
The result was to denigrate the continuation and validity of orality into the
present time and to deny its continuing significance in contemporary Afri-
ca. 6
3 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Key Concepts, pp. 165-66.

4 Ibid., p. 166; italics mine.
6 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin.?, Key Concepts, p. 166.
Recent studies 7 have stressed the fact that oral and literary cultures in the
colonial and post-colonial societies of Africa existed and exist within uni-
fied social situations and were, and still are, mutually interactive. Rather
than being restricted to the past and therefore inferior to the written, oral
forms in African societies have a continuing and equal relationship with
the written. "Orality and literacy are two worlds that coexist in a state of
tension, enriching and contradicting each other in daily life" and "the prox-
imity of oral traditions is certainly one of the distinctive characteristics of
African literature," as Christopher Miller remarks. 8 On the other hand, in
South Africa, for instance, oral forms such as "praise songs" have been
adopted by such modern, European institutions as trade unions (for rallies)
and and have developed some of the formal and social aspects of literary
texts and practices . In such cases not only is the work of the written cul-
ture increasingly modified by the existence of popular oral forms, but the
oral cultures are themselves transformed by their ongoing interaction with
the written cultures of the modern period. 9
General comparisons and observations on written and oral cultural
forms have been made from a vantage point that may suggest an observer
7 Noteworthy in the West African context are Graham Furniss, Poetry, Prose and Popular
Culture in Hausa, International African Library Series 16 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP,
1996); Karin Barber, / Could Speak Until Tomorrow, International African Library
Series 7 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991); Karin Barber, "African-Language Litera-
tures and Post-Colonial Criticism," Research in African Literatures 26: 4 (1995), pp. 3 -
30; Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Key Concepts, p. 166, with reference to Karin Barber
and Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (eds.), Discourse and Its Disguises: The Interpre-
tation of African Oral Texts, African Studies Series 1 (Birmingham: Birmingham Univ.,
1989); Elisabeth Gunner and Mafika Gwala (eds.), Musho! Zulu Popular Praises, trans.
Elisabeth Gunner and M. Gwala (East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1991); Isabel
Hofmeyer, We Spend Our Years as a Tale That Is Told: Oral Historical Narrative in a
South African Chiefdom (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP; New Haven: Heinemann,
1993). Cf. also Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
(London and New York: Methuen, 1982); Julien, African Novels, Part I; Harold Scheub,
"A Review of African Oral Traditions and Literature," African Studies Review 28:2-3
(1985), pp. 1-72; Christopher L. Miller, Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature
and Anthropology in Africa, chaps. 1 and 3 (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1990); Jack Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, [1987] 1993), chap. 3 and Part III: "Written and Oral Cultures in West
Africa"; Liz Gunner, "Hidden Stories and the Light of the New Day: A Zulu Manuscript
and Its Place in South African Writing Now," Research in African Literatures 31:2
(2000), pp. 1-16; Ruth Finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of
Communication (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), esp. chap. 6 on processes of the formation
and manifestation of traditions rather than given products.
8 Miller, Theories of Africans, p. 67.
9 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Key Concepts, pp. 165-67.
248 Tord Olsson
with a far-sighted academic eye, or with "the astronomic gaze" launched

by Claude Levi-Strauss, as one requirement for carrying out comparative
anthropological studies on the structural interrelations of oral and literate
forms of mythology. The scholar whose the ambition it is to "think big"
about literature may be African, American or European, the academic lens
would for all three be ground in the main by western techniques. In view of
the present stage of knowledge, one may indeed ask if a comparative an-
thropology of African verbal art is at all possible—or even desirable, some
would say—without the use of at least some of the methods and intellect-
ual tools of European academic provenance. Although the terms literature,
orature and verbal art, as well as a number of theoretical genres and vari-
ous types of aesthetic categories are of western design, this would not auto-
matically mean that we play them all off against emic terms when we
launch into comparative studies of verbal expression in Africa. Many sys-
tems of signs and expression set tough challenges to western categories of
understanding, and very often the latter turn out to be temporary tools we
can use only provisionally. This is even more true when we leave the wide
perspective and immerse ourselves in the oral arts of a group of people and
try to share a part of their experience. When we centre our attention on
their actual verbal art, aesthetic categories, institutions and cultural pro-
cesses, we will soon find that an even smaller number of our scholarly
terms are useful, or that they have to be thoroughly revised. One reason is
certainly that comparative literature has mostly developed "theories of the
middle range" 10 confined to rather special phenomena, and that the theor-
etical idiom is encumbered with a certain number of empirical terms most-
ly taken from studies of European types of literature. Scholars of compara-
tive literature tend to think in terms of literatures, as an intellectual re-
source, similarly to the way anthropologists find that societies or cultural
elements are good to think with. Even the most important abstract concepts
in literary theory appear to be conceptualized via multiple complex meta-
phors. Such metaphors seem to be an essential part of those concepts, and
without them the concepts would be skeletal and bereft of nearly all con-
ceptual and inferential value. The advantages as well as disadvantages of
these metaphorical ways of thinking comparatively are obvious. In fact, we
cannot ignore the fact that elements of literary theory are conceptual meta-
10 The designation was used about social sciences by Robert K. Merton, "The Role-Set:
Problems in Sociological Theory," British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957), pp. 106-20 (p.
108).
phors. Nevertheless, metaphorical mapping may be apt in some respects,

but not in others. One reflective critical task is thus to learn where meta-
phor is useful to thought, where it is crucial to thought, and where it is mis-
leading.11
One problem is how well our most favored metaphors, our hidden as-
sumptions, and our entrenched figures of thought serve us when we try to
understand the practice of verbal art and the ways people speak and think
about it in African life worlds. I believe the ambition to understand how
oral art works can be approached in a reasonable way if we try to get close
through ethnographic description. Fieldwork carried out in odd corners
with the aim of revealing what experiences the ethnographers have in com-
mon with the people who inform them, and what views they do not share,
is not a comfortable and isolated enterprise; rather, for both parties it is
perhaps a spur to intellectual deprovincialization. Accordingly, participant
observation and insight through participation are not only of documentary
value, but also of strategic importance in the attempt to somehow under-
stand over broader spectrum how verbal art works. Yet, ultimately—at
least in books—the ethnography of oral expression consists of written im-
pressions on paper.
As strategic sites for reflecting on such problems, in this essay I shall
concentrate on how people are concerned with orature in Sahelian West
Africa, and also try to envisage the life world and habitats where oral art is
embedded and performed. I shall devote much space to illustrating this by
providing portraits of three men in Mali, two of them by means of ethno-
graphic narratives. The men who figure in this essay have in their individ-
ual ways gained the reputation of being guardians of verbal art. In local
parlance people of their kind are said to "eat words and to be eaten by
them." They are all concerned with verbal art as a central feature of the in-
terconnected cultural life world of the Sahel, that I would call the Sahelian
cultural ecumene (oikoumene) of West Africa.
Amadou Hampäte Bä, Writer and Warden of Malian Orature
Amadou Hampäte Bä (1901-1991) was one of the most prominent advo-

cates of oral literature in West Africa. He was a member of a pre-eminent
11 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 70-73, 129.
250 Tord Olsson
Fula family in Bandiagara, in present-day Mali. His life took an auspicious

turn in 1942 when he was recruited as a research assistant by the eminent
French anthropologist Theodore Monod at the newly founded Institut
F r a n c i s de Γ Afrique Noire (IFAN). Hampäte Bä became one of West Af-
rica's most renowned intellectuals, and his work as a historian, ethnogra-
pher, novelist and autobiographer is well known. He was also an open-
minded Muslim scholar who, in a dialogue with Christianity and tradition-
al African religions, tried to bridge the gap between cultures. In scholarly
circles his self-experienced ethnographic knowledge was highly esteemed
and his work as a guardian of oral tradition is celebrated by many. Indeed,
some of his statements have gained almost proverbial status as examples of
meta-orality sayings, such as "En Afrique, quand un vieillard meurt, c'est
une bibliotheque qui brüle" ("In Africa, when an old person dies, it's a li-
brary burning down").
In his preface to the book on Malian literature, Litterature Malienne,
Hampäte Bä describes himself as a "traditionalist" and "a man of orality."
He confesses that his task of introducing literature in a general sense makes
him a little uneasy, but he finds some support in his own, often quoted,
words that literaure is fundamentally "la parole couchee sur le papier"
("the spoken word taken down on paper").
In fact, being chiefly a traditionalist and a man of orality, I do not feel quali-
fied for speaking about literature in general. But, after all, what is literature,
if not the spoken word taken down on paper? As it has first been recited
before being collected, or, as it has been hatched out in the secret of thought
before being consigned, is not speech, after all, mother of the written? Thus
I am going to speak about the spoken word.12
Hampäte Bä thus boldly launches a sort of "logocentric" view, not only re-
garding the formation of orature and its recording, but also the ontology of
written literature as prompted by interior speech and as a record of the in-
wardly spoken word. This may seem confusing, considering that "logo-
centrism," in a broad philosophical sense, was denounced by Jacques Der-
rida, in the second part of his De la grammatologie (1967), as a tendency in
European intellectual history—especially in the critique of civilization pre-
sented by Rousseau, Husserl and Levi-Strauss—to equate the spoken word
with purity, creative subjectivity, and a natural state, unspoiled by writing
and thus in sharp contrast to the written. The ambiguity of the "logo-
12 Amadou Hampäti Bä, "Preface," in Litterature Malienne, Notre Librairie, Riddition,

No. 7 5 - 7 6 (Paris: Clef, 1989), pp. 7 - 1 1 (p. 7). All translations from Bä are mine.
centric" view, says Derrida, "governs the Saussurian exclusion of writing:

a profound ethnocentrism privileging the model of phonetic writing, a
model that makes the exclusion of the graphie easier and more legitimate.
It is, however, an ethnocentrism thinking itself as anti-ethnocentrism, an
ethnocentrism in the consciousness of a liberating progressivism." 13
This tendency may have been born out of a remorse or a nostalgia
among intellectuals such as Levi-Strauss, and permits the simplistic distin-
tion between peoples using writing and peoples without writing as if they
were clear-cut divisions of culture. When the relation between the oral and
the written is considered in sequential terms it is conceived, says Derrida
"as a leap, as the instantaneous crossing of a line of discontinuity: passage
from a fully oral language—pure, innocent—-to a language appending to it-
self its graphic 'representation' as an accessory signifier of a new type,
opening a technique of oppression"; 14 and he emphasizes how the ambigu-
ity of this allegeded ethnocentrism supports ethical and political indict-
ments: "The traditional and fundamental ethnocentrism which, inspired by
the model of phonetic writing, separates writing from speech with an ax, is
thus handled and thought of as anti-ethnocentrism. It supports an ethico-
political accusation: man's exploitation by man is the fact of writing cul-
tures of the Western type. Communities of innocent and unoppressive
speech are free from this accusation.'" 5
Derrida's critique was published at a time 16 when Tristes tropiques
(1955), La Pensee sauvage (1962), and other works by Levi-Strauss were
being widely discussed among anthropologists and intellectuals. Today,
the majority of anthropologists have long since left behind the manichean
dichotomy of societies into those with and those without script, and
Levi-Strauss's and Derrida's opinions are no longer on the list of anthro-
pologists' topics. Yet the questions they raised about the "directness" and
"authenticity" of oral culture, are still discussed, now however in more
general terms, by scholars of comparative literature in their research into
13 Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967). I quote from the English
version, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), p. 120.
14 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 120. Also Ong, Orality, p. 175, speaks about the relation
orality/writing as the shift from orality to literacy and beyond.
15 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 121.
16 His lectures at the Ecole Normale Supirieure in 1965-66 under the title "Ecriture et
Civilisation," were soon published as Jacques Derrida, "Nature, Culture, Ecriture: La
violence de la lettre de Levi-Strauss ä Rousseau," Cahiers pour l'Analyse 4 (September-
October, 1966), pp. 1-45, corresponding to Part II, chap. 1 in De la grammatologie.
252 Tord Olsson
oral and written literature in Africa, among them Christopher Miller and
Eileen Julien.17
Being himself a writing author Hampäte Bä, in the paragraph quoted
above, does not exaggerate the difference between orality and the written,
and he does not speak about the two modes in terms of evolution (orality as
primitive and writing as evolved) as discussed above. He does, however,
give priority to the oral, but in a psychological or logical sense as a stage in
the creative process and in the recording process.18 The distinction made
here does not focus on sequentiality. The emphasis, in a sympathetic read-
ing, is rather on the distinction between, on the one hand, interior speech
and enonciation, the act of uttering a statement in a context, and on the
other the textual enonce, the statement itself independent of its speaking,
for example a statement that is represented by the marks that appear on the
page.
Both in oral and written verbal art language is used, not only as a means
of communicating information, but in a presentational way: the listener or
reader is invited to ponder upon what is being said and how it is said or
sung.19 Like written verbal art, the use of language at the performance of
orature does not only communicate information, but also conveys expres-
sive elements and emotional and associative messages of far-reaching im-
portance, beyond the semantic contents. But at the oral speech event the
listener is physically involved, and quite strongly invited to react to the
words and the form of presentation, often in a ritualized situation where fa-
cial expressions, gestures, ideophones and music are necessary parts of the
performance. Speech and music can be recorded, written down and quoted,
but the very act of performance (enonciation) is unique and conveys ex-
pressive elements and sentiments which are lost in any recorded version
(enonce). There is an obvious discrepancy between the live performance
and the quality of the videos, audiotapes, and transcriptions of orature that
are conveyed to distant audiences and readers. Such lines of thought have
often emerged in conversations I have had with with bards, Sufi masters,
and other people who claim to transmit their messages "from mouth to
ear." They expressed themselves, of course, in different words from those I
have used here, but they all emphasized the situational context of perform-
17 Miller, Theories of Africans, pp. 108-109, 2 4 7 ^ 8 , 295; Julien, African Novels, pp. 15-
18.
18 Compare, however, the critical assessment of Peter I. Okeh's "predictions and prescrip-
tions for what African literature will or should be," by Julien, African Novels, pp. 23-24.
19 See Anders Pettersson's introduction to this volume.
ance or transmission, which often led to their final observation: "That's

why our message cannot be learnt from books." 20
If we take Hampäte Bä's remarks as a reminder of the quality difference
between performance and recorded version, his comments can then help us
to respect the qualities of situational context and the art of oral perform-
ance.21 However, Hampäte Bä goes on to exalt Malian and other African
orality very strongly, as though their eminence were somehow primordial-
ly and essentially African:
The main part of the cultural legacy of Mali is founded in the power and
beauty of the Spoken Word. The peoples of the savannah, where the voice
is loud and far-reaching, were—and perhaps still are—peoples of singers
and poets, exceedingly sensitive to the rhythm of beautiful language. The
"masters of the word," who were clever at making them vibrate, had almost
a complete power over them.
The black race, not being a race of writing, has developed the art of the
spoken word in a quite special manner. According to the circumstances one
expects from the spoken word that it makes you laugh or shed tears, that it
excites enthusiasm to such a degree that the listeners become inebriated or
go into ecstasies by it, as if they had drunk mead.22
Performer and Audience—the Experience of Oral Art

According to Hampäte Bä
It is true that orature is performed and valued as a vigorous social and aes-
thetic act in Africa, and that Africans have a predilection for words well
expressed, "but there is nothing more essentially African about orality nor
more essentially oral about Africans," as Eileen Julien rightly says. And
she adds: "What must be recognized, it seems to me, is that speech / listen-
ing is a mode of language as is writing / reading. The art of speaking is
highly developed and esteemed in Africa for the very material reasons that
voice has been and continues to be the more available medium of expres-
sion, that people spend a good deal of time with one another, talking, de-
bating, entertaining. For these very reasons, there is also respect for speech
and for writing as communicative and powerful social acts."23
20 Tord Olsson, "Melamimästarens anvisningar i konsten att bränna en mantel" (The

Melami Master's Instructions in the Art of Burning a Cloak), in David Westerlund (ed.),
Levande sufism (Nora: Bokförlaget Nya Doxa, 2001), pp. 240-68 (p. 25).
21 Compare the comment on Okeh's statements in Julien, African Novels, p. 23.
22 Bä, "Priface," p. 7.
254 Tord Olsson
Seen from a comparative perspective, attempts like those of Hampäte Bä

to privilege orality and oral tradition may be considered "ultimately as
sterile and as blinding as to malign them. The exaggerated dichotomy be-
tween the orality of Africa and the writing of Europe took in the past a dif-
ferent form (orality as primitive / writing as evolved) which we have long
dismissed. But it nonetheless reproduces itself as the object of literary
criticism in the propensity to elevate the oral mode and world above the lit-
erate / technological one." 24
Yet, if we regard Hampäte Bä's statements about orature and literature
as prescriptive rather than descriptive, a symptomatic reading of his text
would perhaps reveal what an influential West African writer and scholar
would assume to be the significant features that qualify orature to be con-
sidered as art. Hampäte Bä had an almost institutional reputation in West
Africa as an advocate of orality, and he was said to have an ear for what
old people in the Sahel considered to be valuable qualities in oral literature.
Indeed, Hampäte Bä was himself an accomplished poet in the Fula lan-
guage, and highly esteemed as a representative of Fula oral traditions as
well as an advocate of Mande orature. Through him we may perhaps trace
some ideas of artistry that West African performers and listeners ascribe to
certain modes of orature. He speaks from a double vantage point, invigor-
ated first by his traditional upbringing that brought him into close contact
with the sages and institutions of oral education, and later by his scholarly
work with the French anthropologists at the IFAN. Throughout his career
he advocated the collection of orature, and later in his life implemented
this as a private research program on a semi-institutional basis. His pro-
posal is that oral texts be recorded and transcribed in the local languages in
order to maintain the cultural continuity—by means of the appropriated
alphabets (he is thinking of the ajami script as one example) that already
exist—and then be translated into French for the benefit of intercultural
communication and mutual enrichment. 25 He himself produced a series of
texts in the Fula language, edited, transcribed and translated with fellow
scholars, such as Koumen (1961) together with Germaine Dieterlen, and
Kaidara (1969) with Lilyan Kasteloot. 26 These texts, and his UNESCO
programme for the preservation and presentation of oral tradition in Africa,
24 Ibid., p. 23. Julien is discussing Valentin Mudimbe and, more critically, Peter I. Okeh.
25 Bä, "Priface," p. 10.
26 Amadou Hampäte Bä and Germaine Dieterlen (eds.), Koumen, texte initiatique des pas-
teurs peuls (Paris: Mouton, 1961); Amadou Hampäti Bä and Lilyan Kasteloot (eds.),
Kaidara, recit initiatique peul (Paris: Julliard, 1969).
Programme pour la preservation et la presentation de la tradition orale en

Afrique 1966 (UNESCO WS / 0766 / 55 CULT), are designed in the cur-
rent European academic manner of linguistic anthropology. 27 But he also
encouraged young Africans, including those who had not benefited from
French education but had gone through to some of the various alphabetiza-
tion programs carried out on a local level, to transcribe oral traditions in
appropriated Arabic or Latin script.
It is most important, says Hampäte Bä, that "the African" does not hate
himself, or feel ashamed of himself and his traditions, or of the cultural
background that fashions his being. If he breaks away from it, it would
mean cutting the moorings and he will never completely become what he
wants to be; he will only have the appearance of it. Here, Hampäte Bä
takes the opportunity to quote an adage: "un morceau de bois a beau se-
journer dans l'eau, il pourra flotter, mais il ne deviendra jamais caiman"
("a piece of wood may well stay in water, and it will be able to float, but it
will never become a caiman"). 28
This use of traditional sayings accentuates his image as a traditionalist,
or "traditionist", and a representative of orality. The traditionalist vein is
also brought out in his rhetorical style by his use of metaphors taken from
nature and gardening.
Obviously one must understand to prune from the tradition all that which is
overgrown; no doubt one must understand to make new grafts; but one must
take care never to cut the trunk, from where we receive our sap.29
He also advises young writers not to copy western literature but to try to
recreate in their writing colourful scenes from the traditional life of today
and from West African history. Young writers should not "hesitate to pour
ipuiser) out of themselves and let stream forth (jaillir) the genius of their
race that rests in them." 30
In an autobiographical statement from 1986, in which Hampäte Bä tries
to explain to the readers of his manuscripts how an old man like him re-
members past events in such minute detail, he says that in his generation,
and more generally, among "peoples of oral tradition" who could not rely
on the written word, memory has an almost prodigious fidelity and preci-
27 Amadou Hampäti Bä, Contes initiatiques peuls: Njeddo Dewal, mire de la catamite,
Kaidara (Paris: Editions Stock, 1994); see references in the author's introduction and in
Ηέΐέηε Hackmann's postscripts, pp. 333-45.
28 Bä, "Preface," p. 11.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
256 Tord Olsson
sion. "Since childhood we have been trained to observe, to regard, and to

listen, so that every event became inscribed in our memory as in untouched
wax (cire vierge). Everything stayed there: the scenery, the characters, the
words, even the costumes, in minute detail." This also applies to his expe-
rience of oral literature, which is recalled, as if visualized, as an intrinsic
part of a scene in its totality.
I have no need to "remember," I see it on a sort of interior screen, and I
have only to describe what I see. In order to describe a scene, I have only to
revive it. And if a story has been told to me by somebody, it is not only the
content of the story that my memory has recorded, but the total scene: the
attitude of the narrator, his costume, his gestures, his facial expressions, the
prevailing sounds, for instance the guitar tones played by the griot Dieli
Maadi while Wangrin told me the story of his life, and which I still
hear... 3 1
When he speaks about the orature genres in Fulfulde, his mother tongue, he
repeatedly gives prominence to the functional and performative aspects, to
the intentions and skills of the reciter, and to the listeners' reactions and to
what is expected of them. For instance, the Fula genre jantol (plur. janti) is
a very long story, with human or fantastic characters, its function is didac-
tic and it is often part of an initiation ceremony. Thus the narrator says in
the beginning of the Ka'idara initiation story: "I am at the same time futile,
useful, and a tutor." The jantol may be recited in rapid, cadenced verse
Cmergi, poetry), or in prose (fulfulde maw'de, "great Fula speech"). The
traditional performer is supposed to keep to the structure throughout; the
progression, the episodes, the symbols, and the significant facts should not
be changed. However, the performer may draw from other variants of the
story on minor points, embellish, develop or abridge some passages ac-
cording to the receptivity of his audience. But most importantly, the aim of
the performer is to keep the attention of those present, and avoid their be-
coming bored. A story should always be pleasant to listen to, and at certain
moments cheer up the most reserved. "Un conte sans rire est comme un ali-
ment sans sei" ("A story without laughter is like food without salt"). 32
Many of these comments could equally be applied to other orature and its
performance, both in Africa and elsewhere. But the prominence Hampäte
Bä gives to the interplay between performer and audience is pursued fur-
ther and in more detail:
31 Amadou Hampäti Bä, Amkoullel I'enfant peul: Memoires (Paris: Editions J'ai lu, [1991]
1996), p. 11.
32 Bä, Contes initiatiques, pp. 12-13.
In the traditional society every jantol is like a book that the Master recites
and comments on. The youth, he has to listen, let himself be imbued,
remember the story, and, as far as possible, recreate it within himself. One
recommends him (as for Ka'idara) to return constantly to the story at the
significant events of his life. According to his inner development, his com-
prehension will change, and he will discover new meanings in it. Often, a
certain hardship in his life will elucidate this or that episode of the story;
and vice versa, the latter might help him better understand the meaning of
that which he is just now living through.
... In fact, all the characters in the story have their counterparts within
ourselves [...] Our being is the place of their struggle. Finally, to enter the
inmost meaning of a story is a bit like entering the inmost part of oneself. 33
The accent is on the listener's reception of orature, h o w it should be in-

ternalized, and on the value it might have in the course of individual lives.
T h e s e c o m m e n t s may well be coloured by Hampäte B ä ' s Sufi way of look-
ing at stories as didactic tools on the mystical w a y of the murid—he was a
follower of the Tijani Sufi master Tierno Bokar, to w h o m he dedicated a
b o o k — b u t the story he takes as an example of W e s t African orature, the
Ka'idara, is not in and by itself a Sufi story. It is a traditional Fula initiation
story, and in the variant taken d o w n by Hampäte B ä the narrator begins
with a traditional preamble running as follows:
Conte, conte, ä confer...

Es-tu viridique?
Pour les bambins qui s'ebattent au clair de lune,
mon conte est une histoire fantastique.
Pour les fileuses de coton pendant les longues nuits de la saison froide,
mon recit est un passe-temps delectable.
Pour les mentons velus et des talons rugueux,
c'est une veritable revelation.
Je suis a la fois fiitile, utile et instructeur.
Deroule-le done pour nous....
Tale, told, to be told ...
Are you truthful?
To the children who lark about in the moonlight,
my tale is a fabulous story.
To the cotton-spinning women during the long nights of the cold season,
my tale is a pleasant pastime.
To the hairy chins and the rough heels,
it is a veritable revelation.
I am at the same time futile, useful and a tutor.
Unfold it, then, to us.... 3 4
33 Ibid., pp. 16-17.

34 Ibid., p. 251.
258 Tord Olsson
Narratives such as the initiation story following this paratext are coded,
and only "the hairy chins," the already initiated elders, says Hampäte Bä,
have access to its inner meanings. Some versions are abridged for the
benefit of children. "Le recit initiatique est la corde qui relie le veau au
piquet, il η'est pas le piquet" ("The initiation story is the rope that binds
the calf to the pole, it is not the pole"). The initiation story connects and
leads the candidate to the wisdom of initiation, but the story as such does
not convey the wisdom that is the property of those who are truly initiat-
ed. 35 The stories potentially comprise multiple levels of signification, and
the same image might express different meanings, according to the un-
derstanding of the listeners. It is up to the individual listener to discover
this latent richness. Sometimes, says Hampäte Bä, it takes a lifetime. 36
"One has to learn," he says , "to listen to stories, teachings, legends, or to
regard things at many levels at the same time. That is what initiation
really is." 37
Hampäte Bä was a prolific scholar and writer who produced a great

body of texts, many of which, he claimed, should be read as written ver-
sions of performed orature. He had many good words to say about Afri-
can orature, and what he said gives the impression that he regarded much
of the spoken word he "took down on paper" as verbal art. Yet I have not
come across any attempts at criticism in his writings—nor so far in the
writings of other West African scholars—that would distinguish verbal
art, by means of defining internal properties, from other forms of oral
discourse, or provide "oral art" or similar terms with an accurate and
theoretically useful meaning that would be of analytical and explicative
value. On the contrary, being perhaps aware of such flaws, he defends
himself against the temptation to "fix" (coller) African stories, as he
says—perchance with a sneer at French intellectualism—to preconceived
systems of thought or to apply intellectual criteria which are usually alien
35 Ibid., p. 244.
36 Bä, Iln'y a pas de petite querelle: Nouveaux contes de la savane, ed. Ηέΐέηε Heckmann
(Paris: Editions Stock, 1999), p. 14; from conversations with Bä, tape-recorded by Jean
Sviadoc (p. 14, note 12).
37 Bä, Petite querelle, p. 16; quoted from Amadou Hampätd Bä, "En Afrique, cet art ou la
main dcoute," Le Courrier de l'Unesco, February 1976 ("A la recherche d'une identitd
culturelle").
to them. 38 Oral tradition, he presumes, may seem chaotic to anyone who

does not penetrate its secret and may lead the Cartesian mind astray, as it
is used to separating everything into well defined categories. 39
Yet, like many African scholars and writers, Hampäte Bä describes what
he seems to cherish as oral art with reference to the rhythm and beauty of
language, and to the well-spoken word that leads listeners to react emo-
tionally and intellectually, and sometimes also ponder at length the con-
tent, symbolism and structure of a poem or narrative, which might give rise
to inner enrichment and maturity. However, if we temporarily disregard
ethnographic details, his descriptions are rather general and there is noth-
ing distinctively African about them. The characteristics he emphasises
also apply to much non-African, including European, literature, both oral
and written. It is not these features that would present difficulties, for a Eu-
roean for instance, in understanding "African" orature. Nor would they
pose a problem for the general reader, or the folklorists and scholars of lit-
erature who have developed sophisticated methods and theories for analys-
ing and understanding texts of the sort Hampäte Bä was concerned with.
Indeed, his general description of what he envisaged as the artistic proper-
ties of African orature is also evocative of non-African expressions, in-
cluding common western expectations of verbal art, as a vital cultural ex-
pression which is beautifully or ingeniously formed, and gives rise to aes-
thetic experience and inner enrichment. 40 If this is an appropriate descrip-
tion, it also applies to written literature in Africa, some of it produced by
Hampäte Bä himself.
The impediments that face the outsider who tries to understand African
oral art of the sort Hampäte Bä promoted lies in other aspects. From his
own experiences Hampäte Bä came to have strong views on orature and
advanced a prototype of African oral art which abounded in ethnographic
particulars and for that reason is difficult to appropriate and apply in a
wider comparative perspective. That is where the difficulty comes in. The
long time he spent with the Sufi master Tierno Bokar, 41 as well as his initi-
38 "Tout recherche a son interet. Qu'il me soit seulement permis de mettre amicalement en
garde les jeunes chercheurs contre la tentation de vouloir ä tout prix faire 'coller' certains
contes africains ä des systfemes de pensie preetablis ou ä des criteres intellectuels qui
leur sont gdniralement Strangers." Bä, Contes initiatiques, p. 9, note 1.
39 Ibid., p. 335.
40 See the section "Presentational Discourse and the Modern Western Concept of Litera-
ture" in Anders Pettersson's introduction to this volume.
41 He dedicated a book to him: Amadou Hampäte Bä, Vie et enseignement de Tierno
Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara (Paris: Seuil, 1980). More in the vein of historical anthro-
260 Tord Olsson
ation into the secret societies of the Fula and Bambara, certainly made a
deep impression on him. Allegorical interpretation practised in these
"schools" is often based on the ethnographic details of daily life among
these ethnic groups and their natural environment. Such particulars abound
in their oral poetry and narratives. Especially when Hampäte Bä talks
about initiation stories such as the Kai'dara he points to their inner symbol-
ism—often based on ethnobotanic and ethnozoological observations—
which endows the texts with a multi-layered character and pliability. Cer-
tain stories, he ventured to suggest in private conversation, could have up
to twenty-one levels of meaning! A story, or a detail of it, could thus be
used as a didactic device, or as an instrument for contemplation, on various
occasions in the course of a persons life. 42 Like most African scholars
Hampäte Bä repeatedly emphasised the didactic element and similar func-
tions of orature in society.
Some of the general features of oral artistry mentioned by Hampäte Bä,
such as the rhythm of language and beauty of form, seem, at least in part,
to be meant as internal properties, but very often his focus is on perform-
ance. Rather than remembering words only, he claims to envisage, as quot-
ed above, the overall performance situation, "the attitude of the narrator,
his costume, his gestures, his facial expressions, the prevailing sounds."
The artistry of orature is often described by Hampäte Bä in terms of the
performer's talent, and indirectly, but even more importantly, as the reac-
tions of the audience. Ultimately, he insists, there are no levels of teaching
or performance, only levels of the listeners' enchantment and understand-
ing. The texts recorded in writing are only the remains of experiences em-
bedded in cultural events.
I have dealt with Hampäte Bä at such length because he has acquired an al-
most institutional reputation in Mali and Francophone West Africa as a
major intellectual figure as a result of his scholarly publications and radio
and television broadcasts on Sahelian cultures and history. As he was a
compelling raconteur, it is a distinct possibility that his oral discourse has
shaped both the forms and understanding of orature, through the mass me-
pology is the study by Louis Brenner, West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and
Spiritual Search ofCierno Bokar SalifTal (London: Hurst, 1984).
42 Bä, Contes initiatiques, pp. 333-42.
dia, through his many publications, and through the questions he asked
during the comprehensive fieldwork he carried out on behalf of IFAN. He
gained standing as the director of the Institut des Sciences Humaines in
Bamako, which he founded in 1958. During the 1960s he exerted his influ-
ence as a member of UNESCO's executive council in determining that or-
ganization's orientation and priorities. In his later years he retired from
public life and settled in Abijan, where he set up an informal school. Here
he spent his time writing his autobiography and receiving visitors from all
over the world. 43
In 2001, ten years after his death, an internationally advertised "Cen-
tenaire Amadou Hampätd Bä: Colloque scientifique International" was or-
ganized by the ministry of culture in Mali and sponsored by UNESCO.
The central themes were: 1."Amadou Hampätd Bä et les traditions," 2.
"L'univers traditionel d'Amadou Hampäte Bä," 3. "De l'oralite ä l'ecri-
ture," 44 which all reflect the concerns of the person celebrated. A manifes-
tation of this kind is of course part of national culture politics, suggesting
perhaps that Hampäte Bä's mission has not been uncontested. He is con-
sidered by some Malian intellectuals as a "Pular nationalist," embodying
what has been described as "the Pular superiority complex." He is credited
with having promoted the notion of a truly African Islam, but his Tijani
mysticism, his teaching of Islamic theology in the Fula and Bambara lan-
guages, and his association with the Bureau des Affaires Musulmanes and
one of its officers, Marcel Cardaire, were quoted by the anticolonial and
scripturalist, Arab-oriented Muslim reformers as an example of his collu-
sion with the French colonial state against them. 45
According to Andrew Manley, these facts have become impediments to
the exalted position of Hampäte Bä in Malian colonial history. In this con-
nection Manley rightly reminds us that the "concept of 'feedback' from the
43 Andrew Manley, "Amadou Hampatd Bä's Amkullet A Malian Memoir and Its Con-
texts," in Lai'la Ibnlfassi and Nicki Hitchcott (eds.), African Francophone Writing: A
Critical Introduction (Oxford: Berg, 1996), pp. 1 7 1 - 8 0 (p. 179); Abiola Irele, "Introduc-
tion," in Amadou Hampätd Bä, The Fortunes ofWangrin: The Life and Times of an Afri-
can Confidence Man, trans. Aina Pavolini Taylor, with an introd. by Abiola Irele and an
afterword by the author (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1999), pp. v i i - x v
(p. ix); Douglas Killam and Ruth R o w e (eds.), The Companion to African Literatures
(Oxford: James Currey; Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2000), p. 34.
44 Le Ministire de la Culture du Mali, Centenaire Amadou Hampäte Βά: Colloque Scienti-
fique International (Bamako, 8 - 1 0 November 2001): http://w3.culture.gov.ml/a-cultu-
relles/ centenaire/colloque.html, no pagination (14 April 2005).
45 Manley, "Amadou Hampati Bä's Amkullel," pp. 1 7 6 - 8 0 (p. 180).
262 Tord Olsson
written to the oral is a familiar one to oral historians." But he also suggests
it would be worth investigating whether Hampäte Bä's oral discourse "it-
self shaped the understanding of colonial reality," and adds that "he had
plenty of opportunities to bend the ears of elites, local and French." 46 As
we have seen, Hampäte Bä's oral and written discourse was not only de-
scriptive, but also rhetorical and prescriptive. His position in Malian cul-
tural history remains ambiguous.
Bards Eat Words. Words Eat Bards.
Some Sahelian West African ways of speaking seem to suggest that impor-
tant events, observations, and what other people have said are experienced
in a very physical way. Of course, we cannot tell what other people actual-
ly experience, but many West African idioms in the Fulfulde, Songhai and
Manding languages express attitudes in terms of internal bodily reactions,
indeed even digestive or intestinal, when the purpose is to articulate re-
markable experiences and to make statements about significant speech.
One example out of many is found in a Fula story retold by Hampäte Bä. A
young stableman, after a marvellous experience in the bush returns to the
royal city, and his state of excitement is described as follows:
His stomach was so full of things to tell that it threatened to burst; crumbs
of the stories slipped out of it in detached details, but he took them back
again and stored them in his stomach. He managed to keep all that well hid-
den, until the moment when he arrived in front of the king.47
In a footnote to this passage Hampäte Bä himself draws attention to the

fact that in African parlance the word "stomach" is used where westeners
say "head." One does not say "he has this in his head," but "he has this in
his stomach." And he adds that the expression "a stomach that bursts," as
in this story, may evoke the news-bringer's fear of being forestalled by
someone else and seeing his secret revealed. 48 Concurrently with the
46 Ibid., p. 179.
47 Bä, Petite quereile, p. 113.
48 Ibid., note 3. Cf. ibid., p. 56, note 2 and Bä, Contes initiatiques, pp. 89-90, esp. p. 89,
note 2. Cf. also Jan Jansen, "An Ethnography of the Epic of Sunjata in Kela," in Ralph
A. Austen (ed.), In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and
Performance (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999), pp. 297-311, where Jansen quotes the
present kumatigi, (Master of the Word) in Kela, Lansine Jabate: "A few days later, laying
his hands on his belly he said that there were enough words 'inside' to continue for
another ten years" (p. 302).
"gastric" terms used by the narrator to describe how the young man
struggled to keep the stories inside and return disconnected pieces of them
to his stomach, the stableman's stories are reified in the story and de-
scribed as objects; they also appear as "textualized" in the sense that they
have autonomy and, by implication, a degree of coherence and stability,
though volatile. 49
The rich nomenclature for griot or bard in the vocabulary of the various
languages in West Africa is a useful reminder of the central position of the
bards in the Sahelian cultural ecumene.
In my encounters with bards among the Bambara and Mandinka in
Mali—with jeliw (sing, jeli), griots who considered themselves Muslims,
as well as with hunter bards, soraw (sing. sora\ var. sere) or donso jeliw
(sing, donso jeli), who did not 50 —I have at times heard them say that bards
"eat" (dun) the words (kow, kumaw) of orature. They may refer to "texts"
which according to academic theoretical genre categorization would sim-
plistically be called proverbs, epics, poetry, or prose narratives, for in-
stance. In the Manding dialects there are of course a number of emic terms
for different genres and sub-genres of orature, and single instances of the
genres or sub-genres are also marked as "texts." But when Manding speak-
ing people, including bards themselves, talk in general terms about their
devotion to orature they may say about a griot:
Jeli be ko kdrow dun, The griot eats the old words.

Jeli be dun ko kdrdwβ, The griot is eaten by the old words.
49 Recently, Karin Barber has reconsidered the reintegration of the much discussed notion
of oral "text" into a performance-oriented approach to verbal art. Karin Barber, "Quota-
tion in the Constitution of Yorübä Oral Texts," Research in African Literatures 30:2
(1999), pp. 17-41.
50 For the term "ecumene," see the final lines of this essay and note 80 below.—In this
essay I use "griot" and "bard" synonymously, but prefer the latter word when I deal with
hunters . There is no grammatical gender in Manding, but the compound jelimuso (pi.
jelimusow), "griotte," is the equivalent for women. Among the hunters there are no
female bards. The rich nomenclature for griot or bard in the vocabulary of the various
languages in West Africa is a useful reminder of the central position of the bards in the
Sahelian cultural ecumene. A useful map of the terminology is provided by Thomas A.
Hale, "From the Griot of Roots to the Roots of Griot: A New Look at the Origins of a
Controversial African Term for Bard," Oral Tradition 12:2 (1997), pp. 249-78; see also
Thomas A. Hale, Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music (Bloomington: Indi-
ana UP, 1998). In the Bambara language, in addition to the general terms for griot, there
are designations for particular categories, including capürüca,füni, gawule, jdnkdrdme,
and maabo: Charles Bailleul, Dictionnaire Bambara-Frangais; Dictionnaire Frangais-
Bambara (Bamako: Editions Donniya, 1996).
264 Tord Olsson
The bard is a master of the words of tradition, but he is also possessed by

its words. This is the broad sense, and rather metaphorical use, of the two
phrases. In a more restricted sense the expressions refer to the long and
thorough training in verbal artistry a griot has undergone and the change in
his personality resulting from this training. The first phrase then says that
the griot learns his art by eating the words of oral tradition. Griots have got
to know oral traditions so well that they ingest their words. In Bambara and
Mandinka parlance, people thus consume words in order to master them,
but they are also consumed by the words. In the second expression, the
griots are eaten by oral traditions, they are controlled by the power of the
words of orature. By extension, the powerful words of tradition transform
their being. In the Bambara and Mandinka ways of speaking, gustatory
metaphors are thus used to understand the power of orature and the work of
bards, who are custodians of orature.
Expressions of a similar kind are also used about the bards of other
peoples in Sahelian West Africa, for instance among the Songhai of Mali
and Niger. Their griots, the jeserey (sing, jesere), their guardians of oral
traditions, may express their commitment as follows:
Ay ga don bori sonni nga, I eat the words of the ancestors.
They are also thus implying that the words of the ancestors eat the griots,
consume them and transform their lives. 51
Such parlance seems to suggest an experience of a rather sensual and
physical relationship to orature, and in the contexts mentioned it has prob-
ably remained more vivid than the corresponding metaphors in European
languages, such as the rather conventional way of saying that we "con-
sume" literature or "devour" a book. 52 Beyond the above-mentioned con-
texts the Bambara may also use words for "eat" to indicate, in a wider
sense, an attentive way of taking in information, a more conventional
metaphor closer to European usage.
Similar expressions for the communication of orature are found in other
African languages. When I consult my old diaries from my fieldwork on
religious orature among the Maasai in Kenya from 1972-741 am reminded
of idioms corresponding to those in West Africa. The verb "eat," a-inos,
and some of its derived forms are used in a number of compounds:
51 Paul Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), p.

7.
52 On Biblical and Western metaphors of reading, see Alberto Manguel, A History of Read-
ing (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996), pp. 163-76.
a-inos il-omon, to eat stories or news (most common in Motion-Towards

Form a-inos-u); to tell stories, or exchange news (a fixed phrase).
a-inos enk-atini, to eat a story; to tell a story.
a-inos-u il-omon, to eat, to tell the news or stories (a fixed phrase).
inos-aka-ki il-omon, tell me the news, tell me the stories! (Dative Form).
a-inos-aki-no enk-atini, to eat a story together; to offer each other a story to
eat, to tell each other a story (Dative + Neuter Form).
a-inos-aa, to go away eating; to go out and spread things around (Motion-
Away Form).
e-inos-u-no-yu, it is debatable (Motion-Towards + Neuter Form, 3rd p.s.,
future tense).53
The Maasai idioms are quite general expressions referring less to expertise
in transmission than the examples in Bambara and Songhai, although their
literal wording undoubtedly has clear gustative, bodily connotations. The
Bambara and Songhai expressions first mentioned here are used in a more
specialized sense, about the custodians of words, their commitment to ora-
ture, and their experience of being transformed by words through the learn-
ing process.
In Sahelian West Africa, according to the bards who articulate the past
and the present, orature in this sense is not just a certain amount of texts to
be simply repeated but a force that consumes the bodies of those who
speak and those who listen. On the other hand, much of the orature they
learn consists of consolidated arrangements of words recognized as "texts"
which are felt to exist prior to the moment of performance and after it, as
durable compositions that transcend time. They are acknowledged as ob-
ject-like entities that can be quoted. I would add to Karin Barber's recent
discussion of Yorübä oral verbal art, that her observations also account for
much of the texts' potential as affirmed by audiences and practitioners of
oral art in Sahelian West Africa. 54
In the Manding languages there are a number of terms for various ele-
ments of speech and for emic genres and sub-genres of orature. Bambara
terms for parts of speech include kan, lit. throat, but designating also voice,
language, statement; kuma, speech, word; kumakan, way of speaking, lan-
guage; ko, something said, word; fd, foli, enunciation, the act of saying
53 Cf. also Tord Olsson, Religious Documents of the Maasai, I—III (Lund: [cyclostyled],
1975-82), Part II; Frans Mol, Maasai Language and Culture Dictionary (Limuru,
Kenya: Diocese of Meru - Kolbe Press, 1996), pp. 113-14.
54 Barber, "Quotation," pp. 18-19, 21, 35-36.
266 Tord Olsson
something (enonciation)·, fölen, what is said (enonce). Manding genres in-

clude ntälen, proverb, parable, short story (Gambian Mandinka ntaaling)\
tare, folktale; nsiirin, short narrative, story, fable, tale; fäsa (variant pasa),
panegyric, praise-poem; wasala and maana, epic, "geste," historical chron-
icle, long story (Arabic origin); tariku, historical chronicle, epic (Arabic
origin); kokdrd, ancient word. The generic term for a song or poem which
is sung is ddnkili. In addition there are single instances of a genre that are
acknowledged as enduring compositions which transcend time, and can
thus be called oral "texts." Some of these texts are also named: for in-
stance, Masajigin, royal genealogy, and Mänden kuma, The Mande word,
are some of the designations used for the epic of Sunjata. The terms men-
tioned here, and many others, normally refer to the spoken word only. I
have listed them not to confuse the reader but to give some sense of how
rich and complex the vocabulary used about the spoken word is, and in
contrast, to weigh this against the fact that—apart from Arabic and French
loan-words—there is only one basic term (and its derivatives) for what is
written: seben. This word is used for everything connected with writing,
such as secular and religious scriptures, letters, booklets, notebooks, and
paper. It also denotes the powerful signs and formulas which ritual mas-
ters, such as marabouts, write on paper or other material, and insert in
amulets—and by extension, seben denotes the amulets themselves.
In "magical" and ritual contexts, the physical incorporation of "script" is
quite common, but on such occasions the embodiment of texts is not for
the actual purpose of further transmitting the texts. When I was studying
ritual practices and the ritual use of Koran verses among the marabouts,
mostly as the apprentice of Isa Jikine—a Khasonke man from Mali, who is
now active in the Gambia—he instructed me in the common practice of
writing quotations from the Koran and other sorts of formulas on paper to
be put into leather bags for use as amulets. He also taught me to write quot-
ed formulas on wooden tablets, including the specific method of washing
the ink in which the words were subscribed off the tablet into a bowl; the
liquid, that was now assumed to contain the text, was kept so that it could
be drunk by the clients as a protective or medical measure. The purpose of
this procedure is obviously not that the text should be further transmitted
by those who drink it. On the contrary, they neither need, nor should they
know the wording of the text they drink. The wording is part of the ma-
rabout's art, and it is his property. He gives away or sells liquefied words
to his clients. A specific text would be appropriate for a particular occa-
sion, but Isa's act of writing the text and the client's of drinking it would be
of greater consequence to the client than what the text actually says. To the
client the text would have no or very little referential sense. Its persuasive
force arises from the context of the performance, the kind of ritual being
enacted. Drinking the text is not in this case a metaphor, as when we say
we devour a book or consume literature, but represents an intimate physi-
cal relation to a culturally created object. Yet the example tells us some-
thing about the sensual perception of texts, especially about the object-like
character of quoted texts, written as well as oral, and the potential that can
be ascribed to them.
The way Isa Jikine and his clients conceive of drinking written texts is
not unique,55 and may help us understand the statements of the Mande and
Songhai bards about eating oral texts and being transformed by them. Lo-
cal psycho-linguistic philosophy and practices among the Bambara have
also developed complex speculations, in terms of bodily processes, about
the connection between thought (miiri, hakili) and word (ko, kuma, kan,
fd), silence and speech, truth and lies, man and woman, and notions of reli-
ability and authority. I have heard the relations between these notions ar-
ticulated in various terms of a physiology of thought and word that are con-
nected to intestinal organs and processes of the body. For instance, the
origin of the spoken word may be conceived according to a complicated
scheme: in its initial form of inner thought, called kond kan, the voice of
55 Close equivalents to the "drinking of texts" by Isa Jikine's clients are found in the
Islamized parts of Africa. For instance, the Jakhanke of Senegal and the Gambia use
hijab (pi. hijbat), formulas charged with power, "written down on Qur'an slates and
washed off, the mixture serving as medicine," says Lamine O. Sanneh, The Jakhanke:
The History of an Islamic Clerical People of the Senegambia (London: International
African Institute, 1979), p. 208. Also, the marabouts among the Tukulor of the Senegal
river basin may prescribe that their clients drink "preparations made from dissolving
Qur'anic script from a wooden writing board ( s a f a r a ) , " see Roy M. Dilley, "Spirits,
Islam and Ideology: A Study of Tukulor Weavers' Song (Dillere)," Journal of Religion
in Africa 17: 3 (1987), pp. 245-79 (p. 252). The habit is also reported from Mayotte, an
island off the coast of East Africa near Madagascar, by Michael Lambek, Knowledge
and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession
(Toronto, Buffalo, and London: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993). Speaking of amulets con-
taining Koranic verses he states: "Likewise, singa, the common medicine in which a
verse from the Qur'an is written on a white plate, rinsed off, and then swallowed, is a
direct way of infusing the body with the sacred liturgy, yet another kind of embodiment
of the text and a sacralization, hence sanctification, of the body," p. 142. Lambek himself
(p. 419, note 10) also refers to the studies of the Berti in the Province of North Darfur in
the Sudan, by Osman El-Tom, "Drinking the Koran: The Meaning of Koranic Verses in
Berti Erasure," Africa 55:4 (1985), pp. 414-31; and "Berti Qur'anic Amulets," Journal
of Religion in Africa 17:3 (1987), pp. 224-44. In contrast El-Tom emphasizes the seman-
tic relationship of the selected Koran verses or formulas to the specific purposes for
which they are consumed.
268 Tord Olsson
the stomach, the word receives its first impulse from the brain (künko-
loseme) and the heart ( s d n , sdnkun, the physical organ; or dusukun, heart as
the centre of emotions). Thought takes the form of a little "ball" (kulukutu)
or an "air bubble" ( k u r u ) passing through the liver ( b i y e n , binye) where it
is assessed and can be censored. From there it proceeds to the kidneys
0kdmokill), where its sense (kdro) is either hardened into precision or left
vague. The initial word or thought is then taken through the intestines and
into the bladder (nyegenebara). The urine gives the word its fluidity and
beautifies it. The word is then ejected upwards to the mouth (da), the "ene-
my of man," where in a "smeared" form it enters the world, capable of
beauty and of empowerment, but also of insult and deception. "The jour-
ney of the word upward and out of the mouth describes a fall out of authen-
ticity and truth, which, in and of themselves, are synonymous with silence.
Simultaneous with the appearance of the word in the world is the possibili-
ty of lying: in Mandekan someone who is thought incapable of lying is said
to have no mouth," as Christopher Miller aptly remarks. Therefore, "[t]rue
knowledge is held in silence, safe from the transformation into speech that
releases nyama [occult power]. The Mande attitude toward speech reveals
a sign system that is both dualistic and laden with danger." The word is as-
sociated with deceit, as well as with might and beauty. As "people of the
spoken word" the griots, the jeliw, "suffer from a less than sterling reputa-
tion," and "their fate is tied to the fortunes and reputation of orality." 56
What sort of experience do the bards and their intimates refer to when
they say that griots and other bards "eat" orature and "are eaten" by ora-
ture? They acquire it over a long period of apprenticeship and keep it in-
wardly, but they also digest, process and transform the oral tradition. The
artistically skilful griot displays his individual style in his performance
practice, and he is careful about his choice of words with regard to the situ-
ational context and the audience present. The bard may also foreground
certain genealogies and interpose praise poems, fasaw, in the current per-
56 Information from Soungo Traori in Gwanyebugu, and from other persons in the Sirako-
rola area (Mali). The quotations are from Miller, Theories of Africans, p. 81; he refers to
Dominique Zahan, La Dialectique du verbe chez les bambara (Paris: Mouton, 1963), pp.
15-30, and to Sory Camara, Gens de la parole: Essai sur la condition et le role des
griots dans la societe Malinke (Paris: Mouton, 1976), p. 248. Cf. also Youssouf Cissi,
"Signes graphiques, reprisentations, concepts et tests relatifs ä la personne chez les
Malinki et les Bambara du Mali," in La Notion de personne en Afrique noire, Colloques
Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 544 (Paris: L'Harmattan,
[1973] 1993), pp. 131-79 (p. 148).
formance, sometimes long improvised passages, in honor of people present

(which also happened to me, as a recurrent guest and fieldworker).
On the other hand, the bards are intimately and strongly bound to their
authorities; their relation to their masters is reverent, and the bards change
themselves profoundly both by the orature they take in, and through their
transmission of it. The Gambian griot Alagi Mbye and the Malian hunter
bard Bakari Samake, as well as other Mandinka and Bambara bards, rever-
entially described this change as a mental transformation—intellectual,
emotional, and moral—but also as a physical experience. The process ex-
tends over the long convivial life with the master, Bakari's forty years
spent together with Bäala Jinba, for instance. Our conversations also re-
vealed a sensual experience of the word which might be disturbing, elu-
sive, or recalcitrant to a cool Northern academic mind, but may also be of
great importance if we are seriously trying to describe oral literature ethno-
graphically in life worlds where current concepts of literature and methods
of scholarly work on written texts seem unable to convince. In our repre-
sentation and analysis we have to consider that in cultural habitats where
literacy is of little prominence, imagery derived from perceptions of fra-
grance, taste, touch, and listening are prominent, and that metaphors re-
lated to script and reading play only a minor part.
Anthropologists who have been working in societies where oral culture
predominates have reported such observations. For instance, Rene Devisch
in his account of the Yaka of Southwestern Zaire, states: "In the oral cul-
ture of the Yaka, where cognition and institutional discipline are not mas-
tered by linear writing, dictionaries, and positive science, or by goals of ef-
ficient economic production and progress, the approach to reality is usually
a highly sensuous and transactional one." 57 Along the same lines some so-
cial scholars think that a feature of restraint is characteristic of societies in
which writing is dominant. The introduction and dominance of writing
would lead to a profound change of attitude, meaning that part of an imme-
diate, sensual relation to the world would be lost and that the relationship
would be more indirect than in societies where literacy is less significant.
When the metaphorical organization of experience does not depend on
writing, not only sound, speech and listening, but also touch, taste and
smell, the "lower" spheres of the senses, hold a more prominent position in
the organization of perception and knowledge than in societies where writ-
57 Rend Devisch, Weaving the Threads of Life: The Khita Gyn-Eco-Logical Healing Cult
Among the Yaka (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 43.
270 Tord Olsson
ing culture has a high status. When one's own history is not recorded in
venerated scriptures another form of cultural memory is deposited and re-
leased, sometimes stored and actualized at ritual celebrations. 58 One ex-
ample is the septennial ceremonies in Kangaba town, recognized by the
Mande as the ancient capital of the Mali empire. During these ceremonies
the epic about the deeds of Sunjata Keita, who founded the empire in the
thirteenth century, is ritually recited. I shall return to this below.
Institutions of Oral Art:

Ritual Societies and Centers of Learning
In pre-colonial times there were a number of great teaching centers

(kumaydrdw) and ritual societies in the Sahel with the status of "acade-
mies" where oral and musical skills were taught, and where the knowledge
maintained by the the masters of words and music was highly esteemed,
both the traditional African and the Islamic. Ideally, each man in the course
of his life was supposed to improve his wisdom step by step by being initi-
ated and instructed in the orature and teachings cultivated by a number of
secret societies, called jow (sing, jo) among the Mande. The most ad-
vanced of these traditional institutions of learning was the Köre secret so-
ciety. It flourished especially among the Bambara in Mali. 59 The distin-
guished members of this school submitted themselves to seven years of
training in various arts, from medical education to the art of the "great
speech." This educational institution gradually disappeared during the co-
lonial time, and today it does not exist as a school any more. Not even the
elders among my Bambara friends had much to tell me about their memo-
ries of the Köre.
58 Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship, pp. xv-xvi; Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), pp. 71-72.
59 Among the Bambara each male person in the course of his life was supposed to be suc-
cessively initiated and instructed in the orature and teachings of six initiation societies on
a progressive scale: Ntomo, Kdmd, Nama, Kono, Ciwara, Kdre\ see Dominique Zahan,
Societes d'initiation bambara: Le N'domo, le Kore (Paris and The Hague: Mouton and
Co., 1960). In principle, only Ciwara is open to both men and women. However, I have
attended Kono rituals of a rather popular and "folklorized" kind, where the audience
included men, women and children. Elements from the secret societies are appropriated
in the vibrant West African theatre tradition, and in Mali displayed in various kinds of
popular performance arts, such as the masquerade theatre festivals; see the generously
illustrated book by Mary Jo Arnoldi, Playing with Time: Art and Performance in Central
Mali (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995).
Other initiation societies however still flourish among the Bambara and
the Mandinka, such as the secret Komo society and the many hunter
brotherhoods, the donso tdnw. Today the great masters (karamdgdw) and
prominent members of these secret societies and brotherhoods are con-
sidered the true guardians of traditional oral and musical arts.60 In the meta-
phorical parlance used among these societies, wisdom and knowledge of
verbal art are sometimes—as in European language imagery—said to be
"wells" (kdldnw), while the wooden poles around the mouth of the well
that keep sand from sliding down it, are compared to sages, the guardians
of traditions. A Kdmo song runs as follows:
Kolon kana jiriw ye Look at the the wooden poles protecting the well
Jiriw dugudege The trees plume themselves
Jiri den caman The fruits of trees are many
Jiri do be nugu One tree sprouts
Do be fyere another blossoms61
The teaching and performances of the Kömd mainly take place in ritual set-
tings. The peculiar orature and music of the brotherhood involves a docu-
mentary and moral dilemma. Although I am an initiated member (kdmdna)
of this society I have not been allowed to tape-record, take notes or photos
during our ritual sessions. The secrecy of the society is to be strictly kept.
When its ceremonies are performed, the paths to the ritual grounds are
guarded by watchmen to prevent unauthorised people from being admitted,
especially children, women and "casted" griots, the jeliw. These categories
of people are considered unable to keep secrets. People are inclined to
speak about the Komo in a low voice, so that the words will not be over-
heard by others. Some are horrified by the violent sacrifice of dogs which
are ritually consumed, others express a feeling of awe, inspired by the
vehement evening dances and processions, and the imposing masks used at
the nocturnal rituals, performed in the obscure light of flickering fires. It is
60 Germaine Dieterlen and Youssouf Cisse, Les Fondements de la societe d'initiation du

Komo (Paris: Mouton 1972). On a personal experience of Kdmd among the Mandinka in
Mali, including some texts in translation, see Nambala Kante and Pierre Erny, Forgerons
d'Afrique noire: Transmission des savoirs traditionnels en pays malinke (Paris: Editions
L'Harmattan, 1993), pp. 228-49. On the hunter brotherhoods among the Mandinka and
Bambara, including texts in the original languages and in translation, see Youssouf Tata
Cissi, La Confrerie des chasseurs Malinke et Bambara: Mythes, rites et recits initio-
tiques (Ivry and Paris: Editions Nouvelles du Sud / Association ARSAN, 1994).
61 Text in Zahan, Societes d'initiation, p. 227.1 have adjusted the orthography to standard
Bambara; my translation.
272 Tord Olsson
also said by the members themselves that the knowledge of the existential
themes of birth and death, expressed in the Komo rituals, brings suffering
to the seeker of wisdom, since the search for it is endless. For all that,
rather a lot of information about the Kdmd has been reported by early an-
thropologists and certain members of the society.62
The Kdmd knowledge, including verbal art, song and music, is con-
sidered to exist on its own in the form of a substance outside or above (san-
fe) common human bodies and minds, but it may enter the body at the
secret rituals. The karamogow, the masters of the society, carry this sub-
stance in great measure in their bodies. Knowledge is represented as an im-
mense and heavy reality, harsh, ardent and demanding, an insatiable desire.
The acquisition of this knowledge is shown in the rituals as descending
from above, down to the initiated. For this reason some of the Komd masks
are worn on the head, and not as masks covering the face.63 The Komd
symbols are associated particularly with the heart and the lungs, with the
throat and with the mouth, that is, with the speech organs. As we have
seen, in the Bambara physiological philosophy, or if you prefer, their body
myth of the origin of the word, these parts of the body play an important
role in the elaboration and emission of the well-spoken word. This symbol-
ism is intimately associated with the vital education mission of the Komo
society: to instruct people in the art of speaking well, to teach felicities of
expression, and to transmit the subtleties of the symbiosis of music and
verbal art.64
The rituals and the sacred verbal arts of the hunters are not surrounded
by the same secrecy as those of the jow. I have always been free to record
and take pictures, even at the most solemn sacrificial rituals of the hunters.
Although their orature is not really secret ( g u n d o m a ) , a hunter bard would
not like to perform any of it outside of the sacred setting. In a non-ritual
situation he would instead draw from a secular repertoire of praise songs
and epics, and he would also be more free to improvise.
As we have seen, Hampäte Bä was keen on mentioning "traditional"
ways of learning and performing, and that the oral education was guarded
and transmitted by the most talented artists, who further improved their
legacy by their own creative work and improvisations. The verbal artists
were thus simultaneously continuing and creating, enriching the common
62 By Zahan, Dieterlen and C i s s i , and Kante.

63 Illustration in Dominique Zahan, The Bambara, Iconography of Religions, Section VII:
Africa, Fasc. 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), Plate XXIII.
64 Zahan, Societes d'initiation, pp. 25, 3 1 - 3 3 .
heritage, said Hampäte Bä. He hits a nostalgic note when he recalls the
masters of Kore, various sorts of storytellers, Fulani poets, the griots of the
"schools" or "academies" which guard the great West African epic tradi-
tion.65 Only a few such centers exist today; the most important for the
transmission of the Sunjata epic is in the village of Kela in the Kangaba
area in the south-west of Mali. Some esteemed members of the Jabate
family in K&a are widely renowned as the true custodians of the Sunjata
epic.66 Extensive research has been devoted to various aspects of this epic
by African, European and American scholars.67 The Sunjata epic is ritually
performed once every seventh year in the sacred hut of the Keita clan in
Kangaba town.68
Is There a Text in the Heart of the Manden?
Kangaba town (Kaaba) is situated 95 kilometres south-west of Bamako

and was probably an ancient capital of the Mali empire. In front of the cen-
tral mosque in the middle of the town's official open space is situated the
sacred hut, which is the centre of extensive septennial ceremonies called
65 Bä, "Priface," pp. 8 - 9 .

66 Seydou Camara, La Tradition orale en question: Conservation et transmission des tradi-
tions historiques au Manden - le centre de Kela et l'histoire de Mininjan (Paris: These
de doctorat, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1990); Seydou Camara, "The
Epic of Sunjata: Structure, Preservation and Transmission," in Austen (ed.), In Search of
Sunjata, pp. 59-68; Jan Jansen, "An Ethnography"; Jan Jansen, VEpopee de Sundjata,
d'apres Lansine Diabate de Kela (Leiden: Research School Center of Non-Western
Studies, 1995); Jan Jansen, "The Sunjata Epic - The Ultimate Version," Research in
African Literatures, 32:1 (2001), pp. 14-46; Walter E. A. van Beek and Jan Jansen, "La
Mission Griaule ä Kangaba (Mali)," Cahiers d'Etudes africaines 158 (2000), net-ver-
sion: http://etudesafricaines.revues.org/documentl77.html, no pagination (14 April
2005); Madina Ly-Tall, Seydou Camara, and Bouna Dioura, L'Histoire du Mande
d'apres Jeli Kanku Madi Jabate de Kela (Paris: SCOA, 1987). Ralph A. Austen aptly
remarks: "For the Mande themselves, Sunjata appears to occupy an ambiguous position
between fixed document [...] and pure performance process," Ralph A. Austen, "The
Historical Transformation of Genres: Sunjata as Panegyric, Folktale, Epic, and Novel,"
in Austen (ed.), In Search of Sunjata, pp. 69-87 (p. 69).—For an example of a modern
attempt to establish "schools" combining tradition and modernity in the Gambia, see Eva
Saether, The Oral University: Attitudes to Music Teaching and Learning in the Gambia,
Studies in Music and Music Education 6 (Lund: Malmö Academy of Music, 2003).
67 See the references in note 66 above and other contributions and bibliographical refer-
ences in Austen (ed.), In Search of Sunjata·, see also Hale, Griots and Griottes.
68 Jan Jansen, "Hot Issues: The 1997 Kamabolon Ceremony in Kangaba (Mali)," Interna-
tional Journal of African Historical Studies 31:2 (1998), pp. 253-78; van Beek and
Jansen, "La Mission Griaule ä Kangaba," with references; cf. also above, note 66.
274 Tord Olsson
Kamabolon. Most recently these ritual events occurred in 2004 during five
days in mid April. When I attended the ceremony in 2004, invited by Sidi
Keita, it had drawn more than a thousand visitors, some from abroad and
not all of them Mande people. The latter came to participate in this mag-
nificent occasion, which is regarded as an exaltation of the Mande nation
and its glorious past. The common audience was kept at a distance of about
20-40 meters from the sacred hut by a wooden fence guarded by young
watchmen carrying long sticks, so that the space inside the fence made a
dancing ground. The entrances of the sacred hut were also guarded by
watchmen carrying sticks. Apart from the dancing, music, song and pro-
cessions, and the restoration of the figurative hunting motifs and abstract
paintings on the wall of the hut, the most spectacular piece, completed to-
wards the end of the ceremonies, was the re-roofing of the sacred hut. The
recital of the epic began late in the evening with a long introduction about
the prophet Muhammed and early events in Mecca, followed by the tradi-
tional West African contents, and continued until dawn. However, I was
not able to hear very much of the griot, Lansine Jabate, reciting from inside
of the sacred hut. Tape recording and the taking of photographs were not
allowed. Nevertheless, the confidence people have in a reliable, orally
transmitted text of the Sunjata epic finds expression in this prominent ritual
of its recital.
The reports on the ceremonies by Germaine Dieterlen (1955, 1959) and
later by Claude Meillassoux (1968), and again by Germaine Dieterlen
(1968) have become classics in Mande studies. 69 The two scholars have
both admitted the impossibility of recording the words recited in the
Kamabolon sanctuary in Kangaba. The words of the ritual are everywhere
considered great secrets of the Manden, guarded by the famous Jabate
family in Kela, who were griots of the ancient kings of Kangaba—the
owners of the sanctuary. One certain kumatigi, a master of the word, exer-
cised his functions over many decades and thus guarded the conservation
of the tradition. There have not, for this reason, been many kumatigiw in
Kela in late colonial and postcolonial times. Today, the authority is exer-
cised by Lansine Jabate, the successor of Kanku Madi, who was in charge
69 Germaine Dieterlen, "Mythe et organisation sociale au Soudan frangais," Journal de la

Societe des Africanistes 25 (1955), pp. 38-76; 29:1 (1959), pp. 119-38; Germaine Diet-
erlen, "Note compMmentaire sur le sanctuaire de Kaaba," Journal de la Societe des Afri-
canistes 38:2 (1968), pp. 185-88; Claude Meillassoux, "Les Cirdmonies septennales du
Kamablon de Kaaba," Journal de la Societe des Africanistes 38 (1968), pp. 173-82. Cf.
van Beek and Jansen, "La Mission Griaule ä Kangaba," no pagination.
between 1960 and 1987, the year of his death. Before him a certain Breh-
man, a classificatory father of Lansine, exercised the function of kumatigi
for about twenty years. 70
In Sahelian West Africa, orature is still taught in the traditional ways by
a master to his apprentice. As mentioned, the Sunjata epic, but also other
oral traditions, are guarded by the Jabate clan in Kela. Some people in
Kangaba have told me that there is an ajami scripture, a text in the Mandin-
ka language written in Arabic letters, of the Sunjata epic preserved in the
village. Seydou Camara, in his contribution to the volume In Search of
Sunjata, edited by Ralph A. Austen (1999), also maintains that written ver-
sions of Sunjata in ajami script exist in Kela and Kangaba. This is, how-
ever, contested by Jan Jansen in the same volume. 71 I have not seen any
such text myself, and if it exists at all, one may well ask what value such a
text would have for the griots' actual performances and their maintenance
of the oral "text." However, the very idea of such a written version seems
to suggest the notion of a durable "text" of the epic that transcends time,
indeed the idea of a textus receptus, that is, a standardized and authorized
version of the epic. The same notion, but of a canonical oral text, is sug-
gested by the well-guarded secrets surrounding the septennial ritual recita-
tion of the Sunjata epic at the Kamabolon ceremony in Kangaba.
In the Mande world the thousand-year-long impact of the Islamic writ-
ten tradition as well as the more recent French influence are strong, and
writing is highly esteemed. In the town of Kangaba, for instance, one griot
is also an imam and a teacher in the Koran school; marabouts have many
Islamic scriptures in their houses, and in the secondary school children
learn to read and write French and some English. Today, people in the
Kangaba area show great respect both for speech and oral traditions and for
writing, as means of communication, signs of authority, mark of culture,
and manifestations of socially and politically powerful acts. The idea of an
authentic Sunjata text fixed in writing is only symptomatic of the high
prestige the epic enjoys.
In the case of the Sunjata epic, and how Mande people conceive of it, we
may refer to the oral object's texuality, implying that the oral object has
coherence and a certain degree of autonomy and stability over time, as it is
perceived by a performer and listener. Texuality may well be experienced
by performers and listeners as an inherent property of certain oral objects,
70 See van Beek and Jansen, "La Mission Griaule ä Kangaba," no pagination.
71 Camara, "The Epic of Sunjata," pp. 64-67; Jansen, "An Ethnography," pp. 308-309.
276 Tord Olsson
but as an analytical term oral textuality should rather be regarded as a prop-

erty assigned to oral objects, either by those who produce and listen to
them, or by those who analyze them. Primarily the textuality of orature
pieces is thus a social and cultural construct, although it may be adopted in
literary analysis as an assigned property with which to identify specific
oral texts. Thus when a critic speaks about an oral object as a "text," such
as the "text" of the Sunjata epic, he or she usually presupposes a coherent
whole that is independent of idiosyncrasies or context-bound variations
which occur at every particular performance event. For instance, some ana-
lysts of the Sunjata epic have regarded its (ascribed) self-sufficiency or au-
tonomy as characteristic of its textuality, but others in a more poststruc-
turalist vein have seen the epic "text" as constructed out of other "texts."
Thus one way of viewing its textuality is to identify a number of praise
songs and other poems as core texts which have been woven together by
narrative passages into an extant whole.
Orature in a sense consists of "texts" to which the usual notions of
closure, univocal meaning, and authorial intention do not apply, regardless
of whether or not an individual author is known. Oral texts continually pro-
duce meaning independent of their association with an author. They inter-
act with the listeners, they are produced by the interplay between them and
the performer, and they are a source of "jouissance" (Roland Barthes).
However, certain pieces of orature fulfil a more recognizable role: for in-
stance by being bound to a particular context, such as a specific ritual, or
being closely related to an individual compilator, performer or author and
legends spun around his or her personality. In the latter case we may speak
about "works of orature." All the same, oral texts seem to be thrown upon
the resources of a double authorship, one being the anonymous tradition
and the other its appropriator and performer. I shall return to this below.
Yet, in Mande verbal artistry it is not really any such imagined text, but
the griots in person—the jeliw, some of them more or less literate, and the
hunter bards, the soraw or serew,12 usually not literate—who are con-
sidered the authorities of verbal art, measured in terms of their reputation
and reliability as people who know the tradition and who are accomplished
at paying balanced homage to the patrilinear formations in the Mande so-
ciety and their foremost heroes and ancestors.
72 Karim Traori, "Jeli and Sere: The Dialectic of the Word in the Manden," in Austen (ed.),
In Search of Sunjata, pp. 171-88.
Lamine Traore—the Hunter Bard
Let me now turn to the second of my three central figures, Lamine Traore.
The first time I met him was at a major ceremony which the hunters of the
Kangaba region had organized. The ceremony started a couple of hours af-
ter sunset in an area lit by fires and torches. Gunpowder smoke from the
muskets soon blanketed the dance arena. Lamine Traore led the ritualized
performance of hunter poetry. Donso-foli, the special orature and music of
the hunters among the Mande people, includes two types of repertoire:
partly the sacred, liturgically prescribed repertoire, partly the secular. The
literary and musical genres are determined by situation, form, content,
rhythm of the music, and by the mode of performance.
The sacred repertoire makes up a part of an ordered set of ritual proce-
dures which organize the actors' performance and are performed—if the
norms are followed—only within the brotherhood of the hunters. The li-
turgical song called Dugalawili is one example of what is included in this
repertoire. The title is ambiguous: the basic meaning, "the one who lets the
vulture (duga) rise," is emblematic of its spiritual sense, "the one who lets
the benediction (duga) rise."73 Poetic expressions in Manding, such as say-
ings and jokes, are often based on such homonyms. The song makes up the
second part of the sinbonsi ceremony, the ritual wake after a hunter's
death. Under the leadership of the donso-ba, "the great hunter" and master
of ceremonies, followed by the lead singer, sora, the hunters move in a
rhythmic procession around the ritual fire to the beat of the Dugalawili-
rhythm and sing the refrains in unison. In contrast to secular songs, the beat
remains the same throughout the performance. The text is followed me-
ticulously, embellishments are not appropriate, the liturgical order is strict-
ly defined. Only hunters are supposed to participate.
But the repertoire which Lamine and the hunters performed in Kangaba
was of the secular type so that even non-initiates could attend. People from
neighboring villages had flocked to the ceremony. The show was per-
former-oriented, with a great deal of improvisation, but Lamine and the
73 duga, variants düfa, duba, dugawu (from Arabic du'a), blessing, benediction; lawili, var-
iant lawuli, cause to rise. On this and other hunter songs, see Brahima Camara, "Baala
Jinba Jakite, un chroniqueur des chasseurs," Jamana: Revue Culturelle Malienne, No. 4 4
(March/April 1999), pp. 2 0 - 2 6 (pp. 2 3 - 2 4 ) ; Tord Olsson, "Barden och den blinde
jägaren: Muntlig litteratur och musik i Mali" ("The Bard and the Blind Hunter: Oral Lit-
erature and Music in Mali"), Karavan: Litterär tidskrift pa resa mellan kulturer, 2002,
No. 2, pp. 4 4 - 5 2 .
278 Tord Olsson
other hunters followed the traditional norms for how the performance
should be carried out: the "poetic" sections were sung and the narrative
parts were scanded, or recited very rapidly. The beat often accelerated
within the course of the same song. A new section was marked with a loud
and long exclamation. As with other forms of chanting, the musical struc-
ture is partly defined by the oral text and its phrasing. As the storytellers
perform, an elderly master strides along at the side of the bard. He encour-
ages him and confirms the narrative with his presence and short verbal in-
terjections: -Naamu, yes, that's right!
The old man, the naamu-naminena, "the one who responds with ' y e s ' , "
plays the important role of guaranteeing the progression of the recital. The
bard himself accompanies the performance with his sinbi, the harp-lute.
Now and then someone runs up and puts some money in the instrument's
sound-hole. The dancers move counter-clockwise in a ring holding their
weapons and imitating the hunter's stalking motions when he has his prey
in sight. Now and then someone fires his musket. In other words, perform-
ance traditions and participant contributions take place within a ritually de-
fined framework, but it is not a sacred context. The performance is lively
with a certain degree of improvisation, but in general the ritualized plots,
including language plots, are prescribed acts which can be said to be taken
from an experiential and verbal repertoire.
The ceremony lasted most of the night. I recorded it on tape but the qual-
ity was very poor. Therefore, Lamine and I agreed that I would get another
chance to record a performance, with fewer participants, in his own vil-
lage.
I set off the next day with two young boys from my compound to show
the way. But we were forced to turn back to Kangaba as rain had increased
the river's current and we were unable to wade across. Lamine Traore, the
hunter bard, was waiting for us in his village, but he would understand. By
the next day the water had subsided and we reached the village after a
three-hour hike; the boys knew the path through the bush. The Fulani
nomads who had their cattle nearby offered us a calebash of fresh milk.
Lamine's wife gave us water. Her husband returned from working in the
fields, hoe on shoulder. Like most Mandinka he is a farmer, but also a
hunter. Our greetings were extensive. I gave him cola nuts and caliber 2
ammunition, the usual gifts for a hunter in Mali.
Within the brotherhood of hunters ranking is different from the hierar-
chy of age found in the secret societies of the farming religion. The hunters
themselves describe their relations to each other as equal. In practice how-
ever, there is also a kind of hierarchy. It is not related to age but rather to
how long the hunter has been a member, from the day he was initiated into
the brotherhood. In their ceremonies, then, a son may go before his father.
In addition, there is a variation in status based on a man's achievements as
a hunter. The person who has killed a large animal is a donsoba, a "great"
hunter. Ritually this honor is shown by the hunter having the right to dance
to the janjon, the hymn of bravura. This is a specific genre within the hunt-
ers' music and orature. If someone were to dance this dance without hav-
ing accomplished the necessary deed, he would fall down dead, the saying
goes.
Many vital aspects of the culture of the Mande people, deeply rooted as
they are in the male hunter tradition, have a different character from those
associated with farming. This is also true for the oral literature. The hunt-
ers' oral traditions among the Mande also differ from the partially Islamic-
oriented historical epics, the best known oral literature from West Africa.
This is especially true of the Sunjata epic, which is usually considered a
prototype for the great oral traditions of West Africa. Performance of such
an epic is usually accompanied by a kora, a 21-stringed harp-lute with a
long neck. As we have seen, the male bard who sings and recites these
epics is usually called a griot, in Manding, jell·, but it is not unusual for the
bard to be a woman, a "griotte," jeli-muso. In contrast, the hunters' oral tra-
dition and music, donso-foli, is kept entirely within a male organisation
and centers around various motifs and themes, using literary genres and
other rythmic patterns that differ from the griots' or griottes' better known
epics. The performance is also carried out to a different instrument, an
8-stringed harp-lute with a relatively short neck; Mandinka people call the
instrument sinbi, but the general term is nköni.
The hunter orature's themes and motifs are not derived from Islamic tra-
dition, nor from the domain of the village and fields, but rather from the
life of the hunters and thus closely related to the bush, kungo—the dark
and dangerous world where the jinew, i.e. the genii, and other spirits exist
together with the wild animals, trees and herbs. The bush and the hunters
are also associated with medical and magical knowledge. In order to bring
forth the wild animals, the hunters use special formulas: small sections of
the hunters' orature which turn up here and there in performances of their
longer, poetic and epic traditions. These formulas are considered personal
property which the hunters exchange among themselves or sell to each
other. As protection from the spirits of the bush, evil genii and the power,
nyama, which the slaughtered animals emanate, the hunters wear amulets
280 Tord Olsson
on their bodies, and their clothes are covered with innumerable such orna-
ments. Even the amulets contain formulas. Powerful words have been read
over the central components of the amulets and the words have been af-
fixed to them through the moisture of exhalation. The formulas can be both
appeals and protective; they help the hunter find his prey, they defend him
from the powers which are released when an animal is killed and from the
mysterious malady which the malicious genii can cause. Such an illness is
thus characteristically called either jine-bana, genie-sickness, or kungo-
bana, bush-sickness. These elements of the oral literature, in other words,
are "functional"; they have a magical, medical and practical function. But
the various formulas are also interjected into larger literary contexts.
The afternoon heat at the Traores' home has eased somewhat and be-
come a weightless yellow glow. Lamine and his father have put on their
earth-red hunting clothes: the cap with a tassel, tight trousers, jacket dec-
orated with amulets for protection from evil magic and malevolent genii.
The father carries a hide over his shoulder and in his hand is a fly swatter
denoting his authority. He is a donsoba, a great hunter who has felled
large animals and may therefore dance and sing the janjon, the bravura
hymn.
Lamine starts strumming his sinbi. Accompanied by the instrument, his
father starts reciting—in his rough, old man's voice—the traditional story
of the hunters and the origins of the hunt: the legend of Säane and
Köntörön, the female and the male deities at the top of the hunters' mytho-
logical pantheon. This is organized differently from that of the farming re-
ligions where Ala (Allah via Islam's influence) or Ngala is the highest god,
and the reverence of the ancestors, and the rituals of the secret societies are
the vital elements. In the hunters' religion this is not the case. Instead the
significance of Ala is not so great, ranked even below the goddess Säane
and the god Köntörön. In the old man's story, the two deities are given a
certain heroic character, and sometimes he calls them melekew, angels—a
word imported from Arabic.
Säane was not born of another being and she has never had sexual inter-
course with anyone. Even so, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a
son, Köntörön, who she initiates into "the visible and invisible things"
which are hidden by the bush. Köntörön is the archetypal hunter, donso
fdlo, the first hunter. He has conquered all types of wild animals, even
killed some of the genii, and mastered all the bush's magical and medicinal
secrets. Köntörön, too, remained chaste and thereby preserved his mental
and physical vitality, as well as his original purity. The story is long and
complicated but its theme presents the ideals which the hunters embrace
and which I would summarize as the right to human dignity. The pair of
deities is a symbolic representation of life's victory over death, superiority
of kindness to hatred, foresight and good sense winning over chance and
violence. The expression Säane ni Kdntdrdn derm, "the children of Säane
and Köntörön," is therefore an honored title among the hunters. The sacri-
ficial altar at their cult ground is sometimes called sää nene ni kdtördn,
"taste death and return," a play on words based on the two deities.
After the old man's introduction Lamine sings and recites continually
for three hours without a pause. The performance is intense and he is
skillful with his sinbi. The poetic motifs of the songs have their mythical
origins in the father's story of Säane and Köntörön. But the distinctive
mythic and legendary motif cycle of the origins of the hunt grows during
Lamine's performance into a long tale which not only tells about the
great hunters' achievements and their conversations with the animals, but
is, above all, a story about life values. The songs often have a special
tone of mixed joy and melancholy, according to those who listen. Even I
feel this and catch myself thinking about the music of Vivaldi, there in
Lamine's hut.
All the preparations for the recording session were done. Lamine helped
me arrange the tape recorder and tapes so that I could easily change them.
He was not at all clumsy. During the session he adapted his performance
smoothly to the change of tapes, repeating strophes without breaking off
the accompaniment. The music and the narrative on this occasion had the
character of a sort of potpourri, including the father's introduction and a
number of different genres: sankin, mambifasa and janjon. When the fa-
ther had danced to the bravura hymn, Lamine sang a praise poem in my
honor which told about how Jöla Keita—word had reached him from be-
yond the river Niger that this historical name had been given to me by the
famous blind hunter Bäala Jinba—crossed the river and wandered through
the bush withstanding many hardships in order to finally reach the home of
the singers. It is normal to expand on a very ordinary occurrence in this
way. Convention requires that the guest of honor be praised.
Lamine and his father gave the performance a ritualized framework
which included even the praise to me. Among the "texts" which I have col-
lected, there is thus also—paradoxically—one which is about myself and
my research. From the point of view of the reflexive anthropology of lit-
erature, this is of course an example of how the field researcher influences
his research material. Not so in the bard's eye.
282 Tord Olsson
Three years later, in April 2004, now before a larger audience of hunters
and Muslims in Kangaba town, Lamine embellished further on the traveller
theme. I had asked him to perform once again the legends and songs about
Säane and Köntörön. But he refused. That type of orature, he excused him-
self, was part of the sacred repertoire and could not be performed in the
present context. Then he started to recite and sing about travellers: the Mus-
lim who walks in the bush should not forget to bring his Koran as protection,
the hunter his gun and his amulets and his boli, his "fetish." He was aware of
the mixed audience. But "Jöla Keita," he now intoned—and in passing asked
the audience about my Swedish name, keen that it should be heard from my
tape-recording by an audience in my country—Jöla has travelled all over the
world (a ye dinye miime bee yaala), in Mali, in Guinea, in Burkina Faso, in
the Gambia, in England (Angilteri), in Germany (Alimani), in France
(Faransi), and when he walks through the wide savannah without father and
mother (a be kungokolon fäntan bantan taa), when he travels through the
length and breadth of the wide savannah (ά be kungokolon taama), he brings
his Koran and his notebook, his gun and his camera, and his amulets and his
boli. I mention this as an example of the bard's innovative ability to extem-
porize a praise poem, here by paraphrasing and drawing on a previously re-
cited theme in order to achieve an enhanced effect.
Bäala Jinba Jakite—the Blind Hunter
Lamine Traore's fame is local and he transmits both sacred and secular
orature, performed in more or less ritualized ways. The basis of his
repertoire is the hunters' oral canon. He is inventive in embellishing the
standard themes of the hunters' life in the bush and their values and beliefs.
Like other bards he can extemporize praise poems during the course of a
performance in order to honor people in the audience. The legendary Bäala
Jinba, the blind hunter, is a celebrity talked about in all of Mali and its bor-
dering countries. Bäala Jinba himself also strives to implant traditional val-
ues in the Mande people and uses the motifs and themes of the hunters'
orature to this end. But in his oral art, he is also innovative. He has com-
posed a large and cohesive opus which carries his personal imprint, which
has given him a reputation. He has become the object of scientific theses at
African, French and German universities. He has a number of very close
apprentices, foremost among whom are Bakari Samake and Joman
Tarawele. He even has followers who appear in the media; among these
are such stars as Salif Keita, Kase Madi Jabate and Musa Keita alias Seke-
lengwe Musa. 74
- "Several years ago I stopped participating in larger events. My voice
can't handle it," says Bäala Jinba. But in my opinion he still retains his
strong bass voice. Now he no longer leaves his village which is located
about an hour's hike south of the right bank of the river Niger. My friend
Balla Coulibaly and I had stopped a fisherman and crossed the river in his
pirogue, taken a leisurely hike south and crossed yet another river before
we reached our destination. Bäala Jinba's village was beautifully situated
on a hill. In the afternoons I sat in the shade together with the bard Bakari
Samake. We exchanged snuff, conversed and looked out over the plains
below. In the evenings, we ate freshly trapped hare.
Bäala Jinba himself asserts that the hunt—naturally—is fundamental to
the world of the Mande people, and often points out that the Mali king-
dom's founder, Sunjata Keita, was a hunter.
- "The hunt, donsoya, is truly the primary thing. If it weren't for the
hunt, the Mande would not have survived," insists Bäala Jinba forcefully,
as he lies enthroned in his hammock outside his clay house. The old man is
blind, but he rushes around like a squirrel when he is not presiding from his
hammock, surrounded by family members and apprentices.
He gave a hunting formula to my friend Balla Coulibaly. To me he
gave three things: the name Jöla Keita, an amulet of which the potent
parts were parts of plants, and an alimon: a toothbrush made of a kind of
wood called kolokolo which is a mild psychic stimulant. He recited for-
mulas, bent and massaged the twigs and spat on them. In this way he af-
fixed his words to the objects. His authority is largely based on the
magical medical knowlege he has about the bush: about plants, animals
and the powers that are found there. Therefore he, as a hunter, can be
blind; he is not known for his skill in killing animals with a gun, but for
74 On Bäala Jimba and his work, see Brahima Camara, Jägerliteratur in Manden: Gat-
tungs- und Übersetzungsprobleme afrikanisher Oralliteratur am Beispiel von Baala
Jinba Jakites Epos Bilakoro Mari, Part I (Bayreuth: Schultz und Stellmacher, 1998);
Camara, "Baala Jinba Jakite"; Cisse, La Gonfrerie des chasseurs; Joseph Dosseh Couli-
baly, Recits des chasseurs du Mali: Dingo Kanbili, une epopee des chasseurs malinke de
Bala Jinba Jakite (Paris: Conseil international de la langue franâise, 1985); Nicola Mar-
tin Granel, "Un Homme-rficit parmi les hommes fusils: Jinba Jakite," in Litterature
Malienne, Notre Librarie, Riedition, No. 7 5 - 7 6 (Paris: Clef, 1989), pp. 67-69; Modibo
Keita, Nyakalenba, recit de chasse d'apres Baala Guimba Diakite (Bamako: Mdmoires
de fin d'Etudes, DER-Lettres Modernes, Ecole Normale Supdrieure, 1982-1983); Ols-
son, "Barden" (The Bard).
284 Tord Olsson
his ability to transfer this art to other hunters. Without the magic formu-
las, no hunter can find his prey.
Bäala Jinba's reputation is however primarily based on the songs he has
created. These songs are heard far beyond the Malian borders. He is known
as Bäala Jinba, but his real name is Fajinba Jakite. He speaks proudly of
himself as Badugu kdnd, "the bird from Badugu," 75 after the region where
he was born about 80 years ago. But, as is common among the Mande
people, he has taken his name from the village of his birth, Bäala.
I asked him frankly if he had always been blind. - " N o , I lost my sight as
a teenager," he said gruffly. And then he continued to relate how blindness
has honed his art and shaped his fate. An older brother who was a pious
Muslim, forbid him to play the sinbi, but he resisted and in secret led musi-
cal poetic meetings with the young people of the village and neighboring
areas. The soirees were a comfort to him in his handicap, enabling him to
remain in the traditional environment and gradually attain a respected posi-
tion as a poet and musician. Today he is sought after for his art and is
someone who is highly regarded and deeply respected, a mandiya.—"And
that is an important trait for us Mandinka," he adds.
Bäala Jinba's greatness comes from his being a sora, a poetic chronicler
of the hunters: that is, a special kind of bard. He himself describes his crea-
tions as one single work in the form of a continuous chronicle, or hunter
mythology, as he himself likes to depict it, in which each individual story
is an episode within a larger context. The context that makes up his opus
consists of 44 epic stories, each one dedicated to one of the 44 hunter he-
roes, the gwedew. Some of the stories have a serial character. In order to
really grasp the last episode for example, the one which without a doubt
has become the best known in this work, we must know what the previous
one was about. -"In order to understand Bilankoro Mari, you must have
heard Nakalenba." 76 And he adds, -"Stories are important, through them a
person gets his reputation. The hunters' saying is: Life is a struggle for
reputation. Nothing remains of a reputation which is not completely de-
scribed in a story (dinya ye jamu di, mdgd te jamu sodo n'i ma koba key
This is especially true for Bäala Jinba himself. He is a mysterious figure
surrounded by legends. Jinba is generally said to be something other than
an ordinary human being (mdgd gwansan te). People say that he is "the
75 So also in his songs; see for instance one quoted by Cissi, La Confrerie des chasseurs, p.
139; cf. also the excellent studies by Brahima Camara, mentioned above in notes 73 and
74.
76 On Bilankoro Mari, see Camara, Jägerliteratur; on Nakalenba, see Keita, Nyakalenba.
master of the double gaze" (nyefilatigi don) and that—because of his night-
ly meetings with the genii—he has no need of sleep (ά te sunogo). I myself,
in fact, got the impression during my stay that he only slept a few hours
now and then. His apprentices maintain that if anyone were to try to tape
record him without his consent, only noise would be picked up, and Jinba
definitely agreed that that was the case. I thought to myself that this view
of the matter serves to ward off unwelcome attention and gives expression
to Jinba's purist attitude and his well-known scepticism about electronic
media, surreptitious recordings, and commercialization of a folk literature
which naturally occurs, within its cultural habitat, in a ritualized perform-
ance that is often part of a ceremony or other special event.
Jinba himself does not attempt in any way to dispel the mystique sur-
rounding his person. His apprentices and the other people present nod and
mumble affirmation when he tells us: - "I was only three years old. When I
washed myself one morning I somehow became invisible (dibi) to human
eyes. I was first found again three days later in the same place where I had
disappeared, and at the same time of day."
I also nodded in agreement. I recognized the theme from the hunters'
stories, songs and rituals. With Jamako Coulibaly, Soungo Traore, and
other Bambara hunters in the Sirakorola area, I had recently taken part of
some rituals pertaining to a certain boli called Dibi, "The Invisible," who is
said to have the power to make its owner invisible. The quintessential
power of an invisible divine spirit, boli, can be manifested in, and sup-
ported by, a physical object, also called boli. Both aspects of an individual
among them are referred to by the same proper name. My friends had told
me about the work of Dibi and his character. I had photographed his physi-
cal side. Beings of this kind play an important part in the rituals and verbal
art of the hunters. I had also got the impression that Bäala Jinba in his own
person combined several characteristics which in other parts of the world
are found among shamans: the ability to allow one's body or soul to disap-
pear and travel to far away places; the ability to communicate with the
spirits, and gain a knowledge from them which supersedes ordinary human
abilities. Bäala Jinba's magic-medical and ritual knowledge and teachings,
which consist of a vast repertoire of oral literature, belong to this type of
ability.
I asked Jinba: - "All the griots have a master. You yourself are Bakari
Samake's master and you have had him as a student for 40 years, but who
is your master?" He answered without hesitation: - "No human being is
my master."
286 Tord Olsson
This was his way of saying what many people have confirmed, and
some even claim they have seen: that a certain genie whispers the songs in
his ear. This particular jine is his genius, his muse. But the songs are now
sung far from Jinba's and the genie's home region by those who do not
know their true authorship. This may sound strange to a European ear, but
in West Africa, though contact with genies is a rare occurrence, it is cer-
tainly not unnatural. There are many genii there. I have heard academics
say that they have relatives, one of whose parents is a genie. People do not
believe in their existence, they know that they exist, like we know that Ice-
land exists even if we have never been there. There is always someone who
has seen a genie and can tell about it. We usually translate the Arabic word
jinn, Mande jine, with "spirit"—Aladdin's spirit, for example is a jinn—
but the word gives rise to associations that are much too vague and airy for
this context. The West African genii are not intangible beings, even if, as a
rule, they remain invisible to the untrained eye. They are made of a differ-
ent substance than people and they can be several hundred years old.
Otherwise, they are like us; they are born and they die, they have first
names and family names, they work at different professions and in the arts,
and some have become real celebrities due to the wisdom which in Africa,
as opposed to Northern countries, comes with advanced age and experi-
ence. Bäala Jinba's master is an accomplished bard among the hunters in
the genii fellowship, a sora among the jinew who performs the genii oral
literature and communicates it to a poet among men. All honor to the genie
who chose Bäala Jinba as his spokesman! He is a great poet and has the
ability to listen to stories told by others about people's lives and what the
hunter's experiences in the bush are like.
Bäala Jinba's knowledge of the traditional Mande culture, language,
sayings, oral art and rituals is unique, but there is also an overarching
theme which is constantly present in his work: life is not only about surviv-
ing, but surviving with dignity. In order to convey this, Jinba uses the hunt-
ers' expressions and ideology in his imagery, because the hunters identify
themselves as respected men, honorable and honest. In this regard, Jinba
stays within the hunters' tradition. But he also uses their accomplishments
in a wider sense as mental images for human dignity. By placing this
theme in the center of his creative process, he simultaneously incorporates
many fundamental values of Sahelian West African society: the impor-
tance of upbringing, solidarity, one's own duty, moderation, a feeling for
rhythm and tone, the relationship between men and women, the value of
work.
The men who were listening were in agreement about one thing: -
"When Jinba and Bakari sing together, they have one and the same voice
(kan kelen)" The description "one and the same voice" concerning the
master and his apprentice did not in any way contradict the impression
which their performance made on us who listened. At the same time, how-
ever, I believe it can be interpreted as an expression of the sense of cultural
continuity and the authenticity of the oral tradition: performance of orature
is by its creative artist and the audience supposed to follow a normative
standard, and the "text" is believed to be conveyed unchanged over time in
an unbroken line of tradition. To a certain extent this is correct in the case
of Bäala Jinba and his supporters; his performance of the songs follows the
common genres accompanied by the four rhythms of Sankin, Mambi, Sori
and Janjon.11 This reflects the purist pretence. But Bäala Jinba also balan-
ces this pose which gives him authority, masterfully, with his own creative
powers, which are masked in the statement that no human being is his mas-
ter. Many in Bäala Jinba's audience are strict observers of the Mandinka
traditions and are proud of them, but at the same time, their ancestors have
lived in proximity of Islam for a thousand years and many Islamic ele-
ments have been culturally transposed and integrated into the Mandinka
people's language, orature and daily life. These originally Islamic catego-
ries live their own lives as naturalized parts of the Mandinkas' world. Ob-
vious and well known, the Mandinka consider them integral to their own
culture and even use them as expressions of their cultural identity. People
who are not Muslims can also use them in this way, even though many of
these elements clearly have an Islamic origin. That Allah created two races
of rational beings, mdgdw nijinew, human beings and genii, is one of these
obvious categories. When Bäala Jinba says that no human being is his mas-
ter, he implies that a genie is his master. And he himself is a master; he has
taught Bakari for forty years. He has retained his authority, remains a
purist, and ensures authenticity in his art. But without his own master, he
would be an amateur, a bluff.
However, outside of Bäala Jinba's group other voices can sometimes be

heard. They give discrete reminders in passing that in his youth he was a
jumbe player—implying that someone who previously played the drums
cannot become a player of the kora or nkoni, and a bard. What master
would accept him as an apprentice?
77 Camara, "Baala Jinba Jakite," p. 22.

288 Tord Olsson
Bearing this in mind one can try to imagine how Jinba will be remem-
bered in future Mande oral literary history. He makes no effort to simplify
himself. From an outsider's perspective, he can be considered a creative
artist who has chosen to work within the traditional framework of the oral
genres. He has composed a coherent work of oral art which is woven from
other "texts," which he has reshaped and connected into a self-contained
"grand text" with such a degree of autonomy and durability that the
texuality 78 of this ceuvre is comparable to that of an author who writes. His
songs contain "text" variants which no man has sung before, but also stay
within the Mande convention. His disciples and audience confirm this;
they have a high regard for these songs and for their internal arrangement.
They greatly respect Bäala Jinba. Most importantly, his message and the
way he articulates it are consistent with the values, customs, and beliefs of
the community of listeners, other bards, local connoisseurs as well as ordi-
nary addressees. The common intra-cultural consensus seems to be: Jinba
is an authoritative sora, a guardian of the hunters' verbal art, and a don-
soba, a great hunter because of his deeply internalized knowledge of the
world of the genii, his fellowship with them, and his close and long appren-
tice-master relationship with a particular individual among them, a sora
among the genii.
Hunter, magician, poetic chronicler and creative artist, are epitomized in
the person of Bäala Jinba. Even from the viewpoint of an outsider, he can
be considered a purist in the sense that he clearly conforms to the institu-
tional norms of the oral hunter genres and how they should be performed—
he himself embodies an institution. At the same time he is difficult to place
in a canonic apprentice tradition and its conventions for the transmission of
texts. He is an ambiguous epitome: a purist and an innovator with great
creative powers. 79
78 On text and texuality in anthropological research, see W. F. Hanks, "Text and Textual-
ity," Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989), pp. 95-127. He defines text inclusively
as "any configuration of signs that is coherently interpretable by some community of
users," (p. 95), and textuality as "the quality of coherence or connectivity that character-
izes text" (p. 96).
79 For comparison and references regarding such problems, see Chukwuma Azuonye,
"Oral Literary Criticism and the Performance of the Igbo Epic," Oral Tradition 9:1
(1994), pp. 136-61, one of his brilliant studies dealing with the dynamic interrelation
"between the poetics of oral epic performance [...] and traditional aesthetic principles as
voiced by local connoisseurs, ordinary listeners, and the bards themselves" (p. 136),
viewed by him in this paper especially with a time perspective.
Bäala Jinba and Bakari Samake had once again brought out their sinbiw
and sung a melancholic song. Its theme was death as a condition for life,
depicted by a conversation between a vulture and a hunter. The vulture was
complaining because his life was in danger. How would he survive now
that the lion and leopard had disappeared from the Sahel? There were no
longer any leftovers after their meals. The vulture begged the hunter to kill
wild animals and leave something behind so he could survive. This theme
is reminiscent of the gods Saanfe and Köntörön, pronounced Saane ni Kdn-
trdn, and the play on words: sad nene ni kdtördn, "taste death and return."
Once again, my tape recorder was ready.
Epilogue
The men who have figured in this essay all eat words and are eaten by
them, in the Manding sense discussed. They are all concerned with verbal
art as a very central feature of the Sahelian cultural ecumene in West Afri-
ca: ecumene (oikoumene), since it is "a region of persistent cultural inter-
action and exchange." 80 In this interconnected life world the impact of Is-
lam is more or less discernible everywhere. This is also true of oral litera-
ture. As mentioned, the griots begin their recitation of the Sunjata epic with
a discourse about the events in Mecca. This tendency to attach local oral
traditions to the "grand narratives" of "the book" is common, not only in
the Kangaba area, but througout in the Sahelian ecumene. 81 This reliance
on the written, Islamic tradition is mixed with awe for djinns, but also with
the use of amulets for protection, and with reverence to ancestors, divine
spirits and their altars. Such beliefs and rituals figure routinely in Sahelian
orature. The central figures in this cultural ecumene are the custodians of
oral art. I have tried to portray a few of them and to convey how their work
80 Igor Kopytoff, "The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture,"
in Igor Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African
Societies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987), pp. 3-83 (p. 10); quoted in Ulf Hannerz,
Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 1996), p. 172. For habitats of meaning, below, see Hannerz, p. 22.
81 "Elle aurait dü savoir dgalement, aprfes avoir assisti ä trois cirimonies, que les griots
commencent leur ricit par des discours sur La Mecque et le prophfete Mahomet (Jansen
2000). Un tel bricolage n'est pas surprenant, ni inconnu. La tendance ä relier les tradi-
tions locales aux grands ricits 'du livre' est assez courante. La fagon dont les ancetres de
Sunjata ont έΐέ inscrits dans la prehistoire de l'islam est röpandue partout en pays mand-
ingue, ainsi que dans la rigion de Kangaba." van Beek and Jansen, "La Mission Griaule
ä Kangaba," no pagination.
290 Tord Olsson
is embedded in cultural habitats of meaning in which they perform, and

which they also produce, where they find their affluence and goals as well
as their limitations.
Notes on Contributors
Gunilla Gren-Eklund is Professor Emerita of Indology, especially San-

skrit at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her main research interests are the
philosophical and grammatical traditions and the analytical discourse of
ancient India. Her dissertation on the Upanishads in 1978 was followed by
articles based on identification of recurring musters of thought in the In-
dian cultural context. A longstanding project concerning aspects of Pali
grammatical tradition in Burma will be published.
Bo Holmberg is Professor of Semitic Languages at Lund University, Swe-

den. His main area of research is Christian Arabic literature. He is the au-
thor of A Treatise on the Unity and Trinity of God by Israel of Kashkar (d.
872): Introduction, Edition and Wordindex (1989) and numerous articles
and reviews on Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew studies.
Marja Kaikkonen is Associate Professor of Chinese at Stockholm

University. Her research deals with modern Chinese popular culture/litera-
ture and the relationship between elite and popular cultures. Author of
Laughable Propaganda (1990) and "Stories and Legends: The Largest
Contemporary Popular Literature Journals" (in The Literary Field of Twen-
tieth Century China, 1999), she is currently writing a book on popular fic-
tion, Heroes for Billions.
Gunilla Lindberg-Wada is Professor of Japanese Studies at Stockholm

University. She is the author of Poetic Allusion: Some Aspects of the Role
Played by Kokin Wakashuu as a Source of Poetic Allusion in Genji Mo-
nogatari (1983) and co-editor of An Arctic Passage to the Far East: The
Visit of the Swedish Vega Expedition to Meiji Japan in 1879 (with Urban
Wräkberg, 2002). She has translated classic and modern poetry into Swe-
dish, as well as novels and drama by Endo Shüsaku and Mishima Yukio.
Leif Lorentzon earned his PhD in the Department of Literature, Stock-

292 Notes on Contributors
holm University. His main areas of research are oral and popular literature
in South and West Africa. He is the author of "An African Focus": A Study
of Ayi Kwei Armah's Narrative Africanization (1999) and of numerous ar-
ticles in journals such as Research in African Literatures, Critique,
Matatu, and in the second edition of Africana: The Encyclopedia of Afri-
can and African-American Experience. (2005).
Tord Olsson is Professor in History and Anthropology of Religions at

Lund University, Sweden. His main areas of research are oral literature and
ritual performance. He is the author of Religious Documents of the Maasai,
I—III (1975-82), and he has edited Sufism, Music and Society in Turkey and
the Middle East (with Anders Hammarlund and Elisabeth Özdalga, 2001)
and Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives (with Elisa-
beth Özdalga and Catharina Raudver, 2003).
Anders Pettersson is Professor of Swedish and Comparative Literature at

Umeä University, Sweden, and Secretary-General of the International Fed-
eration for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM). Among his books
and co-edited collections are the monograph Verbal Art: A Philosophy of
Literature and Literary Experience (2000) and the collection of articles
From Text to Literature: New Analytic and Pragmatic Approaches (2005;
with Stein Haugom Olsen).
Martin Svensson Ekström, Associate Professor of Sinology at Stockholm

University, lectures at the Programme of Aesthetics at Södertörn College,
Sweden. Some of his main areas of research are early Chinese poetry,
poetics and theories of interpretation. He is the author of "Illusion, Lie and
Metaphor: The Paradox of Divergence in Early Chinese Poetics" (Poetics
Today 23:2) and the editor of the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities (BMFEA).
Index
A Ying, 53 Bä, Amadou Hampate, 249-50, 252-

'Abbäs, Iljsan, 181, 188 62, 272-73
<Abd al-Hamld, 188, 194, 205 Ba'albaki, Munir, 183
*Abd al-Qähir al-Jurjänl, 195 Babalola, S. Α., 213
Abhinavagupta, 163 Badawi, Μ. M., 186
adab, 187-88, 199-205; in Arabic, as a Bailey, Greg, 140, 147, 164
concept of literature or of texts, 6-7, Bailleul, Charles, 263
30, 32-33, 181, 191-92, 197, 199- Bakari, Mohamen, 230
201, 204; in Arabic, as referring to Bakhtin, Μ. M„ 221,225, 227-28
manners or to culture in general, 32- Baldensperger, Fernand, 3
33, 199, 202-203, 205; in Indian al-Bäqillänl, 194-95
languages, 157; the word, 201-202 Barber, Karin, 30, 207, 210, 212, 215,
Adagala, Kavetsa, 232, 234 223-27, 237, 239-40, 242, 244, 247,
Adonis, 193-95 263,265
African (sub-Saharan) literary cultures, bards. See poets/bards/storytellers, the
29-30, 206-290 role and status of
African religions, traditional, 250, 270- Barthes, Roland, 276
73, 277-82, 285-87, 289 Bastid-Bruguiere, Marianne, 38
Agnipuräna, 147, 158, 164, 167, 169, Bauman, Richard, 224, 227
172 Baumgartner, Alexander, 3
Allen, Roger, 180, 184, 187, 189-90, van Beek, Walter Ε. Α., 273-75, 289
192-93, 197-98, 200 Beeston, A. F. L., 186
Änandavardhana, 163 Β ehr, Wolfgang, 103
Ancient Egyptian literary culture, 6-7, Belcher, Stephen, 216, 218-19,223
208 Ben-Amos, Daniel, 219-20, 233-34
Andrezejewski, B. W., 209, 211-12, Berdnikov, G. P., 3
219 Bertoncini, Elena, 231
•Antara ibn Shaddäd, 193 Bhämaha, 32, 155, 159, 162, 164-65,
Arabian Nights, The. See Thousand and 170-71
One Nights Bharata, 151, 164-65
Arabic literary culture, 7, 32-33, 180- Bhoja, 155, 166-67, 173-75
205,231,245 Biardeau, Madeleine, 135, 161, 179
Aristotle, 32, 137, 149, 159,212 Bible, The, 186,210, 264
Arnoldi, Mary Jo, 270 Biebuyck, Daniel, 216
Ashcroft, Bill, 245-47 Bokar, Tierno, 257, 259
Ashtiany, Julia, 186 Bonebakker, S. Α., 201
al-'Askari, Abü Hiläl, 198 Book of Odes (Shijing), 31, 39, 70-110,
Austen, Ralph Α., 216-17, 273, 275 114; ode 23 ("In the Wilderness Is a
Azuonye, Chukwuma, 288 Dead Deer'V'Ye you si jun"), 97,
294 Index
99, 106-110; ode 87 ("I Lift My Coulibaly, Jamako, 285

Skirt"/ "Qian shang"), 78, 84, 8 7 - Coulibaly, Joseph Dosseh, 283
94; ode 184 ("Crane Calls'VHe Crone, Patricia, 184
ming"), 97-102; ode 203 ("The Cultural Revolution, the (1966-76),
Great East'V'Da dong"), 71-72, 8 2 - 62-63
83, 8 7 , 9 3 , 9 7 - 9 8 , 104-106
Bowra, C. M„ 216 Damrosch, David, 9, 22, 28
Brahmin tradition, 144-45, 147 Dandin, 135, 147, 157, 161-65, 169
Brenner, Louis, 260 Daoism, 52, 71, 100, 114
Brockelmann, Carl, 185, 187 De, Sushil Kumar, 163, 167, 172, 175
Brooks, Bruce, 74-75 Deng, Francis Mading, 213
Brooks, Taeko, 74-75 Deng Xiaoping, 63
Brownstein, Michael C., 118, 124, 127 Derrett, J. Duncan M., 144
Buddhism, 113-14, 130, 144 Derrida, Jacques, 71, 250-51
bungaku, 32-33, 114-18, 121-22 Devisch, Rene, 269
al-Buhtun, 194 Dewey, Melvil, 9
al-Bustänl, Sulaymän, 184 Dieterlen, Germaine, 254, 271-72, 274
Dilley, Roy M„ 267
Camara, Brahima, 277, 283-84, 287
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 182
Camara, Seydou, 273, 275
ad-DIn, Athlr, 196
Camara, Sory, 268
Diop, Samba, 215
Cancel, Robert, 209
Dioura, Bouna, 273
canon. See literary canon
Chambers, Robert, 116 directive discourse, 12, 15, 155, 2 2 8 -
Chambers, William, 116 29, 240, 243
Chambers's Information for the People, Diwekar, H.-W., 151, 163
116 Dolby, William, 53
Dolezelovä-Velingerovä, Milena, 50
Chari, V. K„ 137, 157
Doniach, N. S„ 183
Chen Guoqiang, 69
Doran, Robert M„ 199
Chen Pingyuan, 66
drama, 9, 32, 40, 149, 154, 231, 270
Chen Qiyou, 75, 92
Chen Sihe, 62, 66 Dwiwedi, R. C., 151
Cheng Fangwu, 55
Chesaina, Ciarunji, 232-33, 235-36, Egudu, R. N„ 214
238, 240, 242-43 El-Tom, Osman, 267
Chinese literary culture, 7, 24, 30-31, emic and etic, 181-82, 184, 188, 200-
36-87 201,248, 263
Christianity, 191, 209-210, 250 Erny, Pierre, 271
Cisse, Youssouf, 268, 271-72, 283-84 Escarpit, Robert, 8
Cohn, Dorrit, 226 etic. See emic and etic
colonial/postcolonial studies, 1 - 2
Confucianism, 51, 72, 74-78, 82, 8 6 - Fähndrich, Hartmut, 199, 204
87, 89-91, 100-101; in Japan, 112- al-Farazdaq, 197
15, 117, 121-22 Fenton, Paul Β., 191
Connerton, Paul, 270 fiction, nature of, 13-15; status of, 7, 9,
Cooperson, Michael, 182 33, 37, 39-43, 49-52, 193. See also
Cornis-Pope, Marcel, 2, 27 popular literature
Coulibaly, Balla, 283 finalization. See Seitel, Peter
Index 295
Finnegan, Ruth, 9, 29, 206, 211, 215, al-Hamadhäni, 201

217,219, 2 2 7 , 2 4 0 , 2 4 7 Hanks, W. F., 225,288
Flaccus, Quintus Horatius, 13 Hannerz, Ulf, 289
folk literature (China), 5 2 - 5 5 , 5 9 - 6 0 Harbsmeier, Christoph, 77
Ford, Andrew, 30 al-Harlrl, 189-90, 201
Frankel, Hans, 107-108 Härün al-Rashld, 195
Freimark, Peter, 197 Haruo Shirane, 115
Freud, Sigmund, 102 Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, 193
Friederich, Werner P., 3 Heidegger, Martin, 71-72, 76, 83
Fryer, John, 50-51 Heinrichs, Wolfhart, 24, 199
Fu Lanya. See Fryer, John Helgesson, Stefan, 22
Fujioka Sakutarö, 129-30 Hemacandra, 162
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 115 Hepburn, James Curtis, 116
Furniss, Graham, 247 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 182
Herskovits, Frances S., 214
Herskovits, J. Melville, 214
Gabrieli, F., 202
Hertel, Hans, 3 - 4
Galland, Antoine, 180
Gerard, Albert, 2 0 9 , 2 3 0 - 3 1 Hindu holy texts, 143-44, 158, 172
Gerow, Edwin, 140, 151-52, 159, 163, Hintzenberg, Dagmar, 10
Hiraga Gennai, 131
165-68
Hirata Atsutane, 131-33
al-Ghazäll, 202
Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, 118, 127-33
Gibb, Hamilton A. R„ 186
History of Japanese Literature (Nihon
Giffin, L. Α., 202
bungakushi), 32, 111-12, 116-29,
Gimes, Barbara, 208
133
Gluck, Carol, 128
Hobsbawm, Eric, 138
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 182
Hofmeyer, Isabel, 247
Gonda, Jan, 142
Hoggart, Richard, 54
Goody, Jack, 247
Hollis, A. C „ 235
Graf, Georg, 191
Holmberg, Bo, 32-34
Granel, Nicola Martin, 283
Homer, 184,216
Granet, Marcel, 88
Horace, 13, 137
Greek/Roman literary culture, 7, 24, Horsch, Paul, 166
137-38, 158, 169 Hourani, Albert, 184
Gren-Eklund, Gunilla, 32-34 Hsia, C. T„ 50
Griffiths, Bill, 245-47 Hu Shi, 43, 59
Gu Jiegang, 52 Huang Yushun, 71
Gunner, Elisabeth, 247 Huart, Clement, 186
Guo Moruo, 43 Hung, Chang-tai, 52-53, 5 5 , 5 8 - 5 9
Gwala, Mafika, 247 hunter brotherhoods, 2 7 1 - 7 2 , 2 7 7 - 8 1
Gyllensten, Lars, 9 Husayn, Tähä, 182, 194
Husserl, Edmund, 250
Hacker, Paul, 150-52, 158 Hutcheon, Linda, 5, 21, 27
Haft, Lloyd, 7, 30, 39
Haga Yaichi, 113, 117, 127-28, 130-33 Ibn <Abd Rabbihi, 204
Hagino Yoshiyuki, 118, 126 Ibn al-'Arabl, 200
Halbfass, Wilhelm, 141, 150 Ibn al-Athlr, 193
Haie, Thomas Α., 216-18, 227, 263 Ibn Khaldün, 192, 196
296 Index
Ibn Khuradädhbih, 200 Kabira, Wanjiku Mukabi, 232, 234-35,

Ibn al-Muqaffa', 203, 205 240
Ibn an-Nadlm, 188, 192-93 Kada no Azumamaro, 131
Ibn Qutayba, 203-204 Kadir, Djelal, 2, 27
Idema, Wilt, 7, 30, 3 9 ^ 0 Kahigi, Kulikoyela, 223
Ikebe Yoshikata, 118, 126 Kaikkonen, Marja, 31, 33-34
Imru' al-Qays, 194, 197 Kamo no Mabuchi, 113, 128-33
Indian literary culture, 7, 32, 135-78 Kane, P. V., 163-67
informational discourse, 12, 15, 33, Kang Youwei, 51
150, 155,228-29, 240 Kante, Nambala, 271-72
Innes, Gordon, 216 Karega wa Mutahi, 234-35
Irele, Abiola, 261 Karlgren, Bernhard, 72, 75, 99-100,
107
Irwin, Robert, 183-84, 187-90, 195-96
Islam; and Arabic culture, 185, 191, Kasteloot, Lilyan, 254
195-96, 201, 208; the role of, in Kato, Shuichi, 31
sub-Saharan Africa, 209, 231, 245, kävya, as a concept approximately cor-
250, 261, 267, 275, 279-80, 282, responding to literature, 6 - 7 , 30, 32,
287, 289 137, 149, 153-55, 159-60, 168,
Isoda Köichi, 115 177-78; definitions of, 152, 155,
ItöJinsai, 113 157, 159-63, 165, 169-77; influence
on non-Sanskrit Indian traditions,
148; as a normative concept, 149,
Jabate, Kase Madi, 283
153, 159, 170, 175, 178; vs. sähitya,
Jabate, Lansine, 262, 274-75
156-57; the word, 147
Jackson, Peter, 138
Kävyadarsa. See Dandin
Jacobi, Hermann, 151
Kävyälamkära. See Bhämaha
Jagannätha, 168, 176-77 Kävyamlmämsä. See Räjasekhara
al-Jähiz, 191, 197, 204 Kävyaprakäsa. See Mammata
Jahn, Janheinz, 223 Keichü, 131
Jainism, 144 Keita, Modibo, 283-84
Jakite, Bäala Jinba. See Jinba, Bäala Keita, Musa, 283
Jakobson, Roman, 73, 102 Keita, Salif, 283
Jansen, Jan, 262, 273-75, 289 Keita, Sidi, 274
Japanese literary culture, 7, 31-32, Keita, Sunjata, 270, 283
111-34 Keith, A. Berriedale, 160
Jenner, Gero, 152 Kern, Martin, 87
Jewish literary culture, 188 Khalidi, Tarif, 197
Jiang Qing, 63 al-Khansä', 192
Jikine, Isa, 266-67 al-Khapb al-Bagdädi, 200
Jin Yong (Louis Cha), 66 Kilito, Abdelfattah, 196, 198
Jinba, Bäala, 2 6 9 , 2 8 1 - 8 8 Killam, Douglas, 230, 261
Johnson, David, 38 Kilpatrick, H„ 201
Johnson, John W., 216-17 Kipury, Naomi, 229,233, 235, 237-38
Johnson, Mark, 249 Knappert, Jan, 230-31
Jones, Alan, 192 Knoblock, John, 70, 75, 78
Judaism, 191 Kobori, Kei'chirö, 114-15, 117
Julien, Eileen, 2 4 5 ^ 7 , 252-54 Kockum, Keiko, 116
Jullien, Francois, 77, 83 kokugaku. See national learning
Index 297
Konakamura Kiyonori, 127 literati, in China, 3 8 , 4 0 - 4 3 , 59, 64, 6 6 -

Konrad, Ν. I., 24-25, 28 67; in India, 148
Kopytoff, Igor, 289 literature (the concept), contemporary
Koran, The. See Qur'än, The understanding of, 8-10, 15-16, 2 4 -
Kornicki, Peter, 113 25, 33, 89, 102, 184-86, 210, 221,
Krecher, Joachim, 7, 24 226, 228, 243; definitions of, 8, 16,
Krishnamoorty, K„ 156 112, 121-23, 222; historical ver-
Krishnaswamy, N., 157-58 sions of, 6-10, 30, 33, 36, 40-41,
Kunene, Daniel, 213, 229, 243-44 93, 184,187; applied to literature for
Kunjunni Raja, K„ 153, 158, 162, 169, children and young adults, 16, 134;
174 the point of, 11, 19, 22-23, 25-28,
Kunst, Richard, 75, 95 34; applied to popular literature, 16,
Kuntaka, 155, 162, 165, 171-72 31, 3 6 - 3 7 , 4 9 , 134; relativity of, 17-
Kushäjim, 202 21; in the restricted ("imaginative
literature") sense vs. the wide sense,
8, 11, 25, 30, 38, 123, 142, 184-85,
Lakoff, George, 249
187, 198, 213, 241, 244; ways of
Lambek, Michael, 267
defining, 141—42. See also adab, in
Lane, Edward W „ 180-81
Arabic, as a concept of literature or
Lau, D. C„ 78
of texts; bungakw, kävya, as a con-
Lausberg, Heinrich, 72, 85, 101, 156
cept approximately corresponding to
Leavis, Q. D„ 49
literature; literature and non-litera-
Lee, Kar-shui, 75
ture, the distinction between; wen,
Legge, James, 7 0 , 7 2 , 7 5 , 7 8 - 8 0 , 84-86 as a concept of literature
Lerner, Laurence, 222-24 literature (the phenomenon), the func-
Letourneau, Ch., 4 , 2 6 tion of, 11, 123-24, 205, 232, 2 5 6 -
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 248, 250-51 59, 286
Li, Donghui, 64 literature (the word), 8 - 9 , 121,213,244
Liang Qichao, 50-51, 54, 56, 60, 66 literature and non-literature, the distinc-
Lichtheim, Miriam, 10 tion between, 6, 11, 40-41, 123-24,
Lienhard, Siegfried, 148, 155 218, 221-24, 228, 231-34, 236,
Lin Yaolin, 72 239^14, 258
Lin Zezhen, 58 Liu Fu (Liu Bannong), 52-53
Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla, 31-34 Liu, James J. Y„ 31,39, 51
Link, E. Perry, Jr., 56 Lloyd, G. E. R„ 83
literariness, 98, 159, 206-207, 211-12, Lonergan, Bernard, 199
218-29, 231-33, 2 4 2 , 2 4 4 Loprieno, Antonio, 7
literary canon; in China, 36-37, 39, 42, Lord, Albert, 213, 217, 224-25
59, 67, 90; in India, 139, 144, 146, Lorentzon, Leif, 29-30, 34, 138
148; in Japan, 111, 117, 121, 128- Louie, Kam, 43
29, 133; in West Africa, 275, 282 Lu Xun, 4 3 , 5 6
literary cultures, concept of, 2 Lyons, M. C„ 192
literary history, current practice of, 27; Ly-Tall, Madina, 273
definition of, 22; objectivity or rela-
tivity of, 20-21, 34-35; transcul- Ma, Tai-loi, 3 9 ^ 0
tural, 22, 34; view of, in History of Ma, Y. W „ 39-40
Japanese Literature, 119-21, 124. Mackerras, Colin, 42
See also world history of literature Madi, Kanku, 274-75
298 Index
Mainkar, Τ. G„ 160 Mr. Zuo's Commentary, 74-75, 77-80,

Major, John, 71 84-86, 92, 94
Mammata, 32, 167-68, 175-76 Mudimbe, Valentin, 254
al-Ma'mün, 195 Mukarovsky, Jan, 73
Manguel, Alberto, 264 Müller, Max, 125
Manley, Andrew, 261-62 Mulokozi, Μ. M., 231
Mao Dun, 55 Murasaki Shikibu, 130
Mao Heng, 97 Musa, Sekelengwe. See Keita, Musa
"Mao Preface," 72, 75-77, 80-82, 84,
86-87, 89, 92-93, 97-98 an-NafzäwI, 194
Mao Zedong, 43, 59-65, 67, 69 Nagendra, 153
maqämät, 189-90, 201 Nallino, Carlo-Alfonso, 186, 199, 201-
al-Maqqäri, 184, 187 203
Markiewicz, Henryk, 8 Nandwa, Jane, 232
May Fourth Movement (1919), 54, 56- Natarajan, Nakini, 149, 157
58,60, 64, 66-67 National Learning (kokugaku), 32, 113,
Mazrui, Ali Α., 230 127-33
Mbye, Alagi, 269 national literature, 124, 128
McDougall, Bonnie S„ 43, 60-62 Nätyasästra, see: Bharata
Mei, Y. P., 78 Nelson, Andrew N., 114-16
Meiji restoration (1868), 31, 111, 115, Neubauer, John, 2, 27
126-28, 133 Neuwirth, Angelika, 183
Meillassoux, Claude, 274 Newell, Stephanie, 230
Meisami, Julie Scott, 181, 189, 198 Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 231
Mencius, 78, 109 Niane, D. T„ 216
Menocal, Maria Rosa, 186 Nicholson, Reynold Α., 186
Merton, Robert M., 248 Nienhauser, William H., Jr., 38
Mesopotamian literary culture, 6-7, 30 Nihon bungakushi. See History of Japa-
Middendorf, Ulrike, 82 nese Literature
Mignolo, Walter D., 243 Nishi Amane, 115
Mikami Sanji, 111, 118, 122, 124, 127- Nketia, J. H„ 212, 215
28, 133 Norris, H.T., 191
Mill, John Stuart, 161 Nygren, Christina, 151
Miller, Christopher L„ 247, 252, 268 Nylan, Michael, 87
Miller, Stephen D„ 129
Miner, Earl, 32 Oberhammer, Gerhard, 150
Miruka, Simon Okumba, 229, 233, Ochiai Naobumi, 118, 126
236-38, 242 Oe, Kenzaburo, 13-14
Mishra, A. P., 169 Ogawa, 114-16
Miyoshi, Masao, 2 Ogede, Ode, 214-15
Mol, Frans, 265 Ogutu, B. Onyanga, 242
M0ller, Peter Ulf, 3 Ohly, Rajmund, 230-31
Monier-Williams, M., 156 Okabe Mabuchi. See Kamo no Mabuchi
Monod, Theodore, 250 Okeh, Peter I., 252-54
Moraes Farias, Paolo Fernando de, 247 Okombo, Okoth, 231-32
Moreh, Shmuel, 184 Okpewho, Isidore, 9, 29, 212, 216,
Moto'ori Norinaga, 130-32 219-21,234,240
Mozi, 78 Olsson, Tord, 29, 34
Index 299
Ong, Walter J., 247, 251 presentational discourse, 11, 13-16, 33,
oral literature, 8-9, 134; in Africa, 2 9 - 41-42, 81, 100-101, 150, 154, 228-
30, 206-211, 213-15, 217-38, 240- 29,240, 243,252
43, 245-60, 263-66, 268-82, 284, Propp, Vladimir, 242
286-90; in Arabic culture, 195-96, prose and poetry, the distinction
198-99, 204; in India, 137-38, 144, between, 125-26, 158, 212, 218,
148 220, 223.
orature, the concept of, 246. See also purä$a texts, 147, 158, 164, 166, 168,
oral literature 176
Ouyang, Wen-chin, 181-82 Pusey, James Reeve, 68
Owen, Stephen, 31, 72
qafida, 183-84, 193
Pande, Suman, 168, 176 Qian Zhongshu, 72
Pankenier, David, 71 Qianlong, 53
Parry, Milman, 213,217, 224-25 Qu Qiubai, 57-58, 60-61
van Peer, Willie, 9 Quintilian, 85
Peng Yun, 64 quotability. See Barber, Karin.
performance-centred approaches to oral Qur'än, The, 180, 185, 189-90, 193-96,
literature, 213-14, 217-18, 220, 199, 210,245, 266-67, 275, 282
223-27, 233, 246, 252-53, 263
Perkins, David, 20-21, 28 Radway, Janice Α., 46
Pettersson, Anders, on genres, 139, 141, Raghavan, V., 153, 156, 178
143; on literature, 38, 41, 81, 112, Raja. See Kunjunni Raja
143, 150, 155, 181, 185, 228, 243- Räjasekhara, 32, 62, 157, 165-66, 172-
44, 252, 259 73
physiological, descriptions of mental rasa, 152-53, 163, 167, 170, 174-77
events as, in West Africa, 262-69 Rasagangädhara. See Jagannätha
Pickowicz, Paul G„ 57-58, 61 ar-Rashld, Härün. See Härün al-Rashld
Pilaszewicz, Stanislaw, 209 Reynolds, DwightF., 182
Pines, Yuri, 75 Riegel, Jeffrey, 70,72, 75
Plasmati, Marina, 30 Riffaterre, Michael, 73, 98, 102, 106
Plato, 24, 71 Rocher, Ludo, 147, 164
poesis, 6-7 Röllicke, Hermann-Joseph, 75,93
poetry, the role and status of, 9, 32, 70, Roscoe, Α. Α., 242
125-26, 193, 197. See also prose Rosenberg, Rainer, 10, 22, 24
and poetry, the distinction between Rosenkranz, Karl, 3-4
poets/bards/storytellers, the role and Rosenthal, Franz, 182
status of, 72, 145—46, 180, 189, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 250
196-99, 232-33, 263-65, 267-79, Rowe, Ruth, 230, 261
282, 284-90 Rudrata, 164
poiesis, 6, 30, 72, 76-77 Rui Heshi, 56
Pollock, Sheldon, 2, 136, 140, 148, 156, ar-Rummänl, 194
158, 243
popular literature, 7, 43—45, 47-49, 63- Saether, Eva, 273
64, 67; functions of, 45-49; views sähitya, 33, 155-56, 163, 173-74
of, 50-52, 55-58, 61, 63-67, 69 Sa'Id, "All Ahmad. See Adonis
Porter, Deborah Lynn, 71 Samake, Bakari, 269, 282-83, 285,287
Pound, Ezra, 72 Samir, Khalil Samir, 191
300 Index
Sanneh, Lamine O., 267 storytellers. See poets/bards/storytellers,

Sanskrit literary culture, the role of, the role and status of
136, 139-41. See also Indian literary Sufi texts, 200, 252, 257
culture Sugaya Hiromi, 115-16
Sansom, George, 113, 117 Sunjata, 216-18, 226, 229, 266, 270,
Sasaki Nobutsuna, 126 273-76, 279, 289. See also Keita,
sästra, 144-^6, 154-55, 157, 169, 172- Sunjata
73 Sunkuli, Leteipa Ole, 236-37
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 83, 251 Suzuki, Sadami, 114-16
Saussy, Haun, 77, 83, 93 Suzuki, Tomi, 129
Schaberg, David, 77, 85 Sviadoc, Jean, 258
Scheub, Harold, 214, 247 Szymborska, Wislawa, 14-15
Schlegel, Friedrich, 3 Svensson Ekström, Martin, 31, 34
Schmidt, Siegfried J., 8, 10
Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig, 74, 87 Tachibana Senzaburö, 117
Schönert, Jörg, 22
Taine, Hippolyte, 124
Scott, A. C„ 58
Takatsu Kuwasaburö, 111, 118, 122,
Searle, John R„ 12, 15, 17, 20
124, 128
See, Klaus von, 3
at-Tanükhi, 196
Seitel, Peter, 30, 207, 223, 227-28,
Tarawele, Joman, 282
237-42, 244
at-Tawhldl, 196, 204
Semanov, V. I., 56
Taylor, John Tinnon, 49
Sezgin, Fuat, 185, 187
Thagard, Paul, 17, 19
Shaughnessy, Edward, 70-71, 87, 94-
Thousand and One Nights, 180, 192,
96, 103
200, 204
Shekhar, I., 152
Tiffin, Helen, 245-47
shi, the concept of, 76-77, 93-94
Todorov, Tzvetan, 152, 221-22
Shijing. See Book of Odes
Shiner, Larry, 8, 10 transcultural literary studies, 1. See also
Shintoism, 113, 133 literary history, transcultural
Shirakawa Shizuka, 110 Traore, Karim, 276
Shirane, Haruo, 129 Traore, Lamine, 277-78, 280-82
Shklovsky, Victor, 73, 100-101 Traore, Soungo, 268, 285
Shusterman, Richard, 9 Tu Cheng-sheng, 99
Slbawayhi, 191, 196 Tyloch, W„ 209
Sibt ibn al-JawzT, 203
Sino-Japanese (kanbun), 117, 128-29, Ueda Akinari, 131
132, 134 Ueda Kazutoshi, 118, 127
Sivin, Nathan, 83 Unger, Ulrich, 101
Soyinka, Wole, 13 Upani§adic philosophy, 144, 173
Spence, Jonathan, 62 Usäma ibn Munqidh, 204-205
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 2, 5
Srngäraprakäsa. See Bhoja Vägbhata, 164
Stalin, J. V., 62 Vakroktijlvita. See Kuntaka
Starkey, Paul, 181, 189, 198 Valdes, Mario J., 2, 5, 27
Stetkevych, Jaroslav, 183 Vämana, 162
Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney, 192-93 Vanderveken, Daniel, 12
Stoller, Paul, 264, 270 Vansina, Jan, 29
Index 301
Vedic texts, 136, 139, 144-47, 154, world history of literature, 2-5,22-24
156,166, 172, 176 world literature, the concept of, 22, 124
Visvanätha, 163-64 Wright, William, 183
Vogt, Ernst, 24
Völlers, Karl, 201 Xu Jiarui, 59
Xu Ruiyue, 53
Waley, Arthur, 72, 75, 95,107 Xu Shen, 109
Walton, Kendall, 14 Xunzi, 78
Wang, C. H„ 103
Wang Lixin, 50 Yai, Olabiyi Babalola, 207,214
Wang Shuo, 63-64 Yang Zhishui, 72
Wang Xianqian, 72 Yankah, Kwesi, 215
Wang Xiyuan, 75 Yao Nai, 38
Wang Zengqi, 65 Young, M. J. L„ 186
Warren, Austin, 9, 13, 214 Yu, Pauline, 71, 82-83, 94-95
Warton, Thomas, 3 Yuan Jin, 50-51
al-Washshä', 202
Watson, Burton, 78 Zahan, Dominique, 268, 270-72
Watt, W. Montgomery, 189 Zaydän, Jurjl, 182
Wei Shaochang, 55 Zeng Qinliang, 79
Weimar, Klaus, 10 Zhang Henshui, 47
Wellek, Rene, 8-9, 13, 214 Zhang Suqing, 79
wen, as a concept of literature, 6-7, 30- Zhao Shichao, 99
31 Zheng Xuan, 97
wenxue, 32-33, 114 Zheng Zhenduo, 55, 59-60, 67
West, Stephen H„ 40 Zhou Dunyi, 51
White, Hayden, 21 Zhou Zuoren, 52, 55
Whiteley, W. H„ 222-24 ZhuXi, 113
Widdowson, Peter, 8 Zhu Ziqing, 75,77
Wiredu, Kwasi, 206 Zobel, Reinhard, 10
Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 13-14, 81, 100 Zvelebil, Kamil V., 148, 158
Volume 2
WDE
G
Literary History:
Edited by
Editorial Board
Margareta Peters son · Anders Pettersson · Bo Utas
Volume 2

Literary Genres
An Intercultural Approach
Edited by

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literary history: towards a global perspective,

p. cm.
1. literature-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 2. Literary form. 3.
literature, Comparative. 4. Literature and society. I. Pettersson, Anders,
1946- II. Lindbcrg-Wada, Gunilla. III. Peters son, Margareta. IV. Hel-
ges son, Stefan. V. Title: Notions of literature across times and cultures.
VI. Title: Literary genres, an intercultural approach. VII. Title: Literary
interactions in the modern world 1. VIII. Title: Literary interactions in the
modern world 2.
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Contents
VOLUME 2 : LITERARY GENRES: A N INTERCULTURAL APPROACH
Noriko Thunman
Lena Rydholm
Christina Nygren
Kerstin Eksell
Bo Utas
Lennart Ryden t
Anders Pettersson
of Genre 279
Index 309
VI Contents
Margareta Petersson
Per Erik Ljung

Stephan Larsen
Keiko Kockum t
Bo Holmberg
Stephan Larsen
Index 201
Contents VII
Leif Lorentzon
Nelson Gonzälez-Ortega
Margareta Petersson
Stefan Helgesson
Marja Kaikkonen
Communist Party 157
Christina Nygren
Gail Ramsay
Roberta Micallef
Stefan Helgesson
Index 324
VIII Contents
V O L U M E 1: NOTIONS OF LITERATURE ACROSS TIMES AND CULTURES

Anders Pettersson
Literary History 1
Marja Kaikkonen
"Literature" 70
Gunilla Gren-Eklund
Bo Holmberg
Leif Lorentzon
Tord Olsson
Index 293
GUNILLA LINDBERG-WADA
Introduction:
Genji monogatari and the Intercultural
Understanding of Literary Genres
Introduction
Inevitably the writing of literary history will involve generalizations about

types of text. Still, in the writing of global literary history we cannot, with
justification, simply apply the concepts and views developed within the
rich Western theorization of genre. 1 The genre divisions and genre con-
cepts used in the Western context do not necessarily match other cultures.
For that reason reflections on the genre systems of different literary cul-
tures form an indispensable part of the intellectual preparation of more
globally orientated perspectives on literary history. The present collection
attempts to do justice to such variability of other literary cultures.
In this volume we offer a series of essays presenting and discussing gen-
res or genre systems from several widely differing literary cultures—Japa-
nese, Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Persian, Byzantine—and also two essays
that approach Chinese and Western thinking about genres. The purpose is
not to supply the reader with a set of supposedly universally applicable
genre concepts. Our expectation is rather that the reader will emerge with a
1 For a systematic and informative overview of Western theories and concepts of genres,
see Paul Hernadi, Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification (Ithaca and
London: Cornell UP, 1972). For reprints of seminal texts within the field in Swedish
translation, see Eva Heettner Aurelius and Thomas Götselius (eds.), Genreteori (Lund:
Studentlitteratur, 1997). For seminal texts in English and English translation, see David
Duff (ed. and introd.), Modern Genre Theory (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000). For
collections of recent writings on genre theory, see Beata Agrell and Ingela Nilsson (eds.),
Genrer och genreproblem: teoretiska och historiska perspektiv/Genres and Their Prob-
lems: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (Gothenburg: Daidalos, 2003) and New
Literary History, 34:2 and 34:3 (2003). See further the concluding essay of this volume
by Anders Pettersson, "Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and Theories of
Genre."
heightened sense of how and why genre systems differ around the globe.
This will hopefully lead to a better understanding of how the problem of
negotiating such diversity can profitably be handled in literary history writ-
ing that transcends a single literary culture or emphasizes intercultural
comparison.
My introductory essay consists of an overview of the volume, followed
by a discussion of Genji monogatari and of the Japanese monogatari gen-
re: a concrete example of the awkward match between Western and non-
Western notions of genre.
The Essays in this Volume
In the concluding essay of the volume, "Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspec-

tive on Genres and Theories of Genre," Anders Pettersson discusses differ-
ent kinds of concepts and theories of genre with special reference to what
may be useful for an intercultural approach. Instead of settling for genre as
an unambiguous concept, he opts for pragmatic concepts of genre that will
serve well as intellectual tools both for interpretation of individual texts
and for comparing texts from different times and cultures. The three ways
of viewing genres defined in Pettersson's analysis of genre concepts—"the
traditional view of literary genres," "the classificatory view of literary gen-
res" and "the communicatory view of literary genres"—have functioned as
a basic point of reference in the work of the group of authors in this vol-
ume.
At first sight, it would seem fair enough to restrict the investigation of
the various oral and written text cultures concerned to a thorough descrip-
tion of their genres and genre systems as they are defined within their re-
spective context. The reader would thus get a number of genre systems
presented in indigenous terms, for further reflection. The problem would
be, however, that the genre systems thus introduced would be more or less
incompatible and difficult to compare with each other, and our knowledge
of each of them would hardly further our theoretical insights into concepts
of genres from an intercultural point of view. In our attempts to find a
workable solution to this problem, the anthropological concept of "emic"
and "etic" perspectives, introduced in the 1950s and inspired by the lin-
guistic discrimination between phonemic and phonetic analysis, has served
as a point of reference. It creates a distinction between "the understanding
of cultural representations from the point of view of a native of the culture
(emic)" and "the understanding of cultural representations from the point
Introduction 3
of view of an outside observer of the culture (etic)." 2 We have found that

an emic perspective readily combines with traditional and communicatory
views of genres, and an etic perspective with a classificatory approach.
Of course this complementary pair of perspectives is by no means un-
problematic. It may invite a dualistic way of thinking, which would not be
very fruitful, and it is also easy to fall into the trap of equating etic with, for
instance, a Western perspective, and emic with "the other." However, an
emic perspective understood as an "insider's view" constructed from "the
outside" for a specifically defined purpose has proven quite useful as an
analytical tool in our discussions of genres and genre concepts, not least
because it invites in its turn an etic perspective towards one's own tempo-
ral, geographical and cultural context.
The essays by Kerstin Eksell and Bo Utas in this volume may serve as
concrete examples of how emic and etic perspectives may be combined in
a discussion of genres with the purpose of intercultural comparisons and
the furthering of theoretical insights. The retrospective generic mode of
reading demonstrated by Lennart Ryden in his essay may serve as another
example of an intercultural approach to genres. What is characteristic for
the whole volume is that the discussion on genres and genre concepts is
closely connected to specific examples of genres and genre systems from
different times and cultures.
In "The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story Watakushishösetsu in
Japanese Literature," Noriko Thunman discusses the constitutive role
played by writers and critics as literary institutions in genre formation. She
demonstrates how a genre concept lingers on as a mode of reading and
point of reference for the dialogue between the author and the reader long
after the context of the formation of the genre is gone, and how a generic
mode of reading also retrospectively influences the interpretation of liter-
ary works of earlier periods.
In her essay "The Theory of Ancient Chinese Genres," Lena Rydholm
introduces the long and rich Chinese theory tradition of wend, the Chinese
concept closest to common Western notions of genre. Here the close rela-
tion between didactic aims and concepts of literariness are brought to the
fore, since didactics and literature are closely connected in Chinese tradi-
tion: '"The Great Preface' establishes the didactic function of poetry origi-
nating in Confucian doctrine. [...] The didactic view of the function of
poetry became a paradigm in Chinese theories of literature in pre-modern
2 Michael Rhum, "Emic and Etic," in Thomas Barfield (ed.), The Dictionary of Anthropol-
ogy (Oxford and Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. 148.
times (even late into the twentieth century) and it became the foundation of
the concept of literature (wen) in many literary theories, genre theories and
genre systems." This view of literature was however not uncontested, since
already during the period of the Six Dynasties, according to Rydholm, the
anthologist Xiao Tong (Prince Zhaoming) "broke off from the didactic tra-
dition by not judging what is literature by non-literary standards, by
theme/content and by their ability to provide moral instruction and social
comment." Instead he saw the author as "an artist who has to think through
content, structure and diction" and literature as "an artefact of profound
aesthetic qualities."
Emotional impact and types of emotions constitute an important genre-
distinguishing factor in the literary cultures investigated in this volume. In
the case of China it is the emotions of the author that are focused on, as in
the following quotation in Rydholm's essay from the famous Book of Lit-
erary Design by Liu Xie (ca. 465-ca. 532; protege of the above-mentioned
Xiao Tong): " 'There are all kinds of emotions, there are various kinds of
literary techniques in literature, but with no exception the emotions deter-
mine the form/genre (ti), and the form/genre produces the [stylistic] force
(shiy." According to Rydholm it seems that "for Liu, genres exist as norms
prior to their manifestation as the very shapes of particular emotions.
Stylistic forces/styles (wenshi) also exist prior to their manifestation, in-
herent in these forms/genres. Both the genres and what we perhaps can call
in Western terms their inherent 'genre styles,' can then be obtained by
simply adhering to natural order."
In the case of the drama genre in Japan, China and India, the emotional
impact on and collaboration of the audience play a decisive role. As is evi-
dent from the title of Christina Nygren's essay "Drama for Learning and
Pleasure: Japan, China and India in a Comparative Perspective," emotional
effects are closely intertwined with didactic aims, which thus also form an
integral and indispensable part of the genre characteristics. With the
"theatrical event" and emic theories of drama as her point of departure,
Nygren introduces three distinct examples of drama genres on the Asian
continent and analyses them both from a performative and a theoretical
perspective. In her definition of drama she underlines its dual function as
literary text and theatrical expression and argues that "dramas, with the ex-
ception of European closet dramas, are meant to be produced, and it is only
through being performed that they fulfil their consummate form."
The emotive aspects of poetry—"those emotions which are associated
with the genre, those which the poet himself expresses, and, in particular,
the effect of the poem on the receiver"—play a central part in the genre
Introduction 5
system discussed in Kerstin Eksell's essay "Genre in Early Arabic Poetry."

In the text corpus of pre-Islamic, or Jähiliyya, poetry introduced here "[t]he
main function of poetry seems often best defined as its ability to move the
listener." According to Eksell "[t]he potential of the poetry to move and to
influence is considered essential, so essential that it becomes the basis for
the genre classification."
In Persian literature, as well, emotive impact and response play an im-
portant role in generic distinctions. In '"Genres' in Persian Literature 900-
1900" Bo Utas discusses this vast text corpus in emic and etic terms, with
the explicit aim of establishing "a pragmatic system of Persian literary gen-
res." Whereas Rydholm in her essay on Chinese genres bases her discus-
sion on a rich tradition of indigenous genre theories, in the case of Persian
literature there is a rich corpus of texts, but problems of genre obviously
did not attract specific interest as a subject of theorizing. Utas bases the
pragmatic genre system he proposes on the following five components:
"(outward) form," "subject matter or content," "aesthetic means (style),"
"author's intention" and "receiver's anticipation [...] and interpretation."
Although these components are derived from a Persian context, they would
probably serve as a good point of departure for intercultural comparisons
of text corpuses and genre systems in general.
In "Byzantine Saints' Lives as a Literary Genre" Lennart Ryden em-
ploys a retrospective generic mode of reading as an analytical tool. The Vi-
ta, or saints' Lives, constituted a specific text genre within a system that a
concept of literary texts or literariness did not form part of. However, Ry-
den supplements the Byzantine Vita as an emic text genre with an etic sub-
genre—saints' Lives as a literary genre—which he construes with the
pragmatic aim of offering materials for a discussion and reflections on con-
cepts of genres and genre distinctions. He defines "texts with literary qual-
ities" as "not only texts that go further than a text just written to inform, but
more precisely texts in which the narrative or poetic element strikes the
reader as particularly pleasure-giving and thought-provoking" (note 7). In
his analysis Ryden also uses an explicit didactic aim as the distinguishing
criterion between literary and non-literary texts, as implied for example in
his concluding remarks on the Life of Philaretos the Merciful: "The liter-
ary, in part secular, character of this Vita does not prevent it from being
highly edifying. In other Lives the edifying purpose may be emphasized to
such a degree that the literariness is lost."
An intriguing and valuable contribution within the field of theories of
genres, which goes beyond European literature and concepts, is Earl
Miner, Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories ofLitera-
tare, published in 1990. Miner here argues persuasively that an originative

poetics develops when a critic or critics of insight define the nature and
conditions of literature in terms of the then most esteemed genre. He
singles out the Aristotelian theory of literature based on the drama genre as
being more or less unique in a global context, especially in view of the
concept of mimesis, which is closely connected to the drama genre and
brings with it the general idea of literature, or art, as imitation. For lyric-
based poetics, which he argues dominates in most parts of the world, Miner
devises the term "affective-expressive." He notes in passing that for many
stretches of Western literary history "mimetic-affective" would be a more
accurate description than simple "mimetic." 3 Apart from the case of West-
ern literature in his detailed analysis Miner basically confines himself to
China and Japan. In the case of East Asian literature his analysis is certain-
ly full of valuable insights and proves to be quite useful. The central role
that he attributes to the affective-expressive aspects of literature and to
lyrical poetry as a genre seem to prove valid also in the cases of Arabic and
Persian literature, in the light of the essays by Eksell and Utas in this vol-
ume.
In his analysis Miner argues that, with the exception of the Western
poetics based on drama, all other examples of originative poetics are based
on lyrics, and that there exists no originative poetics based on narrative.
Yet he takes for granted the triad drama-lyrics-narrative as the basic genre
system (or "foundation genres") in his analysis. 4 Regarding the concept of
the narrative as a basic genre, however, it should be noted that the narrative
as a type of discourse is lacking in the material treated in the chapter on
Arabic literature in this volume by Kerstin Eksell: "There is one type of
discourse that is conspicuously missing, namely the narrative. Narrative
prose does exist in the corpus of Jähiliyya literature, short narratives of
events, wars, customs, framing the poems. But this discourse is not includ-
ed in the description of literary types. Artistic prose does not include the
narrative as such, a description of a sequential course of actions, in which
the process of action is in focus, nor the moral of it, or the way it is textual-
ly formalised according to the defined rules." Traditional Persian literature,
on the other hand, is rich in epics and narrative texts, but they were not
based on the idea of "fiction," according to the contribution to this volume
by Bo Utas.
3 Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature

(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990), pp. 7ff.
4 Ibid., p. 7.
Introduction 7
Regarding generic mode, it proves problematic to regard prose and

poetry as genre-distinguishing modes, not only in Arabic and Persian
literature but also in Chinese. According to Utas the important distinction
from a "literary" point of view was rather between "elaborate" and "plain"
language. According to Eksell, prose "can be artistic, in which case it is
close to poetry and can lay claim to almost the same high status. Such a
form of artistic prose is sag': it has end rhyme, like poetry, but not metre.
[...] Both poetry and prose were ornamented with figurative language,
such as metaphors and simile, and with assonances of all sorts [...] Prose
without rhyme could be appreciated as literature for its rhetorical qualities
alone." Utas mentions "a special form of rhymed, rhythmic prose known as
saj' [...]," and Rydholm (in note 95) "[pjarallel prose (pianwen), a kind of
aesthetically demanding rhythmical prose characterized by parallelism and
ornateness."
Also in the case of Japanese literature it may prove problematic to re-
gard prose and poetry as genre-distinguishing modes. As a case in point
"The Village of Falling Flowers" (Hana chiru sato) will be discussed in
some detail below. This is a short chapter of The Tale of Genji (Genji mo-
nogatari), which represents the Japanese pre-modern genre of monogatari.
I have chosen this work because in my opinion it clearly illustrates the
complex problems actualised in an intercultural approach to genres. Al-
though not a typical representative of the genre in general, Genji monoga-
tari exerted a great influence not only on subsequent writing, but also on
performative and pictoral arts in Japan.
The Village of Falling Flowers
"Hana chiru sato" (The Village of Falling Flowers) is one of the shortest
chapters of Genji monogatari,5 There is no clear evidence about the exact
date of composition of Genji monogatari, but it is generally assumed that
5 In the original language the length of this chapter is roughly equivalent to five manu-
script pages, standard size (400 characters a page; Yamagishi Tokuhei (ed.), Genji
monogatari, Nihon koten bungaku taikei vol. 14 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1958] 1975),
pp. 417-20). In Arthur Waley's translation into English the length is a little more than
1,300 words and in Royall Tyler's recent English translation this chapter slightly exceeds
900 words. Arthur Waley (trans.), "The Village of Falling Flowers," in The Tale of
Genji: A Novel in Six Parts by Lady Murasaki (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1970), volume
one, pp. 226-28; Murasaki Shikibu (Royall Tyler trans.), "Falling Flowers," in The Tale
of Genji (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), volume one, pp. 223-25.
the court lady Murasaki Shikibu composed this literary work in the first
decade of the eleventh century. The oldest extant manuscripts of Genji
monogatari date back to the first half of the thirteenth century and consist
of fifty-four chö, "leaves" or chapters. 6
In contemporary research Genji monogatari is usually divided into three
parts, in accordance with the development of events in the tale. Part one 7
can be generally described as the success story of the amorous Hikaru Gen-
ji (The Shining Prince Genji). However, rather than forming the focus of
the tale, he serves as a uniting factor for the tale of a number of women and
some men, not only here but also in Parts two and three. By the end of Part
one the residence Rokujöin, built by Genji at his height of glory and with
his unofficial wife Lady Murasaki as the First Lady, embodies the harmo-
ny, power and perfect beauty of his life. Part two 8 depicts the gradual inner
decay of the world of Rokujöin. The focus of the tale is transferred from
Genji to the generations following him and the notion of the changes of
time and the karma of human life predominate the tale. In Part three 9 the
scene of large parts of the tale shifts from the capital to the mountain vil-
lage of Uji, the name of which evokes images of the brooding melancholy
of this ephemeral world, and where the roaring sound of the Uji River ap-
pears ominous. The psychological realism and stretches of inner mono-
logue, as the story here evolves around two men and three women and the
intricate relationships between them, appear strikingly "modern" by our
present standards.
6 The original manuscript, presumably written by Murasaki Shikibu, is no longer extant.

The oldest extant manuscripts are the so-called Aobyöshibon, the edition of Fujiwara
Teika completed in 1225, and Kawachibon, the edition of the father and son Minamoto
Mitsuyuki and Chikayuki, completed in 1255. In addition there are various manuscripts,
which are usually known under the collective term Beppnn. Most modern editions of
Genji monogatari are based on the Aobyöshibon manuscript. The oldest extant picture
scroll of Genji monogatari, Genji monogatari emaki, probably dates back to the middle
of the twelfth century and is traditionally ascribed to the authorship of Fujiwara Taka-
yoshi. It is assumed that this picture scroll from the beginning depicted scenes from the
whole of Genji monogatari, but today only twenty pictures depicting scenes from nine-
teen chapters of Genji monogatari and fragments of the original text remain.
7 Chapters 1-33, from "Kiritsubo" through "Fuji no uraba"; ca 48 per cent of the entire
text volume. My calculations of the volume of the text here and elsewhere are based on
Yamagishi Tokuhei (ed.), Genji monogatari, Nihon koten bungaku taikei vols. 14—18
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1958-1963] 1974-1975).
8 Chapters 34-41, from "Wakana j ö " through "Maboroshi"; ca 20 per cent of the entire
text volume.
9 Chapters 42-54, from "Niou-no-miya" through the last chapter "Yume no ukihashi"; ca
32 per cent of the entire text volume.
Introduction 9
The chapter of "The Village of Fallen Flowers" belongs to Part one and
the story takes place when Genji is about twenty-five years of age, some
time after the death of his father, Emperor Kiritsubo. Times have changed
and Genji has fallen out of favour with those in power at court. He leaves
home one evening in early summer in order to visit a lesser court lady, with
whom he has once had a short relationship. She is the younger sister of
Lady Reikeiden, who once served at the court, close to the late emperor.
Without fore-riders Genji starts out accompanied only by Koremitsu, his
faithful retainer on such secret outings. On the way to Lady Reikeiden and
her sister, Genji stops for a moment outside a small house where he hears
music streaming out, and he realizes that this is a place he has visited be-
fore. The lady of the house obviously does not want a visit from him after
such long absence, however, so he continues his journey to the residence of
Lady Reikeiden and her sister, where he first spends some time with the
elder sister before he finally pays a visit to the younger one.
The poetic image of tachibana, (blossoming) orange tree or orange blos-
soms, plays an important role in this chapter. 10 Starting from the falling
flowers of the title of the chapter, the image of orange blossoms, which
evokes a rich cluster of poetic connotations, functions as a driving force in
the tale, it creates a basis for the poems that are recited and alluded to in the
text and permeates the whole atmosphere of the story. Orange blossom as
an image of poetry obviously possessed a strong power of suggestiveness,
especially as it was expressed in a famous anonymous poem that goes back
to literary sources from the beginning of the eighth century and was in-
cluded in an influential anthology of poetry compiled in the beginning of
the tenth century: "The perfume of orange blossoms awaiting the fifth
month recalls the sleeves of someone long ago." 11 Each component of this
poem points to the same direction, to the dynamic relationship between the
10 The Latin name of this tree is citrus tachibana, in modern Japanese köjomikan, but opin-
ions differ as to whether the tachibana tree of ancient times was identical with the mod-
ern one.
11 In Japanese the poem reads: Satsuki matsu / hanatachibana no / ka wo kageba / mukashi
no hito no / sode no ka zo suru. English transl. cited from Murasaki, "Falling Flowers,"
p. 224. This poem first appears in the ancient historical chronicles Kojiki and Nihon
shoki, both from the beginning of the eighth century. In Kokin wakashü (Anthology of
Old and New Japanese Poetry), which was compiled by imperial decree in 905 and set
the norm for subsequent anthologies of waka (Japanese poetry, as opposed to kanshi,
poetry written in Chinese in accordance with Chinese poetry conventions), this poem by
anonymous author is included as number 139, in the Summer volume. For a detailed
investigation of tachibana as a poetic image in the Japanese literary tradition see Gunilla
Lindberg-Wada, "Tachibana som metafor i den japanska litterära traditionen," Orienta-
liska Studier 93-94 (1997), pp. 3-30.
phenomenon of the moment and the eternal flow of time. The moment (the
fifth month) is contrasted to eternal time (orange blossom). "The perfume"
connects present time to time past long ago. "Someone long ago" may de-
note any person of bygone days, but the mentioning of "the sleeves" turns
"someone long ago" into a very special person, since the touch and person-
al fragrance of "the sleeves" imply a love relationship. According to leg-
end, the orange fruits could give longevity or eternal life and function as a
medicine to alleviate the nausea of early pregnancy. In the poetry tradition
the orange tree was often coupled with the little mountain cuckoo. 12 The
cuckoo may, for example, express the feelings of longing and melancholy of
the poet in summer and was welcomed as a dear guest in the garden of the
lonely poet. Latent in the combination of the (blossoming) orange tree and
the cuckoo were the connotations of the cuckoo as the suitor and the orange
tree as the woman he visits. The cuckoo was also sometimes addressed as a
messenger between the world of the living and that of the dead.
The title of the chapter is attributed to the poem recited by Genji when
visiting the elder sister, Lady Reikeiden: "Many fond yearnings for an
orange tree's scent draw the cuckoo on / to come seeking the village where
such fragrant flowers fall." 13 According to the exegetic tradition of Genji
monogatari this poem alludes to the above-mentioned famous poem on
orange blossom and also to a well-known poem about the cuckoo that sings
day after day of unrequited love in the "village of falling flowers.'" 4 The
season of Genji's visit to the sisters Reikeiden coincides with that of the fa-
mous poem, the fifth month. At the very moment when Genji hesitates out-
side the house from which music is streaming out, a cuckoo passes by call-
ing, seemingly urging Genji to stop by. The allusion made here to a famous
poem about a cuckoo hesitating outside the garden, maybe because of the
darkness of the night or having lost its way, implies a parallel between
Genji and the cuckoo. 15 This is reflected in the poem from Genji to the lady
12 The Latin name of this bird is Cuculus poliocephalus, in Japanese hototogisu.

13 In Japanese the poem reads: Tachibana no / ka wo natsukashimi / hototogisu / hana chiru
sato wo / tazunete zo tou. English transl. cited from Murasaki, "Falling Flowers," p. 221.
14 In Japanese the poem reads: Tachibana no / hana chiru sato no / hototogisu / kata koi
shitsutsu / naku hi shi zo ooki (Manyöshü 1473, Kokin rokujö 35259). In English: "The
cuckoo in the village where the orange blossoms fall sings and sings on many and many
a day." Murasaki, "Falling Flowers," p. 224 note 8. Re. the exegetic tradition of poetic
allusion in Genji monogatari my main source has been Ii Haruki (ed.), Genji monogatari
hikiuta sakuin (Index of Poetic Allusion in The Tale of Genji), Kazama sakuin sökan vol.
56 (Tokyo: Kazama shoin, 1977).
15 In Japanese the poem reads: Yo ya kuraki / michi ya madoeru / hototogisu / wa ga yado
wo shi mo / sugigate ni naku (Kokin wakashü 154). In English: "Is it the dark of the
Introduction 11
of the house, where he alludes to the image of the cuckoo as the courting
lover, as well as the poetic connection between the cuckoo and the memo-
ries of bygone days. 16 However, by indicating the cloudy sky of the season
in her poem of reply, the lady of the house implies that she is not so sure
who he is and might not welcome a visit from him. 17 "Very well. The
hedge I once planted" Genji's go-between Koremitsu comments on leaving
the house. By alluding to an anonymous poem about how "the hedge I
once planted" has become "impossible to discern under the fallen flower
petals and leafy branches," Koremitsu implies in an elegant way that he
understands perfectly well that the lady does not want a visit after such a
long time of absence and negligence. 18
When Genji arrives at the Reikeiden residence, the orange blossoms and
memories of times gone by, which have so far in the chapter only appeared
in the poetry recited and poetic allusions implied, are finally realized. The
scent of the blossoming orange trees in the garden permeates the whole at-
mosphere of Genji's visit to the elder sister and enhances the emotive ef-
fect of the memories of past times, evoked in his conversation with her.
Once again a cuckoo calls, maybe the same as earlier. "How did it know?"
Genji whispers to himself a verse from an old poem: "While we talked of
the past, a cuckoo (how did it know?) called in the voice that we heard long
ago" 19 and recites the poem that has given the chapter its name. In her
poem of reply, it suffices for Lady Reikeiden to mention the orange blos-
soms in order to imply that she understands very well that the only reason
for Genji to visit her is to talk about old memories. 20 Genji's visit to the
night? / Or has he lost his way? / The hototogisu sings / unable to get past my garden."
Cited from Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, Poetic Allusion: Some Aspects of the Role Played
by Kokin Wakashuu as a Source of Poetic Allusion in Genji monogatari (Stockholm:
Univ. of Stockholm 1983, p. 132).
16 In Japanese Genji's poem reads: Ochikaeri/e zo shinobarenu/hototogisu/hono katarai
shi/yado no kakine ni. In English: "He has come again in thrall to unquenched longing,
the cuckoo of yore, / to the fence where once he sang a moment of passing song." Mura-
saki, "Falling Flowers," p. 223.
17 In Japanese her poem reads: Hototogisu / katarau koe wa / sore nagara / ana obotsukana
/ samidare no sora. In English: "Cuckoo, I know well the song that your visit brings, yet
that memory / leaves as clouded as before the will of these rainy skies." Murasaki, "Fall-
ing Flowers," p. 224.
18 The anonymous poem Koremitsu probably alludes to reads in Japanese: Hana chirishi /
niwa no kozue mo / shigeriaite / ueshi kakine mo / e koso miwakane.
19 Quotation from Murasaki, "Falling Flowers," p. 224 note 7. In Japanese the poem reads:
Inishie no / koto kataraeba / hototogisu / ika ni shirite ka /furugoe no suru (Kokin rokujö
33650).
20 In Japanese Lady Reikeiden's poem of reply reads: Hitome naku / aretaru yado wa /
tachibana no / hana koso noki no / tsuma to narikere. In English: "No one ever visits
younger sister, where the two of them spend some time in intimate conver-
sation, is finally narrated in a fairly short prose passage, rounded off by
some comments on the story by the (mainly) omniscient narrator.
The Monogatari Genre
As should be obvious from the above, Genji monogatari is a text rich in

allusions. The research on the subject of poetic allusion in Genji monoga-
tari goes back to the earliest commentaries on this work from the 1230s, 21
which deal almost exclusively with the relations between Genji monoga-
tari and the Japanese, Chinese and other literary sources of allusion that
can be considered to be important for a proper understanding of the text.
Not only Buddhist sutras and the Chinese classics are alluded to, but also,
above all, there are frequent allusions in the text to Japanese poetry. A
number of emperor-sponsored or otherwise well-known anthologies of
poetry were available to the presumptive readers of the time, the poetry of
which could be expected to come to the reader's mind when alluded to in
the text. There are also numerous recitals and exchanges of poetry in the
pieces of dialogue and letters quoted in the story, about eight hundred
poems in total. The chain of events of the story is narrated in a fairly
laconic type of prose, interchanging with scenic descriptions of a lyrical
character and emotive high lights couched in poetry. 22
Poetic allusion plays a role of decisive importance in Genji monogatari,
to the degree that this work of literature in pre-modern times owed its rep-
utation as a great work of art mainly to its lyrical qualities and functioned
as a manual of poetry composition. An interesting insight into the pre-
modern reading of Genji monogatari can be gained from Mumyözöshi (Un-
titled Book), the earliest extant example of prose criticism in the history of
Japanese literature, according to Michele Marra in his introduction to his
translation into English of this work. 23 It is tentatively attributed to The
this shabby home of mine, and the flowers alone / that grace the tree at my eaves inspire
your longing to come," Murasaki, "Falling Flowers," p. 225.
21 Genji monogatari shaku (also called Koreyukishaku or Genjishaku) by Fujiwara Kore-
yuki, and Okuiri by Fujiwara Teika.
22 For a detailed analysis of the functions of poetic allusion in Genji monogatari, see Lind-
berg-Wada, Poetic Allusion.
23 Michele Marra, "Mumyözöshi: Introduction and Translation," Monumenta Nipponica 39:2
(1984), pp. 115-28. This translation into English by Michele Marra is published in three
instalments; in addition to this one: "Mumyözöshi: Part 2," Monumenta Nipponica 39:3 (1984),
pp. 281-305, and "Mumyözöshi: Part 3," Monumenta Nipponica 39:4 (1984), pp. 409-34.
Introduction 13
Daughter of Fujiwara Shunzei, a member of one of the important families

of court poets at the end of the twelfth to the beginning of the thirteenth
century. 24 Within the fictive framework of a discussion one late evening
between the members of a small group of women retold by an aged and
venerable nun, Mumyözöshi deals with the monogatari genre in a critically
evaluative way. Genji monogatari is discussed at length by the group of
women, as the epitome of the monogatari genre at its very best. Recitation
and assessment of the poems in the work play a decisive role in their dis-
cussion of what they consider as moving, wonderful, impressive or amaz-
ing scenes in Genji monogatari. Also in their assessment of other works of
the monogatari genre, the core concepts and aesthetic norms of the critical
writings on poetry of the time play a central part.
Monogatari stands for a genre in the sense of a traditional genre, with
specific conventions that are normative for the text composition and expec-
tations of the authors and readers or listeners. The term monogatari was
mainly used about the court literature of the Heian era (794-1185), but it
also denoted archaic tales of fiction during the following centuries until the
end of the sixteenth century, when this genre term ceased to be used about
contemporary literature. 25
The monogatari genre played an important role in Japanese literature
during the period between the beginning of the tenth and the end of the
thirteenth century. It is by no means a uniform genre, either linguistically
or in form. It encompasses a broad spectrum of tales of different kinds.
There are fantastic stories with heroes of supernatural qualities, as well as
tales from the civil wars recording historical facts, and thrilling stories with
a didactic religious touch. Yet other stories contain sensitive depictions of
human relations and sentiment, recording every shade of nuance. A mo-
nogatari is usually made up of a number of episodes of various lengths,
more or less closely knit together. The story may have some connection to
24 Marra, "Mumyözöshi: Introduction and Translation," p. 116

25 Donald Keene, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late
Sixteenth Century (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), pp. 1158-59. The term monogatari,
tale or storytelling, suddenly appears with high frequency in documents of the Heian era
(794-1185). In those days it was used in a rather broad sense, denoting a wide spectrum
of linguistic expression, from everyday small talk to carefully wrought texts in written
form. It is a compound of katari ("relating"), which dates back to the Nara era (710-
794), and mono ("thing"), which distinguishes Heian story telling from that of the pre-
ceding Nara period and may denote something suspect, incoherent, or unidentified. Töru
Takahashi, "Space/Time of Monogatari and Psycho-perspective," in E. Sekine (ed.),
PMAJS: Proceedings of the Midwest Association for Japanese Literary Studies, Vol. 2,
Summer 1996, p. 32.
historical persons or events, but more often than not the whole or part of
the tale was fictive, although it may often have been read as if recording
factual events and persons.
Some monogatari are narrated almost entirely in prose, but there are
also cases where prose and poetry interact closely in the text in such an in-
timate way that the title of the work may be the only criterion for distin-
guishing a monogatari from an anthology of Japanese poetry (wakashü).
Poetry was usually recited in situations of social interaction, in a more or
less spontaneous or ritualised fashion, and tanka (short-poem) dominated
as the poetry form. 26 In the anthologies the poems would be preceded by
forewords of varying length, which would introduce the social or thematic
context. In a monogatari such as Ise monogatari or Yamato monogatari,
the story, or chain of events, would in a similar pattern be related in prose,
while the emotive high lights would be couched in poetic form. The
boundaries between prose and poetry in a monogatari are often flexible,
and lyrical and narrative passages may reinforce each other in an intricate
manner that defies faithful recreation in another language. This important
characteristic of the monogatari genre tends to disappear from the focus of
attention when works of the genre are placed in the same category as the
novel of the European genre tradition, in which prose as a literary mode
seems to play a decisive role as a genre criterion.
Concluding R e m a r k s
By the end of the nineteenth century, when histories of Japanese literature

were first composed, inspired by the modern Western concept of literature,
the high prestige of the novel of the time also influenced the evaluation of
the literature of the Heian period. Genji monogatari was praised as the first
and foremost novel of Japan, the primary novel not only of the Heian
period, but of all times.27
Arthur Waley, who was the first to publish a full translation of Genji
monogatari into English, between 1925 and 1933, refers to the psychologi-
cal realism of the work when he distinguishes this one from other types of
fictional tales, in the following way:
26 A tanka (short-poem) consists of thirty-one morae, or syllables, sequentially arranged

into verses of five, seven, five, seven, seven morae.
27 Fujioka Sakutarö, Kokubungaku zenshi heianchOhen (Complete History of the National
Literature: The Heian Era), 1905, Chapter 8, in Hisamatsu Sen'ichi (ed.), Ochiai
Naobumi, Ueda Kazutoshi, Haga Yaichi, Fujioka Sakutarö shü (Anthology of Ochiai
Naobumi, Ueda Kazutoshi, Haga Yaichi, Fujioka Sakutarö), Meiji bungaku zenshü vol.
44 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, 1968), p. 315.
Introduction 15
Murasaki, like the novelist of today, is not principally interested in the

events of the story, but rather in the effect which these events may have
upon the minds of her characters. Such books as hers it is convenient, I
think, to call 'novels,' while reserving for other works of fiction the name
'story' or 'romance.' 28
According to an ordinary contemporary definition, such as the one in A

Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, the term novel is
"[d]erived from Italian novella, "tale, piece of news," and now applied to a
wide variety of writings whose only common attribute is that they are
extended pieces of prose fiction." 29 Regarding the origins and early history
of the genre, a number of works of the Japanese monogotari genre are
listed here as the first works that are "more recognizably like the novels we
have become accustomed to in the last 200-odd years" and Genji monoga-
tari is specifically mentioned as "an important work in the history of the
genre because of its analysis of character and its study of psychology in
love." 30
According to Encyclopedia of the Novel, however, Genji monogatari is
"not, strictly speaking, a novel [...] it is an innovative mixed-genre work
that incorporates aspects of monogatari (dismissed by many as mere
stories), personal diaries, poetry (both Japanese court poetry, waka, and
Chinese 'learned' poetry), as well as histories and scripture." 31
I certainly agree that Genji monogatatari fits in with all the criteria of
the genre of the novel, including the decisive one, the generic mode of
prose—when read in modern translations. 32 However, when read in the
original Japanese language of the Heian era (even if our reading, of course,
never exceeds an approximation), this work of art just does not fit in with
the generic expectations of the novel. It is a monogatari. Obviously this
28 Arthur Waley (trans.), The Sacred Tree (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1926), pp. 30-31; quoted in Keene, Seeds in the Heart, p. 508.
29 J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, C. E. Preston (rev.),
4th ed. (first ed. 1977; Oxford and Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), p. 560.
30 Ibid., p. 562.
31 Paul Schellinger (ed.), Encyclopedia of The Novel, vol. 2 (Chicago & London: Fitzroy
Dearbon, 1998), p. 1317.
32 Regarding translations into European languages, see for example http://www.meiji-
gakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/trans/trans.html. Full translations of Genji monogatari into modern
Japanese have been published by famous authors such as Yosano Akiko (first edition in
1912-13), Tanizaki Jun'ichirö (published three versions, in 1935-38, 1951-54 and
1963-64), Enchi Fumiko (1980), and in recent years by Setouchi Jakuchö (Tokyo:
Ködansha 1996-98, latest edition). In 1991 Nakai Kazuko, a renowned scholar of pre-
modern Japanese literature, published a translation into present-day Kyoto dialect, Gen-
dai Kyökotoba "Genji monogatari" (Kyoto: Taishükan; reprinted in 2005).
work of verbal art is transferred from one (traditional or communicatory)

genre to another in the process of translation. In my opinion an intercul-
tural approach to genres thus requires not only a reconsideration of our
concepts and ideas about kinds and modes and "foundational genres," but
also the implications and processes of translation—in the broad sense of
the word, between languages, temporal, spatial or cultural contexts—call
for serious attention.
NORIKO THUNMAN
The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story

Watakushishösetsu in Japanese Literature
Introduction
Each culture has its own generic vocabularies and its own generic con-
sciousness. Some of them may be translatable into universal categories, but
others may be culturally specific. An example of the former is the Japanese
uta, which is comparable to the Western "lyric"; and of the latter its sub-
genre haiku, which is untranslatable and can only be explained as, for in-
stance, "a short 17-syliable poem."
Terms such as uta and monogatari (tale) designated a group of works in
Japanese literature that were felt to belong to the same genre. New names
were introduced to denote new genres. One such new name was shösetsu,
which was used by Tsubouchi Shöyö as an equivalent of the Western novel
and short story in the 1880s. 1
The word shösetsu itself existed in Japan earlier. It derives from the Chi-
nese xiaoshuo, literally meaning "small talk," to refer to "not so valuable
street talk collected by minor officials." Xiaoshuo in China also referred to
unofficial history and supplemental history (waishi and yushi). In Japan,
shösetsu primarily referred to Ming and Qing Chinese vernacular stories
and also to historical narratives (yomihon) during mediaeval times until the
Edo Period. 2
1 Shösetsu designates prose fiction of any length. The words "short," "middle-length" and
"long" are added to indicate the length of a work: tanpen-shösetsu for short stories,
chühen-shösetsu for middle-length novels and chöhen-shösetsu for novels. However,
what long, middle-length and short are has never been clearly defined.
2 Quotation from Tomi Suzuki, Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity (Stan-
ford: Stanford UP, 1996), p. 16. See also Kokugo daijiten (Tokyo: Shögakkan, 1995), p.
1276. The word shösetsu is found in the Ban Gu (AD 32-92), History of the Han Dynas-
ty (first c.) For this passage, see Suzuki, ibid., pp. 16-18.
18 Noriko Thunman
The establishment of the new genre shösetsu was closely connected with
the process of Japan's modernization under the strong influence of the
West. Underlying ideas at the time were social Darwinism and Positivism,
and an optimistic trust in progress could be felt in general, at least at the
beginning of the Meiji Period (1868-1912). 3 As a part of the nation's mod-
ernization project, shösetsu acquired a privileged cultural status after the
end of the nineteenth century as a symbol of modernity itself.
In the present article, I would like to focus on the Japanese autobiographi-
cal novel/short story watakushishösetsu. This genre is interesting, not only
because it was regarded as a dominant genre from the first decades of the
twentieth century until around the 1950s, but also because it has been highly
controversial and a focus of debate since the 1920s in several recurrences.
These debates have been highly charged. Some critics and writers
praised watakushishösetsu as the most exquisite form of the novel (junbun-
gaku); others accused it of lacking such novelistic characteristics as plot,
solid structure and the realistic representation of milieu and personae, or of
lacking social commitment. In most cases, the critics had Western eight-
eenth and nineteenth-century realistic novels in mind when attacking the
Japanese watakushishösetsu. Names often quoted were Balzac, Zola, Mau-
passant and Flaubert, and the Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,
whose works were felt to fulfill those requirements absent from watakushi-
shösetsu.
Debates for and against the genre shared a common ideological ground
by regarding it as an "aberrant" Japanese type of the novel, reflecting the
special nature of Japan's modernization and also being strongly marked by
Japanese literary tradition. Hence, debates on the genre often took an eth-
nological-cultural nature.
Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit made the first effort to define the genre in
Selbstentblößungsrituale, in which she also pinned down systematically
4
the genre characteristics. Her work is based on a comprehensive reading
of Japanese critical writings on the genre. As an important genre character-
3 One example of this is Fukuzawa Yukichi, Gakumon no susume (Encouragement of

Learning), 1872-1876, in which he advocated the importance of learning as a measure of
success and happiness. Since all people are born equal, he argued, everyone is entitled to
attain what he aspires for if he works hard enough.
4 As for early research on the genre after the 1970s, see Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Rituals
of Self-Revelation: Shishösetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon
(Cambridge, London: Harvard UP, 1996), pp. 4-10. First publ. in German, Selbstenblos-
sungsrituale (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981); in Japanese transl. Watakushishösetsu: Jiko
bakuro no gishiki (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992).
The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story Watakushishösetsu 19
istic she pointed out Faktizität, meaning that the reader presupposes a di-
rect relationship between a literary work and the author's actual life, the
work being a transparent rendering of the author's real life. Textually, it
appears as Fokusfigur, which is more a question of the point of view. It
may be the protagonist himself who tells us about himself and his reflec-
tions, but it can also be the narrator who relates the protagonist's thoughts
and feelings through internal focalization. 5 The reader is supposed to see
the author behind the protagonist and the narrator. Hijiya-Kirschnereit also
analyzed the interplay between the reader's expectation and the author's
creation. Once genre consciousness had been established, the author inter-
nalized the genre conventions, writing in a certain style about certain sub-
jects to meet the presupposed reader's expectation.
Edward Fowler studied the genre from a narratological point of view in
The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishdsetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japa-
nese Fiction. His linguistic and textual analyses showed that it is not poss-
ible to see in the literary texts themselves any clear-cut differences be-
tween fiction and watakushishösetsu.
Fowler's conclusion seems to the point. When we read Tayama Katai's
Futon (The Quilt) or Shiga Naoya's Kinosaki nite (At Kinosaki), both re-
garded as representative texts of the genre, though with very different char-
acteristics, the reader must have some knowledge of the authors' private
lives to read them autobiographically. As Itö Sei pointed out, the literary
circle (bundan) was small at the beginning of the twentieth century and
writers were well aware of each other's lives through gossip. They were
also the most important readers and critics of each other's works. 6 For in-
stance, they may have known that Katai had a young female literary aspir-
ant staying at his home, and thus easily recognized or believed they recog-
nized Katai himself in the figure of the middle-aged writer-protagonist of
the novel. But today, if the readership does not know anything about the
author's life, the novel can very well be read as pure fiction. 7
The same could be said of Kinosaki nite. If a reader today does not know
that the author also had an accident similar to the protagonist's, he may
read the novel as a beautiful short prose poem, full of reflections and wis-
5 See Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse, Jane E. Lewin (trans.), (Oxford: Blackwell,
1980).
6 See Itö Sei, Shösetsu no höhö (Tokyo: Kawade shobö, 1950) p. 68.
7 As a matter of fact, both autobiographical facts and fiction are blended in the novel, as
critics have pointed out. See Ökubo Tsuneo, "Shizenshugi to watakushishösetsu,"
Kokubungaku kaishaku to kyözai no kenkyü 11:3 (1966), p. 25.
20 Noriko Thunman
dom about life and death. The texts themselves do not reveal any marked
differences between watakushishösetsu and fiction. It is ultimately a ques-
tion of reception and the reader's expectation.
We cannot find in most of watakushishösetsu texts the autobiographical
contract (le pacte autobiographique) Philippe Lejeune spoke of, namely the
identity of the name of the author, narrator and protagonist. 8 Lejeune dis-
cussed the difficulty of drawing a clear-cut line between autobiography
and fiction. If the protagonist has the same name as the author/narrator, but
everything else is fiction, then it is autobiography by definition. But it is
hardly what the reader normally means by autobiography, in which he ex-
pects the author to tell a "personal" story about himself. Lejeune and others
suggested the notion of "faction" for a case like this. Watakushishösetsu
has been read autobiographically, either because the readership is invited
to do so by recognizing a certain resemblance between the author and the
protagonist, or because the reader has internalized the critics' views and
follows their reading strategy.
In her Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, Tomi Suzuki
defines the question of the genre ultimately as that of a mode of reading
and interpretation. Any literary work can be watakushishösetsu, when read
in this mode. She argues that this mode of reading "successively became a
dominant cultural paradigm, by which almost all literary works, including
classical texts, were described, judged, and interpreted." 9 And this mode of
reading has been constructed by critical watakushishösetsu discourse.
However, Suzuki is not the first to regard the question of the genre wa-
takushishösetsu as that of critical watakushishösetsu discourse. Terada
Töru wrote already in 1953 that all discussion about the genre leads in-
evitably to the question of the significance of critical watakushishösetsu
discourse for formation of genre consciousness. 10 Suzuki does not stop by
pointing out the importance of critical watakushishösetsu discourse, but
she goes further and studies the formation of critical watakushishösetsu
meta-narrative in a wider historical perspective of the Japanese moderniza-
tion process. She does this partly by studying some privileged notions like
shösetsu and the self, which she sees as the important figures of modernity.
She also studies how the critical watakushishösetsu discourse was rein-
8 Philippe Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique (Paris: Edition de Seuil, 1975)

9 Suzuki, Narrating the Self, p. 3.
10 Terada Töru, "Watakushishösetsu oyobi watakushishösetsuron," Iwanami köza bungaku
vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1953).
forced by new literary production, both by self-conscious watakushishöse-

tsu and self-conscious anti-watakushishösetsu writers. Suzuki is right, I
think, in regarding the genre ultimately as the product of the critical wa-
takushishösetsu discourse, which in turn is closely related to the historical
conditions of Japanese modernization.
Watakushi is the pronoun "I," and shösetsu is the novel. 11 The name it-
self indicates the privileged status of watakushi, "I," and its close tie to the
new genre shösetsu. This is a good reason for looking more closely into
what meaning writers and critics put into the words, especially in "the
self," at the turn of the former century. At the core of the genre there seems
to exist the seductive myth of the self and shösetsu, both of which standing
for modernity. I would argue that there is also a strong vein of Romanti-
cism, which was introduced to Japan around 1890, some ten years earlier
than Naturalism, in the works of some watakushishösetsu writers.
Critics are unanimous regarding the genealogy of the genre. The Natu-
ralism prevailing at the beginning of the twentieth century did not root
deeply enough to blossom fully in Japan, but narrowed its path to a more
personal sphere of the author's life, eventually merging with the idealism
of Shirakabaha writers to become a group of novels to be read autobio-
graphically. 12
This unanimous view of the genre had since the 1920s been constructed
and gained general acceptance in the 1950s. As Tanisawa Ri'ichi, among
others, has pointed out, consciousness of the genre did not exist in the early
twentieth century but was successively built up by critical discourse on wa-
takushishösetsu from the mid-1920s on. 13
11 It used to be translated as "I-novel." Watakushishösetsu is not necessarily a first-person

narrative but is often narrated in the third person. Theoretically, it can also be in the sec-
ond person. In Japanese the genre is called either watakushishösetsu or shishösetsu with
the alternate readings of the first Chinese character as watakushi or shi. I choose to call it
watakushishösetsu. To begin with the genre was randomly called watakushi no shösetsu.
There is reason to believe that it was preferably called watakushishösetsu in the begin-
ning.
12 See Hirano Ken, "Watakushishösetsuron," in Hisamatsu and Yoshida (eds.), Nihon
kindai bungaku jiten (Tokyo: Tokyodö, 1954). See also Senuma Shigeki, "Watakushi-
shösetsu to shinkyö shösetsu," Kokubungaku kaishaku to kyözai no kenkyü 11:3 (1966),
pp. 14-19.
13 Tanisawa Ri'ichi, "Watakushishösetsu no keifu" ("The Genealogy of Watakushishöse-
tsu"), in Tanisawa, Kindai nihon bungakushi no kösö (Tokyo: Izumi shoin, [1964] 1994),
pp. 243-77. Terada Töru expressed a similar opinion earlier in 1953 in "Watakushi-
shösetsu oyobi watakushishösetsuron." See also Ogasawara Masaru, "Watakushishöset-
su no seiritsu to hensen," Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshö 27:14 (1962); Katsuyama
Isao, Taishö watakushishösetsu kenkyü (Tokyo: Chüö köronsha, 1980).
22 Noriko Thunman
Many autobiographical works that later came to constitute the wata-

kushishösetsu corpus had already been written by the mid-1920s. Katai's
Futon, which is retrospectively regarded by critics as the pioneer work of
watakushishösetsu, had appeared as early as 1907. Or rather, it should be
said that critics did not succeed in finding any work that could be called
watakushishösetsu previous to Futon. Iwano Hömei's autobiographical
Tandeki (Self-Indulgence) came out in 1909. Morita Söhei's autobio-
graphical Baien (Soot and Smoke) started appearing in Asahi in 1909. Shi-
ga Naoya's Ötsu Junkichi was first published in 1912 and was later ex-
panded under the title An'ya köro (A Dark Night's Passing), starting in
1921 until its completion in 1937. Chikamatsu Shükö's Wakareta tsuma ni
okuru tegami (Letter to My Wife who Left Me) and Giwaku (Doubt), both
considered representative watakushishösetsu, came out in 1913. Shiga's
Kinosaki nite and Wakai (Reconciliation) were published in 1917 and other
works by Hömei and Shiga also appeared before 1925. According to crit-
ics, Kasai Zenzo is the most quintessential watakushishösetsu writer, and
his main works were published before 1925. Makino Shin'ichi's Chichi wo
uru ko (The Son who Sells his Father) came out in 1924.
This list is not complete, but it shows that around 1925 a group of
autobiographical novels, which later came to be regarded as an important
watakushishösetsu corpus, had already been published and gained recogni-
tion. Kume Masao's words also confirm that the genre had come to be rec-
ognized as a new one at the time when he wrote in his " Watakushishösetsu
to shinkyö shösetsu" in 1925: "Lately, in the literary circle (bundan), wa-
takushisösetsu has become impressively numerous. Some, like myself, ap-
prove of the genre [...]" 14
The existence of these works, which the readership and critics "knew"
were autobiographical, is thought to have encouraged critics to try to de-
fine their characteristics around the mid-1920s. The kind of intellectual cli-
mate writers and critics were subject to and the sort of institutions they
were living in at the time are important questions that will be discussed
later.
In my opinion the genre cultivated the notion of the self as one, if not the
most, important marker of modernity. This was done in shösetsu, which
also stood for a part of the national endeavor of modernization.
14 Kume Masao, "Watakushishösetsu to shinkyö shösetsu," Kume Masao zenshü vol. 13

(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1931), p. 544. Translation into English here and elsewhere mine, un-
less otherwise stated.
I owe much to earlier scholars' works already mentioned for the present
article. My contribution here is to give a good picture of the genre by pre-
senting briefly the process of the establishment of genre consciousness in
the 1920s. I shall also discuss the social and intellectual environment of
writers in the early twentieth century to give a better understanding of the
genre. Further, my reading of a short story by an early watakushishösetsu
writer will hopefully give a telling picture of the ideological, psychological
and intellectual background of the genre at its birth. The genre was, to my
understanding, a sign of modernity in early twentieth-century Japan. I
would argue that critical watakushishösetsu meta-narrative was construct-
ed under the very specific historical conditions of the 1920s. However, this
does not mean that the watakushishösetsu meta-narrative has died out. On
the contrary, it is still working powerfully, which I shall show through my
reading of contemporary novels.
The present article consists of eight sections. In the first section, "The
Mid-1920s Watakushishösetu Debate," I will present a quick survey of ear-
ly critical writings in the mid-1920s to show the kinds of arguments that
were set against each other, either to praise or to discredit the genre, to suc-
cessively construct the watakushishösetsu meta-narrative. My aim is to
show that early writings by quite a few writers actually served to formulate
and define the genre characteristics. A few articles were remembered and
quoted repeatedly at this time by influential critics, thereby forming the
core of the watakushishösetsu meta-narrative.
In the following sections, later debates are referred to. These, from the
1930s on, show that modernity was advancing considerably, so that notions
taken for granted by the writers of the 1920s were seriously questioned.
Section two, "The Self," discusses one such central notion, "the indi-
vidualistic self." Section three, "The Social Environment of Watakushishö-
setsu," discusses the social and intellectual environment of writers, which
was a focus of debate during the 1940s and 1950s. The genre's relationship
to literary tradition, also the subject of debates, is discussed shortly in the
fourth section, "Literary Tradition." These later debates show that the so-
cial and intellectual environment of writers in the 1920s was strongly
marked by Japan's modernization process. In my opinion, this supports the
view that the genre, at least in its early days, was a special and time-bound
Japanese kind.
To give a good example of the genre, I present a short story in section
five, " 'An Unhappy Father' by Kasai Zenzö (1887-1928)," and comment
on it in section six, "Comments."
24 Noriko Thunman
Female writers are absent from watakushishösetsu debates in the 1920s,

but this does not mean there were none. On the contrary, as feminist re-
searchers have pointed out, the act of self-narration (watakushi-gatari) was
especially important for female writers. The question of female writers and
the genre is discussed in the seventh section, "Female Watakushishösetsu
Writers."
The genre was born under special historical conditions. The social con-
ditions of writers today are no longer the same as in the 1920s. However, it
is also true that the watakushishösetsu meta-narrative has had, and still has,
a considerable impact on literary creation and reception, which is shown in
the final section, "Watakushishösetsu Today," taking the works of Se-
touchi Jakuchö and Yü Miri as examples.
The Mid-1920s Watakushishösetsu Debate
Some important articles and debates contributed to drawing attention to the

emergence of the new genre of watakushishösetsu in the 1920s, and later to
defining its characteristics.
According to Katsuyama and others, the word watakushishösetsu was
first used around 1920.15 There are three periods of the watakushishösetsu
debate: (1) in the mid-1920s, (2) in the mid-1930s and during World War
II, and (3) in the postwar period. 16
What generated the watakushishösetsu debate in the 1920s were thought
to have been attacks on "old" literature from two sides: Marxist proletarian
literature and modernist literature. 17 In the process of re-evaluation, the
15 See Ogasawara, "Watakushishösetsu no seiritsu to hensen," p. 34; Katsuyama, Taishö

watakushishösetsu kenkyü, p. 175. Katsuyama pointed out that before 1920s there were
synonyms for watakushishösetsu such as autobiographical novel (jijoden shösetsu),
confessions (kokuhaku shosetsu), self-novel (jiko shosetsu) and first person novel
(ichinin'shö shösetsu). Katsuyama, ibid., p. 255.
16 Katsuyama recognized four periods of the animated watakushishösetsu debate: (1)
around the mid-1920s, (2) the mid-1930s, (3) during World War II, and (4) the postwar
period. Katsuyama, Taishö watakushishösetsu kenkyü, pp. 174-214. Irmeia Hijiya-
Kirschnereit and Edward Fowler recognized three periods. According to them, Periods 2
and 3 are regarded as one period. This seems reasonable, since the 1930s and wartime
had much in common regarding the intellectual climate.
17 I follow the view of Hirano Ken. Hirano distinguished three main groupings in literature
at this time: proletarian literature, modernist literature and the watakushishösetsu. See
his "Junbungaku gainen no imi," Hirano Ken zenshü vol. 5 (Tokyo: Shinchösha, 1975),
p. 253. Hirano mentions as modernist literature Shinkankakuha. Later on, he counts the
novel of manners (tsüzoku shösetsu), and not watakushishösetsu, as the most important
opposite pole of the three.
consciousness of the new genre of watakushishösetsu seemed to have

emerged gradually, as a special form of the realistic, Naturalist novel.
Nakamura Murao had written in 1924 about the authentic novel
(,honkaku shösetsu) and the novel of the state of mind (shinkyö shösetsu),
the term used by him to designate a certain sort of contemplative wa-
takushishösetsu. Nakamura criticized the Japanese novel of the state of
mind as being too private, lying too close to the author's lived reality. The
authentic novel, wrote Nakamura, requires a good portion of fiction. The
author's ideas are expressed in it, but not directly in an intimate first person
narrative; they are rather presented through the realistic depiction of the
protagonists' destinies. He mentions as an example Tolstoy's Anna
Karenina. Nakamura was the first critic to criticize watakushösetsu, using
the Western novel as a standard.
A year later, in 1925, Kume Masao's article came out to counter Naka-
mura' s.18 Kume's definition of watakushishösetsu is "the novel in which
the author uncovers himself thoroughly and sincerely." He advocated that
artistic creation should spring from the author's own person. In this sense,
he found too much fiction in, among others, Balzac. His novels, wrote
Kume, may have created a human comedy, but they just give him a feeling
of fabricated goods (tsukurimono).
Kume also uses the adjective naive (sunao) as a positive characteristic of
watakushishösetsu. It is interesting to note how terms such as fabrica-
tion/technique are set in contrast to sincerity/directness/naivete; all of these
keywords when discussing the genre characteristics are present in Kume's
article.19
All literary works are interesting as watakushishösetsu, he wrote, if the
author narrates his own life sincerely, because by doing so he uncovers a
portion of human truth. Kume's ideas have a humanistic and democratic
flavor, most certainly reflecting the liberal and democratic ideas of the
time, and he seemed to believe in some sort of general humanistic founda-
tion with an optimistic trust in humanity. 20
However, Kume's argument is not that simple all the time. He also
stressed the importance of "expressing vividly (nyojitsu ni)" what the au-
18 The article is Kume, "Watakushishösetsu to shinkyö shösetsu."

19 Regarding the genre characteristics, see further Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Rituals of Self-
Revelation and Edward Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishösetsu in Early Twen-
tieth-Century Japanese Fiction (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: Univ. of California
Press, 1988).
20 Katsuyama made a similar comment, in Taishö watakushishösetsu kenkyü, pp. 177-78.
26 Noriko Thunman
thor has to say.21 He introduced, as a model of watakushishösetsu with

vivid expression, what he called the novel of the state of mind (shinkyö
shösetsu). What "state of mind" means is explained in rather vague terms,
but it seems to be mostly about the author's moral state of mind. It is about
a solid standpoint on the part of the author, from which he contemplates
himself, and people and events around him. 22
The author's self that Kume discussed here gives an impression of a
rather contemplative and static, but solid, nature, and it constitutes the
well-unified epistemological center of the individual. One may also sense
an unarticulated demand for philosophical and ethical qualities and depth
in a text, reflecting the depth of the author's mind, for the work to be a
good shinkyö shösetsu, a novel of the state of mind. Kume seems to have
seen a hierarchical order between shinkyö shösetsu and watakushishösetsu,
the former being a higher, finer genre than the latter.
It is, in fact, not easy to draw a clear-cut line between shinkyö shösetsu
and watakushishösetsu. Generally, shinkyö shösetsu seems to bring to
mind essay-like short stories with a philosophical overtone. Watakushi-
shösetsu are the works in which the author's sufferings and struggles are
related, without the moral serenity of shinkyö shösetsu. Shinkyö shösetsu
should, in my opinion, be regarded as a subgroup of watakushishösetsu,
standing especially for its contemplative and introspective quality. For the
present article, no differentiation between the two seems necessary.
Uno Köji pointed out this ethical and philosophical standpoint more ex-
pressively. In an article that came out in 1925 he stressed the genre's Japa-
nese quality. He recognized the Japanese literary tradition in the genre, the
same kind of philosophical posture vis-ä-vis life and the stress on the im-
portance of personal enlightenment as seen, for instance, in the poetry and
the person of the poet Bashö (1644-1694). In an article in 1923 Uno Köji
praised the works of some naturalists and watakushishösetsu writers, call-
ing them "literature of the withered field (kareno)," and compared them
with the poetry of Saigyö (1118-1190) and Bashö. Kareno reminds us im-
mediately of the poem by Bashö, composed shortly before his death: "On a
journey, ill— / and my dreams, on withered fields / are wandering still"
{Tabι ni yande yume wa kareno wo kakemeguru).23 Uno saw in the works
of Saigyö and Bashö the archetypes of the literature of the state of mind
21 Kume, "Watakushishösetsu to shinkyö shösetsu," p. 551.

22 His expression is "koshi no suwatta."
23 English translation cited from Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature (Rut-
land, Vermont, Tokyo: Tuttle, 1988), p. 385.
The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story Watakushishosetsu 27
(,shinkyö shösetsu). He claimed that art is a way of pursuing one's perfec-

tion as a moral man (shugyö). Saigyö and Bashö are the admired examples,
as he saw it, of the ideal artists who cultivated their minds to attain ethical
and spiritual harmony by composing poems. 24
It is interesting to note that all the important contrasts and ideas that are
later to be elaborated in greater detail are already present at this early stage.
Opposing paradigms such as fiction/real life, objectivity/subjectivity, pres-
ence/lack of novelistic structure, and a value-laden, ethical view of literary
tradition and watakushishosetsu, are all present. One type of criticism is
also already present; a comparison of the genre with Western/Russian
novels, which are thought to embody the desirable model for the "authentic
novel." 25
The understanding of the genre at this stage is in my opinion based on
some problematic assumptions, such as the clear-cut differentiation of fact
and fiction, as if this is possible to do. Another problem is a naive belief in
the oneness of reality and language based on the assumption that there was
no split between linguistic representation and reality represented. The ar-
guments also took for granted the existence of the stable self as an episte-
mological center, and also that of universal human truths.
The Self
An important question for writers and intellectuals at the turn of the twenti-
eth century was that of the self (jiga) and modern man's self-conscious-
ness. This question was felt to lie at the very core of modernity. Lately, it
has been studied by Tomi Suzuki in her Narrating the Self, in which she
made an illustrative survey of the self in Japan during the Meiji Period. She
pointed out that an independent, individualistic "self' emerged first and
foremost in the political arena at the end of the nineteenth century. 26 The
People's Rights movement helped to reinforce the new idea of a free and
equal citizen (kokumin), of a political subject with the right to act for the
nation (kokka) in the late 1870s. When the People's Rights movement was
suppressed and declined, a number of young people who had participated
24 The article is "Watakushishosetsu shiken" (My Opinion on Watakushishosetsu), Shinchö

(October 1925).
25 For instance, by Nakamura Mitsuo, as we will see later.
26 Suzuki, Narrating the Self, pp. 33-40. See also chap. 2.
28 Noriko Thunman
in the movement left political activity, rather disillusioned, and converted

to Protestantism. As a reaction to this political self, Suzuki suggests, there
emerged in the late 1880s and early 1890s the notion of the individual self
as an independent ethical and moral subject under the influence of Protes-
tantism. 27
The self was thought to transcend social and historical constraints, hence
it was inferred that the individual self is able to grasp universal truths.
Young people engaged themselves in literature in this intellectual climate
and pursued the "enigmatic" self, 28 never questioning the validity of their
notion of the self, nor the presupposed absolute value of literature. Their
belief in literature was a substitute for religion. It was regarded as self-evi-
dent that both literature and the self were of ultimate value. 29 The adher-
ence to the notion of the individual self in the watakushishösetsu discourse
of the 1920s should be understood in this intellectual climate.
By the mid-1930s a more complex understanding of the self was dis-
cussed by Yokomitsu Ri'ichi. He wrote in 1935 about the self, seeing it as
the site of perpetual self-consciousness, always examining oneself without
ever reaching the Truth. The expression "being truthful to one's self," a
golden rule for watakushishösetsu writers, as well as for the idealistic
Shirakabaha writers decades earlier, can no longer be a privileged path to
the Truth, according to Yokomitsu. 30
Kobayashi Hideo's article "A Study of Watakushishösetsu" (1935), seems
to have been written partly in direct response to Yokomitsu's. In his article
Kobayashi mentions Yokomitsu's ideas and discusses the notion of the self,
taking among others, Flaubert, Maupassant and Gide as examples. The type
of self-consciousness Yokomitsu discussed can be found, according to
Kobayashi, in the European writers mentioned above, especially in Gide and
his Les Faux-Monnayeurs, but not in any Japanese contemporary writers.
His point is that a naive trust in one's subjectivity and in the universal whole-
ness of the self was still alive in contemporary Japanese writers.
27 According to Suzuki, this notion played a key role, aided by the spread of Christianity,
and, in particular, Protestantism, in the transformation of the larger literary and cultural
discourse. Ibid., p. 33.
28 Suzuki's wording. Ibid., p. 40.
29 Ibid., p. 40. The same standpoint can clearly be found, for instance, a little later, in
Mushanoköji Saneatsu's writings.
30 Yokomitsu Ri'ichi, Ai no aisatsu, Basha, Junsui shösetsuron (Tokyo: Ködansha, 1993),
pp. 269-74. Yokomitsu's Junsui shösetsuron (The Study of the Pure Novel) is a rather
confused text and it is not easy to follow his arguments. However, his understanding of
the modern self seems clear.
He used the expression "socialized self," which, as he saw it, was defi-
cient in Japanese watakushishösestu writers. 31 Kobayashi claimed that,
since Rousseau, who was the first Romantic author to write Confessions,
the European individualistic self had had its self-evident place in society,
with all that this implies for political and religious commitment. However,
he says, such was never the case in Japan. 32
Kobayashi's point is also that there was a firm belief in realism among
Japanese naturalists and watakushishösetsu writers. They believed in their
private life and psychological realities, out of which they wanted to create
their "realistic," yet highly artistic works. Distrust in the wholeness of the
self, which Yokomitsu talked about, is, according to Kobayashi, not at all re-
flected in the works of Japanese naturalists and watakushishösetsu writers.
The fact that this kind of discussion arose in the 1930s shows that mo-
dernity took a decisive step forward, and the critics' understanding of the
nature of the self came to be more fragmental, skeptical and intellectual-
ized. It also shows that critics now saw the need to define the position of
the self in relation to the social and political conditions of a historical time.
Kobayashi's concern for society is partly his response to the introduc-
tion of Marxism into Japan and the proletarian movement in literature in
the 1920s. Kobayashi argued in the same article, "A Study of Watakushi-
shösetsu," that, when Marxism was introduced, what was introduced were
social ideas, and not merely a literary technique, as tended to be the case
earlier with new isms. This development assaulted the modern literature of
the country. 33 The new ideology questioned the foundation of literature,
which until then had been taken for granted, and, in Kobayashi's opinion,
undermined the position of the artist himself.
Itö Sei is another critic who, later in the 1950s, wrote about the nature of
the self in the watakushishösetsu writers. Itö also discussed the social posi-
tion of the watakushishösetsu writers. He characterized them as generally
destructive, turning their backs on contemporary society and called them
"escaping slaves" (töbö dorei).34 In his Method of the Novel, Itö described
31 Kobayashi Hideo, "Watakushishösetsuron," Kobayashi Hideo zenshü vol. 3 (Tokyo:

Shinchösha, 1978), p. 134
32 Ibid., pp. 122-25.
33 Ibid., p. 150.
34 See Itö, Shösetsu no höhö, p. 87. Itö's Shösetsu no höhö (Method of the Novel) is intro-
duced and further discussed in Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Rituals of Self-Revelation, pp. 83-86;
Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession, pp. 61-63; Suzuki, Narrating the Self, pp. 59-62.
See also Keiko Kockum, Itö Sei: Self-Analysis and the Modern Japanese Novel, Stock-
holm East Asian Monographs 7 (Stockholm: Stockholm Univ., 1994), chap. 11.
30 Noriko Thunman
watakushishösetsu writers like Shiga Naoya as "harmonious." 35 Hirano de-

veloped the discussion further by defining two types among them: the de-
structive/decadent (hametsu-gata) and the harmonious (chöwa-gata). Itö's
point is that modern writers with their individualistic self had no place in a
society whose major aim was to develop industrial capitalism and strength-
en the hegemony of the nation. Institutions in this society were at this time
still strongly marked by feudal relics. Compared to ordinary citizens,
writers were more progressive and liberal, even though they, too, had a
good portion of feudal relics in themselves. Their only possible way of liv-
ing was, argued Itö, to form a small elite, a literary society, called bundan,
of like-minded people. 36
Itö's discussion can be seen as a distant echo of what Kobayashi called
the lack of the "socialized self' in the watakushishösetsu writers. Koba-
yashi's criticism was about the watakushishösetsu writers' unconscious-
ness of an individual's position in society. Itö stressed the alienated posi-
tion of writers as a group in society.
Itö's argument shows, I think, that the nature of the literary project
itself had changed its character in the 1950s compared to what it was in
the early twentieth century. When genre consciousness was about to be
established, literature (shösetsu) still had its place in the national en-
deavor of modernization. Writers may have internalized the national
project in their own person, sentimentally and intellectually, but they
were still engaged in creating a "new" literature and a new literary lan-
guage for the nation. Half a century later, writers are described as mere
outsiders in the pejorative term of escaping slaves. In a sense, this is a re-
vival of the old pejorative judgment on story-writers during the Edo
Period (1603-1868), regarding them as producers of entertainment litera-
ture for common people (gesakusha).
In reaction to Itö's articles, Hirano developed the discussion of the self
by adding the notion of "performance" (engi)\ the author becomes the di-
rector of his own life and acts out the writer-self just to be able to write
about it. Nakamura also wrote about the author's acting, and it seems most
appropriate to say that this notion of the "performance" self of the wa-
35 In Itö's Method of the Novel, there are mentions of "harmony" (chöwa) and "harmoni-
ous": "Thus, they [those who lived in the literary circle of bundan] were absolutely and
decisively not harmonious persons." Shösetsu no höhö, p. 79. Also on page 93, Mori
Ögai, Shimazaki Töson and Shiga Naoya are discussed as those who tried to live in har-
mony with family and society. See also pp. 78 and 96.
36 Ibid., p. 90.
takushishösetsu writers was constructed around the 1950s by all three of

them together, by Itö, Nakamura and Hirano. 37
This view of acting tells us how much writers have internalized the wa-
takushishösetsu meta-narrative to live their life just in order to be able to
write about it. The interplay of critical watakushishösetsu meta-narrative
and literary creation seems to have started working as soon as genre con-
sciousness was established in the 1920s. Kasai Zenzö became an acknowl-
edged watakushishösetsu writer at this time. His later works like Suikyösha
no dokuhaku (Monologue of a Drunken Fool), 1927, are nothing but a re-
cording of his talks without any plan, written down by Kamura Isota
(1897-1933), an editor in charge of Kasai, and published in the established
literary magazine Shinchö. It is possible that the magazine wanted to have
his work at any price. Even so, without the reading convention that put
great emphasis on the author's person, it could not have attracted any at-
tention. It also shows that the genre convention had started to generate new
works. Writers like Kamura, who came after Kasai, are thought to have
been very conscious of the genre convention in his writing.
The best example of "performance" may be the case of Dazai Osamu
(1909-1948). Dazai is said to have acted out his decadent, immoral life to
be able to write about it. He published his important autobiographical
novels in the late 1940s before he took his own life in 1948. His Ningen
shikkaku (No Longer Human) came out in 1948. In the Shinchö Literary
Dictionary, this book is said to "have told of the author himself in the
shape of the young protagonist, a loser, and in this work the literary tradi-
tion of watakushishösetsu has blossomed in the most contemporary man-
ner." 38
Hirano wrote in retrospect about Dazai in 1965:
It is already more than ten years since Itö Sei put Japanese writers into dif-
ferent types and called one the "destructive" (hametsu-gata). At that time, I
believe, he probably had Dazai Osamu in mind as the model of the type. Of
course he must have thought of Kamura Isota and Kasai Zenzö and others,
too. But the most poignant image was, I think, Dazai Osamu. [...] Dazai
Osamu had lived the whole of his life as an outsider, and he was finally
defeated and died. In his life Itö saw the prototype of the life style of the
modern Japanese writers, and named it "the destructive type." 39
37 About this subject, see in more detail Tanisawa, "Watakushishösetsu no keifu," pp. 2 6 3 -
68.
38 Shinchö nihon bungaku jiten (Tokyo: Shinchösha, 1996), p. 795.
39 Hirano, "Anti 'hametsugata' to iu koto" ("About the Anti-'Destructive Type' "), which
first appeared in 1965. The article is included in Hirano Ken zenshu vol. 5. Mention of
the two types can also be found in his other articles.
32 Noriko Thunman
Critical writings on the genre after the 1920s strengthened the view that
watakushishösetsu is about a writer's personal sufferings and his difficul-
ties in life, both as a man and as a writer. The writer's focus is excessively
on his own person, personal affairs and relationships, never lifting his eyes
beyond his private sphere.
The enhancement of the seductive, individualistic self seems no longer
to exist in the 1950s. The notion of the self underwent a long process of
transformation at this time, reflecting the position of the author in socie-
ty, reaching at last the diminutive picture of the self as an "escaping
slave." However, being an escaper and outsider could also be a conscious
positioning by an author to give credit to his literary and spiritual en-
deavor. Being an outsider, seen from a writer's point of view, may not at
all be merely a negative posture. The writer could reverse the value judg-
ment by saying that he was the one who had come closest to human
truths.
The Social Environment of Watakushishösetsu
One important policy of the new Meiji government was to raise educa-
tional levels to meet new economic and social needs. This resulted in the
increasing number of newly-educated intellectuals in villages in the coun-
tryside. At the same time, the Government was dependent on the feudal
structure of the farming population and villages and tried to preserve it.
Modernization of the countryside and agriculture progressed slowly, if at
all, and newly-educated people had nowhere to work in their home vil-
lages. Tanisawa pointed out "the tragic existence" of intellectuals in agri-
cultural villages, who had few possibilities for finding their place in the
community. They could become a public official in a village office or a
teacher in a school, or they could choose to go to cities, especially to
Tokyo, and become a writer. 40
During the Meiji and Taishö (1912-1926) periods, the economic situa-
tion, according to Tanisawa, was such that writers did not have any patrons
or literary salons as in Europe. Writers lived on the small income they re-
ceived for their writings and, gradually, a Japanese literary circle (bundan)
was formed in Tokyo. The readership that supported the bundan at the
time, according to Tanisawa, consisted mainly of intellectuals who lived in
40 Tanisawa, "Watakushishösetsu no keifu," p. 36.

country villages and cities. Some of them with literary ambitions came to
Tokyo from the countryside to be a part of the bundan,41
Itö Sei saw behind the "aberrant nature (hentaisei)" of watakushishöset-
su the existence of the bundan, which was peopled by literary writers and
critics, and in which they lived and criticized each other's works and way
of living.42 The circle was small, and writers knew a great deal about each
other's lives and doings. A writer was judged not only by his works, but
also by his way of living. Itö wrote that the bundan could be likened to a
drill hall (döjö), and that life in bundan implied moral and ethical training
on the part of writers. 43
Itö argued persuasively about the significance of bundan for the wa-
takushishösetsu genre. However, he may have put too much emphasis on
its significance. Hirano is of the opinion that Itö's own difficulties in deal-
ing with bundan lie behind his stressing the significance of bundan. Think-
ing of the decadent life style of many watakushishösetsu writers, Itö's
comment on bundan as a drill hall rings false.
Although we take into account Hirano's reservation and leave the com-
ment about a drill hall aside, the small world of the literary circle is thought
to have had an important impact on watakushishösetsu. Not so much as a
drill hall, but just because of its exclusive smallness, it constituted a very
favorable milieu for autobiographical reading. The readership could easily
recognize the protagonist/author and other persons in the work, whose
models were often writer-colleagues. We remember that a category called
the model-shösetsu existed at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The importance of bundan is partly demonstrated by the fact, as seen
previously, that the debate swung to and fro between those who approved
of the genre and those who did not.
Literary Tradition
Critical discourse on watakushishösetsu continued after the 1920s to elabo-

rate retrospectively the line of literary continuity from earlier years down
41 Ibid., pp. 35-36. Tanisawa's argument is based on his critical view of Japanese moderni-
zation and industrialization that were led, according to him, from above, by the state.
42 Itö, Shösetsu no höhö, pp. 8-9.
43 Ibid., p. 9. Etö Jun also pointed out the similar nature of bundan in "The Japanese Lit-
erary World as a Sociological Phenomenon," The Journal-Newsletter of the Association
of Teachers of Japanese 1:2 (1963), pp. 10-20.
34 Noriko Thunman
to watakushishösetsu. Apart from Uno, mentioned before, many critics

saw medieval essays such as Höjöki (An Account of My Hut) and Tsure-
zure-gusa (Essays in Idleness) as forerunners of watakushishösetsu. Other
names that are often mentioned in this connection are the medieval poets
Saigyö and Bashö, already mentioned. This kind of rather vague mention-
ing of literary traditions and continuity continued to appear.
At the turn of the twentieth century, literature in Japan played a role nor-
mally accorded to religion and philosophy, namely to answer existential
questions. 44 The readership expected to find clues to existential questions
in literature. In the light of this expectation, Saigyö and Bashö seemed to
provide good instances of good literature. Not only their works, but also
the poets themselves were desirable examples.
In critical watakushishösetsu discourse, the poet as a man stands at the
center of the critics' concern, and his literary production is regarded as a
part of and a means to reach the real poet. This strong concern with the real
poet (author) in literary critical discourse has surely been nurtured and
strengthened by the cult of the modern, individualistic self since the Meiji
Period. An individual is put at the center of interest to study his choices,
thoughts, ambitions, efforts, discouragement, despairs and more generally
the moral state of his mind. Critics ended up looking for the same kind of
individual even in medieval works.
Suzuki is of the opinion that critical watakushishösetsu meta-narrative
colored the critics' view of literary tradition. The line of continuity from
Saigyö and Bashö to modern writers such as Shiga was retrospectively rec-
ognized and re-constructed. And this, in turn, changed our views on liter-
ary classics.
Suzuki has a point, because the social background at the time of Saigyö
and Bashö was different from that of the twentieth century, and the poets'
self-consciousness, too, differed from that of modern writers. It seems too
facile to draw a parallel between them and modern writers just because the
"literature of seclusion" (intonbungaku) of medieval times bears some re-
semblance to the contemplative, reflective works of modern writers.
However, the power of the general understanding of classical literature
cannot be ignored. Kobayashi discussed Japanese literary tradition and its
powerful influence on modern writers in the article mentioned before. He
44 See also Itö, Shösetsu no höhö, pp. 71 and 84-85. According to Itö Sei and Aono Sue-
kichi, quoted on pp. 84-85, the central question for literature in Japan had been the exis-
tential question of how to live.
pointed out that modern Japanese society did not have the same historical
and philosophical foundation as the West, and Positivism, which lay as a
growing ground for the emergence of Naturalism, had not yet fully devel-
oped in Japan. There was "too much useless, old manure" in the society. 45
Social conditions necessary to fully incorporate Western ideas were lack-
ing. However, instead, Japanese writers could lean on a long Japanese lit-
erary tradition. Kobayashi argues that Japanese writers, who enjoyed the
marvelous tradition of literary techniques, had no need of foreign ideas, but
only foreign literary techniques. His point is that Japanese writers used
foreign ideas just as a means of technical literary innovation. They did this
guided, perhaps unconsciously, by literary sensitiveness and standards
nourished by Japanese literary traditions.
Kobayashi is a typical example of the critics who worked on the
antithesis East and West. His arguments show his understanding of the po-
sition of writers at the time: they were strongly constrained by old values
and also colored by literary traditions that conditioned and determined the
nature of their literary enterprise. He does not seem to be simply critical of
these writers' position. Rather, his comments on writers like Tayama Katai
and Tanizaki Jun'ichirö show his strong desire to understand their personal
way of meeting the challenge of the time.
Both critics and writers seem, when necessary, to fall back on literary
tradition, or on that which they see as tradition, as the example of Koba-
yashi also shows. More than so, they may work, consciously or uncon-
sciously, with earlier models in mind. The most obvious case is Ozaki
Köyö (1867-1903) and his disciples, who dominated the literary scene at
the end of the nineteenth century. They needed a model of literary style
and looked for it in Saikaku's (1642-1693) stories (gesaku).
In order to meet criticism in different periods, critics and writers needed
to re-evaluate the genre. This need for re-evaluation led their attention to
its genealogy. They ended up by recognizing a continuous line from medi-
eval seclusion literature and poetry to the modern watakushishösetsu.
"An Unhappy Father" by Kasai Zenzö (1887-1928)
Kasai has been looked upon by critics and scholars as the representative
author of the genre around the 1910s and 1920s. The first work he
45 Quotation from Kobayashi, "Watakushishosetsuron," p. 122.

36 Noriko Thunman
published was a short story entitled "An Unhappy Father," 1912. 46 It

starts:
He had lately been obliged to move to the miserable outskirts of the town.
It was at the end of April. The sky was covered by thin cloud that looked
like haze. Bright sunshine glittered on the young shoots of cherry trees and
the weak sounds the brood of sparrows gave out seemed never to stop.
Somewhere construction work on a house foundation had started, and he
could hear the distant shouting of workers [...] He was tired. He was pale
and his eyes were drab like those of a sick animal. There were many sleep-
less nights. Even when he sat calmly, his heart beat fast. He tried to slow its
pace down, only to make it beat even faster. He could hardly breathe.
The owner of his rented room this time was a forty-five or -six year old
woman, who he thought was the widow of a low-ranking public officer. She
ran the house modestly with the help of a girl from the countryside. The
house was small, dark, humid, a one-storey building with a low ceiling. It
was located in a poverty-stricken part of the town, far from the center. The
little he owned was a futon and a quilt to sleep under, a desk and a small
chest of drawers made of paulownia-wood, which was empty. This chest of
paulownia-wood was the only thing he never sold in his long life of pov-
erty. It was the only remembrance of his earlier life. 47
The title itself sets the frame of the story that is about an unhappy and un-
fortunate "father." The opening sentence matches the tone set by the title.
Social and psychological movement is downward, which is indicated by
the fact that the protagonist is moving downward socially, from the center
of the big city of Tokyo to the periphery. This implies that his social and fi-
nancial means are declining, suggesting vaguely, but tellingly, the difficul-
ties he had at the time. Yet it is not clear at this point whether he is the fa-
ther or the son. The narrator is telling about "him," whoever he may be.
In the following section the narrator describes the season of the year and
the things surrounding "him," the protagonist. Successively, the narrator
seems to adopt the perspective of the protagonist. The description of the
sunshine and the song of the sparrows is written with onomatopoeia, giv-
ing it a more personal tone, as if this is a personal expose of his surround-
ings by the protagonist. The description of the sunshine ("chikachika") is
rather ordinary, just telling the reader how bright the April sun is, reflect-
ing on the green shoots of the cherry trees. However, the way the chirrups
46 The short story "Kanashiki chichi" (An Unhappy Father) appeared in the coterie maga-
zine Kiseki, September 1912. Numbers in parenthesis indicate where to find the passage
in the reprint of the novel in Uno Köji, Kasai Zenzö, Kamura Isota, Nihon no bungaku
vol. 33 (Tokyo: Chüö köronsha, 1974), pp. 243-249.
47 Translation mine, also here and in the following extracts.
of newly born sparrows are described gives a vaguely unpleasant impres-

sion. The sound is described as "juku-juku," which usually describes some-
thing damp, for instance a suppurating wound not yet cured. The associa-
tions the sound gives are by no means glad and beautiful, but rather dark,
dirty and damp. Here, the reader is given a sense of unarticulated, sup-
pressed vexation in the mind of the protagonist. This, together with the ver-
nacular verb phrase "naki-kusatte ita" (approximately "[dammed birds]
never stopped singing"), gives the sense of fatigue the protagonist feels. In
the next section the narrator describes the bad physical condition of the
protagonist: he is pale and tired, he suffers from insomnia and an irregular
heart beat.
Then the narrator moves on to tell the reader about the protagonist's
rented room. Here, too, the downward movement is apparent. All the de-
tails about his place tell us that it is a sort of cheap refuge for an unsuccess-
ful person, short of means. The description continues with his belongings,
which also reveal his poor financial situation at the time. However, it is
clear that he has seen better times, symbolized by the small chest of
drawers made of paulownia-wood (meaning of good quality).
The story continues in the same fashion; we learn that "he" is very lone-
ly, and also that "he" is the desolate father. His mental state is referred to as
being as deplorable as that of his lodging. The narrator also tells us that
"he," the protagonist, is afraid of looking at goldfish when he is out walk-
ing in the town. This is because goldfish remind him of his child. He has a
four-year-old child who is living in his hometown in the countryside with
his mother. He, his child and the mother of the child lived until the summer
a year before in a small house in the suburbs of Tokyo. This time is re-
membered with nostalgia as "a life almost of those who live in seclusion,
in poverty, but calm" (p. 244). We also learn that "he" and his child played
a lot together, and they were each other's best friends and brothers. They
kept a dog, goldfish and a baby turtle and their happy daily routine was to
go to the rice fields with the dog to fetch food for the goldfish and the
turtle. Seeing goldfish reminds him of this lost time, and of his child.
The narrator describes how, despite his efforts, it happens that the protag-
onist finds himself standing before a shop with goldfish, staring painfully at
them. In time he manages to get somewhat used to the pain. However, it still
hurts as if "a burning-hot towel is pressed against his skin." This pain seems
to be the only threat to his lonely, isolated, silent world (p. 245). The protag-
onist "he" also suffers from a fever that comes regularly in the afternoon.
This suggests that he is suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs.
38 Noriko Thunman
The narrator goes on to tell us about the other tenants in the house. They
are sickly and poor people. One of them, an unemployed reserve officer
from the countryside, has died suddenly from an attack of ileus. In fact, the
house itself seems doomed to misery and death. His oppressive state of
mind continues to be related as marked strongly by the bad conscience he
feels about his child. A mention of his wife is made just once: "My obedi-
ent wife's sighs deepened" (p. 244).
The child is never explicitly called his son, but this becomes clear when
a dream the protagonist had is related. In this dream his child already has
two or three siblings. The child was naked and had a healthily round belly.
He had a very important air. He talked like an adult, like a medical doctor.
This makes the protagonist smile. He finds the dream humorous, but at the
same time it makes him think of the innate pride a child bears in him. But
again, he is struck by a dark feeling that the child's future cannot be very
bright, thinking of his own weak health and that of his father, who died
around the age of thirty.
The story ends with a description of his bad health, with a temperature
of 37-38 degrees every day. An allusion is made to his having cast up
blood: "he felt it pressing against his throat" (p. 249). 48 The reader is also
told about his efforts to earn some money by "going daily to the library for
work" to allow him to live by the sea. In the very last passages (the last part
of section six), the narration is in the present tense; until then it has been in
the past tense. It reads:
His temperature goes up and down around 37-38 degrees. It is not unbear-
able. He feels, on the contrary, a spiritual calm.
"This means that I've survived a severe trial of life. I'm sure that this is
helping me to grow u p . . . "
Living alone, he gets up when he wants to and goes to bed when he feels
tired. Meanwhile, the leaves of the sultan's parasol tree that has been poorly
taken care of, have grown and the black caterpillar has disappeared. An ice
bag he used when he had a fever is now hanging dry on the wall.
On the little desk under the window are goldfish swimming graciously in
a glass bowl.
He is calmly determined to continue composing poetry.
The tone of the narrator is now more serene and calm. Some sort of recon-
ciliation with his bad conscience about his son is alluded to by the presence
of the goldfish he keeps in the glass bowl on the desk.
48 The word "blood" never occurs, but "it" cannot be anything else.
Comments
Romantic Melancholy
Some parts of the story, especially when the protagonist's distress is re-
lated, are expressed by adjectives and metaphors. For example:
Fine cold rain like mist was falling, enclosing the big town. He felt sad like
a voyager, who, late at night and tired, longs for a peaceful haven and
finally finds it, simple though it may be, in the shape of a bed of grass. He
got off the train and went back to the dark room on the outskirts of the
town.49
The tone is expressively melancholic and permeated with sadness. Adjec-

tives such as "dark," "cold" and "damp" (like mist) set the tone of the short
story and allude to the nature of the protagonist's self-esteem. However,
the difficulties of everyday life never encourage him to look for a job. The
only things he speaks of are his wishes to go to the coast and to continue
writing his "poetry." Despite his bad conscience about the son, he acts as if
he himself is a child—the son's playmate and brother—and only as such
does he seem really happy.
All these expressive, emotionally-charged passages give the short story
a melancholic, romantic flavor; romantic, in the sense that the protagonist
is a dreamer, always looking for something beautiful and good beyond
everyday life. We understand his physical and mental sufferings, anguish
during sleepless nights and fears of misfortune awaiting round the corner,
but beyond all this is something else: that which makes him go to the
library and write "poetry." Poetry may more generally stand for art. Art is
valuable to the degree that even the wellbeing of his family can be sacri-
ficed for the sake of art.
The Cult of Nature
Answering his mother's letter, the protagonist writes, "Please tell him [the
son] not to say such a vulgar thing. Please teach him not to bother about
such trivial things [clothes]. If only he is in good health, now at his age, he
shouldn't need anything more [...]" (p. 248). Later, "He [the protagonist]
wished, from time to time, to have the most noble mind of an aristocrat, to
49 Kasai, "Kanashiki chichi," p. 248.

40 Noriko Thunman
live the most primitive life, to be the true friend of the child, his brother
and also his educator" (p. 248). The ideas expressed in these passages re-
call those of Rousseau, for instance, the idea about the education of chil-
dren and the emphasis on leading a simple life. In Emile ou De 1'education
(1762), 50 Rousseau argued for an education that is well adapted to the dif-
ferent stages a child goes through, both physically and psychologically.
Different ages require different sorts of guidance, but it is always impor-
tant to respect a child's innate personality. This work is also a philosophi-
cal expose that tries to reconcile an urban life and a life lived in nature. Ac-
cording to Rousseau, man is good in nature, and man should live at one
with nature. Hence his praise of the life of primitive men. The word primi-
tive has, in Kasai's text, too, a positive value. 51 Rousseau's cult of nature
had a great influence on Romanticism and Naturalism in nineteenth-centu-
ry Europe. The situation was much the same in Japan, too. After the early
introduction of Rousseau's works such as Du Contrat Social in the nine-
teenth century, his ideas had strongly influenced Romanticism and Natu-
ralism in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. 52 We can also see
Rousseau's ideas influencing those of writers belonging to the idealist and
romanticist movement, Shirakabaha, a little later in the first decades of the
twentieth century.
The Cult of the Self
The protagonist wishes his son to be a great man and to work on himself
until the very end, until the day he dies in his quest for the truth. And he
also hopes that "his son will learn many truths through his [the father's]
death" (p. 248).
50 Emile ou De I'education came out in a translation by Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke in 1927,

a little later than the short story. It was included in the series Sekai daishisö zenshü vol.
10 (Tokyo: Shunjüsha, 1927). Regarding Rousseau's ideas, Matsumoto Isamu and Hara
Masao, Rosö no shinzui (The Essence of Rousseau) was published in 1914 (Tokyo: Nan-
bokusha). The first part of Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloi'se was translated by Miyahara
Köichirö and came out as the first volume of a projected series of the complete works of
Rousseau (Tokyo: Köbunsha, 1922). No further bibliographical data is found regarding
the complete works, indicating most probably that the following volumes never ap-
peared.
51 Rousseau's Du contrat social was first translated by Nakae Chömin in 1882 under the title
Minyaku yakukai. Les Confessions was first translated by Ishikawa Gian in 1912-13.
52 Not to mention the influence Du contrat social exerted on the People's Rights Move-
ment (Jiyüminken) during the 1880s.
The position of the individual in society and politics is always discussed

in the works of Rousseau, whereas in the short story the narrator's interest
is focused exclusively on the protagonist's physical, moral and psychologi-
cal realities. The protagonist's interest stretches as far as his own family,
including his mother and father, but never beyond the family. The univer-
sal sovereignty of the individual is taken for granted in the short story.
The sovereign individual in Kasai's story bears many signs of "old" sys-
tems. The protagonist's relationship with his wife is strongly marked by
the old family system, likewise his appreciation of his first-born son and
the matriarch, his mother.
The protagonist's individualistic self seems also to have a good portion
of the kind of transcendental self, discussed before. His private project is
worth fulfilling because it will lead him to the universal Truth of man.
What strikes the reader is that the spiritual realization of oneself as a man is
put as the highest (aristocratic) purpose of life. The meaning of life does
not lie in the things a man "does" in the world; it is more about grasping
the truth, or at least, the effort he puts into grasping it. And the project is
only for a great man and a spiritual aristocrat.
The protagonist is an artist, not a bourgeois father. He speaks of his
son's future and the strong bond between them, but it is wholly on a mental
level. The only thing that matters in their relationship is his or the son's
truths. The reader may also sense slightly the protagonist's delusion of
grandeur. Nothing modest is good enough for him. If he is miserable, he
feels worse than anyone else. He uses adjectives such as great, true, noble
in the superlative, speaking of himself and his son. It is obvious that, de-
spite his small means, he regards himself as belonging to the class of spirit-
ual aristocrats, because he is an artist. And as an artist, his fate is to suffer
and to sacrifice himself and neglect not only his own needs, but those of
his family as well.
Without taking into account the powerful seduction of the enigmatic in-
dividualistic self discussed previously in the section "The Self," it is diffi-
cult to understand this almost naive confidence in the act of telling one's
own private, personal story. The individualistic self symbolized for Kasai
and other young literary men the very site of the newly-acquired moderni-
ty, and it also opened up a path to the truth.
The protagonist "he" is an individual who takes his life in his own hands
and makes decisions about what to do with his life. His life is his own
project, and no one else's. The protagonist "he" is lonely. He is shut off
from the world, but he himself also shuts the world out of his own life as
42 Noriko Thunman
much as he can. Behind the text the reader senses the moral representation
of a modern man, and this must explain the text's seductive power in the
early nineteenth century. Even today it has a poetic ring, though somewhat
sentimental and sorrowful.
The short story turns on universal questions such as the wish for self-
realization and conflicting moral obligations to others. It is also about un-
certainty about the future, whether or not we may succeed in our project,
be it artistic or worldly. Further, it is about love for one's own child, and
above all, about the romantic longing for something that is far away, that is
indefinable, and which one wishes to grasp in one's hand. Behind the text
lies the soul of a poet, childish, open, romantic and naive. 53
Facts and Fictions
Because the short story has been read autobiographically, it is of interest to

investigate more closely whether the story relates the "real" life of the au-
thor.
The somewhat detached tone with which poverty is depicted in the story
makes the reader almost forget the real poverty the author was living in. It
is told in such a way that poverty does not seem to be the central concern of
the protagonist. However, the reason why the protagonist has to send his
son away is poverty, the reason why he has to live in a miserable rented
room is poverty; his need to earn money is also due to poverty. Neverthe-
less, the narrator is more interested in the protagonist's feelings and
thoughts. A person, actually not anybody, but an artist, is so interesting that
all the ideas that pass through his head seem to deserve to be written down.
He seems most interested in the act of telling itself.
Moreover, some important points are not in accordance with Kasai's
real life. One is the "mother" in the story. Kasai's mother died when he
was fifteen years old and his father remarried when Kasai was twenty in
53 Yamoto Kenkichi expressed a similar opinion with emphasis as follows: "Zenzö was a
writer who could not write. I see him as the one who was essentially a poet. His works
were not really the literature of confession [...] but his was a type of confessional litera-
ture, in which he was endlessly leading a dialogue with himself. His murmurs, prayers,
sighs and emotional outbreaks, they all were like ground colors of his confessions. While
going through, again and again, his confessions, he gave, at the end, a beautiful voice to
his own temperament, and he worked hard to make the sadness of his life come out be-
tween the lines of his writings." Quoted from Nihon no bungaku vol. 33, p. 498.
1907. A year later Kasai himself got married; thus the mother in the story
should in reality be his stepmother.
The reason for this "untruth" may possibly be explained by the impact of
the word "Mother." Especially when "Mother" is used in the short story as
direct address, the tone is affective. (See the passage in the letter from
"Mother.") The effect would certainly have been different if it was "Step-
mother." In the text the line of family succession, at least in a sentimental
sense, goes from Mother to son and to the grandchild. It is curious that Ka-
sai, who wrote mostly autobiographically, never wrote about his own
mother, since he was fifteen when his mother died, and he must have had
many memories of her.
The protagonist's father is mentioned just once in the story: he was sick-
ly and died around thirty years old. This is another fiction. In reality, Ka-
sai's father died in 1922 when Kasai himself was thirty-five years old. The
father appears repeatedly in other works of Kasai, giving a picture of a
concerned, loving father who tries to understand and support his son. A fa-
ther who dies young is effective in the story as an omen of the protago-
nist's and his son's bad fortune. This may be the reason for the fiction.
Another point is when the protagonist casts up blood. In reality, the au-
thor did not suffer from TB until later, around 1924.54 Many writers and
poets suffered from the same illness as the protagonist-author at the time.
It may be said that tuberculosis legitimized the protagonist-author as a true
artist.
The fact is that the author already had two children in 1912.55 A possible
reason for the deviation from this fact may be the protagonist-author's
wish to put the focus on the first-born son. His bad conscience as a father
does not change fundamentally whether he has one or two children. As a
story it may be more effective to concentrate the reader's interest on the
eldest son, especially considering the importance of the first-born son for
the family at the time.
There may very well be other points that are fictions in the story, but it is
most interesting to note that the author changed the facts regarding his
mother and father, both of whom are thought to have been close to him.
According to the critical watakushishösetsu meta-narrative, a story is a
faithful rendering of the author's real life. However, many works of the
54 See Ömori Sumio, Shishösetsusakka kenkyü (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1982), pp. 83-84;
Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession, p. 256.
55 See Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession, p. 255.
44 Noriko Thunman
genre contradict this criterion. The important point has been the reader's
expectation, and the critical watakushishösetsu meta-narrative worked con-
tinuously on reinforcing the reader's autobiographical reading.
Presentational Mode of the Protagonist
It has been pointed out that one characteristic of the genre is the way the
protagonist is introduced to a story, namely without any presentation of
who he is, his occupation and so on. However, a similar presentational
mode of the protagonist can be found in many modern novels, so it seems
inappropriate to count this feature as a characteristic genre marker of wa-
takushishösetsu.
In Kasai's short story, the protagonist is just "he" from the start, and the
reader is not told until the last line that he is a poet. Despite this, the reader
"knows" from the start that the story is about an artist, because it is written
by Kasai, and Kasai is an artist. Without the reading convention that directs
the reader to read the text autobiographically, the equation of the protago-
nist with the author from the start is not possible.
However, this does not mean that an acquaintance with the reading con-
vention is necessary to follow the story at all. The uninitiated reader is suc-
cessively introduced to the protagonist's psychological realities and will
understand that he apparently does not work and that he is a romantic, tor-
mented intellectual with rather keen sensitiveness. And this understanding
will more than suffice to follow the story.
Although an acquaintance with the reading convention is not necessary,
the fact remains that the story has been read autobiographically.
Concluding Remarks
Kasai's short story is interesting because it embodies the important charac-

teristics expected of a work of watakushishösetsu, namely the romantic,
tormented mind of an artist in poverty, his moral sufferings and bad con-
science about his family, his wish to write "poetry," his heavy drinking and
illness. The story conveys a strong romantic longing for the indefinable. It
also demonstrates the cult of nature and that of the enhancing, individualis-
tic self. It is the result of the author's almost religious trust in the very act
of telling. The protagonist in the story also reveals tellingly the mixture of
old and new value-judgments, which certainly mirrors the position not
only of Kasai but also of his contemporary writers.
Female Watakushishösetsu Writers
One may ask whether there were any female watakushishösetsu writers in
earlier times, around the 1910s and 1920s.
During the 1980s and 1990s, feminist research on literature in Japan was
carried out actively and impressively, both theoretically and practically in
discovering forgotten female writers since the Meiji Period. One example
of a female writer who has been studied by feminists is Tamura Toshiko
(1884-1945). She was one of the few female writers who won wide recog-
nition in the 1910s. Some of her works, in which she wrote about her life
with Tamura Shögyo, her writer-husband, are autobiographical. She left
Shögyo and Japan in 1918 to live with Suzuki Etsu in Vancouver, where
they got married and stayed for eighteen years.
Thinking of her fame during the 1910s, the question arises why her
works have never been mentioned as a part of the watakushishösetsu cor-
pus. Tamura Toshiko's autobiographical short stories appeared around
1913 and 1914. The most probable reason for her oblivion is the fact that
she was not present on the literary scene in the mid-1920s, when genre
consciousness was about to be formed. However, the fact that she was a
woman is also thought to have played a part. She had no influential friends
that helped her name to be remembered.
Many writers and poets died young and left very few works, yet they are
remembered in literary histories. Kajii Motojirö (1901-1932) and Nakaha-
ra Chuya (1907-1937) are the names that come immediately to mind. Not
only the quality of a writer's or poet's work, but also other social factors
seem to play an important role. One such factor is friends. In the case of
both Kajii and Nakahara, they had many writer-poet friends who survived
them and became important names in literary circles. What they wrote
surely helped the names of Nakahara and Kajii to live on.
Tamura Toshiko had friends, too, but mostly among female writers who
gathered around the magazine Seitö. They mostly disappeared from the lit-
erary scene with the magazine in 1916. Tamura Toshiko's active years
were short, corresponding almost exactly to the period of the Seitö, which
started coming out in 1911 and stopped in 1916.
The critics are unanimous in recognizing Tayama Katai's Futon (1907)
as the first watakushishösetsu work. Compared to Futon, the works of Ta-
mura Toshiko, such as "Onna Sakusha" (A Woman Writer; 1913), "Mira
no Kuchibeni" (The Lipstick of a Mummy; 1913), and "Höraku no Kei"
(The Sentence to be Roasted; 1914), are in a more obvious manner marked
46 Noriko Thunman
by her private life. Despite the shortness of her active time as a writer, the
quality of her works entitles her, I think, to a better fate. In Ködansha Dic-
tionary of Modern Japanese Literature (1984), the article on her is longer
than that on her husband (who is practically forgotten today), and she is
presented as a writer who had a Naturalist vein and wrote autobiographical
short stories. However, her name seldom, if ever, is mentioned when wa-
takushishösetsu in the early twentieth century is discussed. This omission
should surely be reconsidered and revised. 56 And she is by no means alone
in this neglect.
Proletarian female writers have been treated more fairly in literary histo-
ries. Sata Ineko (1904-1998) and Miyamoto Yuriko (1899-1951) are regu-
larly mentioned as proletarian writers in literary histories. In later times
their works are studied and commented, especially by feminist researchers,
as constituting a part of the watakushishösetsu corpus.
There still seems much to be done in regard to female writers, either to
discover them or to re-evaluate their positions in literary history.
Watakushishösetsu Today
Journalism
Much has changed since the 1920s. At the core of watakushishösetsu there
was the "enigmatic" self that required praise and demanded to be narrated.
After the proletarian movement in literature and the introduction of mod-
ernism, the self lost its unquestioned wholeness and self-sufficiency. After
the self-consciousness of the writer got fragmented, so did his understand-
ing of the world.
The writers' position in society also changed after the advent of the
twentieth century. The rise of commercial journalism started as early as the
1920s. The circulation of a series of cheap, one-yen anthologies (enbon)
started in 1926. This series was a great success and enbon anthologies gave
a considerable income to established writers and publishers. 57 After World
War II, journalism became part of everyday life for writers. The young
56 She is not alone in this sense, but there are other names to be remembered. See Watanabe
Sumiko's series of articles in Tokyo shinbun: Yükan, January 4-March 9 (2002).
57 See in Hirano, "Shöwabungaku no koto" and "Junbungaku gainen no imi," Hirano Ken
zenshü vol. 5, pp. 174 and 259. Hirano wrote that small and medium publishers, thanks
to enbon, took the first step toward becoming big, monopolistic enterprises. Ibid., p. 259.
writer Ishihara Shintarö's appearance on the literary scene was a sensation-

al journalistic event. He received the Akutagawa Prize in 1956 for Taiyö
no kisetsu (The Season of the Sun), which sold 267,600 copies the same
year. 58 It was filmed and the author's hairstyle came into vogue. This event
left a decisive mark on the upsurge of journalism and a corresponding de-
cline in bundan,59 As early as 1944 Mishima Yukio wrote in the conclud-
ing remarks of his first book Hanazakari no mori: "Today it seems difficult
to adhere to the ideas both of bundan and seclusion." This did not prevent
him from regarding himself as one of the senior Nobel Prize winner Kawa-
bata's proteges. A contemporary writer, Setouchi Jakuchö, as discussed
later, also had great difficulty in establishing herself as an acknowledged
writer because of the harsh criticism she suffered from an already ac-
claimed literary critic. This shows that a literary circle certainly continued
to exist later, too, as an institution. However, the circle grew wider. The
significance of journalism had become far more decisive and writers and
critics could live on their writings. The institution of bundan, which was
regarded by Itö as the foundation of the genre, does not exist in the same
sense today.
The distinction between highbrow and mass literature had also become
blurred. The magazine Shinchö had a special number in July 1932 entitled
"What is the fate of highbrow literature?" (Junbungaku wa doko e iku ka).
The rise of mass literature, and, by contrast, the decline of proletarian lit-
erature, modernist literature, and highbrow literature, which was synon-
ymous with watakushishösetsu, formed the background to the debate. 60
Yokomitsu Ri'ichi also discussed the question in 1935 and wondered if the
novel of manners and highbrow literature were really qualitatively differ-
ent.61
Mass literature, which during the 1930s was called the novel of manners
(,tsüzoku shösetsü), and later mass literature (taishü shösetsü), became
dominant, and the general opinion that equated watakushishösetsu with
highbrow literature or "pure literature" (junbungaku) seems to have lost its
relevance today.
58 This can be compared to Izumi Kyöka who was envied because he had five hundred
loyal readers. See Itö, Shösetsü no höhö, p. 91. In 1935 an average number of copies
were one thousand for novels. Ibid., p. 92.
59 Jidaibetsu nihon bungakushi jiten: Gendaihen (Tokyo: Tokyodö, 1997), pp. 341-342.
60 This is the view Hirano presented in "Junbungaku gainen no imi," pp. 253-61.
61 In Yokomitsu, Junsui shösetsü ron.
48 Noriko Thunman
The Works of Setouchi Jakucho and Yu Miri
Setouchi Jakuchö's (1922-) Watakushishösetsu, which came out in 1987,

plays on the watakushishösetsu reading and writing paradigm, as the title
itself shows. The female protagonist is a writer and Buddhist nun who has
decided to go into retreat when she is over fifty years old. Those who know
the author's private life recognize the author in the protagonist and can also
recognize other personae in the novel. 62
In the novel the protagonist recollects her past, especially her relation-
ship as a writer to watakushishösetsu:
A well-known literary critic who died several years ago [...] completely
denied the value of my callow work when I was just about to set my foot in
the literary circle (bundan). And, because of this, I was thrown into an
abyss during the following five years, without being able to see the light,
totally rejected as a writer. The same critic gave me the greatest praise for a
novel in which I wrote about Kuji, another young lover and myself. He used
the wording "pure golden watakushishösetsu" in his review. For me, the
words looked as if they were made of pure, glittering gold and I could
hardly stare at them. [...] The critic loved watakushishösetsu, and he
uncritically believed that my earlier novel was autobiographical, despite the
fact that it was a complete fiction. 63
So the author-protagonist Utsuki changed her strategy and started writing

exclusively autobiographical novels about her relationship with her lover
Kuji. 64
Because the critic believed in the identity of the author Utsuki Harue,
who writes the present novel Watakushishösetsu, and the protagonist of her
earlier novel, his disapproval of the sensual life of the protagonist was di-
rectly turned against Utsuki.
Reading the passages, it is difficult to draw a clear-cut line between fic-
tion and fact. The name Utsuki is not identical to that of the real author,
even though Utsuki has a background and family situation similar to that of
the real author. The critic mentioned was Hirano Ken in Setouchi's real
life, and he criticized the too frequent use of the word "womb" in her
Kashin (A Stamen and a Pistil; 1957). She had just received a literary prize
{Shinchösha döjin zasshishö) for this novel and was about to start her ca-
62 See "Kaisetsu" (Comments) attached at the end of Setouchi Jakuchö, Watakushishösetsu

(Tokyo: Shueisha bunko, [1987] 1999), p. 358. The novel was first published in book
form in 1985, and in 1987 it also came out in the series Shueisha bunko.
63 Setouchi, Watakushishösetsu, pp. 41—42.
64 Ibid., pp. 42^13.
reer as writer. She stopped writing after that, just like the protagonist of the
novel Watakushishösetsu.65
During the 1960s, Setouchi published a series of novels dealing with her
private relationship with two men and received a literary prize for female
writers (Joryü bungakushö) in 1963. This time Hirano praised her author-
ship, saying that it is "pure golden watakushishösetsu"—the identical
wording in the novel.
Thirty years after the watakushishösetsu debate of the 1950s, Setouchi
wrote a novel entitled Watakushishösetsu, in which she seems to be play-
ing with both the reading and writing paradigm of the genre. The author
Utsuki in the novel discusses the question of fiction and factuality:
You write about all of the happenings in your real life and pretend to be
making sincere confessions, but you can never tell even one-quarter of the
truth. 66
[...] I may accept the existence of watakushishösetsu, then, I think what is

called the "authentic novel" (honkaku shösetsu) is in a sense just a kind of
watakushishösetsu, but in a twisted manner. [...] For a very short while I
was proud of being called a pure golden watakushishösetsu writer by a late
literary critic. My first novel was fiction, but it was regarded as watakushi-
shösetsu. My start was bizarre and I suffered from its aftermath. I thought I
could take advantage of the watakushishösetsu way of writing and tell lies
that gave an air of authenticity. But this was also a trap. I thought I was
using it, but it ended up by my being controlled by the watakushishösetsu-
framework. Don't you think that there have always been one or two secrets
never told from Tayama Katai to Kawasaki Chötarö? 67
[...] The theme of the novel is the question of whether watakushishösetsu is

possible or not. 68
These remarks are found in the closing part of the novel. The reader fol-
lows the novel, reading it as autobiographical, because, despite different
names, the novel invites him to identify Utsuki with the real author. He is
now told that it is impossible to separate fiction from fact. The author
seems to be cunningly leading critics and readers along a false path of au-
tobiographical truth.
The novel Watakushishösetsu, which can also be pronounced as shi-
shösetsu, is called in the novel "the novel about death" (shishösestu: shi -
65 See Shinchö nihon bungaku jiten, p. 719.

66 Setouchi, Watakushishösetsu, p. 346.
67 Ibid., pp 347-48. Both writers are watakushishösetsu writers.
68 Ibid., p. 349.
50 Noriko Thunman
death, shösestu = novel). 69 The theme of the novel is watakushishösetsu it-

self, Utsuki relates,™ but it is also about death; many deaths of people
around Utsuki—her sister, lover, monks, friends and fellow-writers.
The female writer Utsuki in the novel seriously questions the possibility
of drawing a clear-cut line between fiction and watakushishösetsu. It is ob-
vious that the real writer Setouchi and the protagonist-writer Utsuki are
playing with watakushishösetsu reading and writing conventions. The
novel Watakushishösetsu is called a "novel" (shösetsu), that is, fiction, in
several places in the novel, but the reader cannot neglect all the signals that
invite him to read it autobiographically. The novel is about reminiscences
and reflections on people the protagonist has met, some episodes, her
travel to India and other doings, and reflections on her own past. The tone
of the text is reflective and introspective. We should remember that the real
author and the protagonist-author have both retreated from this world and
become nuns. Some parts of the novel deal with Buddhist episodes and
ideas.
The best kind of watakushishösetsu was said to be the novel of the state
of mind (shinkyö shösetsu) by Kume. Many parts of Setouchi's novel are
good examples of this, especially when reflections turn on death.
However, the protagonist does not seem to have attained enlightenment,
a well-balanced mental tranquility, as one might expect of a nun. This can
also be said about other people whose fates are related by the protagonist.
It is, rather, their passions and sufferings that come to the fore. In spring,
Utsuki always gets depressed. She is not free from her family, earlier rela-
tionships or humiliating memories. She dreams of them at nights, and it
seems as if writing about them is a way of soothing difficult memories, a
way to give them absolution.
At the end, Utsuki and her nephew decide to go on a pilgrimage, and
they meet an old woman who believes her to be a man. This suggests that,
at last, she may be free of her femininity and sexuality. Until then, in the
whole novel, the protagonist-author-nun had been caught by human kar-
ma. The last line suggests that salvation is perhaps awaiting her.
The fact that the novel invites this kind of reading shows that it plays
very skillfully with the watakushishösetsu convention, this time that of the
more reflective, philosophical shinkyö shösetsu.
69 Ibid., p. 115.
70 Ibid., 346: "What did you want to write about?" "About my skepticism that watakushi-
shösetsu does not exist."
It is highly interesting to see that the novel was written as late as the
1980s.71 Utsuki is aware of the impossibility of giving the "absolutely" true
and authentic picture of reality in a novel. In this sense, she is no longer a
watakushishösetsu writer who aspires to tell the truth, believing naively in
the validity of their perspective.
Setouchi's novel is not the only proof that watakushishösetsu critical
meta-narrative is still powerful today. We can see other examples in liter-
ary reviews elsewhere. Just to mention one example, Hayase Kei'ichi
wrote about Hagiwara Yöko's Jinma no ie (The House of Nettles), in
January 1999:
[...] Anyway, a novel moves us deeply when the author uncovers her own
life without reservation (sekirarani) [...] I am impressed by the dense,
heavy content of the novel. Dazai Osamu once said that "writing novels is
like lying naked in the middle of the day on Nihonbashi-bridge [in the very
center of Tokyo]." Of course some parts are fiction, but Hagiwara Yöko is
precisely lying naked in front of people in the middle of the day, and she
does not hide anything. 72
Because the author reveals herself totally in the novel, the reviewer found
the novel really moving.
Yü Miri is another example of a young writer who produces autobio-
graphical novels. A series of her novels and short stories deals with her
family members and her own life. She was prosecuted in 1994 for her first
novel Ishi ni oyogu uo (A Fish Swimming in a Stone) by a woman who had
a tumor on the face and felt her privacy violated in the novel. Yü Miri and
her publisher lost the case in 1999 and the novel had to be withdrawn. She
also lost the case in the second instance (Tokyo Higher Court) in 2001. She
is now appealing to the Supreme Court. Yü Miri's defense strategy was to
emphasize the fictitiousness of literary work. The accuser argued that the
similarities were too apparent, so the novel should be regarded as unethi-
When discussing this case, the question of models and watakushishöse-

tsu blew up once again in journalism. Yü Miri turns round the question of
fiction in creative literary writing. She contradicts herself by saying that
she regards her novels as not belonging to the genre, 73 and at the same time
71 The novel was first published in the magazine Subaru from February 1983 to July 1984.
It first came out in book form in 1985 (Tokyo: Shüeisha). See Setouchi, Watakushi-
shösetsu, p. 355.
72 Hayase Kei'ichi, "Shohyö," Shükan asahi (Asahi Journal), January 1 - 8 (1999), p. 149.
73 Yü Miri and Tsuji Hitonari, "Kaku shika nai"("You Should just Continue Writing"),
Bungakukai (March 1997), p. 130.
52 Noriko Thunman
claiming to love the genre the most, and that all writers inevitably write au-
tobiographically. 74 Fukuda pointed out that the question should be formu-
lated the other way round, as that of realism not only in the genre but also
in modern Japanese literature in general. 75
The examples of Setouchi and Yü show that the watakushishösetsu writ-
ing and reading paradigms are still working powerfully today. This, despite
the fact that the times have changed and with them the social and intellec-
tual environment that gave rise to the genre. The watakushishösetsu critical
discourse formulated the genre characteristics to construct the genre con-
sciousness after the mid-1920s. This was done so successfully that, regard-
less of the disappearance of the specific, time-bound social conditions be-
hind the genre, the genre convention still lives on strongly today.
74 Yu Miri and Fukuda Kazuya, " 'Shuppan sashitome' to 'watakushishösetsu'" ("The

'Suspension of the Publication' and 'Watakushishösetsu' "), Bungakukai (May 2001), p.
202.
75 Ibid.
LENA RYDHOLM
The Theory of Ancient Chinese Genres
Introduction
This is a study of the "genre" concept and of the genre systems in some in-
fluential Chinese literary theories, genre theories and anthologies in pre-
modern times.1 It deals with three central questions. The first is: What kind
of concept of text types or "genres" is found in pre-modern Chinese literary
theories? To answer this question I discuss the concept of wenti (which can
be used in a meaning similar to a common Western concept of genre), the
origin and development of the concept and related terminology. I also dis-
cuss this concept's close relationship to the concepts of style, school and
literature, and to cosmology, music and Confucian values. The second
question is: What is the relationship between the Chinese "genres"? To
answer this question, I discuss the genre systems and the divisional criteria
in some influential pre-modern literary theories and anthologies. I also
comment on different views of genre evolution. The third and final ques-
tion is: Would Chinese literature and Chinese genre concepts present any
obstacles to constructing culturally and historically neutral genre concepts?
This third issue is relevant to the purpose of this entire volume. The differ-
ent terminology, genre concepts, and genre systems in different cultures
have to be considered before defining, if possible, a culturally and histori-
cally "neutral" genre concept and a coherent system of classification of lit-
erary works from different cultures. In facing similar problems, that is, the
pursuit of a universal theory of literature, James Liu wrote:
[...] I would say that just as all literature and art are attempts to express the
inexpressible, so all theories of literature and art are attempts to explain the
inexplicable. If we are willing to accept this paradox and to continue work-
ing towards that remote and admittedly unattainable goal of a universal
1 I thank Professor Göran Malmqvist and Professor Gu Guorui for valuable discussions on
these topics.
54 Lena Rydholm
theory of literature, then we should consider theories from as many differ-

ent literary traditions as possible. 2
The same can be said about the goal of a "universal" genre concept, equal-
ly remote, but still worth trying to pursue. This study presents one piece in
a large puzzle to be put together in comparison with literatures and genre
theories of different cultures.
This study is not a "history of Chinese genre theory" 3 during the past
two and a half millenniums. Nor is Chinese literary theory homogenous,
following a straight linear development. I discuss some central/dominant
discourses in genre theory in a few of the most, according to present Chi-
nese scholars, influential literary theories and anthologies from ancient
times up to about the fall of the last dynasty (1911). I devote more space to
discussing the genre theories and genre systems created in the third to sixth
centuries, since this period showed great innovation in genre theory and
theories of literature. Finally, I make some brief remarks on developments
in genre theories of pre-modern literature in the twentieth century. I try to
describe the genre theories and genre concepts from an "emic" point of
view in the sense that I use the original Chinese genre terms and several
quotations from ancient sources. But in my comments, I use my own, and
some other Westerns scholars', viewpoint. Some important critical com-
ments by modern Chinese scholars will be included. There are problems
related to interpretation and translation that any study of Chinese literary
theory encounters. Ancient Chinese theories are often impressionistic ra-
ther than analytical and written in highly poetic language, sometimes even
in verse. Most of the crucial terms have multiple meanings, and even when
used by the same writer in the same book, they may denote different con-
cepts. In translations, as J. Liu points out:
It is often impossible to draw an equation between a Chinese word and an
English one with not only the same referent but precisely the same implica-
tions and associations, [...] In fact, in Chinese there is no word that is the
exact equivalent, in conception and scope, of "literature," as the word is
commonly used in English today, but there are several Chinese terms that
correspond more or less to it. 4
2 James Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1975), p. 3.
3 This study includes only genre theories about Chinese literature written in Mainland Chi-
na, not theories about the literature written in Chinese outside Mainland China and not
about literature written by minority people in China in their native language.
4 Liu. Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 7.
Nor is there a word that is the exact equivalent of the term "genre" in Chi-
nese, but several terms that correspond more or less to it. In this study, Chi-
nese terms referring to genre, style, literature and the like will be translated
according to context. 5 There are also several possible ways of translating
the traditional genre names, but regardless of the English translation, the
genre per se is not identical with its English counterpart.
Another problem in the study of ancient literary theories is that while the
Chinese characters have undergone little change through thousands of
years, their meanings have evolved. The unchangeability of the Chinese
characters has also given the false impression, among both Chinese and
Western scholars, of the immutability of theoretical concepts. This has led
to conceptual anachronism being performed on ancient texts. Göran Som-
mardal discusses a strategy called the "golden age prospectus," which has
dominated literary theory in China and pre-modern times. 6 In this strategy,
every truth has already been stated in the works of the ancient sages in the
Confucian Classics, and it is merely a question of interpreting them cor-
rectly and applying the knowledge to our present time. In my opinion this
strategy, which is evident already in the genre theories of the third to sixth
century, dominated Chinese literary theory up to the twentieth century. In
this study I face the same problem. I cannot recreate the original historical
context of the ancient texts or retrieve their "true" original meaning. I can
merely read the original text closely and hopefully recover a fragment of
the original meaning of the words and point out the role of these theories in
the evolution of Chinese genre theory.
The Concept of Wenti
The concept most similar to a common Western concept of "genre" in an-

cient Chinese literary theory is the concept of wenti. Just like its Western
counterpart, it is complex and problematic. The Chinese term used in daily
speech today denoting text types, what could be called "genre" is "ticai,"
but there is no "ticailun," that is, "genre theory." In A New English-Chi-
nese Dictionary under "genre" you will find that it is a "French term refer-
ring to the type (leixing); school (liupai)\ style (fengge) of works of litera-
5 All translations of Chinese sources in this text are my own unless otherwise stated.
6 Goran Sommardal, The Empty Palace (PhD diss., Stockholm Univ., 1998), pp. 13-14.
56 Lena Rydholm
ture and art,"7 but none of these three terms are used for something like
"genre theory." For when both ancient and present-day Chinese scholars
and critics discuss issues of text types or "genre," they use the ancient term
wenti, which may roughly be translated as "literary form." But the concept
of wenti has evolved and, as often is the case with terms in Chinese literary
theory, new meanings are added to, rather than replacing, older ones. The
term wenti consists of two syllables/characters: wen and ti. The lexico-
graphical work Ciyuan (The Origins of Words) lists ten meanings of the
character wen,8 the earliest meaning being "combination of colors," a well-
balanced, and thereby beautiful, combination of several colors, a well-
organized, harmonious man-made structure (renwen), (in, for instance, an
art form like music or literature). Wen could also refer to the harmonious
natural order of things (ziran wen). The second meaning of wen, according
to Ciyuan, is "lines/veins, decorative pattern/figure." 9 The third meaning,
finally, is "character/script/writing/written language (wenzi), diction/lan-
guage (wenci)."10 According to James Liu, it was during the second cen-
tury BC that the term wen started to denote something similar to what we
now in English call literature.11 During the Han dynasty the term wen was
used about texts that contained features like embellishments, parallelism
and/or rhyme, texts that seem to be created less for pragmatic purposes
and more for aesthetic ones.12 In this study I will translate wen as "litera-
ture" to simplify the discussion, but the reader should keep in mind that
7 Xin ying han cidian bianxiezu (eds.), Xin ying han cidian: A New English-Chinese Dic-
tionary (Shanghai: Shanghai yiwen chubanshe, [1978] 1979), p. 522. For the origin of
the Western term genre, see Anders Pettersson's article in this volume.
8 Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan and Henan Ciyuan xiudingzu (rev. and eds.), Ciyuan
(Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, [1979] 1987), vol. 2, p. 1356. Bernhard Karlgren lists
the following meanings: "[...] w e n drawn lines, design (Yi); striped (Shu); ornaments,
ornate (Shi); written character (Tso); literary document, literature (Lunyii); accom-
plished (Shi); civil (as opp. to military) (Shi); embellish [...]" Grammata Serica Recensa
(Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri, 1964; reprint, from BMFEA 29, (1957)), p. 130. The
character wen appeared in inscriptions on oracle bones. For a discussion of this charac-
ter, see also Cecilia Lindqvist, Empire of the Living Symbols (Reading MA: Addi-
son-Wesley Publ., 1991), pp. 309-10.
9 The slash (/) indicates that this word in Chinese can be translated into English in alterna-
tive ways.
10 The fourth meaning in Ciyuan is "ritual music system," the fifth is "laws and decrees, ar-
ticle/clause," the sixth is "beauty, goodness," the seventh is "non-military affairs," the
eighth is a certain monetary unit, used "from the time of the Southern and Northern
dynasties," the ninth is "a measure word for textiles," and finally the tenth meaning is "a
surname."
11 Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 8.
12 Ibid.
the common Western concept of literature is not identical to an ancient

concept of wen, nor has the concept of wen been static but has developed
and changed its frame of reference in Chinese literary theory through the
ages.
The second character in the term wenti, "ti," which can refer to what we
can call "genre" today simply in the sense of "text type," is listed with
eleven meanings in CiyuanP The first meaning is "body (shenti)" of hu-
man beings or animals (the whole body or parts of the body). The second
meaning is "the thing-in-itself, subject." The third is "shape, form of uten-
sils," the fourth is "divinatory symbols." The fifth is "rules, customs of
things/affairs." In the sixth meaning we finally find "pattern/type/form,
style in literary works or calligraphy (wenzhang huo shufa de yangshi,
fengge)." Liu Xie (ca. 465-ca. 532) during the Liang dynasty wrote in
Wenxin diaolong (The Book of Literary Design), "Yang Xiong recited [Qu
Yuan's poem 'Lisao'] with appreciation and said it had the same literary
form (ti) as the odes (yd) in 'The Book of Songs' (Shijing).'" 4 The seventh
meaning in Ciyuan is "embody/contain, hold." The eighth is "distinguish/
differentiate, decompose." The ninth is "join/link, be close to." The tenth is
"comprehend, experience and observe." Finally, the eleventh meaning is
"implement, put into practice." We can see how this term originates in de-
noting the concrete body of living beings, then turning into the shape, visu-
al form of things, of objects, moving on to meaning the shape, form, style,
pattern, structure or rule of literary works and other works of art, to later
more abstract meanings like embody, distinguish and the like.
The earliest example of wen and ti being used together listed in Ciyuan
is from the Han dynasty, and it shows that originally this term was closely
connected with the two original meanings of wen and ti, with the meanings
of beauty and the human body, of the shape and visual appearance of the
human body. Ciyuan lists two meanings: firstly "elegant/refined, moder-
ate/moral posture" and finally "types/forms or styles of literary works
(wenzhang de ticai huo fengge)."15 The earliest example listed in Ciyuan
using "wenti" in the latter meaning is found in "Concluding Remarks to the
Biography of Xie Lingyun" by Shen Yue (441-513):
13 Ciyuan, vol. 4, p. 3475. Bernhard Karlgren lists the following meanings: "[...] t'i body
(Tso); limb (Shi); embody (Yi); form, shape (Shi) category, class (Li); indication in divi-
nation (Shi)." Grammata Serica Recensa, p. 160.
14 Liu Xie, "Bian Sao," in Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong, in Zhou Zhenfu (ed.), Wenxin diao-
long jinyi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, [1986] 1998), p. 41.
15 Ciyuan, vol. 2, p. 1363.
58 Lena Rydholm
In the period of m o r e than 4 0 0 years of the H a n and W e i dynasties, profes-

sional and a m a t e u r writers w e n t t h r o u g h three c h a n g e s in their m a n n e r s of
writing [type/form or style], (wenti). S i m a X i a n g r u w a s skilled at the verbal
e m b o d i m e n t of the visual [objects]. B a n B i a o ( 3 - 5 4 A . D . ) and B a n G u w e r e
especially able in the presentation of a r g u m e n t s s e a s o n e d with f e e l i n g s [or
expressing e m o t i o n s in a rational way]. C a o Zhi and W a n g C a n ( 1 7 7 - 2 1 7
A . D . ) w r o t e as their p e r s o n a l qualities dictated and, a l m o s t assertively,
achieved their peculiar c h a r m s : without rivalry they shone in their age and
w e r e c o p i o u s l y copied by their contemporaries. 1 6
It is o b v i o u s t h a t wenti in t h i s t e x t d o e s n o t m e a n " g e n r e " in t h e s e n s e o f

t e x t t y p e s , b u t r a t h e r s o m e t h i n g l i k e " s t y l e , " a n d W o n g t r a n s l a t e s it a s
" m a n n e r s of w r i t i n g . ' " 7 In a n o t h e r p a s s a g e of this text, S h e n Y u e u s e s t h e
t e r m wenti in t h e m e a n i n g o f " v e r s e f o r m . " 1 8 T h e t e r m wenti was also used
b y Z h o n g R o n g ( c a . 4 6 8 - c a . 5 1 8 ) in Shipin ( G r a d i n g s o f Shi-poetry) in a
m e a n i n g s i m i l a r to " s t y l e " :
T h e origins of t h e shi-poetry by S o n g d y n a s t y h o n o r a r y g e n t l e m a n
[awarded b u t declined o f f i c e ] T a o Y u a n m i n g are f o u n d in Y i n g Q u [ ' s
poetry]. In addition they are in line with Z o u S i ' s style (fengli), their style
(wenti) is frugal, there are a l m o s t n o long sentences. 1 9
B u t Z h o n g R o n g a l s o u s e d wenti in t h e s e n s e o f " f o r m a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . " 2 0

T h e m e a n i n g o f wenti in t h e t w o q u o t a t i o n s a b o v e b o t h s e e m c l o s e r t o
" s t y l e " t h a n " g e n r e . " Ciyuan d o e s n o t p r o v i d e a n e a r l y e x a m p l e o f wenti in
t h e m e a n i n g o f t e x t t y p e o r " g e n r e , " t h o u g h it is f r e q u e n t l y u s e d i n t h i s
16 Shen Yue, "Xie Lingyun zhuan lun," in Shen Yue (ed.), Songshu (History of the Song
Dyansty), (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), also in Guo (ed. in chief), Zhongguo lidai
wenlun xuan (Shanghai: Shanghai guiji chubanshe, [1979] 1999), vol. 1, p. 215. English
transl. by Siu-kit Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism (Hongkong: Joint Publ.,
1983), p. 76.
17 On the same page as the quoted text (p.76), Wong translates wen as "style." Wong also
points out that wen can mean "literature in general or prose or poetry in particular" or
"belletristic writing in general." Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 87, note 41.
18 Shen Yue: "But it must be conceded that in the countless years since Qu Yuan, even with
poets who have been punctilious in their use of given verse forms (wenti) the secret (that
metrical beauty is important) has not been known." Shen Yue, "Xie Lingyun zhuan lun,"
in Guo edition, vol 1, p. 216. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism,
p. 79.
19 Zhong Rong, Shipin, in He Wenhuan (ed.), Lidai shiyu, juan zhong, quoted in Guo (ed.),
Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan, vol.1, p. 322. Also quoted in Ciyuan, vol. 2, p. 1363.
20 Zhong Rong: " 'The Ancient poems,' now beclouded by the oblivion of their age, have
become difficult to ascertain in terms of authorship and date of composition. But judging
them by the formal characteristics (wenti), we would arrive at the fairly firm conclusion
that they were the inventions, not of the late Zhou period (approx. 3rd century B.C.), but
of the Fiery Han." "Shipin xu" (Preface to Shipin), in Shipin, in Guo edition, vol. 1, p.
308. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 90.
meaning by Zhong Rong's near contemporary Liu Xie in Wenxin diaolong

(se below), and has continued to denote "genre" in many genre theories up
to our present day. Another lexicographical work, Cihai (The Sea of
Words) lists two meanings of wenti: "style of literary work (wenzhang de
fengge)" and "type of writing/variety of language (yuti)." 21 Modern genre
theorist Zhang Yi explains that the term and concept of wenti has its roots
in ancient Chinese literary theories discussing ti, a term that through the
ages has denoted two "threads of thought." 22 Firstly, ti "is used to separate
kinds of literature," which is the equivalent of the modern Chinese word
ticai "types or forms of literature," that is, "form of literary works" (ti-
shi)P This interpretation of ti, which according to Zhang originates in the
"genre theory" in "The Great Preface" to Shijing (The Book of Songs), has
been used to distinguish literary forms like poetry and prose to create a co-
herent system of text types or "genres" in Chinese literature. Zhang names
eight works on literary theory using ti in this regard, among them Liu Xie's
Wenxin diaolong. The second interpretation of ti is that it is used "to ex-
press the features of an author's individual style, a school or the style of an
era." 24 Zhang uses the term fengge for style. Zhang names only three ex-
amples of such literary theories, one again being Wenxin diaolong. For
Zhang, as for Liu Xie, ti can be used to denote both "style" (today fengge)
and "genre" (today ticai).
In Ciyuan the term ticai means "structure/composition and pruning of a
literary work (wenzhang de jiegou jiancai)."25 The earliest example listed
in Ciyuan, is found in "Concluding Remarks to the Biography of Xie Ling-
yun": "Yan [Yan Yanzhi] controlled the formal requirements (ticai) of his
work with what seems like judicial discipline." 26 In none of the quotations
from Shen Yue's and Zhong Rong's texts above do the terms wenti or ticai
refer to what we today would call "genre" in the sense of "text type." Cihai
lists two meanings of ticai. The first meaning is that of "style of writing,
ornate diction (wenfeng, cicao)," used in ancient literature. The second
meaning is close to a common Western genre concept: "the classes/catego-
21 Cihai bianji weiyuanhui (eds.), Cihai (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, [1979]
1987), vol. xia, p. 3511.
22 Zhang Yi, Wenxue wenti gaishuo (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, [1993]
1996), p. 4.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ciyuan, vol. 4, p. 3476.
26 Shen Yue, "Xie Lingyun zhuan lun," in Guo edition, vol.1, p. 216. English transl. by
Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 78.
60 Lena Rydholm
ries (leibie) of literary works like poetry, novels, drama and prose," catego-
ries that, according to Cihai, evolve with time and can be divided into sub-
categories based on form, theme or basic quality. 27 The wide use of ticai as
"genre" in common speech occurred after the May Fourth Movement in
1919.28 But there still is no "ticai lun" (genre theory), only "theory of liter-
ary form" (wenti lun), and that still involves both "style" and "genre." The
term wenlei is used for "genre" in the sense of "text type" in a few genre
theories of the late twentieth century. 29
In genre theory the multiple meanings of wenti, in my view, prove to be
a problem. But to some Chinese scholars the possibility to use one term si-
multaneously meaning several things is highly desirable and enriches both
the language in itself and our thinking. It gives a large degree of flexibility,
expands possibilities and reveals the true complexity of things. It opposes
over-rigidity, exclusions and one-sidedness, 30 and creates a harmonious
balance between things (like the unity and balance between the opposite
forces of yin and yang in cosmology). The two different meanings are
simply two sides of the same coin. Theories built on such assumptions will
clash with scientific demands on research to clearly define terms. And the
fact that wenti/ti denotes both genre and style has troubled many Chinese
scholars. Some have tried to bridge the gap between genre and style with
the aid of auxiliary concepts/terms. Modern scholar Tong Qingbing is criti-
cal about the concept of "genre style" (wenti fengge), which "some schol-
ars have also forced" on the ancient texts of Cao Pi, Lu Ji and Liu Xie. 31
Tong Qingbing alludes mainly to Wang Yuanhua's interpretations of
Wenxin diaolong (discussed in the following). This concept means, accord-
ing to Tong, that the special content of each genre restricts the style, with-
out taking the author's creativity into account. To sum up, the ancient con-
cept of wenti is highly complex. It is obvious that there is a need to distin-
27 Cihai, vol. shang, p. 522.

28 According to Professor Gu Guorui. Personal communication, September 2000. The May
Fourth Movement was partly a cultural movement and has been seen as a "literary revo-
lution" inspired by Western theories and literature, by liberation of the individual and
"art for art's sake." Leading writers began to strive for an individual aesthetic expression
and style in literature, especially in the novel; they aimed at experimentation, pluralism
and creative freedom. See, for instance, Tse-Tsung Chow, The May Fourth Movement:
Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford UP, [1960] 1967).
29 For instance, Tao Dongfeng, Wenti yanbian ji qi wenhua yiwei, Wentixue congshu Series
(Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, [1994] 1999), p. 42.
30 According to Professor Gu Guorui. Personal communication in September, 2000.
31 Tong Qingbing, Wenti yu wenti de chuangzao, Wentixue congshu Series (Kunming:
Yunnan renmin chubanshe, [1994] 1999), p. 22.
guish the concepts of "genre" and "style," since the terms ticai/wenlei and
fengge are increasingly used for these concepts to distinguish them both in
Chinese literary theory and in common speech today.
The Concept of Wenti in the Pre-Qin Era
In the pre-Qin era (up to 221 BC) there were great philosophical and his-
torical works, and poetry, the five Classics, 32 and basically everything in
writing was regarded as wen. A concept of wenti in the sense of text types
existed much earlier than the time of the Southern dynasties, when the term
appeared. This is evident from the editorial work in the earliest collections
of (what is today labelled) prose and poetry, compiled presumably in the
pre-Qin period "Spring and Autumn" (770-476 BC). Shujing/Shangshu
(The Book of Documents) is the earliest extant historical record and collec-
tion of shorter essays, "prose" texts. Shijing (The Book of Songs) is the
oldest collection of shi-poetry. This Classic contains literary folk songs,
dynastic hymns, religious odes and the like. 33 Anthologists, writers and
readers had some recognition of at least two literary forms, what we today
would label poetry and prose, since texts were divided into two categories
and fitted into separate collections. Within these collections there are fur-
ther subdivisions. In "The Great Preface" to the Mao edition of Shijing, the
most important thesis on literary theory and poetics in ancient Chinese lit-
erary history, the poems are divided into three types or "genres": "airs"
ifeng), "elegantiae" (ya) and "laudes" (song)?4 The section "Airs of the
32 The Five Classics: Shijing (The Book of Songs), Shujing (The Book of Documents), Yi-
jing (The Book of Changes), Li (The Book of Rites) and Chunqiu (The Spring and Au-
tumn Annals).
33 Allegedly, the main part of Shangshu was written during the Zhou dynasty (the Spring
and Autumn period), an edition long lost. Later, two ancient editions of Shangshu ap-
peared, one from the Han dynasty, the Jimven Shangshu, allegedly true to the original
edition, which according to the record in Honshu was edited by Confucius. The other
edition, Guwen shangshu, was compiled in the Tang dynasty, based on an edition sup-
posedly older than the Jimven edition. Many scholars now consider Guwen shangshu to
be a falsification. In any case, Shangshu is at least as old as the Han dynasty. Most
pre-Qin literary works underwent some revision by Han dynasty scholars. Shijing, the
oldest shi poetry collection, was presumably compiled (allegedly also by Confucius) dur-
ing the Zhou dynasty between 1000 and 600 BC.
34 Haun Saussy's translation of these terms, in Haun Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese
Aesthetic (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993), p. 79. The three terms are listed as part of "The
Six Arts/Principles" (liuyi) of poetry, which also contains what is labeled by Wong as
62 Lena Rydholm
State" (Guofeng) contains folk songs from different regions, the "laudes"
are dynastic hymns of Shang and Zhou and songs and dances to worship
spirits and ancestors. The "elegantiae" are mainly songs of the imperial
court about the fate of states (depending on the rulers' morals). The "ele-
gantiae" are divided into two subcategories, "lesser" (xiaoya) and "greater"
elegantiae (daya). In "The Great Preface" the three categories are ex-
plained as follows:
The government employs the popular song (feng) to influence the people.
The governed employ it for the purpose of offering barbed admonition to
their princes [...] The word 'serious' (ya) connotes the 'proper,' the 'cor-
rect' (zheng). 'Serious songs' deal with the presence or absence of kingly
rule. Now, as kingly rule can be of either a major or a minor order, 'serious
songs' are respectively divided into two categories: the major ones and the
minor ones. As for 'ceremonial songs,' they are a glorification of the mani-
festations of great virtue, they are also an account to the gods of triumphs
won. 35
The poems in Shijing are presumed to have been sung to music and the
"laudes" also involved some kind of dancing. 36 However, the tunes were
lost before the Han dynasty, 37 when the term shi, which rather meant "song
lyrics," came to denote poetic forms, four- and five-syllabic verse not sung
to music. Shi was to become the generic name for poetry in general. Some
scholars believe that the division into feng, ya and song is based on the
type of melodies, others believe it concerns their different educational
functions. Kong Yingda (574-648) claimed that the "airs" were written to
"tunes of different regions," while the music for the "elegantiae" and the
"laudes" were "composed for the ancient kings as they travelled to inspect
three "rhetorical styles." Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 53-54, note 4.
These three terms are translated by Haun Saussy as "comparison" {bi), "allusion/evoca-
tion" (xing) and "exposition" (fit). Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic, p. 79.
For a brief discussion of these terms, see also Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism,
p. 6, note 8. Ferenc Tökei translates feng as "song," ya as "ode," song as "hymn," fu as
"description," bi as "comparison" and xing as "allegory," in Ferenc Tökei, Genre The-
ory in China in the 3rd-6th Centuries, Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica XV (Budapest:
Akademiai Kiado, 1971), p. 33.
35 Anonymous, "Mao shi xu" ("The Great Preface"), in Guo (ed.), Zhongguo lidai wenlun
xuan, vol.1, p. 63. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 2-3.
Tradition attributes this preface to one of Confucius' disciples, but most scholars now
think it is of later date, probably from the Han dynasty. Ibid., ρ 12.
36 Chu Binjie, Zhongguo gudai wenti gailun (zengding ben), (Beijing: Beijing daxue chu-
banshe, [1990] 1997), p. 5.
37 James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Bibliographies,
Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies vol. Ill (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, [1953] 1971),
p. 3.
the world." 38 Kong's statement is of later date than Shijing itself, but it is
safe to say that music and poetry shared a close relationship from the very
beginning and this often affected genre distinctions. "The Great Preface"
bears a great resemblance to Yueji (The Music Memorial). Music and
poetry both shared an affinity with cosmology and Daoism. They were
both outlets for cravings for expression, reflected the state of affairs and
the substance of the moral rule, and had a primarily didactic function. 39
"The Great Preface" establishes the didactic function of poetry originating
in Confucian doctrine. 40 Poetry is seen as an educational tool to spread
Confucian moral values and knowledge. It is also a vehicle for political
and social comment. The didactic view of the function of poetry became a
paradigm in Chinese theories of literature in pre-modern times (even late
into the twentieth century) and it became the foundation of the concept of
literature (wen) in many literary theories, genre theories and genre systems.
Literature was up to the late Qing dynasty (that fell in 1911), seen by the
literati-bureaucrats as a vehicle for the Confucian way (dao) and as a
means to maintain order under heaven. 41 "The Great Preface" begins with
the following words on the genesis and function of poetry and its relation-
ship to music and cosmology:
'Guan ju' is (a reflection on) the virtues of the Empress. It is placed at the
beginning of the Feng section (of the Shijing)·, its purport is to influence
ifeng) the entire world in the rectification of the relationship between hus-
bands and wives. The poem is as valid to the humblest dwellers of villages
as it is of ceremonial use on national occasions. The word ' f e n g ' means
'influence'; by extension it means 'teaching.' Men are affected by influ-
ences, they are educated through teaching. Poetry is the forward movement
of the activities of the mind: (in other words) the activities of the mind, once
verbalised, becomes poetry. When the emotions within one are stimulated
into activity, they assume verbal forms. [...] Thus human emotions are
sometimes verbalised. When the verbalisation takes on a recognizable pat-
38 Kong Yingda (574-648) in his commentary on "The Great Preface" to the Mao edition
of Shijing. English transl. by Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic, p. 81.
39 Sommardal, The Empty Palace, pp. 89-92.
40 In Lunyu (The Analects), in Sibu beiyao (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1965). This is
a collection of sayings and dialogues by Confucius and his disciples, compiled after the
master's death in 479 BC. In Lunyu, poetry is described as the major pedagogical tool of
Confucianism. It is used not only for conversation, but also as a medium to spread moral
thoughts and knowledge. For an English version, see Arthur Waley (trans.), The Analects
of Confucius (London: Unwin Hyman, [1938] 1988).
41 For a more detailed description of the Confucian view of the nature and function of lit-
erature as incorporated in a so called Central Tradition, see Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft,
A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: The Univ. of Michigan, 1997), chaps. 3-5.
64 Lena Rydholm
tern, it becomes melodic. In times of peace, the melodies (we hear) sound
contented and joyful: we see in them signs of good government. In times of
war, the melodies (we hear) are plaintive or agitated: in them we recognize
signs of bad government. And at the fall of a nation, the melodies (we hear)
are sorrowful and contemplative: in them we detect the distress of the
people. Therefore, nothing rights what is wrong, nothing moves heaven and
earth, nothing touches the gods and the spirits as much as poetry can. The
former kings used poetry for the regulation of proper relationships between
husbands and their wives, for the establishment of a sense of respect and
loyalty for the old, for reinforcement of human bonds, for the amelioration
of civilised life and for the removal of bad customs. 42
Chinese scholars stress the importance of the generic division of "airs,"

"elegantiae" and "laudes" in Shijing on the development of genres and
genre theory. In Göran Sommardal's view, the origins of the Chinese liter-
ary genres are related to social communication and social functions. 43 In a
commentary on one poem, there is a description of the "Nine Abilities" (jiu
neng) essential for becoming a true gentleman of the ruling class (some
concerned the ability to express oneself in speech and writing). 44 Som-
mardal claims that some abilities "crystallized" into literary genres listed in
anthologies and literary theories of later date, for instance the "inscription"
0ming), the "parentation" (lei), the "oration" (shuo), the "oath" (shi) and
the "recitatio" (/w).45 These terms are obviously identical to genre terms in
later theories, but it is unlikely that the concepts they denote would be ex-
actly the same in literary theories in the sixth century CE, like Xiao Tong's
Wenxuan. The fu, for instance, had a long and heterogeneous history of
development and many scholars today believe that it originates not in the
terminology used in "The Great Preface" to Shijing, but rather in the
42 "Mao shi xu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, p. 63. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Lit-
erary Criticism, pp. 1-2.
43 Sommardal relates that the eighty-four literary forms in Ren Fang's (460-508) inventory
list are derived from the name of a person or the communication between officials or
ministers and rulers, with the exception of yuefu, labeled "old verse." Sommardal, The
Empty Palace, p. 133, quoting Ren Fang, Wenzhang yuanqi, in Zeng Yongyi, Ke Qing-
ming (eds.), Zhongguo wenxue piping ziliao huibian [I]: Liang Han Wei Jin Nanbei
chao (Taibei, 1978), pp. 274-76.
44 The commentary on the poem "Ding zhi fang zhong" in the "Yongfeng" ("Songs of
Yong") section in the Mao edition of Shijing. For a discussion of these "Nine Abilities,"
see Sommardal, The Empty Palace, pp. 132-34.
45 Sommardal translates/« as "recitatio" in its sense of a literary genre. Fu appears in "The
Great Preface" of the Mao edition of Shijing as one of the "Six Arts," referring to a de-
scriptive mode of poetic representation. The Empty Palace, p. 133. Saussy translates this
meaning of fu as "exposition." The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic, p. 79.
5ao-genre/"songs of Chu" (Chuci) presumably created by Qu Yuan (329-

299 BC) and Song Yu in the State of Chu.46
In Shangshu, the prose texts in the Shang and Zhou dynasties' section
were written by officials in charge of history writing. This Classic included
about fifty texts (or fifty-six depending on how some texts are divided) in
six categories of writing. The main part of these texts were either docu-
ments used in politics and administration, such as imperial orders, adminis-
trative rules, examination of government officials, state officials' reports
on battle movements, or historical records. 47 The texts in Shangshu are
mainly upper-rank addressing lower-rank officials and the division into
categories is based on a combination of the relationship between the writer
and the intended reader and the content of the text, resulting in different
forms or modes of expression. The Shangshu was regarded as an authentic
record of the lives, deeds and words of the wise ancient rulers and minis-
ters, to be used as examples and studied by future emperors and literati/
bureaucrats of the ruling class to be able to conduct good government and
maintain order under heaven. From the viewpoint of present scholars, the
texts in Shangshu are not literature. Anthologists at the time had a prag-
matic concept of genre. Texts were divided into two categories, which we
now label prose and s/zj-poetry, presumably based on function and compo-
sition, and even further divided into subgenres, 48 but there was no division
into what we may call literary and non-literary texts, either in Shangshu or
Shijing. There were statements on literary form in Shangshu: "In ruling the
important thing is stability, in writings the important thing is the form
[style or genre] (i/)."49 Somewhat later, a statement in Mozi'· "Writing a text
and not understanding its kind (lei), this must really be difficult." 50 These
statements were the embryos of "genre theory" (wenti lun) in Mainland
46 Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature, p. 26. Sao-poetry is named after Qu Yuan's fa-
mous poem "Lisao."
47 In ancient times Shangshu was seen as "an authentic record of the words and deeds of the
ancient rulers." Idema and Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature, p. 77. Shangshu is divid-
ed into four sections (the four dynasties Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou) but the first two are
considered additions by later Confucians. In the latter Shang and Zhou parts, there are six
categories of texts included: dian, ηιο, gao, xun, shi, ming. The categorical terms dian,
gao, shi and ming are also found in Liu Xie's genre division in Wenxin diaolong in the
sixth century, but the concepts that they denote had probably changed.
48 Tong, Wenti..., p. 14.
49 The "Bi ming" section of Shangshu. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 10.
50 The philosopher Mo Di (? - 392 BC) or Mozi (master Mo), founder of the Mohist
school, quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 11. The name of the collection of writings of this
school is Mozi.
66 Lena Rydholm
China. 51 They show that literary form was of great importance to antholo-
gists and writers in the pre-Qin era.
Genre Division During the Han Dynasty

(206 BC-AD 220)
During the Western Han dynasty (206 B C - A D 48) a specific written lan-
guage developed, increasingly different from the vernacular (baihua). It
was called "language of texts" (wenyan). Only the rich and the ruling class
had the time and economic means to learn how to read and write, and this
was not only the prerequisite for becoming a writer, but more importantly
the ticket to a career as a government official, to wealth and power. To
work in the bureaucracy, knowledge of the Classics and of how to write of-
ficial documents used in politics and administration was required, and this
ability in the applicants was tested through the imperial civil service ex-
aminations.'52 The applicants needed models to study, so important texts
were increasingly categorized, anthologized and imitated. The earliest
"genre theory" and genre divisions in China are found in prefaces to col-
lections, anthologies, theories of literature, remarks in philosophical and
historical works, literary criticisms and commentaries, written by these lit-
erati/bureaucrats. Genre theories in their own right did not occur until the
third century. Ban Gu's (AD 32-92) historical record, Hanshu (History of
the Han dynasty), includes some prose texts and poems. It also contains a
record of writers and texts, both of what we would call literary and non-
literary texts, divided into six categories (liie): the Six Arts (The Classics),
the philosophers, shi- and /«-poetry, warfare, mathematics/cosmology and
crafts/ medicine. 53 The poetry collection Shijing (the Book of Songs) is list-
ed among the Classics. The fu-poems are divided into four major subcate-
gories. Three of these are further divided into twenty, twenty-one and
51 Tong, Wenti..., p. 11.

52 For a detailed description of the traditional Chinese society with regard to language, lit-
eracy, culture, the relationship between literature and government, state ideology (the so
called Central Tradition, based in Confucianism), the study, practice and censorship of
literature, the bureaucratic career, the state examinations etc., see Idema and Haft, A
Guide to Chinese Literature, chaps. 1-5.
53 Ban Gu, "Yiwen zhi," in Ban Gu, Hanshu (History of the Han dynasty), juan 30,
(Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, [1962] 1975), vol. 3, pp. 1701-1781. The six categories (liu
liie) consist of twenty-eight "kinds" (zhong), and 596 "schools" (/7a) are distinguished.
Ban Gu, p. 1781.
twenty-five minor subcategories respectively, basically through listing each

writer and his works separately. The fourth major subcategory of fu-poetry,
called "miscellaneous," is further divided into twelve minor subcategories,
mainly based on function and content. In the shi- and /«-category, shi refers
to "song poetry/songs" (geshi), and these songs are divided into twenty-eight
minor subcategories, based mainly on theme or region of origin.
Genre Theories During Wei, Jin and the Six Dynasties

(220-581)
In this period literature flourished, new literary forms developed—such as

parallel prose and poetic forms making use of the four speech tones—and
new concepts of wen were in the making. The Six Dynasties was the period
in which literature has been accused of being most decadent and worthless,
by contemporaries and later critics. Fw-poetry was criticized for being
empty word play and the palace-style shi-poetry for being erotic. But it is
also the time of great development of literary and genre theories and has
been considered the period in which literature acquired "self-awareness."
Precisely this "decadent" literature showed that there was more to litera-
ture than moral instruction and social comment, that beauty has a value,
that literature could have an aesthetic purpose. Attempts were made by
Xiao Tong, Liu Xie and others to distinguish what we today would say are
literary from non-literary texts. There was an abundance of anthologies, lit-
erary critique and treatises on literary theory, some discussing literature
(wen) as an art form, as a medium for self-expression, and not merely as a
mirror of the world or a tool for moral education. The authors of these
theses and anthologies were writers/state officials, influenced by the an-
cient tradition of book cataloging and bureaucratic practices. Many literary
theories included genre theory and genre systems, but these were function-
alistic and served utilitarian purposes in government administration. Major
importance was placed on distinguishing "prose" genres, that is, all kinds
of documents used in politics and administration, based on function, and
prescriptive genre descriptions instructed people how to write appropriate-
ly in these forms. This led to "prose" being divided into more and more
categories and subcategories. Functionalistic genre classification became
an important part of Chinese literary theory. It was put into practice in gov-
ernment administration and politics, and also in the imperial civil service
examination system (abolished in the early twentieth century).
68 Lena Rydholm
Cao Pi's "Lun wen" (Essay on Literature)
During the Wei dynasty, Cao Pi (187-226; emperor Wen of Wei) wrote his
influential "Essay on Literature," the earliest extant essay devoted to litera-
ture. Cao discusses, for example, the function of literature, the relationship
between the author's character and his style and the basic features of the
genres. On the one hand, he continued the Confucian tradition of stressing
the relationship between literary writings and the wellbeing and ruling of
the state, supporting its close relationship to politics and administration.
On the other hand, he did not view the literary work as a mere mirror of so-
cial reality; rather it reflected the author's personality. Cao Pi claimed that
the most important quality in literature is "vital spirit" (qi), which is close-
ly related to the author's character (which is inborn and unchangeable,
originating in the two cosmological forces of yin and yang).54 The idea of
equating the author's character and his literary style was later developed by
Liu Xie in Wenxin diaolong and became a paradigm in literary theory in
pre-modern times. The function of literature (wen), according to Cao Pi,
was for the author to gain fame and immortality, not merely moral educa-
tion. Thereby "individual expression" finally became a recognized value in
literary texts. 55 Cao Pi's division included four major categories, each con-
sisting of two conventional text types or "genres." 5fi He summed up the
standard requirements for each category:
It is the case that the root of literature is the same, but it contains different
branches, in fact memorials and interpellations (zou, yi) should be refined,
letters and treatises (shu, lun) must contain reason, inscriptions and parenta-
tions [over the dead] (ming, lei) should be factual and .v/if-poetry and
/«-poetry ( s h i , f u ) should be magnificent. 5 7
54 Cao Pi, "Lun wen," in Cao Pi, Dianlun (Classical Theories), in Xiao Tong (ed.),
Wenxuan (also called Zhaoming wenxuan), Sibu beiyao (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shu-
ju, 1965), also in Guo (ed.), Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan, vol. 1, PP- 158-59. Only the
"Lun wen" section of Dianlun has been preserved in Zhaoming wenxuan.
55 Chu, Zhongguo gudai..., p. 17.
56 In the case of the major poetic genres like shi, fu and ci, I keep the original Chinese term
followed by "poetry." For most of the prose forms I use the English terms in Shi-hsiang
Chen's translation of Lu Ji's "Wenfu," "Essay on Literature," in Cyril Birch (ed.), An-
thology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century (New York:
Grove Press, 1965), pp. 208-09.
57 Cao Pi, "Lun wen," in Guo edition, vol. 1, p. 158. The genre names have been translated
in a number of ways. Wong used "official memorials" (zou), "discourses on state mat-
ters" (yi), "letters" (shu) "essays" (lun) and "elegiac and other inscriptions" (ming, lei).
Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 20. Tökei translates zou as "memorandum," yi as
"advisory paper," lun as "essay" and lei as "elegy," and fu as "description." Genre Theo-
ry in China..., p. 57.
According to Cao Pi, these four categories differed so widely that writers
tended to excel in writing in only one of them, since it would "take a
genius" to master them all.58 Ferenc Tökei points out that Cao Pi, as an
"enlightened Confucian," put the political genres before the "beautiful" po-
etic forms of shi and fu, "judging political, philosophical and virtue-glori-
fying conceptualism prior to mere 'beauty'." 59 At the top of the list Cao put
the "memorials" (zou, used for presenting opinions to the emperor) and the
"interpellations" (yi, the discourses on state matters). These are followed
by the "letters" (shu) and the "treatises" (lun). Then he listed the "inscrip-
tions" (ming, biographies of important people carved on their gravestones
or placed inside the tomb) and the "parentations" (lei, highly emotional
elegies mourning someone's death). In final place he listed the shi-poetry
(the poetic form originating in the songs of Shijing), the /«-poems (rhym-
ing prose). By including only eight genres, Cao Pi appears to have drawn a
line between what we today would call literary and non-literary texts, but
by including forms used in politics and administration, he set a standard for
a broad concept of literature (wen) used in many subsequent genre theo-
ries. These eight basic conventional genres appear in almost all anthologies
and genre divisions up to modern times. The first four genres Cao listed
did not have rhymes, while the latter four did, thereby perhaps preparing
for later divisions of literature based on rhyming versus non-rhyming texts
(in Wenxin diaolong).
Cao Pi's manner of discourse is prescriptive, advising writers how to
write. It is a functionalistic genre system. His purpose is utilitarian rather
than analytical. Genre standards are brief, one word for each category.
Two of the required features presumably concern content, while the other
two, "refined" and "magnificent/beautiful" (li), presumably concern lan-
guage (in an abstract sense, in the overall impression of style). Cao was
progressive in advocating aesthetic values for shi- and/ii-poetry. "Beauty"
was of secondary importance in traditional Confucian poetics, in which the
primary function of poetry was moral instruction. In this way Cao Pi pre-
pared for later theories stressing the aesthetic function of literature such as
Lu Ji's. Modern Marxist critics like Ferenc Tökei have criticized Cao for
rejecting the didactic and moralizing approach of Confucian aesthetics and,
consequently, rejecting a historical approach and failing to see that litera-
ture reflects social reality. 60 But Cao Pi's lack of interest in the "social de-
58 Cao Pi, "Lun wen," in Guo edition, vol. I, p. 158.

59 Tökei, Genre Theory in China..., p. 58.
60 Ibid., p. 59.
70 Lena Rydholm
terminedness of literature" and "unhistorical nature," in Tökei's words,

seems to me rather to be a merit, since it is hard to imagine a "self-aware-
ness" of literature without allowing it some independence. The poet is not
simply a medium, a mirror of socio-economic conditions, and the time had
come for literature and literary theory to finally start to break away from
the Confucian-cosmological relationship, although it never completely
succeeded in doing so before the twentieth century.
Lu Ji's "Wenfu" (Rhymed Prose on Literature)
In the early days of the Jin dynasty, Lu Ji (261-303), a high official and
poet, wrote "Rhymed Prose on Literature," the first literary critique to sys-
tematically discuss the nature and function of literature (wen), the process
of literary creation, literary genres and their basic features. Lu Ji described
ten genres, compared to Cao Pi's four categories (eight conventional gen-
res). Six of the genre names in these two works are identical (yi and shu
were substituted by bei, song, zhen and shuo). Lu Ji claims that, since the
objects of the external world have infinite shapes, literary texts describing
them also have to take on different shapes suited to the object of descrip-
tion. His genre descriptions are brief, but more elaborate than Cao Pi's (us-
ing four characters instead of one), and each genre is discussed separately
(not in pairs as Cao Pi did):
The lyric (shih), born of [expresses] pure emotion, is gossamer fibre woven
into the finest fabric; / The exhibitory essay ifu), being true to the objects, is
vividness incarnate; / In monumental inscriptions (pei) rhetoric must be a
foil to facts; / The elegy (lei) tenderly spins out ceaseless heartfelt grief. /
The mnemonic (ming) is a smooth flow of genial phrases, succinct but preg-
nant; / The staccato cadences of the epigram (chen) are all transparent force.
/ While eulogy (sung) enjoys the full abandon of grand style, / The exposi-
tory (lun) must in exactitude and clarity excel. / The memorial (tsou), bal-
anced and lucid, must be worthy of the dignity of its royal audience, / The
argument (shuo) with glowing words and cunning parables persuades. /
Meticulous as these classifications are, / Lest passion and thought, given
free rein, may wantonly go astray, / The maxim: Let Truth in terms most
felicitous be spoken, / While of verbiage beware. 61
61 Lu Ji, "Wenfu," in Xiao Tong (ed.), Wenxuan, also in Guo (ed.), Zhongguo lidai wenlun
xuan, vol. 1, p. 171-72. English transl. by Chen, "Essay on Literature," pp. 208-09.
Wong translates some genre names differently: "rhymed descriptions" for fu, "stone in-
scriptions" for bei, "inscriptions" for ming, "cautions" for zhen, "glorification poems"
for song, "discourses" for lun, "memorials for the throne" for zou and finally "persuasive
essays" for shuo. Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 43^14.
Lu Ji's genre requirements are, just like Cao Pi's, prescriptive from the
writer's viewpoint, but also contain an element of stylistic impression from
the reader's, Lu Ji's, viewpoint. Just as in Cao Pi's genre standards, there is
no unified criterion, they involve function, content, rhetoric, linguistic fea-
tures, style and the like. Several requirements seem to involve linguistic
features, but are, just like Cao's, abstract, based on an overall impression.
This genre division amounts to an impressionistic description of what we
may call genre styles. Lu Ji basically adheres to the Confucian, didactic
view of the function of literature, stressing the importance of the con-
tent/message in literature. He also grasped the universal and timeless as-
pects of literature:
The use of literature (wen) / Lies in its conveyance of every truth. / It

expands the horizon to make space infinite, / And serves as a bridge that
spans a myriad years. / It maps all roads and paths for posterity, / And mir-
rors the images of worthy ancients, / That the tottering Edifices of the sage
kings of antiquity may be reared again. / And their admonishing voices,
wind-borne since of yore, may resume full expression.62
Lu Ji contributed to elevating the status of poetic genres by turning Cao

Pi's genre list upside down, listing the poetic genres before the administra-
tive/political ones. Contrary to the Confucian view that λ/z/-poetry should
express good and moral thoughts (shi yan zhi), Lu Ji stressed the aesthetic
qualities of poetry and the joy of writing and claimed, "shi expresses emo-
tion {shi yuan qing)." As opposed to Cao Pi, who discussed shi- and/w-po-
etry as one category, Lu Ji explained the difference between these genres
in function and object of description. Shi-poetry conveyed the inner emo-
tions while /«-poetry was used to describe the external objects. Some
scholars claim that Lu Ji recognized the lyrical function of λ/i/-poetry and
the narrative of yw-poems. 63 Lu Ji also discussed the relationship between
language, meaning and the external world/object of description. Although
he, like traditional Confucian critics, also saw the author as a kind of me-
dium, he was aware that there is craftsmanship involved in the writing
process. He claimed, "the ways of employing words and forming expres-
sions are indeed infinitely varied," and when composing complained:
"Constantly present is the feeling of regret that the meaning apprehended
does not represent the objects observed; and, furthermore, words fail to
62 Lu Ji, "Wenfu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, ρ 175. English transl. by Chen, "Essay on Litera-
ture," p. 214.
72 Lena Rydholm
convey the meaning." 64 This shows that Lu Ji did not view content and ex-
pression as inseparable, as did later proponents of a monistic view of style.
"Wenfu" is written in rhymed prose and is quite lyrical in style, but Lu Ji
manages to be precise and structured in his line of thought. He shows that
there is no clear-cut line between Chinese literature and literary theory.
Zhi Yu's Wenzhang liubie ji

(Anthology of Literary Development and Genealogy)
In the Western Jin dynasty, Zhi Yu (d. 311) compiled "Anthology of Liter-
ary Development and Genealogy," 65 in which texts were arranged accord-
ing to genre. The chapter entitled "Thesis" ("Lun"), has been considered
the first work solely devoted to "genre theory" (wenti lun) (since Lu and
Cao discussed genres in the context of literature). Zhi Yu discussed the
origins, development and features of at least eleven genres, 66 listed famous
pieces as examples and used historical sources. Zhi Yu's thesis is a perfect
example of the combination of a traditional Confucian view of the function
of literature, a purely functionalistic view of literary genres and the close
relationship between cosmology, music and poetry (echoing "The Great
Preface"):
Literature serves the purpose of proclaiming the phenomena of Heaven and
Earth, of making manifest the order in human relationships, and of deter-
mining the right and the appropriate of all things (in the universe). When
munificence of the Prince cascades (on the commoners), poems (shi) are
composed. The achievement of victories occasions the writing of poems of
glorification or the 'ceremonial' (song). The attainment of particular virtues
and triumphs calls for the designing of inscriptions (ming). And the death of
good and admired persons demands the collection of elegies (lei). It is the
responsibility of the official chronicler, who also takes charge of religious
rituals, to present to his liege words (of wisdom). At court, every servant of
the sovereign should counsel [zhen] his lord. [...] In ancient times sa-
gacious Emperors and just Kings inspired the writing of 'ceremonial'
poetry with their triumphs over enemies and the establishment of stable
rule. The poems thus written were recorded by official chroniclers, pro-
64 Lu Ji, in the preface to "Wenfu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, ρ 170. English transl. by Chen,
"Essay on Literature," p. 204.
65 This anthology is long lost, but what is possibly its preface "Wenzhang liubie lun,"
survived in incomplete state in colletaneas such as Beitang shuchao, Yiwen leiju and
Taiping yulan. Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 65.
vided with melodies by expert musicians, and performed in ancestral

temples so that the gods and spirits were respectfully informed. In short, the
'ceremonial' poems were reserved for the praise of the wise kings (and
emperors) on account of their deeds of virtue. 67
Marxist critic Tökei appreciates Zhi Yu's theory since he makes the Con-
fucian perception of social determination the foundation of his genre theo-
ries and provides a historical approach to poetic genres. 68 It seems to me
that compared to Lu Ji, Zhi Yu is utterly conservative turning genre theory
into a direct implementation of the traditional, Confucian, didactic view of
function of literature. Zhi Yu, like many traditionalists, glorified the poetry
of ancient times. In Zhi Yu's view Shijing is the source, the origin of all
proper literary forms. The ancient/«-rhymed prose was a kind of subcate-
gory that, in the same manner as Shijing, was based on the expression of
true emotions in a proper manner. The best /«-poems were the Songs of
Chu (Chuci) by Qu Yuan, so Zhi Yu did not recognize sao-poetry as a gen-
re of its own. Zhi saw the development of the fu-genre as a process of de-
generation from the pure literature of the past, conveying true emotions in
a frugal, economizing language, to a superficial, formalist rhymed prose
void of emotions. 69 Zhi clearly preferred genres to be static.
Zhong Rong's Shipin (Gradings of Shi-poetry)
During the Liang dynasty, Zhong Rong (ca. 468-ca. 518) wrote his influ-
ential literary critique Shipin. Zhong Rong was a traditionalist in his way
of explaining the genesis of poetry, the poet's role as a cosmological
medium and the close relationship between poetry and music (though he
wanted to disrupt the latter relationship). 70 Zhong Rong's "Preface" is not
about genre theory, he does not focus on genre names, origins and distinc-
tions, but he emphasizes the formal aspects of poetry. Zhong argues that
67 Zhi Yu, "Wenzhang liubie lun," in Guo (ed.), Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan, vol. 1, p.
190. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 61-62. In Guo's edi-
tion, the fragments of this text in different collectaneas are put together as one, more or
less, coherent text. These fragments do of course not give us the full picture of Zhi Yu's
views on literature and genre, but I do think that this quote does justify the interpretation
that Zhi Yu basically represented a traditional Confucian view of the function of litera-
ture.
68 Tökei, Genre Theory in China, p. 79.
69 Zhi Yu, "Wenzhang liubie lun," in Guo edition, vol.1, pp. 190-91.
70 Zhong Rong, "Shipin xu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, pp. 308 and 311.
74 Lena Rydholm
five-character verse is different from and superior to the earlier four-char-

acter verse of Shijing.11 The number of characters per line became an im-
portant criterion for distinguishing poetic genres in genre systems.
Xiao Tong's Wenxuan (A Selection of Literary Works)
Anthologies have played a major role in Chinese literary theory, especially

in genre theory.72 A huge anthology of seven hundred and sixty-one
pre-Liang dynasty prose texts, shi and/«-poems by one hundred and thirty
authors, arranged according to genre, 73 Wenxuan (or Zhaoming Wenxuan),
was compiled by Xiao Tong (501-531; Prince of the Liang dynasty, post-
humous name Zhaoming) and his co-editors. The concept of literature
(wen), genre theory and genre system in Wenxuan became a model for edi-
tors of anthologies and influenced writers, critics, students preparing for
civil service examinations, officials and so on up to the fall of the last
dynasty in 1911.
In the preface to Wenxuan, written mainly in parallel prose, Xiao distin-
guishes thirty-eight literary forms, eleven of which are not exemplified by
texts in the anthology, which includes thirty-seven genres. 74 The first four
genres listed are /«-poetry, s/zj'-poetry, sao-poetry and "sevens" (qi, a kind
of /«-poetry with the word seven in the title). Most of the categories are
prose texts classified according to function, like memorials (zou), petitions
(biao) and so on. These official "prose" texts were listed in three groups:
71 Ibid., p. 309.
72 This study includes only some of the most influential literary theories and anthologies
concerned with genre theory and genre division. For a more complete list of anthologies
and literary theories relevant to genre theory from Xiao Tong's Wenxuan up to the early
twentieth century, see Chu, Zhongguo..., pp. 497-525.
73 Chu, Zhongguo..., p. 499.
74 The anthology Wenxuan contains thirty-seven categories: fu, shi, sao, qi, zhao, ce, ling,
jiao, cewen, biao, shang shu, qi, tanshi, jian, zou ji, shu, xi, duiwen, she lun, ci, xu, song,
zan, fu ming, shi lun, shi shu zan, lun, lianzhu, zhen, ming, lei, ai, bei, mu, zhi, xing
zhuang, diaowen, and ju. Xiao Tong (David R. Knechtges trans., annot. and introd.),
Wenxuan: Or Selections of Refined Literature (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982), pp. 2 1 -
22. Hightower lists thirty-seven categories of literature in the anthology, of which ten
have no entry in Xiao Tong's preface to the anthology ("Wenxuan xu"), while eleven of
the thirty-eight categories in the preface, are not represented by literary works in the an-
thology. According to Hightower, these discrepancies indicate that Xiao Tong had not
accomplished a "consistent solution" to the problem of how to distinguish genres and ar-
range them systematically. James Robert Hightower, "The Wen Hsiian and Genre Theo-
ry," Harvard Journal of Asiatic studies 20 (1957), p. 530-33.
addressed from superiors to inferiors, from inferiors to superiors and final-

ly between equals. 75 Only the first two poetic forms,/«-and shi-poetry, had
subdivisions. Together they constitute more than half of the entire antholo-
gy. Fa-poetry had fifteen and .v/ii'-poetry twenty-three subcategories, based
mainly on theme/content, function or relationship to music in the case of
shi-poetry ("yuefu-song," "popular song," etc.). In the preface Xiao dis-
cusses the genres, clearly using the term ti in the meaning of text types,
"genre." He describes the development of shi-poetry into forms with dif-
ferent line lengths (but he does not use this criterion to distinguish poetic
forms in the anthology). He only discusses some main features of ten gen-
res, eight of them rhyming. There is no unified criterion of division, genres
are distinguished by origins, theme/content, line length, function, style,
rhetoric and so on. Most of the genres mentioned in the preface (mostly
prose categories) are listed by conventional names and their features are
not discussed. David Knechtges believes that Xiao Tong in his selection of
works for the anthology clearly favoured works written in an elegant, re-
fined and ornamental style, especially the parallel style so popular at the
time. 75
Xiao's work has several merits. Earlier works on genre theory listed few
examples, while Xiao Tong arranged seven hundred texts according to
genre in the anthology. He also separated for the first time 7 7 /«-poetry from
the "songs of Chu" now labelled "sao" (after Qu Yuan's poem "Lisao"). In
Xiao's view/w-poctry developed from the mode fu described in "The Great
Preface," while sao-poetry (Chuci), poetry written in the style of "Lisao,"
was a "genre" of its own. 78 His division of both shi- and /«-poetry into a
large number of subcategories was copied in many later anthologies.
Fwe/ii-poetry was now distinguished and listed as a subcategory of shi-
poetry. However, according to Tökei, yuefu-poetry has "no genre mean-
ing," it is a heterogeneous collection of poems written in all kinds of gen-
res, merely sharing a label, yuefu, after the Bureau of Music (Yuefu) in the
Han dynasty. 79 But in fact many other genres are heterogenous and there
are hardly any "pure" literary genres.
75 Hightower, "The Wen Hsüan and Genre Theory," pp. 531-32.

76 Knechtges, "Introduction," in Xiao Tong, Wenxuan: Or..., p. 52. For a detailed analysis
of Xaio Tong's genre distinctions and criteria of selection, see ibid., pp. 21-52.
78 Xiao Tong, "Wenxuan xu," in Wenxuan, also in Guo (ed.), Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan,
vol.1, p. 329.
79 Tökei, Genre Theory in China, p. 114.
76 Lena Rydholm
Xiao Tong basically adhered to the traditional view of the genesis of po-
etry, echoing "The Great Preface": "[...] when the emotions within [the
poet] are stirred, they assume the [exterior] form of words." 80 But he did
not subscribe to the idea of development as degeneration from the golden
era of the past. He saw a natural evolution in literature, as well as in nature
and its objects, towards greater complexity and a multitude of forms. 81 He
recognized the possibility of literary forms developing at the same time (as
in his discussion of different verse forms in s/n'-poetry),82 rather than in-
evitably replacing each other (as opposed to later theories). 83 Xiao seems to
have been quite open-minded, an advocate of development, of pluralism
and of an aesthetic purpose of literature (wen):
[...] all these genres have come into existence, busily like bees: some of
them belong to the mainspring (of literature), while others belong to its
tributaries. An analogy is to be found in the musical instruments: whether
earthen or made from gourd-shells, they all can please the ear. Again, as
with the embroidery on ceremonial garments, which, whether it is in black
and white, or in black and blue, equally delights the eye, so these various
modes of writing stand for different avenues through which writers attain
their highest perfections. 84
Modern scholar Siu-kit Wong (Hongkong) claims that Xiao Tong's pref-
ace is a discussion of the historical development of literature, and that
some scholars may over-emphasize his genre theories. 85 Wong lists several
problems in the preface to Wenxuan that Xiao Tong obviously was aware
of: unclear definition of shi-poetry; unclear on the relationship between
shi- and/«-poetry, and between the "songs of Chu" and/w-poetry; unclear
on the origins of /«-poetry and on how "laudes" developed from Shijing;
difficulties in drawing the line between genres and mixing up genres by
failing to distinguish classifications based on formal versus thematic fea-
tures; not distinguishing which genres were associated with the "main-
spring" of literature and so on. 86 Xiao has been criticized by modern main-
80 Xiao Tong, "Wenxuan xu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, p. 329.

81 Ibid., pp. 329-330.
82 Ibid.
83 Wang Guowei's influential theory "Development by replacement of literary forms"
(wenti daixinglun) in Wang Guowei, Renjian cihua, in Guo Shaoyu, Luo Gengze (eds. in
chief), Huifeng cihua; Renjian cihua, Zhongguo gudian wenxue lilun piping zhuanzhu
xuanji Series, (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, [1960] 1982), p. 218.
84 Xiao Tong, "Wenxuan xu," in Guo edition, vol. 1, p. 330. English transl. by Wong, Early
Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 151-52.
85 Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 155-57.
86 Ibid., pp. 156-57 and p. 161, note 16.
land Chinese scholars for "fragmentation," 87 for dividing literary texts into
too many categories and for being responsible for this trend, which was to
persist until the Qing dynasty. Some of the genres he listed were in essence
the same and did not require different names. 88 There is much truth in these
critical remarks. The problem of fragmentation is serious, especially in the
division of prose texts, but it is not fair to make Xiao solely responsible for
this trend. Xiao was probably reflecting the situation at the time when
these functionalistic genre divisions were known and practised by most
academics and bureaucrats. Siu-kit Wong is right in that Xiao's preface
does not contain a coherent, deeply analytical genre theory. It is an intro-
duction to the anthology, with a short summary of literary development
from ancient times up to his own, in which he explains his criteria for the
selection of genres in the anthology and describes some basic features of
the more important genres.
Xiao's main contribution was that he distinguished what we today
would call literary from non-literary texts and this is reflected in his genre
system. In traditional Chinese library science, works were divided into four
basic categories, the Classics (jing), the Histories (shi), the Philosophers
(zi) and the Writers/Collections (/'/). Xiao Tong excluded the Classics, and
most of the Histories and the Philosophers (but not the shi-poetry) from his
anthology, all of which had previously been considered the most esteemed
literature. Xiao included poetic genres and single-piece, self-contained
prose texts. In the preface he describes his criteria for selection, and as op-
posed to what some scholars now claim, he did not simply state one single
criterion, the "ability in literature" (neng wen) for distinguishing literature
(wen) from non-literary texts, but discussed several criteria in the context
of explaining why each of the categories or genres was excluded from the
anthology. The main criteria were the following:
Firstly, Xiao stressed the importance of the Confucian Classics in moral
teaching, but excluded them, since they were too important to be "tailored
or pruned," that is, "tampered" with in any way. 89 The philosophical works
Zhuangzi, Mengzi and the like were excluded because "[...] they were first
87 Tong, Wenli..., p. 17.

88 Chu Binjie lists several examples: fu and qi, nan and sheluii, buwang and nigu. Zhong-
guo gudai..., p. 23. He claims that the subcategories qi and duiwen are misplaced and
should be listed under/ii-poetry. Ibid., p. 29.
Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 152 and p. 161, note 21. Xiao did not exclude two edicts
by the Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty concerning the recruitment of government offi-
cials. Sommardal, The Empty Palace, p. 136.
78 Lena Rydholm
intended for the purpose of conferring on particular ideas permanent form,

and not supposed to demonstrate the authors' abilities in literature (neng
wen)."90 Secondly, many famous speeches, argumentations and military
formulae related to particular historical incidents, to wars and diplomacy
were excluded, the reason being that they were oral speeches later written
down, that they were closely affiliated with popular anecdotes and that
they had already been related in the philosophers' works. More important-
ly, Xiao states that not everything in writing can be regarded as a "work of
literature." 91 As for the Histories, according to Xiao, they relate actual
events, indicate what was good and bad and are different in nature from
"self-contained pieces" (pian han). But some pieces, like certain "com-
mendations" and "discourses," are included, because they contain magnifi-
cent, well-structured language and narrative in reasonable proportion. Fur-
thermore, they are similar to "self-contained literary works" {pian shi) in
that "the events described originate in deep consideration, the meaning is
presented through ornate diction [literary language]." 92 That is, their liter-
ary qualities are evident in aesthetic composition and beautiful diction.
This last quotation has been used as the definition of the concept of litera-
ture {wen), though it is only one of several criteria used in the process of
selection.
Xiao Tong's "concept of literature" contributed to the awareness of the
independent status of literature in two ways. Firstly, he broke off from the
didactic tradition by not judging what is literature by non-literary stand-
ards, by theme/content and by their ability to provide moral instruction and
social comment. Secondly, he sees the author as an artist who has to think
through content, structure and diction. Literature is an artefact of profound
aesthetic qualities. But we may ask ourselves how much literary quality
there is in all the "prose" categories, the documents used in politics and ad-
ministration that Xiao did include in the anthology. This is still in essence a
functionalistic genre division that served a purpose in administration and
politics. Xiao's concept of literature is narrower than before and comes
closer to a "modern Western" concept of literature by basically excluding
Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 152-153.
91 Xiao Tong: "What is a more important consideration is that even that which is given cir-
culation by the writing tablets is not necessarily identical with independent works of lit-
erature {pianzhang) and would not be suitable for inclusion in this selection." "Wenxuan
xu," in Guo edition, vol.1, p. 330. English transl. by Wong, Early Chinese Literary Crit-
icism, p. 153.
92 Xiao Tong, "Wenxuan xu," in Guo edition, vol.1, p. 330.
philosophy and history from the realm of literature. This has gained him
credit with many modern scholars, but he has also been criticized for fail-
ing to recognize that philosophical works like Zhuangzi and Mengzi, in
spite of their content, do contain literary qualities.
Liu Xie's Wenxin diaolong (The Book of Literary Design)
During the Liang Dynasty, Liu Xie (ca. 465-ca. 532), 93 educated by Bud-
dhists and a protege of Prince Zhaoming (Xiao Tong), wrote Wenxin
diaolong. It is today considered the most structured, systematic and ana-
lytical work on literary theory and literary critique of ancient China, 94
and it is written in parallel prose. 95 It was completed slightly before Xi-
ao's Wenxuan, but it was less influential than the latter before the Qing
dynasty. However, in the twentieth century Wenxin diaolong has been
elevated by both Chinese and Western sinologists and there are innumer-
able studies of it. Liu clearly aims to make his work "The Classic of Lit-
erature." It gives a comprehensive view of just about everything that con-
cerned literature at the time. Liu's erudition, high theoretical level and
rhetoric almost cover up the fact that it has, however, many inconsisten-
cies and unresolved issues. Liu explains the origins of literature, literary
creation, literary techniques, literary concepts, standards for literary cri-
tique, the author's relationship to the work and the origins, development
and basic features of thirty-four genres ti (twenty-one of a total of fifty
chapters), as well as the relationship between genres and styles. Liu cre-
ated a model for genre description: to describe the origins and develop-
ment of the genre, to explain the meaning of its name, to give examples
of texts by famous authors and finally, to discuss the main features of the
genre. 96 Liu recognizes that genre features often become evident in com-
parison. Liu discusses twenty- four of the genres with similar features in
pairs.
93 Many scholars have dated Liu's death to AD 520, but according to a dating by Fan Wen-
Ian, he died in 532. Zhou (ed), Wenxin dialong jinyi, p. 1.
94 For an introduction to the rhetoric and exposition of Wenxin dialong, see Stephen Owen,
Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard UP., 1992)
pp. 183-86.
95 Parallel prose (pianwen), a kind of aesthetically demanding rhythmical prose character-
ized by parallelism and ornateness.
96 Liu Xie, "Xuzhi" (Postscript/Declaration of Intent), in Wenxin diaolong, p. 456.
80 Lena Rydholm
Of Liu's thirty-four 97 major genres (some with subgenres, twenty-four at

the most), the first seventeen are rhyming literature (wen), the remaining
seventeen non-rhyming (bi). Modern scholar Chu Binjie labels these two
groups "verse" (yunwen) and "prose" (sanwen), 98 but the prose genres are
not all artistic prose; most are documents used in politics and administra-
tion. There is a high degree of consistency between Liu Xie's and Xiao
Tong's genre divisions. As many as twenty of the major genre names are
identical, and most of the remaining major categories in Wenxuan appear
as subgenres in Wenxin diaolongThis shows that there were more than
twenty conventional genres in use at the time. Liu begins by discussing
rhyming genres, .vao-poetry, followed by shi-poetry. But while Xiao Tong
divided shi-poetry into twenty-three categories based on theme/content or
music affinity, Liu divides it into only three categories based on the
number of characters per line (four, five or six). The following genre,
yuefu-poetry, is listed as a genre of its own (a subcategory of shi-poetry in
Wenxuan). Number four on Liu's list is /«-poetry (top of the list in
Wenxuan), with no subcategories (fifteen in Wenxuan). Liu, as opposed to
Xiao, also divides some non-rhyming genres into subcategories for utilitar-
ian purposes ("records" (ji) had twenty-four). And, as opposed to Xiao, Liu
considers historical and philosophical works to be literature and includes
them. In listing thirty-four literary genres, Liu, just like Xiao, has been crit-
icized by modern scholars for "fragmentation," for separating forms that
belong to the same category. 100
In the chapter "Ding shi" (Fixed Stylistic Forces), 101 Liu discusses the
relationship between the norm and the particular and explains that the very
nature of a certain emotion determines the form/genre (ti) it is expressed
in, and inherent in these forms/genres are in turn certain forces/qualities/
styles (shi):
97 The thirty-four genres are: sao, shi, yuefu, fu, song, zan, zhu, meng, ming, zhen, lei, bei,
ai, diao, zawen, xie, yin, shi zhuan, zhuzi, lun, shuo, zhao, ce, xi, yi, fengshan, zhang, bi-
ao, zou, qi, yi, dui, shu, ji.
98 Chu, Zhongguo gudai..., pp. 500-501. One problem with Liu's labels is that bi does not
consist simply of prose texts. Another problem is that some rhyming categories of wen
like song and ming do not always contain rhymes.
99 Knechtges, "Introduction," p. 22.
100 According to Zhou Zhenfu's analysis. Zhou Zhenfu (ed.), Wenxin diaolong jinyi, p. 53.
101 Wong translates both the words ding shi and shi as "stylistic force" in his translation of
Wenxin diaolong. Sui-kit Wong, Alan Chung-hang Lo and Kwong-tai Lam (eds. and
trans.), The Book of Literary Design (Hongkong: Hongkong UP, 1999), p. 114.1 prefer
to use this translation only for the word shi, which means "force," but "stylistic force" is
a suitable translation of the word in the context in this chapter of Wenxin diaolong.
There are all kinds of emotions, there are various kinds of literary tech-
niques in literature, but with no exception the emotions determine the
form/genre (ti), and the form/genre produces the [stylistic] force (shi)} 0 2
For Liu, this is as basic as the laws of nature. It seems to me that for Liu,
genres exist as norms prior to their manifestation as the very shapes of par-
ticular emotions. Stylistic forces/styles (wenshi) also exist prior to their
manifestation, inherent in these forms/genres. Both the genres and what we
perhaps can call in Western terms their inherent "genre styles," can then be
obtained by simply adhering to natural order. Liu's views on genre and
styles are, in my opinion, the result of his view of the relationship between
thoughts/emotions and language discussed in the "Ti xing" chapter
(thoughts echoing "The Great Preface"):
When the emotions are stirred, they take on the shape of language; when
principles are expressed, they are manifest in writings. This is how the con-
cealed [emotions and thoughts] become manifest, how the internal turns
into the external. 103
For Liu, there is perfect correspondence between the inner emotion and the
outward expression, in other words, the expression "is" the emotion; lan-
guage and thought are simultaneous and inseparable. In his view of the re-
lationship between emotion and style, Liu Xie, according to Stephen
Owen, resembles Hegel in thinking that language is not a medium but the
"externality of mind," and resembles Schiller's view of the "naive poet's"
notion of language as transparent, the result being that in reading a text,
one is really "reading emotions," not language. 104 The same logic seems to
me to go for the relationship between emotions and genres and styles in
Liu's work. For Liu, emotions, thoughts, important principles, philoso-
phies and so on are internal, they exist in the human mind, and when they
receive outward expression they come, by nature, in particular forms, in
particular genres and styles. 105 In my view this is a founding principle in
102 Liu Xie, "Ding shi," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 278. The term ti here does not have to refer
to "genre." Owen translates ti as "normative form." Readings..., p. 232. Indeed, ti may
refer to any kind of normative category, genre, style etc. depending on context. Zhou
Zhenfu claims that in the "Ding shi" chapter it refers to "genre" in this context and that
shi refers to "style." Wenxin diaolong jinyi, pp. 277-78. Wong here translates ti simply
as "form." Wong et al., The Book of Literary Design, p. 114.
103 Liu Xie, "Ti xing," in Wenxin dialong, p. 256.
104 Owen, Readings..., pp. 234-35.
105 Liu Xie is inconsistent when discussing the relationship between emotions and language.
In the final chapter, Liu, just like Lu Ji in "Wenfu," complains about not being able to
fully express in language every aspect of literature. Liu Xie, "Xu zhi," in Wenxin diao-
long, p. 457.
82 Lena Rydholm
Wenxin diaolong that makes Liu's theories problematic and inconsistent

when discussing the relationship between genre and style and in what way
authors can affect style. The possibility of not letting emotion determine
the normative form and stylistic force, that is, of fiction and manipulation,
did not appeal to Liu Xie. Owen explains that "stylistic inversion for the
sake of novelty" implies "a willful rejection of the 'proper' simply because
one is 'sick of it,'" and thereby "it seems to threaten the essential correla-
tion between literature and the natural order of things." 106 For Liu, an in-
version of language was probably a perversion not only of the language but
also of true emotion and of the natural order. Stylistic inversion is obvious-
ly a threat to Liu's basic notion of language being externalized emotions
with a perfect correspondence between the emotion, the content, and its
form, language. Liu tries to solve this problem by blaming stylistic novelty
on the author's shallow inborn personality, that is, an inner quality finding
outward expression in stylistic novelty. 107 In this chapter, Liu Xie also de-
scribes the features/styles "inherent" in twenty-two of the "genres" (ti) in
groups of two to four:
In memorials illuminative (zhang), memorials manifestative (biao), reports
to the throne (zou) and debates (yi), the appropriate standard is classic ele-
gance; in /«-poems, laudes (song), songs (ge) and .v/»'-poctry, the appropri-
ate principle to follow is pure beauty; compliments to the sovereign (fu),
war declarations (xi), letters (shu) and declaration of disquiet (yi), are
modelled on clarity and resolution; in history (shi), treatises (lun), prefaces
(xu.) and commentaries (zhu), the principle is to focus on the central issue
[/object of study]; in cautions (zhen), inscriptions {ruing), epitahs (bei) and
parentations (lei), the composition (tizhi) is deep and impressive; string of
pearls (lianzhu) and words in sevens (qici), are suited for witty and colorful
[language]. 108
These genre descriptions are prescriptive and several criteria are used:
style, language, rhetoric, composition and so on. Liu Xie claims that
writers should study these "genres" (ti) and "styles" (shi) and learn how
to mix them properly. There are no clear boundaries between them, but
there is always one dominant genre/style in a work. How are these state-
106 Owen, Readings..., p. 238. As Knechtges points out, Liu was not completely against
change and development, as long as one did not divert completely from the Classics or
the basic generic rules. Knechtges, "Introduction," pp. 14—15.
107 Owen, Readings..., p. 238.
108 Liu Xie, "Ding shi," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 280. I have used Wong's translations of the
genre names of zhang, biao, zou, yi, bei.fu (compliments to the sovereign) and_yi (decla-
ration of disquiet). Wong translates song as "panegyric poems," zhen as "puncturing
pieces" and lei as "laudations." Wong et al., The Book of Literary Design, p. 115.
ments by Liu compatible with the statements about the "externalization"

of emotions in fixed forms? The mixing of normative forms and styles is
really in Liu's view a mixing of affections, 109 comparable to the mixing
of colours in a painting. 110 Another problem in this chapter is that Liu
claims that the emotion determines the form, but in the twenty-one chap-
ters discussing specific genres, as Owen points out, genres are mainly de-
termined by "specific kinds of occasions," 111 by social context and func-
tion. In addition, in the chapter "Zong Jing" (The Classics as a Model),
Liu claims that all literary forms originate from the five Classics. 112 Fur-
thermore, in the chapter "Ti xing" (Style and Personality), Liu claims
that style (ti) is determined by the author's inborn personality and educa-
tion (see below). So on the one hand, the emotions determine the norma-
tive form/genre (ti) and the style (shi), and on the other hand, the author's
personality and education determine the style (ti), and he can study and
mix styles. One way of solving this problem is to distinguish the two
meanings of ti, to interpret the ti in the chapter "Ding shi" as "genre" and
the "stylistic force" (shi) as "genre style," and the ti used in the "Style
and Personality" chapter as "individual style." This is an anachronistic
interpretation of the terms, but it may well be that Liu saw genre and in-
dividual style as two different levels of style, since he does seem to use
the term ti in both these senses in Wenxin diaolong. Wang Yuanhua, the
expert on Wenxin diaolong, interprets the "Ding shi" chapter as Liu Xie
describing styles inherent in genres, that is, "genre styles" (ticai
fengge).in I agree with Wang about the possibility to use the term "genre
style," but he claims that "genre style" is the objective part of style, while
the author's individual style is the subjective part. 114 In my opinion, how-
109 Owen, Readings..., p. 235-36.

110 Liu Xie, "Ding shi," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 279.
111 Owen, Readings..., p. 233. According to Owen, emotions, (qing) in the "Ding shi" chap-
ter is also used in the sense of "circumstances." Ibid., pp. 232-33. It is possible that Liu
is referring both to emotion and thought and in extension to circumstances without being
specific. I think that Liu included both emotion and thought in the mental construct de-
termining language and form, since his theories also apply to the philosophers' works.
112 Liu Xie claims the Five Classics to be the origins of at least twenty genres: lun, shuo, ci,
xu all originate from The book of Changes·, imperial order zhao, ce, zhang, zou originate
in The Book of Documents', fu-poetry, song, ge and zan all originate in The Book of
Songs; ming, lei, zhen, zhu all originate from The Book of Rites; ji, chuan, meng, xi orig-
inate from The Spring and Autumn Annals. "Zong Jing," in Wenxin dialong, p. 30.
113 Wang Yuanhua, "Liu Xie fengge lun bushu," in Wang Yuanhua, Qingyuan lunxue ji
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), pp. 105-7.
114 Ibid., pp. 105-6.
84 Lena Rydholm
ever, genre styles do not exist objectively. They are rather mental con-
structs, "subjectively" created by writers and theorists. 115
In the chapter "Style and Personality," Liu discusses the relationship be-
tween the author's personality and his style. 116 Liu basically adheres to a
traditional view expressed in "The Great Preface" of the poet being stirred
in his emotion by the external world and expressing this in literature, of the
poet basically reproducing nature and its objects in literature. 117 But the
outcome of this process obviously differs, which is explained by the au-
thor's individual character (xing). In Liu's opinion there is an inborn part
of the author's creativity that consists of "talent" (cai) and "disposition"
(qi) and a part that can be acquired and influenced, "learning" (xue) and
"habits" (jcz).118 These four constituents of character are associated with
eight specific qualities of personalities, four pairs of antonyms. Since au-
thors' personalities differ, their literary works are "as different as are their
faces," 119 and therefore styles are inexhaustible. Style ("individual style")
is the outward expression of the inner qualities of the author, just as what I
call "genres" and "genre styles" in the "Ding shi" chapter are the outward
expression of the inner emotions and thoughts. Liu's theory of style and
personality has been the foundation of the dominant discourse in Chinese
literary theory and criticism up to the present day: "The literary text [style]
is like the person" ( w e n ru qi ren).120
Another important contribution to Chinese stylistic theory was that Liu
set up a typology of eight basic styles, four pairs of antonyms that can be
combined in different ways. 121 Some scholars believe that the styles (shi)
115 For an ontological discussion of the genre concept, see A. Pettersson's article in this vol-
ume.
116 As Owen points out, Chinese critics associated writers with genres in which they were
successful (like Cao Pi in "Lun wen") and they therefore interpret the "ti" in this chapter
as "genre," i.e., the relationship between an author's personality (xing) and genre (ti).
Owen, Readings..., ρ 212. But in this chapter I think that the word "ti" no longer means
"genre" but more resembles "style" (fengge). The term ti occurs seven times in "Ti
xing," in Wenxin diaolong, pp. 256-61. Only in one instance, when it occurs as a disyll-
able (tishi) is it reasonable to interpret it as something other than "style," namely as "lit-
erary form."
117 Liu Xie discussed these issues in both the "Ti xing" and the "Wuse" chapters of Wenxin
dialong.
118 Liu Xie, "Ti xing," in Wenxin dialong, pp. 256-57.
119 Ibid., ρ 257.
120 Qing scholars Shen Deqian and Xue Xue expressed similar thoughts on the relationship
between the author's character and the style in shi-poetry. See Tong, Wenti..., p. 33.
121 The eight styles: "Thus, the stylish stands against the peculiar, the profound is separate
from the manifest, the extravagant is opposed to the frugal, the vigorous is different from
required in these twenty-two genres (ti) in the "Ding shi" chapter (quoted
above) are identical to the "eight styles" (ba ti) he describes in the "Ti
xing" chapter. 122 But I think not. He lists only six "styles" (shi) in genres
and only one of these terms is identical to one of the eight "styles" (ti) re-
lated to the author's personality ("classic elegance"). I think Liu Xie distin-
guished on the theoretical level required genre features from styles gener-
ated by the author's individual character ("individual styles"), although he
used the term ti to designate both. But Liu also advocated studying and im-
itating the eight styles, in order to use and mix them properly. Hence the
possibility to write well in different styles is not only related to one's per-
sonality. Liu, as Owen points out, contradicts his statements of an organic
bond between a person's mind (and body through the "vital spirit" (qi)
flowing through one's blood) and literary form and style. 123
The term ti appears no less than one hundred and ninety-one times in
Wenxin diaolong}24 The meaning of this central term in each instance is
determined by the context. It can easily shift frames of reference, 125 and
translations into modern Chinese or English often differ, using style, 126
genre, "normative form" (Owen), "manner of writing/form/style/literary
form" (Wong) and sometimes it seems to be equivalent to what we could
call "genre style" and "individual style." In Chinese literary theory, instead
of inventing new terms to describe new concepts, terminology is often
adopted from other art forms, or traditional terms in literary theory simply
continue to be used, but with enlarged frames of reference. I am inclined to
think that the shortcomings outweigh the advantages in the case of ti. The
terminological confusion contributes to what appear to be inconsistencies
in Liu's theories. Flexible terms can be used to bridge logical inconsisten-
cies, and solving the problem of explaining the relationship between two
related but different concepts by giving them the same label.
the elegant." Liu Xie, "Ti xing," in Wenxin diaolong, pp. 257-58. English transl. by
Sommardal, The Empty Palace, p. 229.
122 Zhou Zhenfu, in his preface to the "Ding shi" chapter in Wenxin diaolong. He also
claims that Liu lists only six "styles," because he wanted to omit the two styles he did not
approve of. Zhou Zhenfu, Wenxin diaolong jinyi, p. 277.
123 Owen, Readings..., pp. 215-18.
124 According to a count by Professor Gu Guorui. Personal communication, September,
2000.
125 For a discussion of the term ti in "Ti xing," see Owen, Readings..., pp. 210-12.
126 The word fengge, "style," appears once in the chapter "Yi Dui," in Wenxin dialong, p.
222. Its meaning in that context is similar to, but not identical with, the present-day com-
mon concept of fengge.
86 Lena Rydholm
Liu was greatly influenced by Daoism and the cosmology in Yijing (The
Book of Changes). Wenxin diaolong is modelled on Yijing.121 In the "Zong
Jing" chapter, Liu claims Yijing to be the earliest source that grasped the
essence of literature in its divinatory symbols. 128 (Thereby Liu shows a
connection with ti in the meaning of divinatory symbol, meaning no 4 in
Ciyuan.) As Owen points out, there is a leap in Liu's theory "between the
fixed 'number' and the vision of infinite variety," 129 between the source
and developments, common origin and multiplicity, the norm and the par-
ticular. It seems to me that partly Liu tries to solve these problems by using
basic concepts and terms from Yijing. Firstly, Liu claims the Classics to be
the origin of all subsequent literature. The idea of one source being the ori-
gin of every manifestation, a single unity creating a multiplicity of forms,
is a founding principle in Yijing. Secondly, according to Liu, changes lead
to new forms and styles, but some basic qualities of the source have to be
retained. He explains this relationship between the source and the different
genres with the aid of two concepts and terms from Yijing: "continuity"
(.tong) and "change" (bian). These terms refer to the changes created in the
hexagrams used in divination consisting of whole and broken lines/sticks.
By changing one stick from whole to broken, one stick has changed but the
others remain the same, thus there is "change" and "continuity." Thirdly,
Liu shows a preference for pairs of antonyms, for unity and antithetical
forces balancing each other, like the yin and yang concepts, for qualities
that come in fours or eights and can be multiplied. In Yijing, the earthly and
heavenly phenomena exist in a myriad of forms, but the basic elements of
the world are only eight, four pairs of dualities that can be combined to
make sixty-four divinatory symbols in the Eight Diagrams system (ba-
gua).m Liu describes eight basic qualities, four pairs of antonyms, associ-
ated with an author's personality that can be combined in different ways,
creating multiplicity and infinite styles. He identifies eight basic styles,
four pairs of antonyms that can be combined, creating infinite variation.
Liu's typology of eight styles is, according to Tong Qingbing, modelled on
127 Owen, Readings..., p. 620, note 263.

128 Liu Xie, "Zong Jing," in Weiixin diaolong, p. 11. Liu claims that Confucius provided the
explanations for Yijing. Also in the final chapter ("Xu zhi") explaining his intents, Liu
refers to Yijing.
129 Owen, Readings..., p. 213.
130 Yijing prescribes the use of six divinatory sticks, which can appear as either whole or
broken lines, divided into two trigrams, and counts eight times eight possible hexagrams
(64).
the Eight Diagrams system (bagua) in Yijing.m Tong claims that this divi-
sion "is not very scientific" since it is based on "subjective enumeration"
without motivations.132
Liu Xie, just like Xiao Tong, discussed the concept of literature. Liu Xie
used a concrete formal criterion for distinguishing what perhaps could be
seen as literature from non-literary texts: "The common thing today is that
there are wen and there are bi, those [texts] without rhyme are bi, those
[texts that contain rhyme] are wen."133 In ancient times everything in writ-
ing was considered wen, but in the narrow sense of wen, James Liu claims
that it is more or less equivalent to "belles lettres" and bi can be translated
into English as "plain writing."134 The theory of wen and bi has been seen
as a sign of the self-awareness of literature at the time. Literature was pro-
vided with a concrete definition based on linguistic criteria, distinguishing
prose texts from shi- and /«-poetry, while still not excluding the rhyming
parallel prose (pianwen) so popular at the time. The problem with this divi-
sion, apart from the fact that it did not always fit the actual situation in cer-
tain genres,135 is that it implied that prose texts without rhyme could not be
literature (wen), and some historical and philosophical works do contain
literary qualities. Perhaps to remedy this, though Liu Xie included histori-
cal and philosophical works in the bi category, he claimed that the belles
lettres, the wen, must take the Confucian Classics as their model, that all
literature originates from the Classics. To Xiao Tong the historical and
philosophical works were not pure literature. Liu once again broadened the
concept of literature (wen). To modern scholar Chu Bingjie, a broad con-
cept of literature is required which "fits the ethnic character of Chinese
prose literature" often being a mixture of literature, learning and practical
writings.136 Another way of looking at it is that Liu once again muddled the
131 Tong, Wenti..., pp. 35-38.

132 Ibid., p. 173.
133 Liu Xie, "Zongshu," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 385-86. The concepts were already in use in
the Jin dynasty. James Liu points out that not all Chinese scholars have thought that the
distinction between wen and bi (literally it means "writing brush") is a formal one, but
some have thought that it rather refers to a difference between works "expressing emo-
tions" and texts with more "utilitarian purposes." Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p.
8.
134 According to Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 8.
135 In some genres, like shi- and /«-poetry, rhyme was a required feature. But genres like
song, ai, lei, zhen, ming sometimes contained rhymes even though they were not re-
quired.
136 Chu, Zhongguo gudai..., p. 26. Tong Qingbing thinks Liu Xie's inclusions of these work
is reasonable since it fits the actual situation at the time. Tong, Wenti..., p. 18.
88 Lena Rydholm
distinction between what we today would call literary and non-literary

texts for the simple reason that he was a great admirer of Confucius's
teachings and wanted to include the Classics as literature. 137 We may as-
sume that Liu Xie speaks of wen in two senses (just as he used ti in two
senses); in the narrow sense it has to contain rhyme and is opposed to bi,
but in the broad sense, the Classics and other forms listed as bi are also "lit-
erature" {wen). Liu Xie thereby took a stand in between the extremes of the
later schools of anthologists who regarded only parallel prose or only an-
cient style prose as literature. 138 The distinction between wen and bi disap-
peared from the Tang dynasty onwards, when wen, as James Liu points
out, came to refer to prose as opposed to shi-poetry. But in the broad sense
the word wen still refers to literature as a whole, to both prose and poet-
ry,139 and in modern times wen also includes drama (xiqu) and novels
(.xiaoshuo).
Liu adhered to a traditional, Confucian, didactic view of the function of
literature. 140 According to Liu "the sages used literature to explain the natu-
ral order of things ( d a o ) " u l and therefore writers must "Zong Jing,"142 that
is, use the five Confucian Classics as models for literary creation.
Present-day Chinese scholars have accused Liu Xie of elevating the status
of the Confucian Classics to "serve the purposes of the feudal imperial
power." 143 Liu's theories are a mixture of Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist
influences. Tökei points out that at that time the central powers sought to
legitimize their power by relying on a mixture of Confucianism, Daoism
and Buddhism. 144 And Liu Xie was a protege of Prince Zhaoming. Another
way of seeing it is that, by tracing the origins of the literature and genres
discussed in Wenxin diaolong back to the revered Confucian Classics, he
137 On Liu Xie's great admiration for Confucius and his use of the Classics as a model for
Wenxin diaolong, see "Xu zhi," Wenxin diaolong, pp. 453 and 456.
139 Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 8.
140 Liu Xie: "Literature functions, as it were, as the branches of the [Confucian] Classics. It
contributes to the enactment of the five rites; it makes it possible for the six Standard
Works [part of Zhouli (Rites of Zhou) in Li (The Book of Rites)] to be put to use. By lit-
erature are the positions of the princes and their ministers dignified; by it matters of the
state and army are made resplendent. The deep and ultimate source of literature should
be the Classics." Liu Xie "Xu zhi," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 453. English transl. by Wong,
Early Chinese Literary Criticism, pp. 126-27.
141 Liu Xie, "Yuan Dao," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 14.
142 Liu Xie, "Zong Jing," in Wenxin diaolong, pp. 26-32.
143 According to Zhou Zhenfu, Wenxin diaolong jinyi, p. 9.
144 Tökei, Genre Theory in China, pp. 87-96.
could legitimize his own theories. Or maybe there were no ulterior motives
but simply his honest opinion.
The numbers of genres listed in genre systems increased from two major
categories, consisting of what we now label as "prose" and shi-poetry in
the pre-Qin era, to almost forty during the Six dynasties. This was not
simply a consequence of new literary forms appearing, but rather of func-
tionalistic genre systems in which the prose genres were divided into more
and more categories and subcategories for utilitarian purposes in politics
and administration. Observing genre distinctions became a sign of educa-
tion and refinement, in line with Confucian ideals. According to Wong,
distinguishing the genres "plants every man in his given social position"
and "prescribes to him what he should say and how he should say it at
given moments, on given occasions." 145
Genre Theory During the Tang and Song Dynasties
During the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties there were
many anthologies that more or less copied the genre systems in Wenxuan,
Wenzhang liubie ji or Wenxin diaolong. But anthologists had different
opinions of what should be considered literature, and thereby be included.
This resulted in different schools, some including parallel prose and some
not. When a new kind of highly regulated poetry, the recent-style shi-
poetry (jinti shi) appeared, some scholars claimed the ancient-style verse to
be the true form of poetry and excluded recent-style shi-poetry, while
others did the opposite. Later, all these forms were included in anthologies.
The anthology of shi-poetry and prose from the beginning of the North-
ern Song dynasty edited by Li Fang called Wenyuan yinghua (The Flour-
ishing Garden of Literature) included almost twenty thousand texts by two
thousand writers from the Liang dynasty through the Tang and the Five
dynasties. These texts were divided into thirty-eight types with several
subcategories each. 146 As many as nineteen genre labels are identical to the
names in Wenxin diaolong, and eighteen names are identical to the genre
names in Wenxuan\ altogether fourteen genre names are identical in all
three works (several also have similar names). Most are prose genres, but
three poetic genres top the list: /«-poems (thirty-nine subdivisions), shi-
145 Wong, Early Chinese Literary Criticism, p. 51.

146 Chu, Zhonggun gudai..., pp. 501-05.
90 Lena Rydholm
poetry (twenty-three subdivisions; one is ywe/M-poetry), songs of a popular

kind (gehang, eighteen subdivisions). These are followed by the "miscel-
laneous writings" (zawen, fifteen subdivisions; one is the sao-genre). Sub-
divisions of the poetic genres are based mainly on theme/content and func-
tion. There was a tremendous increase in the number of subdivisions of
prose genres used in politics and administration compared to Wenxuan (no
subdivisions) and Wenxin diaolong (nine at most). The "petitions" (biao)
had forty-nine subcategories, mainly forms for written communication be-
tween officials or officials and ministers, while "jurisdiction" (pan) had as
many as seventy-three.
Not only prose faced the problem of fragmentation. Shi-poetry and
fu-poetry were divided into an increasing number of subgenres. In the
Song dynasty, Guo Maoqian edited a collection of yuefu-poems and folk
songs, Yuefu shiji (Collection of Yuefu Shi-poetry). The poems/songs were
divided into twelve categories with up to nine subcategories. 147 There are
no unified criteria of division, using function, kind of melody, instrument,
historical period, "miscellaneous," and so on.
Song scholar Yao Xuan's influential anthology Tang wen cui (The Best
of Tang Dynasty Literature), contains one thousand one hundred and four
prose texts and /«-poems and nine hundred and sixty-one .s/ii-pocms di-
vided into twenty-three major types of literature, excluding recent-style
verse, parallel prose and recent-style /«-poems. 148 In comparison with
Wenxuan, which Yao was inspired by, he took two to five of the major
genres and combined them into one major genre; this may seem like a sim-
plification, but in fact he included altogether three hundred and sixteen
subcategories! He also added eight new major genres. 149 In Tang wen cui,
only eight genre names are identical to the genre names in Wenxuan (and
two are very similar), nine names are identical to the ones in Wenxin diao-
long (two are very similar) and seven names are identical to all three
works. Yao starts off by listing the ancient /«-poetry, followed by three
kinds of song lyrics defined by music affinity and historical time. The em-
phasis of the relationship between music and poetry is also evident in that
shi-poetry was not listed as one major genre but divided into several kinds
of song lyrics. Yuefu-poetry was a genre of its own, while sao-poetry was a
subcategory of "ancient and contemporary song texts." The subcategories
147 Ibid., pp. 505-6.

148 Ibid., pp. 506-8.
149 Ibid., p. 30.
of these first four genres are based mainly on function and/or theme, but
some on region, kind of music or musical instrument. The fourth category,
"ancient songs," had forty-three subcategories, all based on theme/content.
It is remarkable that a song genre had more subdivisions than any of the
"prose" genres listed. These were divided based on social context, theme
and function, and for some prose genres the name of the addressee of the
text was listed first, for example "emperor" and then the text function, like
"birthday congratulations."
In the Song dynasty Yan Yu, an inspired Buddhist, wrote his influential
Canglang shihua (Canglang's Remarks on Shi-poetry). In one section he
listed five ways of dividing poetry into categories 150 (in this context ti de-
notes "style" or "prosody" rather than "genre"). The first category is "clas-
sification by historical time" and had fifteen subcategories based mainly on
the titles of an emperor's reign, followed by the character ti (a kind of
"style of the era"). The second category is "classification by author," with
thirty-six subcategories of one to two famous authors' names followed by
the character ti (what we now would call "individual" or "group styles").
The third one is "classification by anthology or school" (six subcatego-
ries). There are no unified criteria for the subgenres. Titles of poetry col-
lections, authors' names, theme and the like are simply followed by the
character ti. The poems in the fourth category "classification by language
and meter" (twenty-six subcategories) are defined by the number of char-
acters per line, region, musical affinity, ancient versus recent-style shi-
poetry, short versus long songs and so on. Some were earlier labelled as
genres of their own, like yuefu-poetry and "songs of Chu." Finally, there is
a fifth "miscellaneous" category, to fit in the leftovers (with the simple for-
mula of x+ti). Yan's classification constitutes a major change in the view
of genre division. In my view, it contributed to the later confusion between
the concepts of individual style, group style, genre style, school, formal
features and genre by apparently using ti in all these senses.
The Song anthology Song wen jian (Distinguished Song Dynasty Lit-
erature) by Lu Zuqian included both the ancient style fu- and shi-poetry
forms and the recent-style shi- and/it-poetry. Lu starts the list with eleven
poetic genres of fu and shi, defined by style and/or number of characters
per line and/or number of lines. 151 Altogether there are fifty-eight genres
(no subcategories). This increase cannot simply be explained by the addi-
150 Ibid., p. 509.

151 Ibid., p. 510.
92 Lena Rydholm
tion of the recent-style forms, but rather by the inclusion of more prose
forms. Only about twenty of the prose genre names are identical to the gen-
re names in Wenxuan.
Song scholar Zhen Dexiu wrote Wenzhang zhengzong (The Orthodox
School of Literature) reflecting a Daoist view of literature. He divided lit-
erature into only four major classes {men), each consisting of two conven-
tional genres: "written instruction," "discussions," "narrations" and "shi-
and/M-poetry." 152 Thus, from an anachronistic viewpoint, he distinguished
practical and scientific literature from narration and lyrics. But the trend
towards fragmentation continued, reaching unprecedented levels in the
Ming dynasty with Xu Shizeng's Wenti mingbian (one hundred and
twenty-one genres).
Genre Theories in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Two important genre theoretical works from the Ming dynasty (1368-
1644) are Wu Na's Wenzhang bianti (Genre Distinctions in Literature) and
Xu Shizeng's Wenti mingbian (Genre Division). They both contain genre
systems, and the genre names, main features and origins are described. In
the preface to Wenzhang bianti, Wu stressed the importance of genre divi-
sions and discussed the features of different genres. 153 Wu's genre system
contains forty-nine categories of regular literary forms (zhengti) and nine
"variant forms" (bianti) in a supplement, altogether fifty-eight genres. The
variants include recent-style shi-poetry forms and c/-poetry (excluded in
many previous anthologies). Placing them in a supplement could be a sign
of regarding these genres as unorthodox. Among the forty-nine "regular"
literary forms, the first four categories were "ancient songs" (no sub-
division), "ancient-style/«-poetry" (seven subcategories divided by dynas-
tic reign), yuefu-poetry (six subcategories based on music affinity) and
"ancient-style shi-poetry" (four subcategories: three based on the number
of characters per line and one called "songs"). The remaining forty-five are
mainly prose genres but include a few rhyming verse forms like "laudes"
(song). In the realm of prose he added at least five new genres that had ap-
152 Ibid., p. 30.

153 Wu Na, "Wenzhang bianti xushuo," in Guo Shaoyu (ed. in chief), Wenzhang bianti
xushuo; Wenti mingbian xushuo, Zhongguo gudian wenxue lilun piping zhuanzhu xuanji
Series (Beijing, Renmin wenxue chubanshe, [1962] 1998), pp. 7-62.
peared during the Tang and Song dynasties. 154 Of the genre names, sixteen
are identical to the names in Wenxin diaolong, sixteen are identical to the
names in Wenxuan and altogether eleven are identical to all three works
(several have similar names).
Xu Shizeng's Wenti mingbian is a revised and extended edition of Wu's
Wenzhang bianti.155 Xu listed no fewer than one hundred and twenty-one
genres. But there were no or fewer subgenres (nineteen at the most) than in
many previous genre systems. In some cases it is simply the case of elevat-
ing a previous subcategory to a major genre, but not by any means all.
Many genre names had not appeared in earlier anthologies, and the inclu-
sion of recent-style verse forms accounts for only nine genres. Only about
twenty genres have identical or similar names to Wenxin diaolong and
Wenxuan. In most of the early anthologies, shi-poetry was one major genre
with several subgenres divided by function and/or theme/content. Xu in-
stead divides .v/u-poelry as a topic into eighteeen major genres containing
the word shi-poetry, based mainly on style (recent or ancient) or form
(four, five or seven characters per line, rhyme arrangement, parallelism or
miscellaneous poems with uneven line length). He also diverged from tra-
dition by dividing ^/-poetry into four categories based on form and style
instead of theme/function: ancient-style/w-poetry, parallel-style /w-poetry,
literary /w-poetry and recent-style /w-poetry. Several criteria are used in the
division of prose genres. Apart from theme/content or function, we find
"ancient style" (guti) versus "popular/plain style" (suti) and "regular
forms" (zhengti) versus "variant form" (bianti) and even what he con-
sidered "variant but not completely out of line with the regular form." Both
recent-style and ancient-style shi- and fu-poetry were included, classified
by style and number of characters per line. C/'-poetry was referred to as
"s7zi-poetry offshoots" (shiyu). Xu has been severely criticized for "frag-
mentation" by modern Chinese scholars, and rightly so. In his preface to
Wenti mingbian, Xu stresses the importance of distinguishing genres and
knowing how to use them properly, comparing it to the construction rules
of buildings. Certain rules and measures must be followed or the result will
be "laughable," and "the same goes for literary texts." 156
During the Qing dynasty (1644-191 l)there were huge anthologies of
prose texts, shi-poetry collections and c;-poetry collections. The genres of

155 Ibid., pp. 511-12.
156 Xu Shizeng, "Wenti mingbian xushuo," in Guo Shaoyu (ed.), Wenzhang bianti xushuo,
Wenti mingbian xushuo, p. 77.
94 Lena Rydholm
drama and novels, though extremely popular at the time, were not included
since they were considered popular forms of entertainment and not refined
literature. A few anthologists worked against the trend of fragmentation.
Yao Lai edited Guwen cilei zuan (Collection of Ancient Prose and Poetry),
an anthology of ancient prose genres, fu-poetry and "songs of Chu" (from
the period of the Warring States up to the Qing dynasty), divided into only
thirteen kinds (lei) by fitting several conventional genres with similar fea-
tures into the same category. 157 In the preface he discussed each form's fea-
tures, origins and development. Modern scholar Ye Shengtao criticized
Yao for using different criteria in distinguishing genres (formal features,
textual examples, the relationship between writer and reader, etc.). 158 Qing
scholar Zeng Guofan edited the anthology Jingshi baijia zachao (The Clas-
sics, The Histories, The Philosophers and Miscellaneous Collected Writ-
ings). Zeng divided literature into only three major categories: "compila-
tions" (including rhyming and non-rhyming texts within the subgenres of
"thesis," "prefaces and postscripts" and "song texts and/w-poetry"), "infor-
mation" (instructions given by upper rank to lower rank, or information or
communication between officials of equal ranking, or lower to upper rank
and between people and spirits/ghosts), and finally "records" (biographies,
events, administration and miscellaneous texts). 159 Zeng returned to the tra-
dition once obstructed by Wenxuan and confused the distinction between
what we now would call literary and non-literary works by including, like
Liu Xie, the Classics, the historical and the philosophical works.
Genre Theories on Pre-Modern Literature

in the Twentieth Century
By the end of the Qing dynasty society had changed rapidly and new
thoughts on literary theory and genres were taking shape. Liang Qichao di-
vided prose into only two categories: "records and narration" and "debate
and analysis," the former with a content consisting of the objective assimi-
lation of things perceived, the latter of the expression of subjective opin-
ions. 160 According to Tong Qingbing, this division is progressive and quite

158 Ye Shengtao, "Zuowen lun." Quoted in Chu, Zhongguo gudai..., p. 36.
159 Chu, Zhongguo gudai..., pp. 520-21.
160 Liang Qichao, Zhongxue yishang zuowen jiaoxuefa. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., pp. 2 0 -
21.
scientific, but Liang considers only content, not form; the division is too
general and only applies to prose genres. After the fall of the Qing dynasty,
Zhang Binglin in Wenxue zongliie (The General Principles of Literature) 161
once again included everything in writing in a distinguishable form and
self-contained (with a beginning and an end) in his genre system. He di-
vided writings into two major categories: with or without periods and com-
mas, that is, in sentences and phrases. The category without these included
catalogues, tables, calculations (six subcategories), while the category in-
volving sentences and phrases was divided into rhyming versus non-rhym-
ing texts (six subcategories each). Ci-poetry and ^«-drama were listed in
the same category. The sixth non-rhyming category was novels (xiaoshuo).
In the early twentieth century, drama and novels were elevated to the
status of literature. This was partly due to the influence of Western litera-
ture and literary theories in China at the time. More importantly, political
groups, like the Communist Party, found that drama and novels written in
the vernacular were perfect tools for education and propaganda. 162 Thus
novels and drama obtained the most important function of literature in the
traditional, Confucian view of literature, namely that of moral (now politi-
cal) instruction and social comment. 163 The traditional, didactic view of the
function of literature was continued by the Communist Party up to the late
twentieth century, and thus continued to have an immense impact on the
development of literature. Today in China, people in general identify four
major genres, poetry (shi), prose (sanwen), drama (xiqu) and novels (xiao-
shuo). In the past decade, there has been an upsurge in studies of wenti by
scholars searching for a concept of wenti reconcilable with both Western
literary theories and ancient Chinese literature and genre theory, and new
genre systems for both ancient and modern literature are outlined, as well
as new theories of literature and new histories of Chinese literature. 164
161 Zhang Binglin, "Wenxue zongliie," in Guogu lunheng. See Chu, Ζhongguo gudai..., pp.
523-25.
162 For a description of the relationship between politics and literary genres in the twentieth
century see for instance Feng Guanglian (ed. in chief), Zhongguo jinbainian wenxue tishi
liubiamhi (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1999).
163 See Lena Rydholm "Genre and Politics in China: The Development of the Modern Chi-
nese Novel," in Beata Agrell and Ingela Nilsson (eds.), Genrer och genreproblem: Teo-
retiska och historiska perspektiv/Genres and their Problems: Theoretical and Historical
Perspectives (Göteborg: Daidalos, 2003), pp. 191-209.
164 On genre theory, see, for instance, the works mentioned by Tong, Tao, Chu and Zhang.
A new history of Chinese literature in ten volumes has been compiled by scholars at The
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing: Zhang Jiong, Deng Shaoji, Fan Jun
(eds. in chief), Zhonghua wenxue tongshi (A Comprehensive History of Chinese Litera-
ture), (Beijing: Huayi chubanshe, 1997).
96 Lena Rydholm
Defining Factors of the Literary Genres
In the ancient works on literary theory, the concept of wenti was rarely dis-
cussed, the emphasis resting on creating functionalistic genre systems for
utilitarian purposes. Consequently, there were many discussions of divi-
sional criteria, starting with the difference between shi-poetry and prose. In
the Song dynasty, the discussion turned to the difference between shi- and
the popular c;-poetry. In this section I discuss what I perceive to be the
main criteria used for the division of the ancient, major literary genres
prose, fu-poetry, shi-poetry and α-poetry, in pre-modern theories. This is
not an exhaustive list of the innumerable statements on the difference be-
tween literary genres in literary theories, genre theories, anthologies, dy-
nastic histories and remarks on shi- or ci-poetry. Some comments from
modern Chinese scholars on the subject are included.
The Difference between Poetry and Prose
The character wen can be used both in the broad sense of "literature"
(nowadays the compound word wenxue is used in the sense of literature),
and in the narrow sense of prose (still in use, often in the compound word
sanwen), but in Xiao Tong's Wenxuan it was used in the sense of "belles
lettres." Jin dynasty Yuan Haowen wrote about the difference between
prose and shi-poetry, "STii-poetry and prose are special alternative names
in the language, the one that narrates something is called wen, the one that
chants emotions is called shi, their language is one and the same." 165 Ming
dynasty scholar Li Dongyang recognized some formal differences between
these forms, claiming that in prose the author should narrate in detail, be
expressive and use embellishments, while shi-poetry relied on sound, on
the structuring of a harmonious pattern of speech-tones and rhythm based
on certain principles. 166 For many ancient scholars, prose should be ex-
plicit, express ideas, transmit truths and morally instruct, while .v/z/-poetry
should be implicit, express (moral) emotions and ideals and affect the
spirit. Ming dynasty scholar Wang Wenlu claimed that prose was appreci-
ated by the eyes and shi-poetry by the ears. Prose should be filled with
spirit and written in a vigorous style, since its main purpose was moral in-
165 Yuan Haowen, Yishan xiansheng wenji, juan 36. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 12.
166 Li Dongyang, "Chunyutang gao xu," in 11ua i Lutang ji. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 12.
struction, while shi-poetry should cultivate emotions, relying on sound and

the fluctuating flow of the speech-tones. 167 Qing dynasty Wu Qiao believed
that prose and s/n'-poetry were in essence the same and only differed in
form:
If we use raw rice as a metaphor for their meaning, prose in a metaphorical
meaning can be boiled and become cooked rice, jAi-poetry in its metaphor-
ical meaning can be brewed and turn into wine; cooked rice is no different
in its form than raw rice, but in wine the rice has completely changed its
form; in eating cooked rice you get full and can sustain your body, it
enables you to do what is humanly possible to follow the correct path [in
life]. When you drink wine you get intoxicated, it can make melancholic
people cheerful, it can make happy people sad. 168
The Hybrid Form Fu-poetry
There is one major literary genre in between prose and poetry, namely
/«-rhymed prose or /«-poetry, also translated as poetic essay, rhapsody, and
the like. It has formal poetic features, so it may be labeled poetry, but it
also contains a strong element of prose, so it may be labeled prose. Written
in rhyme, this genre, as opposed to other poetic genres, did not share a
close relationship with music because it was recited, not sung. Liu Xie in
the chapter on fu in Wenxin diaolong claims that the term/« means "narra-
tion" and its function is to "describe objects (ti wu) and express thoughts/
emotions (zhi)."' 69 According to Liu, the term originates in the descriptive
mode fu in "The Six Arts" in "The Great Preface." 170 Both Ban Gu in his
"History of the Han" and Liu Xie discuss two traditions in /«-poetry, one
originating in Shijing and one in the sao-poetry/Chuci of the state of
Chu. 171 Some later scholars claim that /«-poetry developed directly from
"The Six Arts," while some believe it originates in sao-poetry. Most schol-
ars today think that fu-poetry originates in the Chuci/sao-tradition, since
167 Wang Wenlu, Wenmai. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 12.

168 Wu Qiao, Da Wan Jiye shiwen. Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., pp. 12-13. In Tong's book the
character "ye" in the book title is misprinted as "lan."
169 Liu Xie, "Quan fu," in Wenxin diaolong, p. 76.
170 According to Hightower,/«is a poetic form developed from Qu Yuan's Sao-poetry. Top-
ics in Chinese literature, p. 26. According to Wong, the ,/w-poetry of the Han dynasty
was an extension of the /k-style used in Shijing, though using some of the techniques
from the "songs of Chu." Early Chinese Literary Criticism p. 67, note 18.
171 Liu Xie, "Wuse" and "Quan fu," in Wenxin diaolong, pp. 415-16 and p. 76; Ban Gu,
"Yiwen zhi," pp. 1755-56.
98 Lena Rydholm
sao-poet Song Yu wrote/«-poems. But in the way the/w-poet exhausts lan-

guage and describes in great detail a certain emotion, object or action, there
is also a connection with lexicography (some early /ii-poets were lexico-
graphers) and with the rhetoric in the historical work Zhanguo ce (Intrigues
of the Warring States) compiled by the imperial librarian Liu Xiang (79-8
BC). 172 The anthology Chuci (Songs of Chu), was allegedly also compiled
by Liu Xiang. 173 Some /«-poems were purely descriptive and some more
lyrical. The genre was also probably more like poetry at certain stages and
more like prose at other stages in its development, assimilating new fea-
tures from both poetry and prose. In about A D 100, it assimilated the sty-
listic devices of parallelism and antithesis (pianwen) so popular in prose
texts at the time. In the Tang dynasty, it assimilated some speech-tonal
rules from the recent-style .v/i/-poctry, turning into recent-style /«-poetry
(,lüfu). Compared to shi- poetry, it has been seen as less subjective, less lyr-
ical, its function being that of "describing objects" (tiwu). If we generalize,
we can say that /«-poetry had the form of poetry and the content and func-
tion of prose. This genre is not called shi ("poetry" in the broad sense), nor
is it called sanwen ("prose"), it is merely "/«."
Defining Criteria of the Poetic Genres
Shi-poetry can refer to poetry in general, such as the major categories of

.y/zi-poctry in the narrow sense (poetry not sung to music), d-poetry (poetry
sung to music) and gw-drama (partly sung to music). 174 These poetic genres
all had a close relationship with music and were sung to music at some point
(shi-poetry in the narrow sense too, since the poems in Shijing were song
lyrics), as were two other important poetic genres, the "songs of Chu" and
the yuefu-poetry. The symbiotic relationship between poetry and music is a
basic feature of ancient Chinese poetry. In the following, I briefly discuss
some of the criteria used for classifying poetic genres through the ages.
Firstly, poetic genres have been distinguished by formal criteria, by
prosody and by linguistic features. 175 This is often evident in the names of

173 Liu Xiang (76-5 BC). The anthology was later provided with a commentary by Wang Yi
(d. AD 158). Ibid., p. 95.
174 The Chinese drama genre is discussed in Christina Nygren's article in this volume.
175 Wang Li, Hanyu shilüxue (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1962) gives a detailed
description of the formal features of ancient-style shi-poetry, recent-style poetry, c/-poet-
ry and ^«-drama.
the genres or subgenres. Genres have been defined by the number of char-
acters per line, such as "two-word shi-poetry," "four-word sW-poetry." The
"recent-style sW-poetry," popular in the Tang dynasty, was defined by its
strict rules for speech-tone patterns, rhyme arrangement and parallelism.
Earlier shi-poetry lacking these formal requirements, was called "ancient-
style shi-poetry" (further divided into "ancient-style five-word shi-poetry"
and "ancient-style seven-word shi-poetry," etc.). Ancient-style s/zi'-poetry
in quatrains was called jueju. Recent-style .v/zz-poetry in eight lines was
called "regulated verse" (liishi) and the quatrains were called "regulated
supreme lines" (liijue). Both these subgenres were further divided by the
number of characters per line (five or seven) into two categories each.
Poems in other line lengths, three, six or mixed numbers of characters per
line, were called "miscellaneous words" (zayan). One early name of cz'-po-
etry was "long and short lines" (changduan ju) because of its irregular me-
ter. Cz-poetry has also been distinguished by including more colloquial
language than shi-poetry (written mainly in literati language). 176 Ming
scholar Li Kaixian claimed, "in meaning ci- and shi-poetry are the same
but in form they differ; shi-poetry is remote and has a long lasting flavor,
while cz-poetry is clear and not difficult to understand." 177 Some scholars
thought the language of cz-poetry plain, low and vulgar.
Secondly, poetic genres have been distinguished by their relationship to
music. Some scholars view the shi-poetry in Shijing and the recent-style
shi-poetry as "poetry not sung to music," as opposed to the songs of Chu,
yuefu-poems and especially the cz-poetry of the Song dynasty, which are
"song lyrics" (geci). But in fact, all these forms were sung to music at some
point. Shijing was originally called "shi," which at the time meant "song
lyrics," and the poems were sung to music. When the original music disap-
peared, the term shi came to denote written poetry not sung to music. The
"songs of Chu" were sung to regional music. The yuefu-poems were sung
to popular tunes and collected by the Bureau of Music (Yuefu) in the Han
dynasty. Even recent-style s/zz-poems were sometimes sung to music at
banquets in the Tang dynasty. Unable to draw a sharp line between song
lyrics and poetry in ancient times, some modern scholars claim that the dif-
ference between the poetic genres is that they were sung to different kinds
of music. S/zz-poetry was sung to "sophisticated music" (yayue); the "songs
176 The features of the early popular c/-poetry has been discussed by Kang-i Sun Chang, The
Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry: From Late Tang to Northern Sung (Princeton: Prince-
ton UP, 1980), pp. 15-24.
177 Li Kaixian, "Xiye chunyou ci xu." Quoted in Tong, Wenti..., p. 14.
100 Lena Rydholm
of Chu" to regional music; the yuefu-poems to "bright music" (qingyue);

and finally, c/-poetry to "party music" (yanyue). But these heterogeneous
forms of music are not easily distinguished and some ci-poems were sung
to "bright music." Some modern scholars instead identify three stages in
the development of the relationship between Chinese poetry and music:
"first-poetry-then-music" (the poems in Shijing), "existing poems-fitted-
to-existing tunes" (the yuefu-poems) and finally "first-music-then-poetry"
(o-poctry). 178 But in fact, the Bureau of Music in the Han dynasty wrote
new lyrics to existing tunes 179 and Song dynasty ci-poet Jiang Kui wrote, "I
enjoy very much composing melodies myself. First I jot down a few long
and short lines and then I set them to music." 180
The poems in Shijing became poetry not sung to music, shi-poetry in the
narrow sense of the word, when the music disappeared. Yuefu-poems finally
received the label "yuefu s/i/-poetry" {yuefu shi) when the music was lost.
But α-poetry is only "shi" in the broad sense of the word. It never became
shi-poetry in the narrow sense of the word, even when the music was long
lost, because of its extremely close relationship to music. These song lyrics
were for the main part completely adapted to existing, popular tunes with re-
gard to form, prosody, speech-tones, contents and aesthetic features. 181 The
four subgenres in d-poetry (ling, yinjin and man) were probably defined by
musical features, by rhythmic modes. 182 There is no clear-cut line between
poetry and song lyrics in Chinese literature. Some genres were song lyrics
that in time were recognized as poetry, others consisted of poems, some of
which were occasionally sung to music, thereby functioning as song lyrics.
But recent-style shi-poetry, though sometimes sung, was for the main part
written independently of the tune it was sung to. Some scholars claim that re-
cent-style shi-poetry, instead of leaning on "exterior music," has an "intrinsic
music" of its own kind and that its regulated and harmonious speech-tone
patterns "musicalized" poetry from within.183
178 Shi Yidui, Ci yu yinyue guanxi yanjiu (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe,
[1985] 1989), pp. 131-50.
179 Ibid., p. 139.
180 Jiang Kui, in the Preface to his "Changting yuan man," in Tang Guizhang (ed.), Quart
Songci (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, [1965] 1995), vol 3, p. 2181.
181 For a description of the relationship of c/-poetry to music, see Lena Rydholm, In Search
of the Generic Identity of Ci-poetry (PhD diss., Stockholm Univ., 1998).
182 See Ibid., pp 45-55.
183 Liu Yaomin, Ci yu yinyue (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 100^4 and
Shuen-fu Lin "The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz'u," in Pauline Yu
(ed.), Voices of the Song Lyric in China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Oxford, England:
Univ. of California Press, 1994), pp. 8-12.
Thirdly, poetic genres were distinguished by theme/content, function

and social context, as evident in many of the genre systems discussed
above. The ancient functionalistic genre systems were created by schol-
ars/bureaucrats for utilitarian purposes. The first .v/if-poetry forms listed in
"The Great Preface" were divided by function, social context and content.
The same criteria are used by Liu Xie in Wenxin diaolong in most of his
actual genre descriptions. Ci- and shi-poetry have also been said to differ
in content. The standard cliche is that d-poetry "expressed emotions" (ci
yuan qing), while shi-poetry "expressed ideals" (shi yan zhi)}M This divi-
sion is artificial, since there are many love-poems written in s/zZ-form. But
d-poetry for the main part dealt with "private" themes like love/eroticism,
while ,ν/ίί-poetry often dealt with "public" themes such as politics, ethics
and philosophy. Song dynasty scholar Shen Yifu claimed that the differ-
ence between shi- and d-poetry was that in d-poetry you had to "put in a
boudoir flavor." 185 Most shi- and ci-poets were men, but since c/-poetry
was given the reputation of being "feminine," it seemed to have encour-
aged many female poets to write in this form during the Song dynasty, and
particularly during the Late Ming and Qing dynasties, when the form expe-
rienced a new wave of popularity. 5/ii-poetry was able to fulfill the didactic
purpose of poetry in the traditional, Confucian view, while d-poetry was
not. C/-poetry was criticized for being immoral and had a very low status
until Su Shi and Xin Qiji started to use the themes of shi- poetry in the
form. But because of the association with the boudoir-theme, even though
d-poetry eventually became a part of "high" literature, the genre has never
reached the high status of .vW-poetry, not even in modern times.
Fourthly, poetic genres have been distinguished by aesthetic qualities,
style and rhetoric. Ci-poetry has been associated with the aesthetic quality
of "feminine weakness" (yinrou zhi mei) and "masculine strength" (yang-
gang zhi mei), both in the discourses on genre and on styles in d-poetry. 186
184 On the themes and styles used in ci-poetry, see Yang Haiming, Tang Song cifengge lun
(Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 1986).
185 Shen Yifu, Yuefu zhimi, in Tang Guizhang (ed.), Cihua enngbian (Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, [1986] 1990), vol. 1, p. 281.
186 Qing scholar Wang Shizhen: "Zhang Nanhu [Zhang Yan] stated that there were two
schools of ci-poetry, one said to be delicate restraint (wanyue) and one said to be heroic
abandon (haofang)." Wang, Huacao mengshi. Quoted in Wu Xionghe, Tang Song ci
tonglun (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, [1989] 1999), p. 158. For discussions of
the "feminine quality" in ci-poetry, see Kang-i Sun Chang, "Liu Shih and Hsu Ts'an:
Feminine or Feminist," in Pauline Yu (ed.), Voices of the Song Lyric in China, pp. 169—
87 and Grace Fong, "Engendering the Lyric: Her Image and Voice in Song," in Pauline
Yu (ed.), Voices of..., pp. 107-44.
102 Lena Rydholm
This discourse originates in cosmology and the two oppositional forces of

yin and yang. Being feminine implies "weak, soft and small" as opposed to
shi-poetry, which is "masculine, big and strong." But the issue here really
concerns the traditional gender marking of themes and the diction related
to these themes. Ci-poetry dealt with the "private" boudoir-theme associ-
ated with feminine qualities, while shi-poetry dealt with the "masculine,"
"public" themes such as politics, ethics and the like. In rhetoric, shi-poetry
has been considered more "explicit" and straightforward than the "re-
strained" and "implicit" c/-poetry. 187 Song scholar Zhang Yan considered
c/-poetry to be more restrained than ,ν/ζί-poctry, because it expressed emo-
tions, 188 that is, love and desire, which were delicate matters.
Most genre theories distinguish the ancient poetic genres by different
combinations of these basic criteria (often one criterion dominates), or us-
ing additional factors not listed here. The literati of ancient China in gen-
eral stressed the differences between genres rather than the similarities.
Genre theories were prescriptive rather than analytical and genre bounda-
ries were strict. Modern Marxist critic Tao Dongfeng claims that, in the
feudal era, strict rules for relationships in politics and culture led to genres
having strict boundaries where cross-mixing was unacceptable. 189 As evi-
dent in Chinese literary history, authors did not always follow the genre
rules. If the result of breaking the rules of poetry was successful, the author
still gained respect, while the unsuccessful were severely criticized.
(Breaking etiquette in administrative or political documents, like address-
ing the emperor in an improper way, probably cost the author more than
his job.) Two schools are discernible. The one advocating that genres
should not cross-mix, since this would lead to confusion and violate the es-
sence of the genre, is represented by Ming scholars Hu Yinglin, Li
Dongyang, Qing scholar Wang Fuzhi. Song scholar Chen Shidao wrote,
"Shi-poetry and prose each have their own style [form, genre features] (ti).
Han Yu wrote prose in .v/ii'-poetry and Du Fu wrote .s/»-poelry in the prose
form, therefore they were not successful." 190 Also in the Song dynasty, the
most famous female c/-poet in Chinese literary history, Li Qingzhao, criti-
187 This issue has also been discussed by Miao Yue in "Lun ci," in Shi ci sanlun (Taibei:
Taiwan kaiming shudian, [1943] 1966), pp. 1-15. English transl. by John Minford: "The
Chinese Lyric," Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine 11 and 12 (1979),
pp. 25^14.
188 Zhang Yan, "Fuqing," in Ciyuan, in Tang (ed.), Cihua congbian, vol. 1, p. 263.
189 Tao, Wenti yanbian..., p. 69.
190 Chen Shidao, Houshan shihua. Quoted in Tao, Wenti yanbian..., pp. 69-70.
cised Su Shi for basically writing shi-poetry in the form of c/-poetry in her
"Cilun" ("Ci-theory," the first complete genre theory of c/-poetry). 191 Ming
scholar Xu Shizeng claimed that only the "delicate restraint" (wanyue)
style, (as opposed to the "heroic abandon" (haofang) style represented by
Su Shi), was orthodox and represented the essential character of ci-poet-
ry.192 The Qing scholar Jiao Xun wrote, "SVii-poetry and prose were mixed
with each other, then .v/zi-poetry lost its essence.'" 93 But there were scholars
in the Song dynasty who held a different opinion. Chen Shan believed that
genres could mix and coexist and he appreciated Han Yu's prosaic shi-po-
etry and Du Fu's poetic prose. 194 Wang Zhuo claimed that there were no
rules for prosody in ancient times and that there is no need to distinguish
shi-poetry, yuefu-poetry and c/-poetry since they are of the same origins. 195
Qing scholar Feng Ban claimed that .vW-poetry and yuefu-poetry, (referring
to ci'-poetry), are both song lyrics set to music, so there is no need to distin-
guish them. 196 Well into the twentieth century many scholars still failed to
recognize that genres are neither pure nor static.
Problems in Ancient Chinese Genre Theory
Some basic features and unresolved issues in the genre theories and genre
divisions in the ancient Chinese literary theories discussed above, judged
by present standards, can be summed up as follows:
Firstly, the division of literary genres is closely related to the concept of
literature. And the broad concept "everything in writing" being wen from
the pre-Qin era has, with a few exceptions like Xiao Tong's Wenxuan, pre-
vailed up to the twentieth century. This has led to problems in distinguish-
ing literary from non-literary genres. While it was relatively easy to distin-
guish shi- and /«-poetry as literary genres, it was more difficult in the
realm of prose. There were several kinds of prose texts in the pre-Qin era,
but neither then nor later was aesthetic prose clearly separated from aca-
191 Li Qingzhao, "Cilun", in Wang Zhongwen (ed.), Chongji Li Qingzhao ji jiao zhu
(Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, [1979] 1999), pp. 194-95.
192 Xu Shizeng, "Wenti mingbian xushuo," pp. 164-65.
193 Jiao Xun, "Yu Ouyang Zhimei lunshi shu," in Jiao Xun, Diao gu ji, juan 14. Quoted in
Tao, Wentiyanbian..., p. 69.
194 Chen Shan, Menshi xinhua. Quoted in Tao, Wenti yanbian..., p. 72.
195 Wang Zhuo, Biji manzhi, juan 2, in Tang (ed.), Cihua congbian, vol. 1, pp. 73-74.
196 See Tao, Wenti yanbian..., p. 73.
104 Lena Rydholm
demic treatises or documents used in politics and administration. Basically,

all conventional kinds of writing were included in the genre systems. This
is explained by the need for functionalistic genre systems and prescriptive
genre descriptions used in politics and administration by writers/officials,
but also by the traditional, didactic view of the function of literature as a
vehicle for the Confucian way, for moral instruction and maintaining the
social order that these writers/officials represented. The Classics, historical
records and philosophical works were considered literature and included in
genre systems (with the exception of Wenxuan, for example), since they
were thought by Liu Xie and others to contain all (Confucian) wisdom and
truth and to be the origins of and models for all literature.
But when we say that basically "everything in writing" was wen, we
must also be aware of another problem concerning the concept of litera-
ture, namely that this meant for the literati/bureaucrats mainly texts written
by writers/officials in the literary style of writing (wenyan) that complied
with the didactic function of literature. Texts written in the vernacular, in
popular style, or even written partly in wenyan but merely for the purpose
of entertainment, were not considered literature (se point 5 below) and ex-
cluded from genre systems and anthologies. This was also the case with re-
ligious texts (Buddhist texts for instance) and texts written by minority
peoples in China, 197 not to mention oral literature.
Xiao Tong's concept of literature is more narrow than his contempora-
ries and closer to a modern, Western concept of literature. But no matter
how tempting it is to apply a modern Western concept of literature to an-
cient Chinese literature, it simply does not fit the actual situation. We can-
not ignore the fact that some historical and philosophical works, such as
Shiji (Records of the Grand Historiographer), Zhuangzi, Mengzi, Han Feizi
and many others, have aesthetic values and literary qualities, according to
both Chinese and Western scholars today. 198 Modern genre theorist Chu
Binjie claims that the authors of the philosophical works paid attention to
aesthetic techniques, language, rhetoric, structure and imagery. 199 In the
197 There is an anthology of Chinese literature in English, that does include several ancient
religious texts and texts written by minority peoples in China, namely Victor Mair (ed.),
The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia UP,
1994).
198 Hightower describes the literary qualities of the historical and philosophical works, and
traces their influence in subsequent literature in Topics in Chinese Literature. Professor
Göran Malmqvist is of the opinion that we must recognize the literary qualities of an-
cient philosophical works like Zhuangzi and others.
historical works, some of the descriptions of persons and events were vivid
and story-like, written in beautiful language. The vivid dialogues between
historical persons in them have influenced later fiction and drama. 200 This
makes it difficult to claim that these texts are non-literary works, even by
our present standards. And perhaps, just as it is wrong to distinguish good
from bad literature simply by theme and content, it is equally wrong to dis-
tinguish literature from non-literary texts by the same single criterion. I
think that we do need to use a rather broad definition of literature in deal-
ing with ancient Chinese literature and literary genres. If we should ex-
clude some genres, they would be several kinds of documents used in poli-
tics and administration. But we cannot exclude these genres as a whole ei-
ther. In Chinese literature, the distinction between artistic prose and politi-
cal and administrative documents, philosophy, learning and history has
always been muddled. In the Tang and Song dynasties there was a renais-
sance of ancient literature. Great writers like Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan and
Ouyang Xiu gave new life to ancient prose forms used in administration by
using literary methods of composition, rhetoric, rhythm and linguistic tech-
niques to increase their aesthetic qualities, turning ancient categories of of-
ficial documents into literature. 201 In Chinese literary history, even the dis-
tinction between literature and literary theory (e.g., genre theory), is
muddled, as in the case of Lu Ji's "Rhymed Prose on Literature" and Liu
Xie's parallel prose in Wenxin diaolong. But from a Chinese pre-modern
perspective, there was no better way to describe the inexplicable (litera-
ture) than by perceptive, impressionistic, lyrical statements on its essence.
Secondly, the genre theories and anthologies discussed above lack a dis-
cussion of, and definitions of, the concept of "genre" (ti). The concepts of
genre and style are not clearly separated in any of the theories and are also
evident in labels, like the genre "ancient-style verse" (jinti shi) and "the
personal style of Su Shi" (Dongpo ti). Liu Xie tries hard to resolve these is-
sues but fails to fully explain them. Instead, he contributed to the influen-
tial mainstream discourse in subsequent dynasties of equating the author's
personality with his individual style (and consequently of judging literary
works by the author's moral substance).
In the pragmatic use of the term ti in ancient Chinese mainstream genre
theory, I find that ti is basically perceived of as two levels of style. Genre,
as in Liu Xie's genre theory, is basically a kind of "genre style," while the
200 Ibid.
201 Ibid., p. 12.
106 Lena Rydholm
author has an "individual style," though both are referred to as ti. The dis-
tinction between the two is unclear. It is impossible to draw a line based on
some linguistic criteria between genre and style in the ancient, mainstream
theories because basically, they, like Wenxin diaolong, contain a monistic
view of style: thoughts and language are inseparable. 202 Genres were seen
more as mental constructs than verbal constructs. In Wenxin diaolong,
"genres" and "styles" are simply externalized emotions and thoughts. The
"emotion" is the genre/style. The emotion/thought is the all-important con-
tent, the genre/style is its "body"(i/), just like the original meaning of the
term ti. From an ontological point of view, it seems to me that to ancient,
mainstream critics like Liu Xie, genres objectively exist in the organic
unions of inner emotions/thoughts and their external "bodies" genres/
styles, prior to their manifestation. In that sense genre/style is not an ab-
straction but in fact the opposite, a "concretization," the concrete "body" of
a specific "abstract" emotion/thought, and the two are inseparable. The
content, the emotions/thoughts in texts, was originally merely seen as a re-
flection of political and social reality in the traditional Confucian view as
expressed in "The Great Preface." The development in the third to sixth
centuries was the amendment that the thoughts/emotions also reflected the
author's personality and moral character (wen ru qi ren).
Thirdly, the genre divisions discussed are not based on one unified cri-
terion (a critique common in modern Chinese scholars' works). In poetry,
divisions are based on mixtures of several criteria such as theme/content,
social context, occasion, function, prosody, style, the relationship to music
and so on. Prose texts were classified according to function, social context,
theme and content. A large part of the prose genres are non-literary texts,
documents used in politics and administration, distinguished by non-liter-
ary criteria. The abundance of different criteria of division produces a ra-
ther chaotic impression in some ancient genre theories. But in their defense
it may be said that we today are still unable to create perfect genre systems
with a unified criterion for the division of all genres within a certain cul-
ture. Genres are neither pure, nor static, nor compelled to fit into a certain
Ur-genre system that we have yet to discover or invent.
Fourthly, there is the problem of fragmentation. The original division of
literature into the basic categories, poetry and prose, developed into over
202 As opposed to a dualistic view of style in which content and utterance are separable. On
monistic versus dualistic style, see Nils Erik Enkvist, Stilforskning och stilteori (Lund:
CWK Gleerup, 1973), pp. 97-99.
one hundred and twenty genres in the Ming dynasty. Naturally, new genres
emerged over a perod of almost two thousand years, and this should have
resulted in new genre labels and expanded genre systems. O n e problem is
that sometimes the n a m e of an old literary form was used for a new form or
an old literary form was given a new name, (which makes it hard to com-
pare the genre systems). For instance, the different kinds of poems written
between the Han and the late Tang dynasty, collected under the label of
yuefu-poems, have very little in common. Another problem is the unclear
relationship between major genres and subgenres (some critics consider
yuefu-poetry a genre of its own, some list it as a subgenre of .v/ii-poctry,
etc.). But the main problem is still that the expansion included not only lit-
erary genres but also non-literary prose genres.
Fifthly, as genres evolved and new literary forms emerged, the pre-mod-
ern genre systems did not always cope with the changes. N e w genres were
often regarded as unorthodox and excluded. In the ancient genre systems,
genres of popular origins had low status and were excluded because they
were not considered to be literature. The reason for this, according to Tong
Qingbing, is the influence of upper-class Confucian feudal thinking. 2 0 3
There are several factors contributing to the exclusion of genres: popular
origins, functioning as popular entertainment, containing a strong element
of vernacular language, close relationship to a popular form of music, or
dealing with private and "immoral" themes like love/eroticism (not com-
patible with the Confucian didactic view of the function of literature), or
for all these reasons (like α-poetry). However, poems dealing with love
and eroticism could be acceptable if they could be interpreted as political
allegories (as for instance a palace-beauty longing for the emperor's fa-
vours implied the loyal minister's longing for the emperor's recognition of
his devotion to his country and to the emperor). Since women were for the
most part excluded from the public realm, not allowed to participate in ex-
aminations or hold office in the bureaucracy, many female writers' poems
deal mainly with the private sphere, with personal emotions and love
(these poems were not interpreted as political allegories) and many also
used the form of c/'-poetry. This in turn meant that many female writers'
works were excluded f r o m prestigious anthologies. 2 0 4
203 Tong, Wenti..., p. 22.

204 There is an anthology in English of texts by about one hundred fifty women writers in
ancient China, namely Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy (eds.), Women Writers of
Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999).
108 Lena Rydholm
Both prose and poetic forms with popular origins were at times victims
of exclusion from the genre systems and anthologies. Poetic forms often
faced these problems in their early stages, since many originated in popular
song lyrics. For ancient prose there were two schools, one favouring an-
cient-style prose and one favouring parallel prose (pianwen), with both
sides refusing to admit the other prose category into their genre systems
and anthologies. This conflict is related to the traditional view of literary
evolution as a process of degeneration from the ancient Classics. Conserv-
ative critics with a didactic view of the function of literature in general fa-
vour a simple, unadorned literary style and dislike forms with embellish-
ments and many prosodic requirements like parallel prose. Later prose
forms that suffered status problems were novels, and mixtures of prose and
poetry, like the drama in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Being popular en-
tertainment, they were not considered literature until the early twentieth
century. The <?M-drama, popular in the Yuan dynasty, was admitted into
anthologies earlier as a subgenre of shi-poetry (in the broad sense of the
word), as a form developed from c/-poetry, a kind of "c/-poetry offshoot"
(•ciyu). Many of the Chinese literary genres originate in popular literature,
but the ancient scholars often failed to recognize the positive influence of
popular literature on the development of literature. Popular literature
gave birth to new literary forms, as well as new life-force, to established
literati genres. This is an essential feature in the evolution of Chinese lit-
erature.205
Ancient Chinese Literature and Genre Concepts versus

Culturally and Historically Neutral Genre Concepts
What is considered literature underlies all genre concepts and the concept
of literature in different cultures varies. Literary qualities, or literariness,
that which defines literature, are not universal. There are many differences
between an ancient Chinese and a modern Western concept of literature.
Many of the ancient Chinese scholars who have been discussed above re-
garded philosophy and history, documents in politics and administration
and the like as literature. But there were also different opinions among
Chinese scholars, like Liu Xie and Xiao Tong, on what was to be con-
sidered literature. In addition, there is the issue of genres that in their be-
205 Tao, Wenti yanbian..., p. 18.

ginning were not considered literature but in their later stages gained the
status of literature (like song lyrics, which become poetry in the Song dy-
nasty, and drama and novels which gained the status of literature in the
twentieth century). The elevation of genres to the status of literature or
"high" literature is not simply a matter of genres becoming more complex
and mature. What is considered literature often depends on for instance
ideological, political or gender-related reasons. C7-poetry was elevated
when famous male poets used the form to write about "masculine moral
themes," in line with the traditional Confucian didactic view of the func-
tion of literature. And the Chinese communist party's use of novels and
drama for education and propaganda elevated the status of these forms. 206
In Chinese history of literature, what was considered literature was rarely
based simply on literary qualities.
Genre concepts and labels are not universal either, but are largely con-
fined to literature written in a particular language in a particular culture
during a certain historical period. What is to be considered a literary genre
is determined by individual scholars, critics, political establishments and
so on, and opinions change over time. Genres do not exist objectively, they
are man-made mental constructs that can change and are changed at will. 207
It should then be possible to create historically and culturally neutral genre
concepts based on any criteria that we find relevant to our purpose. But
given that concepts are man-made, is there such a thing as a "neutral" con-
cept? And if we do create what we think is a historically and culturally
neutral genre concept, will the criteria chosen be relevant to describing the
texts we categorize? Would we not go for the "lowest common de-
nominator," making such broad generalizations that they do not say any-
thing about the subjects? Can we completely ignore conventional genre
constructs and labels? Do we not risk elevating irrelevant features of texts
to major genre-defining factors, missing more "important" ones? Would
culturally and historically neutral genre concepts make the reader under-
stand and appreciate the special features and aesthetic qualities of the liter-
ary texts categorized? Is it for instance possible to understand Chinese
c/-poetry cut off from its relationship to music? Is it possible to fully appre-
ciate recent-style verse without reference to its speech-tone and rhyme
rules and parallelism? Is it really fair to apply a modern, narrow, Western
206 A development initiated by the theories of Liang Qichao at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury. See Rydholm, "Genre and Politics in China."
207 See Anders Pettersson's article in this volume.
110 Lena Rydholm
concept of literature to ancient Chinese literature, excluding ancient philo-

sophical works like Zhuangzi, which are appreciated for their literary qual-
ities? I leave the reader to ponder over these questions.
CHRISTINA NYGREN
Drama for Learning and Pleasure

Japan, China and India in a Comparative Perspective
Introduction
Many dynamic traditional genres within Japanese, Chinese and Indian dra-
ma and theatre are distinctly intended to teach as well as to entertain. When
comparing the complex cultures of Asia, one finds similarities in drama
production that are as striking as the differences. A particularly evident
similarity is the enormous importance traditional theatre continues to have
for theatre practitioners today (both traditional and modern), based upon a
general attitude towards the dramatic arts as preserving rather than innova-
tive. This implies a well-informed audience that is not merely familiar with
the plot, script and spiritual allusions of a particular work, but also under-
stands the complicated rules and codes of its production. Loyalty towards
canonical texts and the preservation of master traditions configure tradi-
tional drama and its manifestations, forming more often than not a rather
obvious backbone even for modern theatre.
This essay aims to elucidate a congruency in form and function in the
performing arts apparent in three Asian nations. Furthermore, I wish to ar-
gue that some characteristics of the theatre of today in those countries have
been configured during the time the art form gained textual and theoretical
shape as a genre. I also wish to make apparent the strong collaborative role
of the audience and to focus on the sophisticated codified co-operation be-
tween the art forms that is a prerequisite for indigenous theatre in the
whole region. I have chosen to take performing arts in Japan and China as
my point of departure, and then use the basic Indian theory of drama and
theatre as a background for my final remarks. India has the oldest known
written set of rules for theatre and dance, which still permeates the coun-
try's performing arts. The forms of drama and its production in the chosen
countries follow very clear lines, with the theoretical texts and the dramati-
112 Christina Nygren
sation having distinct similarities and differences. Sometimes, influences

have been inter-Asian and sometimes inter-national, as when the West at
times has been strongly interested in the performing arts of Japan, China
and India.
I shall start by introducing perspectives and definitions employed in this
work, together with a general presentation of theatrical form and structure.
Thereafter, the motives behind performing arts will be discussed, followed
by a brief depiction of the basic theories found in Japan, China and India,
including some thematic points of view. The examples presented of theatre
and drama theory have been chosen for their representative character and
because they are still referred to within the theatrical community. Encoun-
ters between text and performance are shown through theatre conventions
and theories applied to dramatic texts taken from Japanese and Chinese
plays from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These are still among the
most popular locally, enjoying regular production. Finally, I compare the
relationship between theory and performance in one Japanese and one Chi-
nese play to parallel examples from India, and discuss the view that drama
can be perfected only through the eyes of the audience.
Perspectives and Definitions
In my work drama is regarded as a genre in its own right, although it will

here be defined through its dual function as literary text and theatrical ex-
pression. This means that "drama" is not isolated from "theatre." The con-
ceptual apparatus is ambiguous and complicated, and it is highly doubtful
whether it is reasonable to separate drama (the written text) from theatre
(the performed text together with the "grammar" of the acting style). I will
argue that dramas, with the exception of European closet dramas, are
meant to be produced, and it is only through being performed that they ful-
fil their consummate form. That is why this analysis, though limited, does
not neglect the performances and the contexts themselves. The Indian the-
atre researcher Rustom Bharucha claims that the spoken words, even when
uttered with minimal or no movement at all, are embodied and "lived" dur-
ing the performance, and are dependent on the training of the actors. 1
Karen Brazell uses the term "performance script" to denote the written text
1 Rustom Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an

Age of Globalization (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford UP 2000, 2001), p. 89.
Drama for Learning and Pleasure 113
in domestic Japanese theatre, arguing for the use of "theatre" instead of

"drama" when it comes to texts that are not meant to be read as dramatic
literature. 2 Sudipto Chatterjee claims in turn that a discussion about nine-
teenth and twentieth century Bengali theatre cannot end with the written
text: "A written text is meant to be changed during rehearsal, on its way to
the performance space." 3
Basically, I take the theatrical event as my point of departure. This indi-
cates a process typical of theatre and dance. The performance occurs, hap-
pens in a passing moment. Unlike many other art forms that, once created,
can be enjoyed many times, theatre cannot be re-experienced. The theatri-
cal performance re-forms itself through the instant contact with the audi-
ence while still anchored in tradition, social life, political systems, philoso-
phy and religion. This event is the primary source for theatre studies.
The joint action between text/content and performance becomes an ob-
vious point of departure for my research (together with a basicly emic atti-
tude). The manifestation of the content (message) is partly achieved
through literary texts, and partly with the assistance of scenic presentation
of codified conventions in the performance of the actor, in set design/cos-
tumes/props and in musical arrangement. Western terms like "drama" and
"theatre" have in many cases no real parallel in the languages of the area
chosen. Instead, the names of the art forms highlight certain parts of the
complex performances (poetry, music or play). In this article, the indigen-
ous terms will therefore be used, accompanied by an explanation.
The three main modes in Western literary theory—the dramatic, the
lyric and the epic—need to be modified when they come into contact with
the traditional drama of Japan, China and India, where the texts are more
properly conceived of as one of many artistic elements in a theatrical per-
formance, rather than as the basic point of departure of the stage perform-
ance. The drama may even involve fusing the three main modes, and the
subdivisions of tragedy, comedy and farce are in most cases inseparable
subdivisions in the traditional theatre of these three countries. Theoretical
texts and basic theories about drama and performance do exist in these
countries, but they can hardly be said to coincide with Aristotle's view or
with the theories underpinning the dramas of Greek antiquity. The terms
2 Karen Brazell, Traditional Japanese Theater (Hew York: Columbia UP, 1998), p. xi.
3 Sudipto Chatterjee, "Mis-en-(colonial-)scene. The Theatre of the Bengal Renaissance,"
in J. Ellen Gainor (ed.), Imperialism and Theatre (London and New York: Routledge,
1995), p. 34. On pp. 34-35 Chatterjee continues with an example containing colonial
signals.
and theories of the classic Western drama are most of the time irrelevant.
However, in order to allow for a discussion, I choose to continue using the
term "drama" for written or orally preserved texts, and "theatre" for per-
formances where the text works together with other stage elements.
My analysis is based on the assumption that the fixed conventions of the
traditional theatre in the region in question are required to make the many
components of a performance function together. Further, that the fixed
conventions of the theatre performance form the dramatic text rather than
being formed by it. A story's structure is influenced by the need to incor-
porate recapitulated events, stage directions, self-presentations of the roles
and descriptions of the milieu (instead of stage decorations) in the text be-
ing used for the stage production. Furthermore, the time aspect of the con-
tent has to be made clear, as well as information that makes an understand-
ing of the historical context possible, and the course of events must be ac-
companied by a commentary, usually made by a storyteller, a choir or the
actor himself. The storytelling tradition is a strong common feature and is
apparent in the dramatic text itself. So are the events repeated in the story
line, repetitions of sequences in the narrative by altered everyday and po-
etic language, and presentations of persons and roles woven into the lines
themselves.
In my study, I do not claim to cover every relevant point. Instead, my
aim is to give examples of how theoretical texts and traditional rules, to-
gether with written stage instructions and information about events in the
story line, form the basis for a performance. The choice of time periods and
writings on theory, as well as examples from drama texts is made from
well-known traditional theatre forms, whose importance to drama and
stage art in succeeding centuries has remained unchallenged in Japan, Chi-
na and India. The theories about the dramas' codified form and expression
(sometimes even including ideas about how the audience are to understand
the whole production) are tested on dramatic texts and further informed by
my own field work, which constitutes the essay's primary sources of mate-
rial. In view of the limited size of this essay, I let one dramatic piece repre-
sent each nation and the drama of the epochs involved. Since the plays are
still being performed, I make a point of using not only old drama texts but
also of references to newer versions. Where Japanese nö is concerned, I re-
fer therefore even to the compendium used in contemporary performances
within one of the biggest no-traditions (Komparu ryu). For China, besides
older versions of the drama I also use a revision from the end of the twen-
tieth century (made for a theatre form whose style of performance stretches
back to the sixteenth century). By using examples from both old and recent
versions of drama texts, theatre traditions that are seven hundred to eight
hundred years old are connected to our time. At the same time the strong
validity of the original theories and drama texts even in our contemporary
theatre situation becomes obvious.
The sampling principles I have used on the exceedingly rich material
were not based on a wish to capture uniqueness but to maximise generality.
The choice of epochs, theoretical texts and dramas was made partly to un-
derline important events in the theatrical tradition of the respective coun-
tries, and partly to make salient differences that have formed the genre's
specific yet varying expressions according to time and context.
In Japan, Zeami Motokiyo's essays on /iö-theatre are the most important
works on theatrical theory. The most vital ones were written in 1402 and
1430, covering instructions about the art of acting, dramatisation and the
experiences of the audience. The texts are strictly philosophical, showing a
close association to Zen Buddhism, to the extent of borrowing Zen tech-
niques like the use of metaphors in köan (insoluble riddles used to train the
mind for it to reach enlightenment). Zeami's texts were kept secret until
the end of the nineteenth century and have since then been translated into
many languages. In Japan, those theories are the very pillar for the nö that
grew up during the time of Zeami and his father, Kan'ami, and that has sur-
vived as such until today. References to the theoretical and analytical dis-
cussions in Zeami's essays on drama and theatre are regularly made today,
and when talking about modern theatre, the terminology and perspective
cited in his texts are still used.
In China, there are quite a few literary and drama traditions, but for the
purposes of this essay I shall keep to the dramatic conventions and per-
forming arts of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). One reason for this is that
this period has been entitled "The Golden Age of Drama" by later genera-
tions. The drama that appeared during this so-called Mongol Dynasty
adopted the strictly regulated forms of earlier epochs like the zaju of north-
ern China and the nanxi of the southern parts of the country. The rules
were ennobled and given literary and dramatic qualities by the highly cul-
tured scholars of Yuan times, who had withdrawn from the rule of the
Mongol conquerors. Some of China's most beloved plays were written
during this period and are still performed within traditional theatre forms
without any significant change. However, theories written on Yuan drama
appeared later and deal mainly with detailed technical descriptions of the
regulations themselves, whose foundation came from a carefully formed
musical structure. Consequently, a careful reading of the dramatic text is a

prerequisite for a literary and philosophically substantial understanding of
the dramatics in the text and the performance. Chinese debates about the
theatre still refer to the form and content of dramas written during the
"Golden Age," which are still regularly performed in their traditional form.
In India, the manifold theoretical text of the Nätyasästra, supposedly
written by Bharata and compiled not later than the sixth century, is the
self-evident choice. The theories and instructions of this manual touch on
the structure of the dramatic text as well as the art of acting, costumes, ar-
chitecture of performing space and the experience of the audience. It was
central to the elitist Sanskrit theatre that developed at the northern courts,
but declined around the thirteenth century, although this tradition partly
continued to be observed at lesser courts and spread to new rural regions.
Every region developed its own style, and what was important was that the
different theatre forms now used local languages. The influence left by
Sanskrit theatre and the rules thereof are most obvious today in the
kütiyättam in the state of Kerala, but can be tracked to folk and popular
theatre forms like kathakali (also in Kerala) and yaksagäna (in the state of
Karnataka). In contemporary discussions about the theory and philosophy
of drama and theatre the most basic concepts are still taken from the
Nätyasästra.
Generalisations of Form, Structure and Intention

in the Theatre Traditions
Fixed conventions established and passed down over many generations are
what makes it possible for the traditional theatre's multifarious expressions
to function to perfection as a unit in the countries studied in this essay.
Polishing of definite patterns and rules are part and parcel of the art itself
and in the West we readily talk about traditional Asian theatre as "total the-
atre" where the different components work in fusion, each with its own ob-
vious justification. In contrast to, for example, European conditions, genres
like ballet, opera, dance, operettas and spoken theatre are not separated as
genres in the performance of traditional theatre. In most cases all of these
genres appear as constitutive components together with the drama text,
which is structured by song, recitation and speech in the form of mono-
logues, dialogues, commentaries, storytelling and poetic and historical al-
lusions.
The minimal common denominator in defining drama should be that the

text is divided into lines (dialogues or monologues) and that it generally
contains at least a minimum of directions for stage design and scenery. In
Western theories, the distinction is usually made that the epic tells of oc-
currences played out in the past, while the drama occurs in the present.
However, already here we discover exceptions in the Asian cases, where
epochal features appear in dramatic texts and performances. Having things
happen at the same time as we observe them is not valid in Japanese
nö-theatre, where the flow of events occur in different time frames and in
separate spheres of consciousness. Leaps in time and space, with only sum-
mary descriptions of the changes, are common in China. Dramas acted out
on an inter-individual plane in the form of encounters between acting per-
sons do not suffice as a feasible definition for many Asiatic forms of the-
atre, and lie far from Indian traditional theatre, for example. In the tradition
of Sanskrit theatre as described in Nätyasästra the gods are always present
and events come into being in the divine realm far from rational human
agency.
Positions, gestures and, to a certain extent, facial expressions (including
the facial features left immobile and absence of expression sought in some
traditional forms of theatre) illustrate the past, present and future social sta-
tus and actions of the roles. An "unhappy" ending can be seen as being less
unhappy because of a moral or religious reward attained by the roles con-
cerned. Surprises are rare or absent mainly because the plot is often known
or the story line can be surmised by the spectators.
Stage art has intentions that go far beyond the mere presentation of the
results of actions and reactions. The totality of the beauty, the execution
and the balance between various components of the composition attain a
desired experience of immediacy. After leaving the theatre, the spectators
sense the lingering experience rather than a "meaning" or thought to be
fathomed later. 4 The immediate emotional and intellectual experience, "the
sensation of the moment," is the main aim of the performance.
The actor is the central element in his/her capacity of bringing the differ-
ent parts of versatile art forms to life. The star cult is remarkably strong.
4 The Japanese «ö-theatre is unique in that it always has a basic message that the audience
is expected not only to understand but also to experience—a parallel to the philosophy of
mental "enlightenment" that is the cornerstone of Buddhist thought. Another example
can be found in Sanskrit drama where the audience is expecting to get a share of the se-
rene contentment (moksa) that is experienced by the hero of the play at the time of fulfil-
ment of his desires.
This has contributed to a strong master tradition that reinforces the tradi-
tion rather than creating new artistic approaches. Ancestors, the clan and
the master constitute and convey the norm, and it is through this fidelity to-
wards tradition that the existent art form is refined.
Content and form are equally valuable in the theatre performance. Simi-
larly, the message that the role bears and the actor's skill in exercising defi-
nite stage expressions through artistic equilibrium are of equal weight to
the performance. The dramatic text and the performance codes, and the
spectator's understanding of the meaning of the contents and his experi-
ence of the manifest form (conventions, acrobatics, dance, etc.) are as-
sumed to be of similar importance. In the traditional theatre in Japan, Chi-
na and India, both content and form are almost exclusively equally empha-
sized, balancing internal "meaning" with external "beauty."
Each component in a performance (e.g., the dramatic text) should be
considered merely as a piece of the puzzle of understanding and experience
that the spectator him- or herself is responsible for. These pieces can there-
fore not be studied separately. This standpoint provides the basis for the
descriptions and analyses of this essay.
Japan—Philosophical Fingerprints, Hints and Demands on

Public Participation
In Japan, one finds numerous signs of early influences of theatre and dance
art forms from China and South Asia, but hardly any textual connections.
The performing arts began divinely and mythologically when the sun-god-
dess Amaterasu was enticed out of the cliff in which she had hidden her-
self. It was only the help of spectacular dancers entertaining the large col-
lection of cheering divinities that convinced the curious Amaterasu to
manifest herself. This story can be found in Kojiki (712) and mirrors the
view in traditional Japanese art, where dance is still a means of communi-
cation with gods and forefathers. 5 Story-telling and sketches are tied to
spiritual ritualistic performances and ceremonies. Okina sarugaku (song
and dance sometimes combined with humorous mimicry) is a predecessor
of the Okina (Old Man) of the nö-theatre performed at special festivals to
bring luck and peace, both to the individual and to the nation.
5 Basil Hall Chamberlain (trans.), The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters (Rutland, Ver-
mont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1981), pp. 64-65.
The early nö performances contained dance and music more than dra-
matic elements, and were influenced by songs and dances like kusemai and
kouta, and also biwatöshi, priests who recited Buddhist texts to the accom-
paniment of the biwa (lute). In the cities, the elitist poetic forms of waka
and renga had their effect on nö drama. Heike monogatari (The Story of
Heike) was one of the most popular sources for written drama. Zeami Mo-
tokiyo (1363-1443) constructed his theories at the end of the fourteenth
century and at the beginning of the fifteenth century, based on what he had
learned from his father Kan'ami Kiyotsugu's (1333-1384) travelling
theatre troupe. Furthermore, he gained ideas from contemporary popular
entertainment and court performances and was also strongly influenced by
Zen Buddhism and its methods of training and teaching.
In Japan, there is no all-embracing term to cover the genre called "per-
forming arts" as it is understood in the West. The closest counterpart to
performing arts is geinö ("art skills"), although the term covers more than
the theatre and stage arts like gagaku, nö, kyögen or kabuki. Geinö covers
even the tea ceremony (cha-no-yu or sadö), the flower arrangement (kadö)
and the art of enjoying incense (ködö). The function of the mutuality be-
tween the performer and the spectator is emphasized, and the guest who is
treated to tea is first the spectator during the preparation but when the tea is
handed over to the guest, the host becomes spectator to how the guest is
receiving the cup and drinking the tea. 6 Geinö also includes traditional
dances like mai, odori, and furi, while modern dance forms are called dan-
su and classical European ballet is named bare. These forms are not sub-
sumed under geinö, nor are the more modern spoken theatre (engeki), un-
derground theatre (angura) and new performance forms (pafömansu).
Engeki includes West-inspired shows like shimpa ("new school") and
shingeki ("new theatre"), both introduced at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury and the beginning of the twentieth century. In the case of dramatic
text, special terms are used for each form of theatre. In kabuki, for ex-
ample, the term shöhon (correct script) or daihon (underlining the function
of text as support or "something one leans on") is used, even meaning a
notebook or a book containing the foundation of the performance. 7 A col-
lection of texts of any kabuki, nö and bunraku is given the form's name
6 See also an in-depth discussion about the concept of geinö in Tatsusaburö Hayashiya,
"Ancient History and Performing Arts," Acta Asiatica 33 (1977), pp. 1-14.
7 For a more developed explanation, see for example Samuel L. Leiter, Kabuki Cyklope-
dia: An English-Language Adaptation of Kabuki Jiten (Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1979), pp. 366-67.
with the addition of zenshü (complete collection), taisei (compilation) and

so on.
Within nö, there is no counterpart to the "dramatic text" of the Western
context. There is utaibon (song/poetry-book), which provides the words
and some guidance for production like rhythm and intensity. The content
can possibly be read and partly understood from the text, but cannot be ful-
ly comprehended and produced without the help of a master trained in the
inherited conventions. As complements to utaibon there are books of in-
structions for dance and movements (katatsuke) and collections of musical
pieces for the different drums and the flute that are always included in a
performance. The text is unique for every piece, while the music (including
the musicians' kakegoe—rhythmic shouts counted as part of the music and
performed according to traditional patterns) is taken from a pre-existent
system of musical pieces linked together in different ways depending on
each performance.
It is difficult to differentiate between literature and the performing arts
during the Japanese Middle Ages when it was natural for poetry and stories
to be read aloud. Storytelling (katari) and poetry (uta) blossomed more as
the art for "the ear" and "the words" than for "the eye" and "the script." 8
The literature of the period addressed a public that was not always literate
and was often performed by a storyteller, thus becoming a product created
together by the artist and the listener. In such a context, Kan'ami and his
son Zeami were active as travelling artists in a theatre group consisting of
illiterate members and with a master tradition as a foundation for their
work. Actors at this time belonged to the lowest social class, but when the
then Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu called the young boy Zeami to his court
after having seen him perform, the latter was given a unique chance to
learn to read and write, educate himself in subjects like history, literature
and poetry and become familiar with the rules governing social life and
etiquette. Consequently, Zeami was later able to both write dramas and put
down stories as well as construct the country's first theory on theatre and
drama. 9 On the basis of Zeami 's writings, drama and theatre can be distin-
guished as a genre in Japan.
8 Yasuo Horiguchi, "Literature and Performing Arts in the Medieval Age: Kan'ami's
Dramaturgy," Acta Asiatica 33 (1977), p. 15.
9 The texts were kept secret until the end of the nineteenth century and could only be read
by every generation's tradition-bearer.
Zeami's Texts and the Aesthetic Language Form
Buddhism had spread from China to Japan via Korea at an early date,
bringing with it music and dance (gigaku). Buddhist philosophy had for a
long time had a strong status in Japan's intellectual and artistic world and
this philosophical connection is fundamental to nö. This is especially true
of Zen, which came from China and became widespread during the period
when theories about theatre and drama attained a definite form. A typical
trait of the stage manifestations of nö theatre is how every movement is re-
duced to a controlled minimum in order to underline its perfection. The ba-
sic characteristics of song and dance have their origin in the "Buddha na-
ture"—a term denoting internal perfection, the completeness latent in all
living beings. 10 Both dramatic themes like the art of performance and the
theories surrounding nö follow the ideals and training methods of Zen,
which suggest and describe more than they explain. Nö builds on hints as
guidance for the spectators, who in turn are expected to be able to bring
forth the figures in their imagination. As with Zen, nö talks to the emotions
more than to the mind. 11
Α nö performance demands intuition, imagination and knowledge from
its audience. On stage, no decorations are used other than the painted pine
tree that is always in the background—possibly a remnant from the actual
pine originally chosen as a background to performances on outdoor stages.
Stage properties are not common and when they do appear they are so
sparse and fragmentary as to be almost incomprehensible to an uninitiated
public. A hut, a mountain or a boat is made of bamboo sticks bound to-
gether with strips of cloth sometimes with a branch added. The raised stage
platform is like an island in real life and is reached with the help of a bridge
(hashigakari) from the greenroom, furnished only with a big mirror, where
the actor prepares himself in silence for his entry. A small curtain separates
this room from the bridge, which becomes a passage from real life into the
dream-like existence of the stage.
The strict discipline that forms a nö performance has contributed to the
idea that nö is an art form impregnable, symbolic and refined, almost im-
10 Motokiyo Zeami, Kakyö, compiled in 1424.

11 "In all art forms, one seeks 'the emptiness of egolessness, permeated by the eternal
present' in order to create the perfected work. In a drama, the most striking and impor-
tant scenes are those where nothing is said and the actor must express the internal with-
out words, concise and concentrated in facial movements and gestures. In the art of
painting, empty spaces are seen as a living part of the work. This is Emptiness, the Void
that is the base of all life." Elin Lagerkvist (trans, and sei.), Zen: en zenbuddhistisk an-
tologi (Lund: Natur och Kultur, 1980), p. 35.
possible for the uninitiated to understand. Actually, it is more a question of

the degree of the demand put on the concentration and the participation of
the spectator before he can appreciate the performance. Hints guide the
spectator. The personages and the performance take shape in his imagina-
tion. The ηό-actor's costume is loose and does not follow the lines of his
body, and together with the mask it distinguishes clearly the character from
the actor. The actor does not attempt a realistic portrayal. Instead, he
presents a type that takes form in the spectator's mind, whose imagination
fills it with whatever is not clearly manifested on stage. In the inner world
of his imagination, the spectator is expected to come into contact with the
roles being played on stage. The portrayals are thus completed in the spec-
tator's own mind. 12 "Not to display, but to suggest, is the secret of infinity"
was how Okakura Kakuzö summarised a description of art, philosophy and
the aesthetic during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and continues:
"leaving to the imagination to suggest to itself the completion of an idea
was essential to all forms of artistic expression, for thus was the spectator
made one with the artist." 13
The philosophical and artistic tendencies of the times were mirrored
clearly in Zeami's texts when, at around the age of forty, he started writing
his most important works such as Füshikaden (Teachings on Style and the
Flower, 1402), Shikaidö (The True Path to the Flower, 1420) and Kakyö (A
Mirror Held to the Flower, 1424). 14
As in Zen, Zeami made use of metaphors and köan in his theoretical
manuscripts and instructions to artists. The main metaphor for practice and
12 Compare with Okakura Kakuzö's discussion on the tea ceremony and other art forms in
Japan. Kakuzö Okakura, Boken om te (Uddevalla: Niloe, 1977), p. 73.
13 Kakuzö Okakura, The Ideals of the East (Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E.
Tuttle, [1970] 1983), pp. 177-78.
14 J. Thomas Rimer and Masakasu Yamazaki (trans.), On the Art of the Nö Drama: The
Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984), p. xlvii. All translations of
the titles of essays and plays and also quotes from Zeami's texts are, if not otherwise
stated, taken from this work, which includes a complete translation of Zeami's papers
published in Nishio Minoru (ed.), Nögakuronshü, Nihon koten bungaku taikei vol. 65
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961). Rimer and Yamazaki's translation also covers Yugaku
shüdö füken (Disciplines for the Joy of Art, 1424), Kyüi (Notes on the Nine Levels,
1424?), Shügyoku tokka (Finding Gems and Gaining the Flower, 1428), Sandö or
Nösakusho (The Three Elements in Composing a Play, 1423), Shüdösho (Learning the
Way, 1430) and Sarugaku dangi (An Account of Zeami's Reflections on Art, 1430). Be-
sides these works included in the translation, there are some less extensive manuscripts
about music, role portrayal, a collection of recorded conversations and less theoretical
texts about related subjects, usually attributed to Zeami. Some fifteen dramas are written
by Zeami while a far larger number are attributed to him.
for experience is hana (flower), and in Kyüi (Nine Levels), Zeami gives
his understanding of the way to artistic perfection in three steps at each
of the three levels. 15 Whatever is quickly understood by the intellect is re-
jected by Zeami, who even expressed himself quite clearly about the
value of secrets and of the partially hidden: "Over and above this, it is
important to know that a Flower blooms by maintaining secrecy. It is
said that 'when there are secrets, the Flower exists; but without secrets,
the Flower does not exist.' Understanding this distinction is the most cru-
cial aspect of the Flower." 16 In Füshikaden, Zeami gives a concise expla-
nation of why the hidden can cause the desired artistic experience: "The
Flower provides the means to give rise to a sensation of the unexpected
in the hearts of the audience." 17
Another essential concept used in a wide sense to refer to the separate
components of a performance is yügen. The word is composed of two char-
acters and means "unclear, deep, mystical." 18 The term was taken from
Chinese philosophical texts and was initially used with Japanese waka-
poetry, where it had a tone of unreality and mysticism. In nö, yügen repre-
sents an essence of elegance and gracefulness, and the allusion made in
Zeami is towards the artistic rather than the religious or philosophical.
Within the nö community, I have heard yügen described with the help of
metaphors such as the emotional impression received from seeing a cloud
pass over the moon and watching how the light weakly filters through the
layers of clouds. Similarly, the meaning of the term has been compared to
the experience of snowfall, where the slowly falling flakes sparkle like sil-
ver, or to how dry autumn leaves, helped by the wind, rustle over bare
stone slabs. The principle of hiddenness in nö is summarised by Zeami as
"what is felt in the heart is ten, what appears in movement is seven." 19
Zeami outlines the basic structure of a nö performance with the words
hi-niku-kotsu (skin-meat-bone). 20 The terms originally came from the aes-
thetics of calligraphy, where hi stands for the softness of a stroke, niku
stands for the calligrapher's love for his art, and kotsu stands for the basic
energy of a stroke. Similarly in nö theatre, hi denotes the mystically enig-
15 Kado Gen'ichi, Zeami zenchiku (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1974] 1988), pp. 174-77. See
also Rimer and Yamazaki, On the Art of the Nö Drama, pp. 120-22.
16 Rimer and Yamazaki, On the Art of the No Drama, p. 59
17 Ibid. p. 58.
18 Yügen is translated as "grace" by Rimer and Yamazaki.
19 Rimer and Yamazaki, On the Art of the Nö Drama, p. 87.
20 Ibid., pp. 69-70.
matic in the aura of the actor, niku is that which gives support to the natural
talent called kotsu. The composition of a performance is important and also
follows fixed conventions. It should consist of five nö (each of which
should be about one to five hours long) and four kyögen (half-hour long
farces acted between the nö pieces). In a perfectly composed nö pro-
gramme, a play from each of the five basic types of nö texts is performed. 21
In the beginning, a play about a god or a divinity is presented. After that
comes a piece with a warrior as the main character. The third category is
made up of pieces about women, for example, an angel, a spirit or a living
person. The fourth category is of histories about "ordinary" people, al-
though they are not uncommonly about someone who has lost his mind,
and include suggestions of shamanism and exorcism. The programme cul-
minates with a piece from the fifth category, which includes a demon. 22
Α nö piece is built up according to the pattern jo-ha-kyü (introduction-
development/exposition/break-finale/dissolution), comparable to the func-
tion of acts in plays. During jo, the introductory music is played, a support-
ing actor (waki) makes his entry, the stage is described and the foreplay of
the story is presented. During the following ha, the main character {shite)
takes the stage and speaks with the supporting actor. The conversation
takes the story along to the plot's culmination, where the fundamental
emotional excitement of the piece is revealed. This is done by song and
dance. The dance has a central role in the performance and is used to un-
veil the main character's spiritual being. Normally, after ha comes an inter-
lude with a story connected to the contents of the piece, acted out by a
farce actor in daily language, in contrast to the rest of the text, which is lin-
guistically complicated, containing classical Chinese language, poetry and
allusions. (The interlude is usually not written in the dramatic text). A
machiuta (song while waiting for someone) is performed and then the main
character makes his entry in a new shape. After sections with songs, ora-
tions and recitals, a dance (mai), the climax of "the last act" (kyü), is
reached. Thereafter, a poem recital follows, together with concluding com-
ments by the choir. The plot is often simple. It can be about a person going
somewhere or staying the night at some humble and distant spot where he
gets into conversation with some local person. Later, this person appears in
21 Ibid., pp. 170-71.

22 Interesting comparisons have been made between these categories and the Buddhist sys-
tem of "The Six Planes of Existence" (rokudö). See for example William R. LaFleur, The
Karma of Words (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California Press, 1986), pp.
118 ff.
an unexpected shape and gives the traveller liberating insights or religious

salvation. 23
With a few occasional exceptions during recent years, nö performers
are, according to tradition, all men. The main character shite (the doer) is
the person around whom the story, the play and the audience's experiences
evolve. All meetings and occurrences on stage lead up to the shite'^ entry
and to the beauty, knowledge and wisdom he brings with him. Shite is the
only one who wears a mask, but in none of the unmasked faces of the sur-
rounding actors, choir members or musicians, is any content of the roles,
the text or the music reflected. The music (hayashi) constitutes the intro-
duction and support for the song, the recital and the dance, and is noted to-
gether with the text in textbooks used in basic training, but it has to be
learned through personal instructions from a master. It is not a question of
interpreting or giving a personal version of the text, the movements, the
dance or the music. The technique of the bearer of tradition, the master, is
copied as conscientiously as possible. With unchanging facial expressions,
choir members sit motionless by the stage throughout the whole show, al-
though the character of the music varies, wearing back and forth between
calm description and dramatic participation.
The exciting and intensive dances, with stamping and stylised chor-
eography, can be as incomprehensible to the public today as the text is. Al-
lusions to classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, metaphors and intersper-
sions of philosophical and religious texts demand knowledge and familiar-
ity on the part of the audience, who sometimes use textbooks with outline
illustrations of the positions of the characters as an aid.
Hagoromo (The Feather Apparel)

an Example from Performance and Text
A sharp note from the flute gives the signal that the performance may start.
There is no hurry. The stage and the play take their own time. The music calls,
tentative and summoning. The flute's thin but strong tones are supported by the
practically metallic sounds of the tightened drumskins, well-matched with the
musicians rhythmic, sometimes searching cries; ya-a, ya-a, yo-o-i...
The curtain lifts and falls again quickly behind two men who slowly
glide forth along the bridge leading onto the stage. Their faces express nei-
23 "Disappointment awaits anyone who reads Noh plays only for the stories, looking for in-
teresting and varied dramas as one might with other forms of drama. [...] A Noh play, in
other words, is not the telling of series of events but an exploration, an evocation, and in-
deed a song of praise." Kunio Komparu, The Noh Theater: Princples and Perspectives
(New York, Tokyo, Kyoto: Waterhill/Tankosha, 1983), p. 151.
ther joy nor sorrow. The polished wooden floor of the stage reflect the dull
colours of the costumes. The men are fishermen and they begin to describe
the surroundings to the public—a pine forest, the sea and the beach. The
soft mist of Spring plays among the fishing boats on their way out to sea
that early morning. One of the men senses a lovely fragrance and soon finds
a costume of feathers, one so exquisite that it cannot belong to a human
creature...The atmosphere thickens with the clang of voices, the cries, the
flute, the drums and the stillness. The public takes part in the story happen-
ing in a world of ideas—half told and half acted by the players. Time has
been severed from the even chimes of clocks. Hours and minutes have
become worthless measures.
The curtain at the beginning of the bridge is raised again quickly, the
intensity rises, the balance is disturbed—as when a heart makes a double-
beat—followed by a momentary stillness filled with power and life. The
cloak of feathers was owned by a divine being who now enters along the
bridge. Halfway across to the separate world of the stage, she stops and
raises her arm, her long sleeve covers part of her head. In despair, she asks
for her cloak to be given back to her. The fisherman hesitates and the choir
joins in the action, explaining, helping, supporting....
The man agrees to return her cloak on being given the promise that the
angel would perform a dance for him, but immediately hesitates again, wor-
ried that she might not keep her promise if he gives her the cloak first. "No,
no...doubt is only for mortals. In heaven, there is no treachery." The heav-
enly creature expresses the basic message of the piece and then dances as
she had promised. In the stage world of still beauty, fidelity, truth, calm and
patient sufferance always get their reward. The stage is an island in life—a
platform in the cycle of rebirths—a station for memories and for returning
from the dead, often to gain a moment of rest and peace in the wise words
of Buddhist sutras.
The heavenly being turns upwards and outwards. When she pauses in her
dance, her movements continue through her breathing. Her body rises and
sinks, the movement perfected by a light but definite stomp. The choir con-
tributes thoughts about her inner being, with stories about her life, about the
snow on the mountains and moonlight on the quiet beach, and ends... "She
fades away and becomes one with the heavenly mists. Now she is no longer
manifest." Total stillness descends. The play is over. The public is silent
and the actors start their way back across the bridge. Accompanied by the
musicians, they disappear behind the curtain at the end of the bridge. The
choir steps out hunched through a low side-door. The stage is empty. 24
This piece, called Hagoromo (The Feather Apparel), is one of the best-
known and most popular plays of the nö theatre attributed to Zeami. The
story goes back to the well-known legend of the same name.
24 The author's notes at a performance of Hagoromo (The Feather Apparel), attributed to

Zeami, at Kokuritsu nögcikudö in Tokyo on April 23, 1989. A longer version of the de-
scription can be read in "Nö—ett möte mellan världar," Tidskriften 90tal 2:1991, p. 65.
In the performed dramatic text, there are initial descriptions of the land-
scape and suggestions of milieu which help the spectator to imagine the
surroundings where the play takes place. There are no decorations on the
stage itself. 25 The drama and the performance follow the basic division into
jo-ha-kyü. Characteristic elements are the description of the surroundings
(issei) and self-presentation (sashi) in the lines, allusions to known poetry,
historical events and figures and religious texts, dialogue in the form of
questions and answers (mondo) which develops the play. Furthermore, the
choir comes into the picture to continue the lines of the character or to rep-
resent directly his thoughts and feelings. There is also a helper on stage
moving freely without being involved in the play.
THE DRAMA
When the play gets underway in the initial sequence of jo, the fisherman
(the companion of the supporting role, wakizure) begins by describing the
surroundings through a song (issei).
(Stage instruction: Turn towards the audience)
Loud the rowers' cry
Who through the storm-swept paths of Mio Bay
Ride to the rising sea. 26
Hakuryö (the supporting role, waki) presents himself (sashi) by giving his
name and origins:
I am Hakuryö, a fisherman whose home is by the pine-woods of Mio. 27
Together, they sing a poetic description of the place, beginning with a

quote from a classic Chinese poem from the Song period (960-1279).
(Stage instruction: Turn towards each other)
"On a thousand leagues of lovely hill clouds suddenly close;
But by one tower the bright moon shines in a clear sky"
A pleasant season, truly: on the pine-wood shore
The countenance of Spring;
Early mist close-clasped to the swell of the sea;
In the plains of the sky a dim, loitering moon
25 Textual references are taken from the Komparu tradition's nö-text series, Hagoromo 6:2
(Tokyo: Komparu kokujitsu, 1977) as translated by me, and from Arthur Waley (trans.),
The Nö Plays of Japan (Rutland, Vermont, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, [19761 1988), pp.
178-85. Unless otherwise stated, the translations are mine.
26 Waley, The Nö Plays of Japan, p. 178
27 Ibid, p. 178.
The song ageuta prepares for the entrance of the main role (shite).
Oh, unforgettable! By mountain paths
Down to the sea of Kiyomi I come
And on far woodlands look,
Pine-woods of Mio, thither
Come, thither guide we our course.
/.../
Silent in morning calm the little ships,
ships of a thousand fishers, ride the sea.28
(Stage instruction: Hakuryö puts his fishing rod close to his helper's spot
on the stage. The companion sits down beside him.) 29
The second part of the drama (ha) begins with Hakuryö informing the
audience that he has now come to Mio's pine forest, describing its beauty.
He then continues with a description of the sudden change of atmosphere:
Suddenly there is music in the sky, a rain of flowers, otherworldly fragrance
wafted all sides. These are no common things, nor is this beautiful cloak
that hangs upon the pine tree. 30
He narrates how he approaches the apparel and informs us that he intends

to take the silk apparel to keep as a treasure in his home.
(Stage instruction·. He takes four steps in the direction of the bridge, hashi-
gakari, that leads away from the place).
He is then stopped by the voice of the heavenly being as she passes the cur-
tain on her way along the bridge towards the stage. Now the first dialogue
of the piece is initiated as a mondö (questions and answers). Earlier, the
characters spoke in monologue "in the air" but now they speak directly to
each other. The conversation follows a series of lines, and Hakuryö does
not want to hand over the apparel despite the divine being explaining that
she cannot return to Heaven without it, for she would then be without
wings. Hakuryö explains harshly that that cannot be helped. Now, the choir
takes part for the first time with a description and a commentary on her
misfortune.
Then on her coronet,

Jewelled as with the dew of tears,
The bright flowers drooped and faded.
28 Ibid., pp. 178-79.

29 The positions on stage have different "landmarks," like the pillars holding up the ceiling
about the platform and other spots mentioned by names like " shite's pillar," "kyögen's
place" and "the naming place." These are not noted in this presentation.
30 Waley, The Nö Plays of Japan, p. 179.
Ο piteous to see before the eyes,

Fivefold the signs of sickness
Corrupt an angel's form. 31
The heavenly being describes how the mist covers the roads among the
clouds and informs us that the way is lost. The choir intrudes into her
thoughts and represents them.
Oh, enviable clouds, at your will wandering
For ever idle in the empty sky, that was my home!
And you, Ο seaward circling, shoreward sweeping
Swift seagulls in the bay:
Even the wind, because in heaven it blows,
The wind of Spring I envy. 32
Hakuryö's heart weakens and he offers to hand back the feather cloak. The
play is driven forward again through a mondö (questions and answers).
The heavenly being is overjoyed, but when the fisherman wants to see her
dance and, to be on the safe side, will not hand back the apparel until after
the dance, she reacts strongly. In the heavenly female's answer, yügen is
suggested, a purity and elegance where there is no place for treachery and
ugliness.
lya utagai wa ningen ni ari. Ten ni itsuwari naki mono o.33

"No, no.. .doubt is only for mortals. In heaven, there is no treachery."
Hakuryö is ashamed and hands over the cloak. (Stage instruction: She re-
ceives it respectfully with both hands). The spectator has to imagine how
she puts the cloak on through the description she gives from the perspec-
tive where she observes herself from without, and through the allusion she
makes to a dance known from Tang times in China (618-907).
The heavenly lady puts on her garment,
She dances the dance of the Rainbow Skirt, of the Robe of Feathers. 34
Hakuryö enhances the experience by describing how the cloak of feathers

flutters in the wind with her dance. The course of event culminates and the
play continues without any dialogue between Hakuryö and the heavenly
being. The choir sings an ancient Shinto tune with allusion to the gods of
creation, Izanagi and Izanami.
31 Ibid., p. 180.
32 Ibid., p. 181.
33 Komparu, Hagoromo, p. 11.
34 Waley, The No Plays of Japan, p. 182.
In poetic terms, the divine being sings the praises of the heavenly spheres
with references to "the palace of the moon god" and its carved walls of jade.
The choir joins in and continues her description of katsura, the bay tree that
grows on the moon, hinting at the reincarnation of Buddhistic divinities. She
dances kusemai, expressing the height of the drama and the essence of the
events, while the choir comments, explains, intervenes and takes over her
thoughts in a long, narrating song (kuse) while she dances.
The long misty streams of Spring flow in the wind,
Who can know more about them than those who reside in the valleys of the
moon
Where the heavenly moon-tree is attired in flowers?
/.../
This may not be heaven,
yet we enjoy beauty of the wind and the vault of heaven.
/.../
Spring shimmers among the trees of the forest,
Colours shifting down by the bay, snow on Fuji mountain
Moonlight on the beach—which is more beautiful?
Everything is exquisite!
/.../
Why does Heaven avoid those on Earth; Are we not children of the gods,
within and without the jewelled walls of the temple,
born where no cloud dares to cover the delayed moon,
in the land of the rising sun? 35
The divine being joins in the choral song with a wish for a long life for the
Highest and a description of the Song of the East, accompanied by instru-
ments.
The sunset is coloured red all along the side of Sumeiro mountain 36
Green islands float in the sea, white flowers fly as snow in a whirl
Of untamed winds,
A white cloud of cotton sleeves. 37
The dance ends and she prays with clasped hands.

Namu kimyo gatsu tenji. Honji dai Seishi,38
35 Komparu, Hagommo, pp. 13-15. Literally "the land where the sun originates" (Japan).
36 Sumeru, the centre of the Universe.
37 Komparu, Hagoromo, pp. 15-16.
38 Ibid., p. 16. "Blessed be the refuge of the lord of the moon and the highest Seishi." A line
from the Chinese Buddhistic prayer showing devotion to the "lord of the moon," the
bodhisattva Seishi (Kannon or Avalokitesvara, the Buddha aspect of mercy) who follows
Amida (Amithaba) and his sovereign power (seishi) to lead the spirit to Amida's para-
dise. The moon is the visible sign of this power.
Here the ending kyü starts with another dance (yo no mai and ha no mai),
and after the choir has described how her dress is covered by mists as she
dances the play's final dance (kiri), it depicts and comments on her dance
as she finally disappears.
The promises are completed and our land is rich with the Seven Treas-
ures—this dance that sinks down to us as a gift from heaven.
But time passes and the heavenly apparel flutters and flutters over Mio's
pine forest.
She leaves the Floating Islands and reaches the clouds, flying over Ashi-
taka,
The high peak of Fuji mountain.
She fades away into the heavenly mists
Now she is no longer visible. 39
(Stage direction: She executes a concluding stamping)
Concluding Comments
The performance is given on an empty stage without props, partly through

role presentation and partly by providing bits of detailed information in ac-
tion and text that together make a picture that takes form in the mind of the
spectator. This is done by the actors, the musicians and by the choir as part
of the unfolding plot of the drama text.
Symbolic stage properties are rare but might sometimes be needed, like
an oval wooden frame to be interpreted as a boat or an empty costume laid
on the stage floor to represent a person. A fan can symbolize almost any-
thing, a writing brush, a wine cup or a knife.
A role figure can be shown weeping by moving the open, stiff hand
close to the face and when looking at the moon the masked face is raised
slightly upwards, letting the light and shadows change the expression of
the wooden mask. Stampings of varied intensity and on different spots of
the stage are used to emphasize the expressions of the role's inner mood.
The plot is revealed partly by the role and partly by the chorus. The role
describes looks, the surrounding and the milieu but can also describe an act
from a dual perspective whereby the actor, in taking the part of the role, de-
scribes from inside what is happening to the role figure. Furthermore, the
role has a self-identification, and provides information about an event or a
changing situation, with reference to its own or someone else's acting.
39 Ibid., pp. 17-18.

The chorus, as in the case of the role, can also describe appearances, sur-
roundings and the milieu, and also depict an instantaneous picture or at-
mosphere that the audience is expected to "see." It comments on the drama
and gives explanations that help the audience to understand an occurrence
or reach an insight. The choir can even represent or take over the thoughts,
emotional expressions or lines belonging to the role. Normally, hints and
allusions to known myths, poetry or religious texts are used as explanatory
elements, together with symbols and metaphors.
In this way, the dramatic text is adjusted to the external role presentation
and "serves" the actor's expressions more than it is a free literary piece.
One can say that the role presentation and the audience's need for support
in their experiencing decide the structure and the appearance of the text
more than the performance of the fable does.
China—Strict Rules for Life and Theatre Create

the Golden Age of Drama
In China, the drama had a golden age during the Yuan Dynasty (1279—
1368). However, old documents and poetry contain information about
earlier theatrical activities. In the Shujing (or Shangshu, Book of Docu-
ments) from the first century BC, shamanistic performances were said to
have occurred in much earlier times. 40 Through the shamans, it was pos-
sible to gain contact with ancestors, spirits and gods, cure illnesses and
predict the future. Dance and pantomime were performed together with
songs and hymns, according to the Shijing (Book of Songs), a collection
of folksongs, court poetry, temple hymns and spiritual praises dating
back to the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1027-221 BC). 41 A
glimpse can be had of the characteristic system of symbolic positions and
movements in "The Big War Dance" (Dawu), a dance symbolizing a
battle and the subsequent overtaking of power. 42 These sources are very
sporadic, although they do give an idea of the origins that were later to
develop into a written drama.
40 About Shujing, see the article on ancient Chinese genres written by Lena Rydholm in this
volume.
41 Ibid.
42 Zhang Geng, Zhongguo xiqu tongshi 1 (Beijing, 1980), pp. 6-7.
Court jesters performed at Chinese courts and some of these attained

such fame that stories began to be told about their skills. 43 The art of
storytelling is also associated with vagrant Buddhist monks who appeared
when Buddhism was introduced during the Han-period (206 B C - A D 220).
Buddhist philosophy soon established itself and became an alternative to
Confucianism, developing in tandem with the indigenous Daoism. With
the translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese, new forms of narration
emerged during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). New styles of storytelling
were created, transformed literature (bianwen) and miraculous tales
(ιchuanqi), performed by priests and learned men. Often they were a mix-
ture of literary and folk styles, with prose, verses, rhymed sayings and
moral tales, and were used not only in religious texts. They were used to
tell myths containing moral, virtuous and sentimental elements. In com-
mon with the adjutant plays (canjunxi), they had great significance for the
development of later drama through their early use of clearly defined role
categories. 44 As yet, there was still no sophisticated dramatic text, only a
story line that the acting revolved around.
Song Dynasty (960-1279) involved an important development in Chi-
nese drama through the southern plays (nanxi) and the mixed theatre (za-
ju), which were early forms of music drama whose regulations formed the
basis of the theatre that was to appear in the "Golden Age." Categorizing
stock characters as well as qupai (famous musical pieces based on ballads
and folk songs also used in ci) helped to determine the structure of dram-
atic texts. 45 The musical phrases more or less dictated the number of syll-
ables, mainly in the song text, and there were rules for how the music and
the vowels could be combined (lianquti, tie-song-system). The southern
tradition {nanxi) and the northern ( z a j u ) differed in many of their expressed
rules, and the latter became the dominant one during the popular period en-
joyed by the dramatic arts during the Yuan. (This was despite the develop-
ment of the southern variant into the refined theatrical form of kunqu,
melodies from the Kun district, which was standard court entertainment in
43 Much has been told about Jester Meng (You Meng), and the saying "Jester Meng's cape
and hat" (You Meng yi guan) originated through him. "To put on Jester Meng's cape and
hat" became a euphemism for playing theatre. Ibid., pp. 17-19.
44 Zhou Yibai, Zhongguo xijushi jiangzuo (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chuban shi, 1981), pp.
20-21. See also Zhang Geng, Zhongguo..., pp. 15 ff. and Zhang Geng and others, Zhong-
guo dabaike quanshu, xiqu quyi (Beijing and Shanghai: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chu-
ban shi, 1983), pp. 449-50.
45 For an extensive discussion on ci see Lena Rydholm, In Search of the Generic Identity of
Ci Poetry (PhD diss., Stockholm Univ., 1998). For example, the chapter "The Symbiotic
Relationship between Music and Poetry in Chinese Tradition," pp. 29-35.
the centuries to come.) The zaju of the Yuan was to become a popular form
of theatre that would be refined, appreciated and referred to for many cen-
turies.
Drama and theatre had a strong period of development during the Yuan
period (1279-1368) when the Mongols took power and united the lesser
empires of the region. The new government meant great changes for the
country. Society continued to be ruled according to traditional Chinese pat-
terns, but now with the Chinese as a suppressed group. This proved to be
highly significant for the development of theatre. The examination system
that had for centuries created officials with a wide knowledge of the clas-
sics was put aside by the Mongols and scholars were no longer employed
at the court and in other positions. Only a few experienced officials were
chosen to serve the new masters. To the extent that the Mongols could not
find competent people among themselves, foreigners from other parts of
Asia were employed. Unemployment among the learned and scholars be-
came widespread, which proved advantageous for the development of
theatre as well as for the novel. Writing for a living had for a long time
been considered rather unrefined. This now began to change. Some people
refused to co-operate with the conquerors and left public life, using their
energy to write. Short stories and novels written in colloquial language
grew in popularity among the urban population and were printed in large
numbers, as were plays in colloquial language. 46 However, it was the writ-
ten drama that was to experience a boom.
With the storytelling tradition and the variety performance for which
dramatic texts were once written as its basis, the theatre gained a devel-
oped literary language. Definite stage conventions came into being and be-
came the foundation on which traditional Chinese theatre has stood ever
since. Different terms are used in China to denote the theatre, but no real
equivalent to the performing arts exists. The concept that comes closest to
"theatre" is xi, which also means "game" or "play," and is used in terms
like xiju and xiqu. The ju in the former term connotes a strong text connec-
tion and is commonly used to denote modern spoken theatre, for example,
and juqing denotes the plot itself, or the story line. The qu in the latter term
means a verse meant to be sung, and this can also be used in combination
with ju like in quju, which denotes musical theatre originating in the ballad
tradition. Quyi is a collective term for popular and folk renditions of bal-
46 James Robert Hightower, Topics in Chinese Literature: Outlines and Biographies (Cam-
bridge MA: Harvard-Yenching Inst., [1950] 1953), p. 103.
lads, comic dialogues and storytelling, together with some subcategories.

Huaju (spoken theatre) denotes a theatre built on spoken dialogue and is
most commonly used for performances in which form and structure are de-
rived from Western spoken theatre. Geju (song theatre) builds on the lines
being sung instead of being spoken, as in opera, while gewuju (song-
dance-theatre) is used to denote forms that are mixtures of song, speech
and dance, as in musicals. Both these concepts have a Western association.
The same goes for wudao (dance) and baleiwu (ballet). Drama texts are de-
noted by terms like xiben or juben (theatre book) and qupu (music man-
ual), involving music notation, including song segments.
In Chinese traditional theatre, performances always include speech, re-
cital, song and music, and even some dancing, acrobatics or combat
moves. 47 The strong connection with music is best exemplified by the fact
that in China, one says that one "hears," not "sees," theatre (ting xi). This is
true for the traditional theatre analysed in this essay, while the concept of
modern Western influenced theatre forms is gradually loosened up.
Yuan zaju—Definite Forms and Double Messages
The fact that the zaju of the Yuan period has its source in the storytelling
tradition is obvious. The actor who comes on stage and introduces him-
self, his character and background clearly originated from storytelling,
where one and the same actor played many roles. By constantly inform-
ing the audience about who he was, he managed to hold the interest even
of latecomers. Another technique was repetition. First something was
sung in verse and then the same message was directly repeated in speech.
The summary, often given at the end of an act or performance, is another
sign of strong bond to the storytelling tradition. This was necessitated by
the conditions under which the performance was given. The audience
watched the theatre in huge amusement areas where all kinds of enter-
tainment like acrobatics, wrestling, puppet and shadow plays went on at
the same time. Within such an area, there might be up to fifty smaller
buildings. Portrayals of this from the time of the Song Dynasty, when
cities grew and public entertainment become popular, give a disorganised
and noisy picture.
47 There are about three hundred local traditional theatre forms ( d i f a n g x i ) which are mutu-
ally distinguishable, but which have a common base in chang (song), nian (speech, re-
cital), zuo (role interpretation, pattern of movement) and da (acrobatics, combative arts).
A Yuan play consists almost always of four acts, sometimes five, and
only one person has a singing role in each of these acts. Normally, the
same person does all the singing in the play, while other roles are speaking
parts. A "wedge" (xiezi) could be added as a prologue or as an interlude in
connection with ordinary acts. In the first act, an expose is given about the
initial situation; in the next, the plot develops in order to culminate in the
third act. In the fourth act, a review of values and the flow of events fol-
lows. This definite division differs from earlier theatre and the nanxi that
was simultaneously developing in the country's southern parts, where the
acts could number up to fifty and the division into song and speaking roles
was never so strict. Instead, a number of role characters could all have
singing parts in the same act. A system whereby roles were clearly defined
already existed in Song variety theatre. Actors were categorized according
to their age into role groups such as main actor/male, main actor/female,
rascal and the like. This role division can still be found in a modified form
in modern traditional theatre. 48 There is also an evident strict literary divi-
sion in the language used by the different roles. The male main role, sheng-
mo, portrays old and young, serious and comic characters, often learned
men, monks and businessmen. The female main role zhengdan will include
mainly beautiful girls, who could be noble ladies, courtesans or possibly
servants. Besides these roles, there were jing, whose faces had thick make-
up, and za, supportive roles like helpers (suicong) and old men (bolao).
The themes follow the ethical tradition of the time with the stress being
laid on rules of propriety, leaving limited possibilities for individual ac-
tions. Individual wishes were not important compared to social duties.
Rules were based on Confucianism, safeguarding virtues like loyalty, filial
piety, chastity, purity and fraternal fidelity. The dramas of Yuan times
were filled with loving parents, obedient children and faithful friends. Sto-
ries coloured by Confucian thought were common in the theatre, not least
thanks to the officials schooled through the old examination system, whose
foundation was Confucianism. Daoism's longing for harmony with nature
and flight from worldly ambitions were staged, in contrast to feelings such
as striving for superficial success. Buddhist ideals and questions of fate,
chains of reincarnation and karma also left their mark on the theatre. The
educated playwrights of the time often wrote about social relationships, ar-
48 A comprehensive description of acting during the Yuan is given in the section "The Ac-
tor's Art" in J. I. Crump, Chinese Theater in the Days of Kublai Khan (Tucson: Univ. of
Arizona Press, 1980), pp. 67-175.
ranged marriages and wise judges solving difficult cases. A dominating

theme is love. Bold writing about love has roots going back a long way, but
became a characteristic of Yuan theatre. Experiences of social injustice
permeate the dramas, giving insights into society and complementing de-
tails from official history. In theatre, the hope for the triumph of justice in
an unjust society is depicted in detail.
At the beginning of the Yuan era, there were hundreds of well-known
gw-melodies, zhugongdiao and daqu, and these, together with established
α-melodies contributed to the music in Yuan drama. 49 Famous pieces of
melody (qu) used for singing poetry were given new texts. 50 Music accom-
paniment is marked in the drama text, with every qu (chosen melody piece)
having a poetic pattern of lines and stanzas. The authors could make addi-
tions to the text to fit the music. Examples of these chenzi (syllabic addi-
tions) could be "One would think...," "It is said that...," or "As luck would
have it...."
The songs in every act were to have the same key according to a system
of ten different keys and two hundred and seventy harmonies. The key in
which the songs are to be played is given at the beginning of each act. It is
probable that the music not only contributed to the structure of the drama
and acted as an accompaniment to lyrical monologues, but also created the
background for stylised dance movements, constituting an important tool
for creating atmosphere. The strict rule of having only one singing role in
each act, or preferably in the whole play, was reinforced by the fact that
only two roles and their sub-roles were allowed to sing at all. These were
the male mo and the female dan.
The theorisation on Yuan drama and its conventions cannot be credited
to any one person. It is evident in different works, especially contemporary
written dramas. Besides those already mentioned, details on one hundred
and fifty-two authors and four hundred dramas can be found in works like
Lu gui bu (Register Recording Ghosts), written around 1330.51 A work of a
similar nature is Qing lou ji (Green Bower Collection), written in 1355,
49 Chung-Wen Shih, The Golden Age of Chinese Drama: Yiian Tsa-chii (Princeton and
Guildford: Princeton UP, 1976), pp. 180-97.
50 See Lena Rydholm, In Search of the Generic Identity, pp. 64 ff. about methods of renew-
ing ci melodies and their lyrics.
51 Zhong Sicheng, Lu gui bu, in Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng (Beijing, 1959);
foreword translated into English in Faye Chunfang Fei (ed. and trans.), Chinese Theories
of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michi-
gan Press), pp. 37-38.
and including the most popular actors and actresses of the period. 52 An-
other case in point is Hu Zhiyu (1227-1292), a wise man of high social
standing with a great interest in the theatre, who constructed a theory about
Jiu mei (Nine Beauties) with nine basic qualities of a good artist.53
Dou Ε Yuan (Injustice against Dou E)

an Example of Performance and Text
This evening, the regional theatre form of yuju from Henan Province is per-
forming and the harsh knocking of wooden clappers play on the untrained
ears of the Beijing audience. The place is full and the echo of voices com-
pete with the clappers and the bows filing tight strings in time to metallic
beats from tight skin-drums. The strings take over, strong but melodious,
while the clappers and ringing gongs give a hint of coming tragedies to be
acted out on the stage. We sit on hard wooden benches in front of a cur-
tained proscenium stage, and the name of the drama is projected along one
side of the opening: Dou Ε Yuan. The music dies, the noise drops, as a
single gong sounds and Mother Cai comes forth with steady and heavy
thumping steps onto the stage decorated by only a huge thick carpet. With a
strong voice and a low tone, she tells us about her background, about her
husband who died and about how she supports herself by lending out
money. She is dressed in an orange and brown knee-long silk dress over a
long skirt. The dull "adult" colour, together with the simple turban-like
head-dress and her light copper-coloured face suggest that she is an older
woman. Her speech is clear, slow and rythmical, and her look is steady. Her
movements are few and short, but her glare, her dress and her make-up are
distinct and well thought out. She talks about the poor scholar Dou whose
wife had died and left him alone with their daughter Duanyun, and about
how he was forced to leave his seven-year-old daughter as security for the
debt he had to Mother Cai when he went off to the capital to try to pass the
official examinations.
A new gong sounds together with the clappers and announces the dubi-
ous Doctor Lu who is also in debt to Mother Cai, but who has come up with
a treacherous way of getting out of it—by killing her. His stooping stance,
his sparse black beard and his white powdered nose area informs the audi-
ence immediately of his evil plans. This plan fails, however, when Old Man
Zhang and his son Donkey Zhang pass by and save her. These men in turn
52 Xia Tingzhi, Qing lou ji. Many of the biographies of performers are translated by Arthur
Waley, e.g. "The Green Bower Collection," Oriental Art 3 (1957), pp. 50-54 and 107-9.
53 Hu Zhiyu, Huangshi shijuan xu, in Chen Duo and Ye Changhai (eds.), Zhaongguo lidai
julun xuanzhu (Changsha, 1987). The points are translated into English in Faye Chun-
fang Fei, Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance, pp. 35-36.
have hatched a plot to use her and her step-daughter Dou E. We understand
that these men are of dubious character because they also have white
make-up around their noses, and besides, Old Man Zhang even has a
clumsy protruding and ridiculous white moustache. These men's move-
ments are uncontrolled and undignified, and their speech is rough and vul-
gar. Mother Cai understands that the only way of saving her life is to go
along with their plans. The young girl Dou Ε had been married to Mother
Cai's son, who, tragically enough, died soon after, leaving her a young
widow.
Yet another gong sounds and the awaited Dou Ε makes a blinding entry
in a pink and white full silk apparel with glimmering hair decorations. She
waves the metre-long white silk sleeves graciously and expressively. Dou
E's face has thick but accurate make-up; the cheeks and the parts around
her eyes are freshly pink, her eyes and eyebrows are circled with black, and
her sculptured lips are red. All these are signs of a reputable and pleasing
young woman. She presents herself curtly and tells her unhappy fate. Her
voice is light but is as sharp as a knife, and when she starts to sing, the notes
cut through the air like crystal. The faithful but rebellious girl sings about
the sorrow of losing her husband so soon after the marriage when she was
still young, and of being left alone to care for her mother-in-law. She lets all
her grief and despair flow out of her with sobs mixed with the descending
half-notes. The wooden clappers and the sad music underline the feelings
and sorrow spreads among the spectators. "Have mercy on her who has
served you all these years, have mercy on her who is without mother or
father," Dou Ε cries, and mainly because the audience know her to be a
paragon of faithfulness, virtue and rebelliousness, they lean forward and
tearfully watch fate unfold.
Donkey Zhang takes Dou Ε to court on the false charge that she has
killed his father. The gong and the clappers sound again as the Governmen-
tal official, Prefect Tao Wu enters in a deep-blue split official dress of
embroidered silk, with a jade belt and a small hat with projecting ribs on
both sides—the regalia of a high official. However, the white face with
blackened parts, together with the unusually rhoboid form of the ears of the
hat inform us that he is a corrupt hypocrite. With a sneer, he has Dou Ε tor-
tured to get her to confess. She collapses to the floor, crying and singing
about her fate.
As the performance nears the end and Dou Ε is to be executed on account
of the false accusation, she calls to Heaven and asks for a sign. Down on her
knees, hands tied behind her back, with a plank placed on her back
announcing her crime, she sings in a high falsetto with such strength in her
voice that it sounds more like an instrument than a human voice. The execu-
tioner receives the order to chop off her head, and a last cry emanates out of
Dou E's throat. From the description told by the prison director and the exe-
cutioner, we in the audience visualise a cold wind blowing past, the heavens
turning dark, white snowflakes floating down despite it being summer,
while blood soaks the white pennant at the place of execution red, and not a
drop hits the ground.
Dou E's innocence is proven by this sign—but she is already dead and
gone. The curtain closes and the audience is already leaving, moved, satis-
fied and unusually silent. 54
Dou Ε Yuan is one of China's most famous dramas, and was written by
Guan Hanqing who lived sometime between 1220 and 1300. The exact
years of his life are not known. The drama is still presented in jingju and in
many of China's regional theatre forms. 55 The text is divided into four acts,
with an introductory xiezi (wedge). 56 Obvious characteristics of the dra-
matic events are analysed with points that typify yuan zaju.57 The opening
verse that characterises the plot and the person's situation, the self-identifi-
cation that gives the spectator the background for the role and the personal-
ity, keeping direct communication with the audience through the providing
of information, explanations and comments about the actions and the
thoughts of the role figure, and the narration about what this person does
and where he finds himself, the alternating between prose and verse where
the verse often gives a poetic repetition of the prose, the recapitulation of
earlier occurrences, and the final summation in verse. Conventionally, it is
only the main role, Dou E, who sings the poetic parts. Since the piece is too
long to be presented fully, only some representative parts of the text are
chosen below to illustrate the typical structure of the drama. The fourth act
of the original play is excluded as it is not regularly presented on stage.
54 Based on the author's notes made during a performance of Dou Ε Yuan at Renmin
juchang in Beijing, November 23, 1982.
55 Jingju means "Capital Theatre" and has been erroneously called "Peking Opera" in the
West since the end of the nineteenth century.
56 Unless otherwise mentioned, I use the printed version of the drama text in Zhongguo gu-
dian beiju xiju lunji (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chuban shi, 1983), pp. 7 - 3 3 , and also a
commented version in Yuanren zaju xuan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chuban shi, [1956]
1978), pp. 3 - 4 6 , with commentaries by Gu Zhaocang. Text references are taken from
Xianyi and Gladys Yang (trans.), Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing (Beijing: Foreign
Language Press, [1958] 1979), pp. 13-37, together with a revision of the original manu-
script into the form of the fifteenth century by Cong Zhaohuan for a kunqu style perform-
ance in 2000 (in my own translation), Kunju: Dou Ε Yuan; Juben, Helisinke Yazhou Jie
2000 (adaptation from Guan Hanqing), p. 1-15.
57 I have chosen mainly to keep to the presentation of characteristic themes made in Shih,
The Golden Age of Chinese Drama, pp. 20^16.
THE DRAMA
The Wedge (xiezi)

Mrs Cai presents the opening verse, setting the atmosphere for the whole
drama:
A flower may blossom again,
But youth never returns. 58
She gives a thorough presentation of herself, stating her name, her home
district and how her husband had died and left her alone with an eight-
year-old son. She has lent her money to the scholar Dou and has repeatedly
asked for repayment with interest but he is unable to get it. Mrs Cai in-
forms us that she has suggested that his daughter be given to her as a
daughter-in-law instead of repayment for the debt, and she is now waiting
for him to come.
Dou Tianzhang appears on stage with the girl and reads his opening
verse'.
I am master of all learning in the world,
But my fate is worse than that of other men. 59
He identifies himself and his home district and complains that, despite hav-
ing a knowledge of the classics, he has not taken any examination. He then
informs about his wife who died when their seven-year-old daughter was
but three, and they have had to live from hand to mouth. He recapitulates
what Mrs Cai had just said about his debt, repeats and bemoans her sug-
gestion that his daughter be given in marriage to her son.
He then communicates directly with the audience: "While I have been
talking to myself, I have arrived at her door." He then again enters the play
and calls for Mrs Cai.
They discuss the debt, and Mrs Cai hands him some money for his travel
expenses and the daughter, Duanyun (later called Dou E), is handed over to
her. With a parting verse that summarises his life up to that point, Dou
Tianzhang leaves the stage.
I drum sadly on my sheath;
I have studied the Confucian classics;
My unhappy wife died young,
And now I am parted from my only daughter. 60
58 Yang, Selected Plays, p. 13.

59 Ibid., p. 14.
60 Ibid., 15.
Mrs Cai informs the audience that Mr Dou now has gone off to the capital
to take the examinations. She ends with: "I must see to my chores."
Act One
Thirteen years have passed when Doctor Lu makes his entry and reads his
opening verse:
I diagnose all diseases with care,
And prescribe as the herbal dictates;
But cannot bring dead men back to life,
And the live ones I treat often die. 61
He identifies himself and his medical trade and narrates about Mrs Cai,
and how he hopes that she would stop coming to collect the debt. Should
she continue to do that, he has a plan. He informs the audience that he is
now sitting in his shop waiting for her to turn up. Mrs Cai comes in, identi-
fies herself by name and narrates the story of how Mr Dou left his daugh-
ter Dunyuan with her thirteen years ago. She married Mrs Cai's son, who
died soon after, and Dou Ε is now in her period of mourning. Mrs Cai in-
forms the audience that she plans to collect Doctor Lu's debt, telling that
she has reached his house, enters the play and asks if he is at home.
I..J
Dou Ε enters. She identifies herself and where she comes from. She re-
capitulates the events of her childhood. She narrates about Mrs Cai, who
has gone to collect a debt from Doctor Lu today, and then returns to her
own fate, alternating to poetic song in an opening verse about her tragic
life.
My life has been mere suffering
And my tears flow while trees blossom outside my window.
The light of the full moon tears me up inside.
Has the incense I offered in earlier lives any effect?
Has my fate covered my life with misery? 62
Mrs Cai returns after having been attacked by Doctor Lu and rescued by
Mr Zhang and his son Donkey who both insist on taking Mrs Cai and Dou
Ε as their wives. Mrs Cai breaks into tears.
Dou Ε informs about what she sees in poetic song:
I see her in floods of tears,
some grief in her heart;
61 Ibid., p. 15
62 Kunju: Dou Ε Yuan, p. 3.
Greeting her quickly, I beg her to tell me the reason.

/.../
She's shilly-shallying and looks ashamed. 61
Both enter the play and talk in prose. Donkey Zhang interrupts them and
confirms the agreement. Dou Ε alternates to poetic song and turns to Mrs
Cai.
Women should not believe all men say;
Such a marriage cannot last.
/.../
Your husband worked in different cities and countries
To amass a well-earned fortune and lack nothing.
How can you let his estate go to Donkey Zhang?
He tilled the land, but others are reaping the Harvest. 64
/.../
Donkey Zhang informs the audience: "Dou Ε refuses to accept me, but I
shan't let her slip away from me. She shall be forced to be my wife. I shall
now get me off for a drink with my old father." (Stage direction: Exits).
Act Two
Doctor Lu enters, identifies himself by name and recapitulates his attempt
to murder Mrs Cai and that she was saved by two men. He informs the au-
dience that he has just opened his shop for business and wonders who will
turn up.
Donkey Zhang comes on stage, identifies himself and informs the audi-
ence that Dou Ε still refuses to marry him. He narrates about Mrs Cai, who
is sick, and that he is planning to kill her, believing that Dou Ε will then be
easier to convince. He then informs that he has arrived at the medicine
shop. He enters the play at this point, speaks to Doctor Lu and asks to buy
poison.
I...I
Dou Ε comes on stage and identifies herself by name. She recapitulates
about Mrs Cai's illness and her wish to have soup made from sheep intes-
tines. She alternates to a poetic song about Mrs Cai's fickle and unfaithful
ways. In a long song, Dou Ε gives the names of strong and faithful women
throughout history who were paragons of loyalty and fidelity.
63 Yang, Selected Plays, p. 18

64 Ibid., p. 19
How shameful that women today are so unfaithful,

So few of them are chaste, so many wanton!
All are gone, those virtuous women of old;
For wives will not cleave to their husbands! 65
Dou Ε alternates back to spoken prose, informs the public that the soup is
ready.
Donkey Zhang poisons the soup secretly. Mrs Cai kindly offers the soup
to her future husband Mr Zhang to taste.
/.../
Mr Zhang dies. A dialogue brings the Act towards its conclusion. Dou Ε
swears that she did not cause Mr Zhang's death, alternates between spoken
prose and poetic song. She is putting her faith in justice and takes Mrs Cai
to task about second marriages.
A horse can't have two saddles;
I was your son's wife when he was alive,
Yet now you are urging me to marry again.
This is unthinkable! 66
Act Three
The Prefect enters with his assistant and identifies himself With an opening
verse'.
It has taken me half a lifetime to reach this social standing.
Wealth and success are attained by stepping on one's subjects.
My power is for sale but those who dare to show disdain
Bring suffering to the people. 67
After the verse, he informs the audience about his position as Prefect and
that he is presiding over a trial today. He orders his assistant to call the
court to order. (Stage direction: The assistant shouts).
(Stage direction·. Donkey Zhang comes in dragging Dou Ε and Mrs Cai).
Donkey Zhang says that he wishes to press charges.
/.../
Dou Ε is tortured but does not confess. However, when they threaten to
beat Mrs Cai, Dou Ε admits to the crime to save her mother-in-law. She is
sentenced to death and Mrs Cai weeps. Dou sings a poetic song to Mrs Cai
before she is led away.
65 Ibid., p. 22.
66 Ibid., p. 24.
When I am a headless ghost, unjustly killed,

Do you think I will spare that scoundrel?
Men cannot be deceived forever,
And Heaven will see this injustice.
/.../
How could I let you be beaten, mother?
How could I save you except by dying myself? 68
/.../
The official-in-charge enters, identifies himself and informs the public that
a criminal is to be executed today. The guards enter. (Stage direction·.
Drums and gongs are sounded three times, after which the executioner
makes his entry. He sharpens his sword and waves his flag. Dou Ε is led in
with a wooden halter. Gong and drum sound.)
Dou Ε recapitulates with a poetic song:
Through no fault of mine I am called a criminal,
And am condemned to be beheaded. 69
/.../
The good suffer destitution and their lives are short.
It is crooks instead who enjoy wealth, honour and a long life.
/.../
Heaven, you distinguish badly between the honest and the dishonest.
A mistake has been made.
And all that is left are tears. 70
While going to the place of execution the executioner's lines are spoken in
prose and Dou Ε uses poetic song. When Dou Ε runs into Mrs Cai, she first
speaks directly to her, recapitulating on the flow of events leading to the
poisoning of Mr Zhang and about how she had pleaded guilty to spare her.
/.../
{Stage direction: Dou Ε kneels while the executioner takes off her halter.)
Dou Ε makes predictions about what would happen after her death that
would prove her innocence: No blood will splash to the ground but will in-
stead stain the silk pennant flying on a pole, her body will be covered with
snow despite it being the middle of summer, and the area will suffer
drought for three years.
Dou Ε sings her concluding verses:
A dumb woman was blamed for poisoning herself;
A buffalo is whipped while it toils for its master.
/.../
68 Yang, Selected Plays, p. 26.

69 Ibid., p. 27.
Once Zou Yan caused frost to appear:

Now snow will show the injustice done to me. 71
The executioner wonders at the sky turning dark and snow starts to fall
(iStage direction: He prays to heaven), but still performs the execution.
(Stage direction: The executioner decapitates her and the assistant takes
care of her body.) They are satisfied with the cut and decide to go take a
drink. Dou E's body is carried off.
Concluding Comments
The performance is given on a practically empty stage. A carpet covers a

large section of the stage floor, and during scene changes a table and two
chairs are placed in varying symbolic formations. Smaller stage properties
are needed, like the stamp and the rack for the brushes for the Prefect,
weapons for the guards and a sword for the executioner. Since the scene
uses static lighting, darkness, for example, is suggested by the role figure
bearing a candle or a lamp, fumbling his way along. A role figure arriving
on horseback carries a stick with tufts. The sparse stage properties, to-
gether with the symbolism of the colours and forms of the clothes and the
facial make-up, and the meaningful music pieces, help the audience to
identify the venue and the social position, character and temperament of
the role figures.
Clearly defined acting patterns support the text. A girl with a good up-
bringing, or a decent woman, preferably speaks shyly from behind a raised
silk sleeve and avoids opening her mouth too wide so that her teeth are ex-
posed. Despair is shown by hands opened to the side, shaking up and
down, or with the hands rubbing together. A wrongly-sentenced person or
a fugitive, and a disgraced woman have bit of hair pulled out from an
otherwise proper hair-do hanging down to the shoulder. Men who are
scared fall backwards with arms and legs in the air while women who are
sad or who encounter misfortune fall forward. To walk in a circle on stage
is to show that one is on a trip. When a role figure climbs a hill, it may look
as if he is climbing with the help of an invisible handrail, and when he falls
downwards, he somersaults and cartwheels.
71 Ibid., p. 30. A reference is made in the verse to Zou Yan who lived during the period of
the Warring States (475-221 BC), and who was unjustly treated, leading to a frost in the
area in the middle of summer.
It is common for the role figure to move easily in time and space, leav-
ing the action on stage to speak directly to the audience, and give a mes-
sage or an explanation and then enter the play again. The continuity of the
drama is disrupted by the self-identifications of the characters and the re-
capitulations or the repeating of earlier occurrences in the performance or
from before the point in time when the performance or drama started. Fur-
thermore, the character informs the audience about his thoughts and plans,
or explains what is presently happening, which can be a necessary piece of
information for the audience since the stage is generally without lifelike
decorations. This is a heritage of the storytelling tradition in which a whole
chain of events is portrayed through narration. One can say that the role
figure takes the spectator by the hand and leads him into the events. Once
he is "in," he is released and left to experience the various scenic expres-
sions. The role figure returns now and again to make sure that the spectator
is not lost. The audience, for its part, provides immediate reactions with
shouts of "Hao" (Good!), for example, when a movement, somersault or
song is performed. It is seldom in traditional Chinese theatre that apprecia-
tion is shown through a final applause, although in recent decades, under
the influence of Western plays, this has become more common.
Thus, even in the case of China, it may be said that the dramatic text is
adjusted to "serve" the actor's expressions more than it is a free literary
piece. The audience's need for support and confirmation of its experiences
decides the structure and form of the text more than the performance of the
fable does.
India—Theories on Fragrance and Taste

In India the theatre is traced back to a mythological sphere of gods and to
the original performance of rituals. 72 During the Vedic age (circa 2000-
1500 BC) ritual practises of a highly dramatic character arose. The search
for the existence of drama and theatre in ancient Indian history leads to the
literature generated after the composition of the Rgveda and specifically to
the two great eposes Mahäbhärata and Rämäyana, written between 1000
and 100 BC. 73 A unity of complex art forms is considered to have its ori-
72 For a discussion on drama and ritual see Natalia Lidova, Drama and Ritual of Early Hin-
duism (Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publ., 1994).
73 Farley P. Richmond, "Origins of Sanskrit Theatre," in Richmond, Swann, Zarilli (eds.),
Indian Theatre, Traditions of Performance (Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publ., [1990]
1993), pp. 25-32.
gins in the philosophy of the ancient Vedic scriptures and the Vedic rituals
themselves as containing the germs of drama and theatre. 74 According to
legend the gods got tired of the vulgar practises of the people and requested
Brahma for an object of diversion that would act as instrument of instruc-
tion as well as entertainment for the people. Brahma then created the fifth
Veda of nätya (theatre) by taking the elements of speech, music, artistic
expression (abhinaya) and taste/sensation/sentiment (rasa) from the exist-
ing four Vedas. 75 The Indian concept of traditional theatre art is character-
ised by this broad view of artistic interaction, "according to Indian notion,
drama is not a written text or dialogue; it is a recital set in action." 76 This
unity of components is pointed out by Kapila Vatsyayan in her extensive
writings: "it would be a partial exercise to analyse genres only in terms of
their dependence on the word or sound or movement in isolation" 77 and
"this art [dance] has to be comprehended as a complex synthesis of the arts
of literature, sculpture, painting and music." 78
An enormous variety of performers seems to have existed in ancient
times. There were professional theatre groups retained by courts or temples
as well as wandering troupes of entertainers who performed for a rich
patron's assemblies or on festival grounds. There were also performers
who continued a sacred vocation in a teacher-disciple tradition. Though no
communal or family occasion seems to have been complete without a the-
atre performance at this time, there is also evidence in the epics that the
performers as a class were looked down upon by the patrons. 79
In a survey as brief as this, it is not possible to include a discussion of
the many traditions of theatre in India, shown in a metaphor by Kapila
Vatsyayan as "a single-bodied and many-armed image of Durgä, or of Siva
in his form as Nataräja, ever destroying, ever creating new forms of the
74 A. B. Keith, The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory and Practise
(Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publ., [1923] reprint. 1992, 1998), p. 23.
75 Tarla Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production in Ancient India (Delhi Motilal Benarsidass
Publ., [1995] 1999), p. 8. Original text in The Nätya Sästra of Bhratamuni, trans, into
English by A Board of Scholars (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, [1986] reprint. 1996),
p. 2.
76 G. T. Deshpande, "Sanskrit Drama," in Indian Drama (New Delhi: Ministry of Informa-
tion and Broadcasting, [1956] rev. ed. 1981), p. 14.
77 Kapila Vatsyayan, Traditional Indian Theatre: Multiple Streams (New Delhi: National
Book Trust, 1980), p. 7.
78 Kapila Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dance (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, [1974] 1992), p. 9.
79 Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production, pp. 16-17.
dance." 80 Therefore I will keep to "one body," the Nätyasästra, and high-
light a few aspects of the theory and practise of Sanskrit theatre. The basic
Indian approach to traditional drama and theatre, together with an ancient,
well-developed and meticulously documented system of rules and instruc-
tions for play production, constitutes an interesting background to my con-
cluding reflections in this essay.
The extensive theoretical work Nätyasästra (Theatre Science) consists
of thirty-six chapters of instructions covering all aspects of theatrical work
such as how to write a play, how to build a theatre, the appropriate use of
voice, dance, song, music, make-up, costume, properties, scenery and so
on. It also includes the appropriate life style of an artist, the attitude of the
audience and the rituals that should be performed in connection with per-
formances as well as other, more peripheral subjects connected with art,
literature and music. It is attributed to an author named Bharata Muni
(bharata is also the term for "main actor" in Sanskrit theatre) and thought
to be compiled sometime between 200 BC and AD 200. It still provides
guiding and active principles for traditional theatre performed today. 81 In a
book on modern Sanskrit dramas, Rita Chattopadhyay states that "[djrama
or Nätya is the finest form of literary creation [...] neither a static form of
art, nor a motionless picture of the universe." 82 She continues about how
the drama has a two-fold aim, "to give delight and to instruct," 83 and points
out that the aesthetic feeling and taste of some Sanskrit poetry (kävya)
"arise through the act of witnessing a drama." 84 The Nätyasästra also
stresses the combined experience of perception: "We wish to have a pas-
time that shall simultaneously be visual as well as auditory." 85
Sanskrit play production has been described by Tarla Mehta as a "frame-
work of interdependence" and refers to the eleven essential components
which constitute a nätya, according to Nätyasästra,86 They are rasa, bhäva
(emotion, mental state), abhinaya (acting), practises of performance—
popularly realistic or theatrically conventional, style, action, achieve-
ment—success, musical notes, instrumental music, song and the stage (I
80 Vatsyayan, Traditional Indian Theatre, p. 1.

81 There are many different views about the time when Nätyasästra was composed, but
most researchers seem to agree that it was probably between 200 BC and AD 200.
82 Rita Chattopadhyay, Modern Sanskrit Dramas of Bengal [twentieth century AD] (Cal-
cutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1992), ρ 1.
83 Ibid., p. 2.
84 Ibid., p. 1.
85 The Nätya Sästra of Bhratamuni, 1:11, p. 2.
86 Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production, p. 3.
shall soon describe some of these in further detail). 87 Each of these compo-
nents can only be fully understood in the context of the others, but for the
sake of comparison with the Japanese and Chinese examples analysed ear-
lier in this article, I shall concentrate more on certain aspects of the theory
of Sanskrit theatre than on others.
The concept of rasa is essential and a major aesthetic goal for the theatre
event. Rasa is an experience in which the actor and the audience can meet,
and the term has been translated in many ways, like flavour, sentiment,
taste or pure joy. In Nätyasästra, an explanation is given with the help of a
metaphor: "Just as dry wood is pervaded by fire, so also the physical body
is pervaded by rasa." 88 The fundamental importance of rasa is shown by
Tarla Mehta to belong to the Indian ancient fine arts "reflecting the aes-
thetic ethos and aestethics which considered art as a discipline to glorify
the joyful consciousness (rasa) of every experience of life." 89 There are
eight rasa that permeate all levels of performance: erotic, humorous, pa-
thos, impetuous anger, heroic, terrific, odious and mysterious.
Along with rasa the different experiences of bhäva, often translated as
emotion or state of mind, are listed in the Nätyasästra and divided into sev-
eral subdivisions. Some of the bhäva mentioned are love, merriment, sor-
row, fury and disgust as examples of "permanently dominant" emotions,
while paralysis, sweat, trembling and loss of sense are example of "tem-
peramental states of emotional fervor." 90 The bhäva as well as everything
else that the actor should communicate to the audience is achieved by abhi-
naya, the performers' artistic expression, divided into four subdivisions:
gestures from the limbs, verbal utterance, embellishments through dress
and ornaments, and temperament. 91 Rasa evocation through bhäva presen-
tation is the quintessence of Sanskrit play production. Appropriate abhina-
ya of the bhäva, together with the correct performance of music, songs,
drums, speech, recitation and the like, will evoke the rasa that is concealed
in the drama text.
The drama text of Sanskrit theatre (nätya rüpaka) should be composed
by the dramatist according to strict conventions that can be used as devices
for the audience so they can be aware of what is intended to be achieved
from the performance. The play should follow a proper schedule of per-
87 The Nätya Sästra, 6:10, p. 71

88 Ibid., 7:7, p. 87.
89 Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production, p. 5.
90 The Nätya Sästra, 6:16-22, pp. 71 - 7 2 .
91 Ibid., 6:23, p. 72.
formance. First comes a prayer, followed by a prologue in which the leader

of the troupe, together with his assistant, the actress and the jester, intro-
duces the play. Then the plot (vastu) is presented through a fixed number
of acts, connected by short, linking interludes. The play ends happily with
the hero achieving his desired goals, and he can finally wish for the
well-being of all through a verse of benediction.
The dramatic text, written in alternating passages of prose and verse in
various metres, is meant to be chanted or sung and probably also partly
spoken. The text is enacted visually through formal schemes of dance
movement, symbolic hand gestures (hasta) and codified facial expressions.
With further support of costume and make-up patterns the performers rep-
resent specific types of characters in carefully determined situations that
are appropriate to convey certain chosen emotional states. All this is ac-
companied by instrumental music and interpolated songs (not necessarily
noted in the author's text). 92 The conventional practises of staging can be
summarised in a few points: 93
Direct and frontal communication between the actor and audience—subdi-

vided into announcement of the character's intention, time of his entry,
context, performed by monologues, asides, direct comments and detailed
descriptions of the states and situations on the entry of the character.
Continuous narration-representation, scenes latent with rasa presented
through bhäväbhinaya (emotion and artistic expression), intertwined with
scenes of narration consisting of brisk linking devices of essential narration
and small connecting scenes. Characters indicate what has happened or
what is coming in a condensed version. This might take the form of speech
from behind the back curtain as well as monologue or dialogue in which
two or three characters speak in the refined Sanskrit or in regional "vulgar"
prakrit languages or both. Further, there may be explanations of what hap-
pens between the acts, indicating a change of setting, time or season.
The zonal divisions of the stage, bifocal and trifocal scenes, and with a
minimum or no use of setting.
The curtain, a hand held rectangular piece of cloth used, for example, for
entrances and exits.
The conventions used for entrances and exits, lighting and sound effects.
92 See James R. Brandon, "Introduction," in Rachael Van M. Baumer and James R. Bran-
don (eds.), Sanskrit Drama in performance (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publ., [1981]
1993), p. xviii. See also Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production, pp. 190-91.
93 See Mehta, Sanskrit Play Production, pp. 191-219.
To give some idea of the practises of performance, let me give a few

very short examples of some of the points mentioned above, using the
drama text VikramorvasTya (UrvasT Won by Valor) written by Kälidäsa. 94
The play opens with an initial prayer to Siva:
In scripture sages call him the cosmic person,
pervading, transcending earth and heaven,
the only lord confined by no realm;
ascetics seek liberation from within,
where he is won by discipline and firm devotion—
may Siva, immovable god, bring us final bliss! 95
The prologue contains an introduction of the play and serves as an initial

direct communication between the performer och the audience. At the
same time the theatricality is strengthened by the Director's presentation.
Director (looking backstage): Märisa, come here, right away!
Assistant (entering): Here I am, sir.
Director. Märisa, the audience has often seen the plays of the old poets.
Today I shall stage a truly new drama called UrvasT Won by Valor. Tell the
cast to be careful in playing their parts.
Assistant: As you order, sir. (He exits.)
Director. Now, as for you worthy people, I make this request:
Out of kindness toward your servants

or respect of the good spirit embodied
in the foundation of the playhouse,
please listen with hearts attentive
to this work of Kälidäsa. 96
Then the Director introduces the beginning of the main plot, giving the his-
torical and present context and describing the characters that are to appear
on the stage.
A celestial courtesan, the issue of a sage's thigh,
returning from service to Indra, lord of Kälidäsa,
has been abducted in the way by the gods' demon foes;
now her company of nymphs is crying out pitifully. 97
The story evolves, mainly imbued by the "erotic rasa" (srngära) but with
some touches of the "marvellous rasa" (adbhüta) and an air of the "terrible
94 Translated by David Gitomer in Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.), The Plays of Kälidäsa
(Delhi, 1984, reprint. 1999), pp. 177-251.
95 Ibid., p. 181.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid., p. 182.
rasa" (bhayänaka). In the first act the hero (King, and ruler of Pratisthäna)
falls in love with the heavenly nymph UrvasT, a secret he shares with his
court jester. The second act starts with the jester explaining to the audience
how he is bursting with the King's secret "like a Brahman stuffed with
fabulous food at feast." 98 The third act starts with an interlude where two
pupils of the sage Bharata discuss how the god Indra decided for UrvasT
that she could remain on earth with the King until he beholds a heir." At
the beginning of act four a poetic verse is sung offstage, telling how the
"distraught nymph" is crying heartbroken on the bank of the lake. It is Ur-
vasT who has been provoked into a rage of jealousy by the King looking at
another nymph as they spent some time together at the mountain Kailä-
sa.100 In the fifth act the excited jester comes on stage, reporting that the
King has returned and is going to take his ritual bath. 101 Suddenly there is
an unexpected message that a heir is born to UrvasT. The son reaches his
father after some complications and gets his consecration. The sage Närada
sent from Indra's court gives his comments in a verse:
The royal splendor of Crown Prince Äyus

Calls to mind the war god Kumära, Siva's son,
When Indra, lord of storms, installed him
Commander-in-chief of heaven's armies. 102
The King is asked if he has any more wishes to ask of Indra and he answers
that if Indra is pleased with him, why should he wish any more? At the end
he gives the benedictory verse:
It is rare to find a happy alliance
when things are mutually opposite—
let wealth unite with the godess of speech
that hearts of truth may prosper. 103
This brief summary of some aspects of drama and theatre in Nätyasästra

shows in general that the nätya of India, according to its ancient treatises,
is a composite artistic work with the goal to teach as well as to entertain.
The dramatist is important with his knowledge of the codified rules about
how the drama text should be written in order to reach the proper achieve-
98 Ibid., p. 189.
99 Ibid., p. 205.
100 Ibid., pp. 217-18.
101 Ibid., p. 239.
102 Ibid., p. 250.
103 Ibid., pp. 250-51.
ments of the nätya productions, which has as its ultimate goal to evoke
rasa that can be experienced by the audience. The carefully formed con-
ventions of the Nätyasästra create a code system that is both broad and
firm, one that comprises the form of the written text as well as the whole
performance.
Theatre as a Genre with a Need for an Audience—

Concluding Reflections
Two striking similarities between the traditional theatres of Japan and Chi-
na are the absence of a demand for realism and the expectation that the
spectator is knowledgeable about the codified system of the performances.
This is also true of the nätya of India as described in the Nätyasästra. The
perspective of the theatre being both for learning and for pleasure is clear,
as is the performance serving as a vehicle for conveying understanding, en-
lightment, purification or bliss to the audience. I find a strong affinity be-
tween the hana of the Japanese nö and rasa in the Sanskrit theatre—both
create a divine platform for encounters between performers and audience.
References and allusions in the written drama text, often only loosely re-
lated to the plot, are made to history and religion or to other art forms like
poetry and literature. The symbolic language of the codified performances
conveys undertones within the actual text or by means of the scenic presen-
tation, suggesting implied meanings to the spoken/recited/sung words.
Another similarity between the cultures is the emphasis on the virtuosity
and beauty that surround the actor's central role in the performance. The
dramatic development may be fragmentary and there may be giant leaps in
time and space on the stage. Some conventions are specifically attached to
the theory of each country, while others like the act of walking in a circle
on the stage meaning a journey or that some time passes are understood in
all the three countries. The audience's understanding is supported by the
role or actor relating the relevant time and place, describing the scenery
and giving necessary information. Direct communication between the actor
and the spectator is achieved through self-identification, an opening verse,
recapitulation, narrative commentaries, repetitions, explaining asides and
the like. The spoken, recited or sung text is complemented by music, dress,
make-up, mask, movement, dance, symbolic props and decorative ele-
ments and only through this combination does the drama reach its full
form.
Subdivisions in stock characters are prevalent in all the countries dis-

cussed. In Chinese jingju there is a more elaborate division between men
and women, clowns and painted faces, while in the Japanese nö there is
primarily a division between the main actor {shite) and the assistant actor
(waki), equivalent to the bharata and nata in the Sanskrit theatre. The use
of different languages is mainly dependent on the character. Some may
sing and some not, some may speak the language of the elite and some the
language of the common people. In all three countries the jester, buffoon or
"commoner" has an important role to play: in China the chou, in Japan the
kyögen and in India the vidüsaka, by being able to move and speak freely
as well as to give the audience a chance for a good laugh. The main actor,
the hero, also has much in common in the three countries. Although in In-
dia he should be a mythological god or king, in China and Japan the hero is
not necessarily a god or a king, but he or she often has strong contact with
the realm of gods or the supernatural.
The performance needs an audience for it to be completed, even if, in
some cases, this may be made up of divinities and ancestors. The tradition-
al theatre of Japan, China and India does not live its separate life behind
"the fourth wall" of a proscenium stage. It includes the audience as a crea-
tive and collaborative force. The spectator has to learn to deal with a com-
plicated combination of expressions from the role (in the theatre piece), the
artist (the virtuoso following the predetermined codes of the performance)
and the actor's person (who can temporarily manifest himself through in-
terspersed direct comments to the audience.)
There is an interesting difference in the three points of view on the per-
ception of the performance. In China the audience would say that they are
listening (ting) to the theatre, while in Japan they are looking (miru). In In-
dia the combined action of seeing (drsya) and hearing (srävya) is the ulti-
mate experience. In conclusion, I would add that to understand a drama in
its totality one has to "read" the performance to its full extent.
KERSTIN EKSELL
Genre in Early Arabic Poetry
Introduction
In Arabic culture of all periods, ancient poetry, pre-Islamic as well as clas-

sical, has always been considered highly prestigious. It is still part of the
obligarory curriculum at school and the pupils learn to recite parts of it by
heart. Together with the Koran, pre-Islamic, or Jähiliyya, poetry became
normative for the foundation of an Arabic grammar and an Arabic national
literature and thus essential for the shaping of Arabic identity. The social
background for this poetry changed with the transition from tribal to seden-
tary society ca. 650-700, but it continued to enjoy high prestige during the
classical period.
The aim of this study is to address the origin and early development of
Arabic poetry by analysing its genre system and the implications that may
be drawn from this in a historical perspective. The study starts with a back-
ground view of pre-Islamic Arabic society and the role of poetry here.
Then, the problem is stated: How should we understand the origin of this
early poetry? The method chosen consists of a two-part analysis: a) an out-
lining of the grid of early poetical genres as defined by the medieval Arab
scholars, and the application of this system to the early poetry (a synchron-
ic view), and b) a pragmatic approach to the same poetic material with the
performance situation as a starting-point (a diachronic view). Under a) are
considered the genres during the classical Islamic period, the genres or
themes during the pre-Islamic period, and general definitions of the poetry
with regard to prosody and rhythm, composition and the "grandes genres."
Under b) are considered parameters of prosody in combination with the
context of the situation of performance and the practical functions of the
poetry.
Pre-Islamic or Jahiliyya Society and its Poetical Corpus
Pre-Islamic poetry as we know it has been dated to ca. AD 500 to ca. AD

680. Its appearance in history is connected with the first recorded battles of
the Arabs, and its characteristics can be followed well into the Islamic
era—the advent of Islam during the 620s brought no abrupt change to the
poetic conventions; rather a slow change over time caused the poetry to
change into that of an urban society. The Arabs before the advent of Islam
were nomads, Bedouins, organised in tribes occupying the area of the Ara-
bian peninsula, stretching up into the deserts of Syria. They were camel
rearers and also raised sheep and other cattle, they controlled the caravan
trade of the area and to a small extent they also lived in cities in the desert
area, where at times they established small and thriving communities such
as Petra, Palmyra, the Hira and the Ghassanid state in the Hawran in south
Syria. Their identity and self-pride were based on their life as nomads,
riders and camel rearers, on glorification of the tribe to which they be-
longed and on their skill in war and in combating the hardships of the
desert.
This Bedawi Arabic society was almost exclusively an oral one. The an-
cient Arabs experimented with alphabets from an early time; the present
Arabic alphabet was developed from ca. AD 300 and there were predeces-
sors to that, beginning with Thamudic ca. 800 BC. However, the technique
of writing was only used to a very limited extent, for example in single let-
ters and trade documents, or in monumental inscriptions, especially grave
epitaphs. The main official documentation was oral. Thus, poetry was
learned and transmitted and recited orally, and so was all recording of his-
tory and of legal rules. The spoken word was considered more reliable than
the written one, and those entrusted to maintain the cultural inheritage
were trained for years in memorising, reciting, and composing texts.
Poetry continued to be transmitted orally until well into Islamic time. (It
may be noted that this poetry, although orally recited and transmitted, does
not show the typical characteristics of oral poetry as defined by Lord and
Parry and must consequently be valuated on its own premisses.) About 700
it started to be collected and written down, and the corpus that has been
preserved was recorded during the eighth and the ninth centuries. (It is
quite possible that the poets in late Jähiliyya used writing in composing
their poem, but not a single scrap of written poetry is dated from pre-Islam-
ic time.) Thus, one or two centuries passed between the actual composing
of the poetry and its being written down. This has created a problem of au-
158 Kerstin Eksell
thenticity. It has often been argued that pre-Islamic poetry may be an enor-
mous forgery from the eighth to ninth century. However, many Arabists,
including myself, believe that the corpus is by and large genuine: oral
transmission can be quite reliable, and the elaborate conventions character-
ising the poetry imply a well established tradition.
The written corpus handed down to us is of an impressive size. It con-
tains the collections of poems by the most renowned poets of the period,
and of many less known poets as well. Furthermore, there are anthologies,
such as the collection of the Mu 'allaqät, the (usually) seven most admired
poems; the Mufaddaliyät, one hundred and twenty-six poems by different
poets, and the Hamäsa, a large collection of short poems. There are also
collections of mixed prose and poetry. Basically, they go back to a sort of
proto-historic corpus, called axbär, "information; reports," which consists
of a large number of reports expressed as episodes or anecdotes about the
deeds of the Arabs, usually about war, but also with a social character, dur-
ing the sixth century. These texts were written down gradually during the
Islamic period, having existed only orally for the first couple of centuries.
There is no single, canonical text; the text units of varying size all went
into different anthologies. The best known original text corpus, Ayyäm
al- 'arab (The Days of the Arabs), deals with battles which were fought and
where the single combats have been edited as actions of a day. Extensive
parts of this corpus were collected in the comprehensive anthology Kitäb
al-agäm (The Book of Songs), from the ninth century, which also contains
information about the lives of poets and other small or big events.This type
of corpus is an endless narrative interfoliated with poems or other memor-
able expressions, for example magical curses or blessings, or simple songs
that may have become preserved rather by accident. It gives much valuable
information on the poetry. It is also our only source of prose texts that has
been preserved from the period and is therefore of the utmost importance.
The Problem
Already on its first appearance around 500, the poetry is fully developed.
With regard to prosody, it conforms to fixed metrical rules and rhyming
principles. It is grouped according to a limited number of themes with re-
gard to content or function. Lexicon, syntax and rhetorical figures demon-
strate a high degree of conventionalisation. The poetical form was so well
established that it could be used as normative for all classical Arabic poetry
that was to follow, as well as the basis for the literary theory that was de-
veloped simultaneously.
Jähiliyya poetry, that is, poetry from the Jähiliyya, or pre-Islamic period
(before ca. 650), is usually treated as an homogenous whole, starting from
nowhere, produced in its period without changes within itself. Such a view,
however, is hardly satisfying. How did this poetry with its norms and con-
ventions come into existence? What was its history? How did it develop
with regard to form and function? Was it an inner-Arabic development,
taking place among the nomads of the desert, or was it influenced by the
sedentary cultures surrounding it? Was there an origin connected with
magic, or was it aesthetic ideals thriving at the rulers' court, the Arabs of
the Hira and Lakhmld dynasties, or other Hellenistic and Byzantine states
that directed its formation?
There are obvious cracks in the presumed homogeneity of old Arabic
poetry. First, there must have been prestages of the poetry, and prose, be-
fore 500; these have never been accounted for, although some discussion
has taken place on the subject. Was there a slow development before 500,
or did it suddenly burst out around that time? Secondly, there are signs of a
development within the Jähiliyya period, from 500 to 680, which have
been vaguely noted but are not really recognized. Thirdly, there is no doubt
that major changes took place in the poetry as well as in other aspects of
literature and society with the change from a nomadic, pre-Islamic society
to the urban and Islamic one during the second half of the seventh century.
Assuming that the ancient poetry developed over time, how do we go
about finding out how it changed? In the absence of historical evidence, we
must apply indirect methods and induction, trying to substantiate some
kind of hypothesis which might serve as a working principle for further in-
vestigation.
The poetic corpus as it now stands has been classified into genres and
other text typologies. Even at a cursory glance, it is apparent that different
typologies have been used, partly overlapping and converging, partly be-
longing to several different layers. Some of these typologising criteria may
be later inventions, others seem to reflect a genuine heterogeneity in the
poetry. Some text types are defined by broad criteria, others by narrow
ones; some by several criteria, others by single ones. Usually a poetic text
may be defined according to more than one typology.
In this study, it is assumed that a study of typological relationships on
the synchronic level must be completed by a study of an underlying dia-
chronic pattern; the apparent overlayering and heterogeneity may conceal
160 Kerstin Eksell
stages of historic development which it may still be possible to uncover.

The approach to the problem is to make an examination of the typologies
in two steps:
Firstly, the text types are studied as they appear synchronically, noting
the characteristics of each established text type, and summing up the total
of criteria used for differentiation. This will show how the system consists
of only partially integrated criteria, and how the later, classical literary
theory of the Arabs has been somewhat artificially imposed upon the old
material.
Secondly, the material is studied in a diachronical frame, disregarding
the classical literary theory, and instead concentrating on contextual crite-
ria, mainly the parameters of the performance, or situational context, and
of the practical function, viewed in combination with an overall basically
prosodic parameter of simple versus complex metres. The diachronical
frame, as outlined here, reduces the apparent heterogeneity of typologisa-
tion to a secondary level of significance, while emphasising the primary
importance of the practical function for the development of the poetry.
The synchronic typology is static and compartmentalising, whereas the
diachonic outline implies a dynamic, porous description. The syncronic
typology is quite useful as such. By categorising according to the concept
of the "grid," we are indeed able to distinguish characteristics and basic
patterns in the poetry and to lay a foundation for further studies of the de-
velopment of the poetry. However, it is not enough. The obvious short-
comings of the mixture of criteria used make the synchronic and static grid
applicable as an explanation model only up to a point. In order to throw
light on the actual process of development and its dynamics, another ap-
proach must be used. This is where the concept of "performance" becomes
essential. In this approach, which may be called a pragmatic one in the lin-
guistic sense of the word, the poetry is viewed as an open and ongoing and
continuous process subject to the combined forces of context, function and
aesthetics, which direct its development.
The pre-Islamic Arabs were not theoreticians. They had labels for differ-
ent text types but never bothered to explain them in an abstracted form. It
became the task of later generations to ponder about precisely what these
labels stood for, and how well they covered the actual material.
As for the meaning of the term "genre," I wish to refer to the three
meanings given by Anders Pettersson in the concluding chapter of this vol-
ume. The meaning of genre as "traditional and established," something
recognised by tradition as a special kind or sort of text is, as we shall see,
the definition which best fits the old, classical Arabic way of classifying
text types, that is, the emic tradition, which will be treated with great con-
sideration. The term "communicative genres" would also seem appropriate
in this perspective. The emic definition often resorts to the communicative
process, to the extent that the intention of the speaker/poet and the reaction
of the listener may often seem to be the decisive criteria for defining a par-
ticular genre.
There is no consistent modern genre theory to challenge the old, emic
one with regard to old Arabic poetry. Modern Arabists, however, as we
shall shortly find out, often speculate loosely around the genre concept, re-
fusing to define some text types as "genres," reserving the term for a few,
selected text types only. The unspoken basis for their reservations seems to
be, as far as I can make out, their conceiving of the term "genre" as de-
manding criteria on different levels, apart from content, as well as some
formal criteria with regard to prosody and/or composition. A text type de-
fined as expressing a certain topic is not felt to be a distinctive "genre," in
contrast to a text type defined both by topic and by prosodic or syntactic
structuring. Here, the desired genre concept seems to be rather of the "clas-
sificatory" type (using Petterson's term). For the purpose of this study, I
shall follow this later way of thinking represented by modern Arabists and
look for criteria on the following three levels: a) the formal level (prosody;
composition; language); b) the semantic level (theme; content; idea); and
c) the informational level (aim and function). The combination of elements
from the formal level, together with elements from one other level, would
allow for a generic classification. These ad hoc operating principles have
been simplified from Todorov's definition of generic criteria; 1 from the
communication model once proposed by Jakobson; and from Genette's
discussion of a taxonomy for the archetext. 2 Which types of texts should be
called "genres" is not certain at this stage of the investigation; wider or nar-
rower typologies must be considered. And it will not be necessary to col-
lect a certain (large) number of elements to be able to determine a genre—
the intention is subject oriented. I shall have to leave to future studies the
postulation of a general theory of genre for the material in question.
1 Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction ä la litterature fantastique (Paris: Editions du Seuil,

1970).
2 Gerard Genette, Introduction a I'architexte (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979).
162 Kerstin Eksell
The Classical Arabic Literary Theory:

Prose and Poetry; Genre
The great European genres, poetry, epic and drama, usually considered as
Aristotelian, are lacking in Arabic literary theory. Mimesis is an unknown
concept. Aristotle's poetics was included in the philosophical Greek corpus
but never came to play any part in the literary theory created, except as a
target of ridicule. 3 In fact, Aristotle, the pillar of Western literary tradition, is
strangely meaningless when it comes to understanding early Arabic literature.
Of the three grand genres, or modes, defined by Aristotle—epic, drama
and lyric—the Arabs do not really count any other than the lyrical one. Nor
does the classification as such cover the facts, since non-fictional types of
prose may be considered literary, while epic is not treated as a literary enti-
ty at all, and drama practically does not exist as an independent text type.
A definition of literarity 4 in Arabic culture most naturally starts with po-
etry. For the Arabs, poetry is the most central and most important of all lit-
erary forms. Poetry is defined prosodically as a discourse structured by
metre and by rhyme. There are many different metres, but poetry without
any sort of metre cannot be conceived. Furthermore, every verse in a poem
has an end rhyme which is the same for all verses within the single poem.
Thus, a text that adheres to certain metrical rules and is rhymed is poetic.
All other kinds of texts are prose forms. Poetry, si'r, is structured, ordered,
whereas prose, natr, is non-structured, scattered.
Prose in its turn can be artistic, in which case it is close to poetry and can
lay claim to almost the same high status. Such a form of artistic prose is
sag': it has end rhyme, like poetry, but not metre. The Koran, for example,
is written in a kind of simplified sag'. Both poetry and prose were orna-
mented with figurative language, such as metaphors and simile, and with
assonances of all sorts; rhetoric (baläga) was a property of literarity but in
practice more loosely defined than the prosodic features. Prose without
rhyme could be appreciated as literature for its rhetorical qualities alone.
In Western terms, Arabic poetry is mainly lyrical. It is the poet himself
who speaks in the first person, and whatever is said is somehow coloured
by this subjective aspect.
3 Cf. discussion in Wolfhardt Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und grieschische Poetik

(Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1969).
4 Cf. Anders Pettersson's introductory chapter in Notions of Literature across Times and
Cultures, volume one of this series.
The definition of literature, especially poetry, is similar to the one pro-

posed by the Russian formalists during the twentieth century, for whom
Roman Jakobson is the most distinguished spokesman: literature is struc-
tured discourse, a text that has been made different from "normal" speech.
The more structured and complex it is, the more literary.
Arabic literary theory was developed during the classical period, be-
tween the eighth and and thirteenth century, that is, after the Jähiliyya
period and when other social and cultural values had become widespread.
The ancient nomadic society had by then become an urban culture, the oral
literature had become written, or rather, mixed, or pseudo-oral, and litera-
ture had (definitely) split up onto two levels, an elitist one, where artistic
poetry and prose were composed for the educated few, and a vulgar one for
the illiterates, producing simpler, strophic poetry and epic prose (of the
type A Thousand and One Nights). Arabic literary theory is thus marked by
its emergence in an urban society and its connection with a well educated
elite. The implications of this must be considered. However, there is no
doubt that pre-Islamic poetry was normative for the continued develop-
ment. Although rhetorical studies were much developed in the classical pe-
riod, the practical classification of poetic texts made in pre-Islamic times
formed the basis for all genre classifications to come. Therefore, we must
include the classical theory of genres in this discussion, if the emic per-
spective is to be consistent at all.
The first systematical classification of poetical text types that we know
of is mainly based on the pre-Islamic corpus. It was undertaken by Ibn
madh praise, panegyric

higä' satire
ritä' death elegy
naslb love poetry
wasf description
tasbih simile
The last two types, description and simile, are more properly classified ac-
cording to other, text-linguistic criteria. Nor were they ever generally ac-
cepted in the genre series. Wasf is sometimes included, perhaps because
the wasf-poem was in fact developed into a particular genre in the classical
5 Amjad Trabulsi, La critique poetique des arabes: Jusqu 'au Ve siecle de I 'Hegire (Xle
siecle de J.-C.) (Damaskus, 1955), p. 216. Cf. "List of Terms" below, p. 198.
164 Kerstin Eksell
period, when the description of an object taken out of its functional sur-
rounding, was cultivated to perfection. Tasblh, simile, a highly frequent
and easily recognisable tropical device, was included in the genre series
only by Ibn Qudäma and his pupil Ta'lab. 6 If these two devices are to be
included, then so should the isti'ära, metaphor, another central trope in this
poetry.
These remain the main text types for all Arabic poetry until modern
time. Variations emerge, of course, for example 'itäb, reproach, igrä', in-
citement, sukr, expressions of thanks. Ibn Raslq al-Qairawäni lists up to
ten genres. 7 Most studies of Jähiliyya poetry count hamäsa, war poetry, or
heroic poetry, among the types. Later, it became common practice to dif-
ferentiate the genres into smaller units and to consider the single topic or
motif as a basis for genre classification. We recognise this development
from other literary traditions such as the late antique. In this way, an in-
creasing number of new genre terms came into existence, for example
rawdiyya, garden poem; xamriyya, wine poem; tardiyya, hunting poem.
The concept of ma'nä (topic/motif) as a smaller category beneath that of
genre was included in the terminology. This development may be partly in-
ner-scientific, partly a function of the diversification of poetry in the grow-
ing, urban society.
Prose texts are less rigourously classified. Khafägi, 8 adding a few others
for the classical period, distinguishes certain types of artistic prose for the
Jähiliyya period: xutba and wasiyya (admonitory speech), hikma and tamtil
(gnomic poetry), all of which may also be rendered poetically. The narra-
tive as such was a non-defined area, and so was the composition of a text-
ual whole.
On the basis of this elementary classification, originally a practical la-
belling made in the Jähiliyya period, the theoreticians developed further
distinctions regarding genre and literary function. Although the material
studied is still primarily Jähiliyya poetry, with the gradual addition of the
growing classical corpus, those distinctions are clearly classical and not
pre-Islamic.
Scientific studies in the subject have not all been identified, even less
published, but we know enough to be able to give a rough presentation of
6 Trabulsi, La critique poetique des cirabes, p. 215.

7 Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (eds.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (London
and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 243.
8 Muhammad 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Khafagi, Diräsät fi l-adab al-gähili wa-l-isläm (Beirut:
Dar al-Jiael, 1992), pp. 53ff.
classical Arabic literary theory, including opinions on genre. Modern re-

search has revealed essential ideas of the genre theory as well as what
seems to be deficiencies in it. Trabulsi: La critique poetique des arabes
(1955) constitutes a sort of basic book on classical Arabic genre theory and
has successfully been followed up by the two works by Heinrichs: Ara-
bische Dichtung und grieschische Poetik (1969) and Literary Theory: The
Problem of its Efficiency f l 973). For a comprehensive and insightful histo-
ry of Arabic literature, Blachere: Histoire de la litterature arabes des ori-
gines a la fin du XVe siecle de J.-C. (1952, 1954) is commendable.
Terms for Genre
The text types defined so far are all called by terms that are somehow
equivalent to our "genre." All terms are generally synonyms of the etymo-
logical meaning of "genre," that is, "type, kind, sort," and similar not high-
ly specific designations. The most common term for "genre" in Arabic is,
and was, garad, in plural agräd. The meaning is usually given as "target;
aim." 9 The sememe may be completed or filled out in two or three different
ways: a) "aim" as "goal, objective, object," when it is the result or effect
rather than the intention that is put in the foreground; b) "aim" as "inten-
tion, inclination, personal interest," where the emphasis is on the subjec-
tive attitude of the agent/speaker. In the first case, the emphasis is on the
receiver's side of the communication process, in the second case, it is on
the side of the sender. A third area of meaning consists of somewhat im-
precise denotations such as "affair; the principal thing; things." The noun
is derived from a verb denoting "to long ardently for," or "to loathe, fear"
respectively—Arabic has a number of words designating a certain signifi-
cance as well as its very opposite; the basis of significance is probably "to
feel strongly about something," without specification of whether the senti-
ment is positive or negative. (In modern forms of Arabic, the plural form
agräd is a very neutral term, "things; stuff.")
Other recurrent terms for genre are naw' (plur. anwä'), "kind, sort, type,
species"; uslüb (plur. asällb), sanf (plur. asnäfi Meisami types) and fann
(plur.funün). Meisami 10 enumerates the terms but does not go into detail to
explain them. According to the dictionaries, the first of these terms is a
9 Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, p. 243, "purpose."

10 Ibid., p. 243.
166 Kerstin Eksell
general one, perhaps most directly corresponding to that of genre: uslüb

means "method, way, manner, style (e.g., of a writer); sanf is also a word
meaning generally "kind, sort, class" but is often used in connection with
literary works, cf. tasnlf "sorting, compilation; writing, literary work";
fann, finally, means in a general sense "kind, specimen, variety," and more
specifically scientific disciplines or artistic forms.
In summary, the Arabs define a genre on the basis of the aim of the poet,
the intention he has with the poem, the goal he wants to achieve, possibly
the theme or topic he treats in the poem. In addition, they use terms for
genre that relate to the style or method of the poet, or to methodical skill
(fann), or to classification of literary forms, or terms that simply mean "art,
kind." Thus, it is rather a diversified terminology. With some of the terms,
the reference to literary forms seems to be secondary. The reference to the
aim and intention of the poet, however, would seem to be primary. The
etymological development thus helps us to understand the function of the
poem. The term garad implies a communication structure with sender, re-
ceiver, message and contextual situation, as opposed to terms such as gen-
re and naw', which are neutral. The terms uslüb and fann imply method,
skill and the individual variation of the poet, a third approach to function.
The Emotive Function
The main function of poetry seems often best defined as its ability to move
the listener.11 In this light we shall consider the theoretical organisation of
genres according to a hierarchy and a principle of polarisation. A stratifica-
tion takes place after two principal classes: madh, panegyric, versus higä',
satire, blame. Included in madh as subordinated classifications are ritä'
(elegy), istifxär (self-praise), as well as naslb (love poetry) and hikma (wis-
dom poetry), while opposite themes are included in the higä'.
The opposition madh vs. higä' may be seen in the perspective of more
comprehensive explanations. For example that of Ibn Rashlq, who counts
four "pillars," arkän: madh, higä', naslb and ritä', and four "basic princi-
ples": "the provoking of desire, fear, pleasure and anger."12 Ibn Wahb
makes use of four main types, asnäf, and each type is divided into funün:
for example, madh, includes elegy, self-praise, and expressions of thanks.
11 Cf., e.g., al-Khafagi, Dirasat fi l-adab al-gahih wa-l-islam, pp. 6 and 86-87.
12 Based on Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, p. 243; my bold.
The four asnäf.: madh, higä', hikma och lahw (pleasure) are concepts re-
lated to Ibn Rashiq's arkänP
It is apparent that all these classifications are based on emotive aspects,
those emotions which are associated with the genre, those which the poet
himself expresses, and, in particular, the effect of the poem on the re-
ceiver. 14 These two main typologies relate to elevating and reducing dis-
courses respectively. In praising, thanking, pleasing, giving joy and trans-
mitting wisdom, admiration or longing are evoked. In contrast, satirising or
smearing provoke fear, contempt or disgust. The potential of the poetry to
move and to influence is considered essential, so essential that it becomes
the basis for the genre classification. We should, of course, distinguish be-
tween the poet as the sender of a message and the listener as the receiver at
the other end of the communication process; that is, on the one hand, those
whose emotions are classified, and the protagonist of the poem (usually
identical with the poet) and the fictive addressee in the poem (often identi-
cal with a real receiver), on the other hand.
The function of the poetry may be compared with modern communica-
tion theory, since it presupposes a communication model.
Commentaries on the Theoretical System: Deficiencies
Heinrichs has called attention to some deficiencies in Arabic literary theo-

ry. 15 Its main fault is not to take into account any sort of development, in
the past or the present. The critics treat all Arabic poetry over a span of
several hundreds years as if it represents an ideal and general system
placed outside time. Furthermore, the genre classifications in practice re-
late to text passages and not to whole poems. One poem may consist of
several text passages, each passage with its own garad, so that it is often
impossible to find a generic frame for a whole poem. Thirdly, one may
sometimes ask whether it is the text that is being classified, and not rather
the skill of the poets in the different types of discourses. And many, apart
from Heinrichs, such as Blachere and Meisami, point to the onesidedness
13 Ibid., p. 244.
14 On the poetical fundament of the affects, see Greger Schöler, "Die Einteilung der Dich-
tung bei den Arabern," in Proceedings of the VIth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Stu-
dies (Stockholm and Leiden, 1972), pp. 108-12.
15 Wolfhardt Heinrichs, "Literary Theory: The Problem of its Efficiency," in G. E. von
Grünebaum ed.), Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1973), pp. 19-69.
168 Kerstin Eksell
of the genre classification. It is exclusively concerned with intention and

function, at best also theme, but completely overlooks formal features such
as metre, rhetorics, textual composition and recurrent motifs.
In my opinion, the system has its advantages all the same. It is elastic,
nuanced enough to denote different text types according to Arabic percep-
tion, and yet so general that it is spacious enough to accept variations, ex-
ceptions and subordinated classifications. And it has a theoretical founda-
tion: the importance of poetry as a communication process built up around
the emotive message.
The genre classification described above is used in modern research as
well, as is obvious from for example Muhammad 'Abd al-Mun'im
al-Khafagl, Diräsät fi l-adab al-gähill wa-l-isläml,16 and Dr. 'Afif 'Abd
al-Rahmän, Al-si'r wa-1-ayyäm al-'arab17 (see below). It does not make
sense to analyse classical and pre-classical poetry without taking this liter-
ary theory into consideration.
The Jähiliyya Period:

I. The Synchronic Perspective.
Mapping out the Material: A Grid with Several Layers
Historical Background:
Separating Pre-Islamic Poetry from that of the Islamic Period
We must take into account at least two paradigm shifts. One brings about
the production of the canonical poetical corpus from the end of the fifth
century, the other is connected with urbanisation and the Islamic con-
quests, especially after the establishment of the despotic califate after 650.
The generic system in the Islamic period seems to characterise a poetry
which is rather evenly distributed over different agräd, or themes, which
are understood as belonging to one common level, defined by criteria from
a single psychological category, the emotive one, in which only the slowly
advancing particularisation reflects a historical, linear progression. As far
as Jähiliyya poetry is concerned, however, the heterogeneity of both the
corpus and the classification is obvious. Genres, themes and modes occur
16 Beirut, 1992.
17 Beirut, 1984.
in a way that implies the mixing of old and new poetical phases, or a para-
digm shift which is as yet uncompleted.
The Arabic theoreticians were of course aware that Jähiliyya poetry was
different from Islamic poetry, but the static genre system did not allow for
much explaining of the variations. Bedawi life was one of the historical
features which was connected with Jähiliyya poetry. Consequently, Beda-
wi motifs were central for that period, whereas their occurrence in later
classical poetry was either consciously travested or rejected as antedated.
An example of the first case is the use of synecdoche in hunting poems. A
study of the development of such single motifs or tropes would probably
constitute such a clarification of the development that we seek. A typical
Jähiliyya phenomenon was the qaslda, the polythematic long poem. As de-
fined by Ibn Qutayba, the very strictly thematically ordered qaslda be-
longed to Jähiliyya poetry and some of its most famous poems followed
this pattern, notably the mu'allaqät. Heinrichs has highlighted two phe-
nomena which characterise the shift from the poetry of the Jähiliyya to that
of the classical urban culture: the transformation of the traditional naslb to
a more general love poetry, gazal, and the appearance of the "new meta-
phor" created by substitution, in contrast to the "old metaphor" dominant
in the Jähiliyya period, which was created analogously to the composite
simile, the tamtil, like "the hands of the Northwind." So both motif frame
and imagery structure are in a way fundamentally different in Jähiliyya and
classical poetry. 18 Other investigations show a progressive development al-
ready during the pre-Islamic sixth century; see for example Jacobi con-
cerning the development of the qaslda19 and Eksell 20 on the gradually in-
creasing structuring of the poem.
The differences between the periods may become clearer through a
study of generic traits. More specifically, we must ask questions like: What
do agräd look like in Jähiliyya poetry? What are the characteristics of the
different text types? Are they genres, in the classificatory sense, identifi-
able by a number of criteria, or are they traditional genres, or themes, or
other sorts of texts? Is the emotive communicative function the governing
trait for the differentiation of text types, as the Arabic theoreticians claim?
Which pragmatical classifications of artistic texts can be made?
18 Wolfhardt Heinrichs, The Hands of the Northwind, Abh. f. die Kunde des Morgenlandes
44:2 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977).
19 Renate Jacobi, Studien zur Poetik der Altarabischen Qaslde (Wiesbaden, 1971).
20 Kerstin Eksell, Descriptions of Water in Jähiliya Poetry (Stockholm: Stockholm Univ.,
1997).
170 Kerstin Eksell
Agrad: Genres or Themes?
It is not difficult to define text passages in Jähiliyya poetry with the help of
the agräd terms, as is demonstrated by scholars such as al-Khafagl 21 and
'Abd al-Rahmän. 22 The latter also equates the hamäsa, war poem, with
faxr, self-praise: the two are considered inseparable from each other. 23
These two studies show convincingly that conventional classification is
quite useful in modern literary analysis as well.
One garad is the rita, death elegy, which in Jähiliyya poetry has a
well-defined status. It is produced in a specific situation, when someone
has died. The poet is a close relative of the deceased. The poem is subject
to conventions of motif and composition: it is relatively short; the introduc-
tion presents the poet in sorrow (with a tearful eye), followed by an an-
nouncement of who has died, often in the form of a fictive messenger ar-
riving with the sad message, after which follows a praise of the dead per-
son, finished with a promise of blood revenge. The discourse is further-
more characterised by simple parallelisms and repetitions. Thus, in the
Jähiliyya, ritä' is a) a theme, a death elegy, b) a garad exposing an inten-
tion by the poet and a provoking of sorrow and c) a classificatory genre,
defined by several coordinated criteria on different levels, connected to a
specific context, specifying the position of the poet/reciter to the dead per-
son as a mourning relative, and demanding certain formal features such as
motifs, compositional order and syntactic-rhetorical devices. We may safe-
ly refer the origin of the genre to an early historical phase. The death elegy
is considered to be an ancient poetical text type.
Example:
1 I was sleepless, and I passed the night keeping vigil, as if my eyes had
been anointed by pus,
2 Watching the stars—and I had not been charged to watch them—and
anon wrapping myself in the ends of ragged robes.
3 For I had heard—and it was not news to rejoice me—one making report,
who had come repeating intelligence,
4 saying, "Sakhr is dwelling there in a tomb, struck to the ground beside
the grave, between certain stones."
5 Depart then, and may God not keep you far (from Him), being a man
who eschewed injustice, and ever sought after bloodwit.
21 al-Khafägi, Dirasatβ l-adab al-gahih wa-l-islam.

22 'Abd al-Rahmän, Al-si V wa-1-ayyäm al- 'arab (Beirut: Dar al-Andalus, 1984).
23 Ibid., pp. 235-36.
6 You used to carry a heart that brooked no wrong, compounded in a

nature that was never cowardly,
7 Like the spear-point whose (bright) shape lights up the night, (a man)
bitter in resolution, free and the son of free-men.
8 So I shall weep for you, so long as the ringdove laments and the night
stars shine for the night-traveller,
9 And I shall never make my peace with a people with whom you were at
war, not till the black cooking-pot of the (good) host becomes white! 24
Goldziher 25 places higa, satire, or rather defamation, on the same level of

classification as ritä', and maintains that it is a text type with specified ge-
neric features which must also be supposed to have ancient historical roots.
Since no formal criteria have been specified for defamation, its claim to
generic distinction would rather be related to its function, that it has been a
practical and easily recognisable component of Bedouin culture, as a
weapon of war. Others are content with counting defamation as a garad:
the main criterion for identification is still the intention and effect, unless
one chooses to lay the emphasis on the situation, recital of defamation in a
war context, which seems to have been typical of the text type in ancient
phases. Example: see 'Abid IV, below.
Faxr, self-praise, makes up a comprehensive text type in the Jähiliyya po-

etical corpus. The poet praises himself or his own tribe. Typical Bedouin
virtues are brought into focus: courageousness and strength, skill in fight-
ing and riding, toughness in the hard climate of the desert, generosity to-
ward guests, nobility of mind, care for the family or the tribe, the long and
glorious lineage of ancestors. As mentioned above, hamäsa, war poem,
may be connected with faxr, or considered as a special kind of it. As such,
it is a heroising description of the poet's actions in war, usually in single-
combats, often occurring together with a corresponding defaming descrip-
tion of the enemy. This text type, according to all definitions so far made,
is a theme and has an emotive function. There is no study to show other de-
fining criteria with regard to form (composition, recurrent motifs or rhetor-
ical structures).
Faxr and hamäsa, more than other agräd, have wide frames and may be
further divided according to many different topics and ways of representa-
tion. I believe that further detailed studies of isomorphs especially in the
24 Al-Khansä; Arberry (trans.), in A. J. Arberry: Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students

(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1965), p. 38.
25 Ignaz Goldziher, Abh. zur arab. Philologie I, I (Leiden, 1896).
172 Kerstin Eksell
hamäsa-poetry proper, or some chosen topics of faxr, will prove fruitful,

and that it is possible to find a number of semantic and conceptual conven-
tions that point to a discernable generic frame. On the other hand, the open
limits offaxr poetry may be explainable by other factors, to which we shall
return.
Example of faxr and hamäsa:

9 Enough of this! many the war wherein I have borne my part,
until I have caused its fire to blaze up with my kindling,
10 Beneath me a mare, strongly-built, short-haired, mighty of limb,
swift as an arrow which a strong bowman sends forth from his hand.
11 And many the captain of a closely-gathered host, bristling with teeth,
bright with armour, in mail-coats, with many brave champions,
12 Whose body I have pierced with my lance, and he has swayed and fallen,
as bends and falls a bough cut through of a soft-wooded jujube tree.
13 And oftimes the wine, in fragrance like broken pieces of musk—
long time has it spent in the wine-jar, year after year passing by—
14 Have I quaffed in the morning before the Dawn shone forth to our mirth,
in the tent of a man rich in bounty, pouring it freely to all.
15 And many the damsel, large-limbed, like a hind of al-Jauw, soft of
skin—
the dew of her lips was as though it had been mixed with potent
wine—
16 Have I dallied with for near half the night, and she with me,
and then departed, with her love fixed deep within my heart.
17 Ah! gone is Youth, and has sworn that ne'er will he visit me more,
and hoariness has taken his place in the locks that fall on each side;
18 And hoary hairs are a shame to the court where they come to dwell
—yea, goodly the full black locks that were mine in days gone by!26
hamäsa'.
6 Ο thou that threatenest us with terrors because of the slaying of thy
Chief,
Hujr—thy hope is but an empty dream!
7 Weep not for us in thy folly, nor for our lords—
turn thy cries and tears towards the son of Umm Qatämi,
8 H u jr—the morning that our spears pierced him one after another,
in the low ground between the waterless plains and the hills;
9 The shafts moved up and down in the thrust, all pointed at him,
some aiming, others withdrawn, covered with blood;
10 And the horses stood there over him, as though they were
tall palm-trees, their fruit far out of the reach of the gatherers—
26 'Abid V, in 'Abid ibn al-Abras, The Diwans of 'Abid ibn al-Abras, of Asad, and 'Amir
ibn al-Tufail, of 'Amir ibn Sa'sci'ah, Charles Lyall (ed., trans, and notes), (Cambridge:
Luzac, 1913), pp. 24ff.; p. 26.
11 Horses that vie with another in speed, bearing against the reins, with
teeth displayed,
carrying on their backs a company of champions great in stature,
12 The vanguard of a host mountain-like, whose dust floats not away,
helmeted all, bristling with steel, a mighty concourse.
13 Therein are mail-coats of iron, and bows of «aft'-wood, kept with care
for the time of need, straight spearshafts, and keen swords.
14 Yea, verily they slew them; and how many a lord
and mighty chief have our horses trampled under foot!
15 When the straightening-iron grips the shaft of our spear,
it springs back—and then it pursues the best of purposes.
16 We shield from harm all our weak ones, and defend the stranger,
and provide for the needs of the widows with orphan children.
17 And we march forth to war, the ever renewed, whensoever it threatens,
and we add fresh fuel to its rising blaze.
18 When thou sawest the hosts of Kindah giving way
before us—and no great nobleness is there in Kindah!
19 Didst thou say that thou wouldst seek to Caesar for help?
—then shalt thou surely die a Syrian (subject to Rome)!
20 We refuse to all men submission to their leading
till we lead them ourselves, yea, without reins! 27
Madh, p a n e g y r i c , is a similar t h e m e with an e m o t i v e f u n c t i o n . It is general-

ly believed to be a d e v e l o p m e n t d u r i n g the sixth c e n t u r y and m o r e rare be-
f o r e that. It usually m e a n s the praising of t h e m e c e n a t e , t h e k i n g or other
p o w e r f u l p e r s o n able to p r o v i d e a salary or other r e w a r d to the poet. F r o m
t h e b e g i n n i n g , it could be a n y praise, o v e r a r e n o w n e d chief of a tribe, or a
f a m o u s warrior. T h e r e are n o particular f o r m a l or o t h e r criteria c o n n e c t e d
with it. T h e contents a r e rather self e x p l a n a t o r y .
Hikma, w i s d o m sayings, o c c u r in m a n y d i f f e r e n t f o r m s , as short, sepa-
rate sayings, p r o v e r b s , as p r o s e and as poetry. A s a t h e m e , it is easily rec-
ognisable.
Example:
31 Yea, every people, although they be mighty and many in number, their
chief one day shall be pelted with the heavy stones of calamity;
32 And praise is not to be bought except by paying the price—well known
is it, of the things that men are loth to part with;
33 And generosity is an obstacle to riches, a destroyer thereof, and mis-
erliness keeps those who practise it in possession of their gods, but is
everywhere counted a shame by men.
34 And wealth is like the fleece of the little sheep—men make sport there-
with: at one time it is abundant upon the sheep, at another shorn away;
27 'Abid IV (with faxr and hija inserted in the end), ibid., pp. 20ff.; pp. 25-26.
174 Kerstin Eksell
35 And he who is destined to be fed with booty wins it on the day of plun-
dering whithersoever he goes: and he who is withheld f r o m it [by Fate]
gets nothing.
36 And Folly is a thing at each m a n ' s hand—one has no need to seek for it
afar: and oft-times good sense is not to be found among men.
37 And he who comes upon ravens and scares them away [by stones and
cries], in spite of his being at the time safe and sound, the ill omen has lit
upon him and there is no escape.
38 And every fortress, though it remain long time safe upon its upholding
pillars, shall one day be brought to ground. 28
Also naslb, in the meaning of love poetry, or erotic poetry, as a synonym

of gazal, is a theme designating a very broad group. Even its emotive func-
tion is unclear, since the feelings evoked in the text may be joyful or sad
according to the actual state of affairs of the relationship described.
However, if naslb refers to the erotic part of the qaslda, it is more nar-
rowly determined. The naslb proper contains a large number of conven-
tional concepts referring to the woman, or to the feelings of love. Form, or-
der of presentation, and length may vary, however. 29 In my opinion, this
text type is sufficiently well distinguished to be called a genre, even if
theoretically it is supposed always to be part of a larger text frame. The
same goes for the other two obligatory parts of the qaslda: the atläl motive,
and the rahll (travel through the desert).
The qaslda, finally, according to the definition of Ibn Qutayba, occupies
a special position among the poetical types. It is a) polythematic and b)
presents a limited number of conventionalised motifs in c) a fixed order.
The motifs themselves cannot be characterised with the ordinary agräd
terms. The naslb with atläl usually contains an erotic element, a descrip-
tion of a woman or of love; the journey in the desert, the rahll, can be
viewed as an expression of faxr, self-praise; the final part is usually a
garad, for example madh, but the terms for the parts of the qaslda are not
at all identical with agräd, but are defined by their content, the object of
the description: the deserted camp; the woman or the landscape; the desert
journey. The final part is loosely annexed to the first three parts. Its realisa-
28 'Alqamah, Mufaddaliyyät CXX, vol. I, pp. 809ff.; vol. II, p. 336. In Al-Mufaddal ibn
Ya'lä al-Dabbi, Al-Mufaddaliyät. Comp, by al-Mufaddal. An Anthology of Ancient Arab-
ian Odes. Charles J. Lyall (ed. and trans.), Vol. I: Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921),
Vol. 11: Transl. and notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), Vol 111: Indexes by A. A.
Bevan (Leiden and London: Brill, 1924).
29 See Nathalie Khankan, The Absentee: Love and Grief in Early Arabic Poetry; Naslbic
Texts and Contexts (Unpubl. MA thesis, Copenhagen Univ., 2001) and Khankan, "Re-
perceiving the Pre-Islamic Nasib," Journal of Arabic Literature 33:1 (2002), pp. 1-23.
tion varies much from poem to poem and it is not really integrated with the
preceding three parts.
Example:
Prelude of travel qaslda
(atläh)
1 Is it for a home now void that the tears stream forth from thine eyes
—an abode whence its people have passed in the morning and jour-
neyed away?
(nasib:)
2 The flat-nosed gazelles therein lead about their younglings to feed,
and the fawns in the open valley are bay and bright red in hue.
3 Was it of Bint 'Ajlän that the shade cast itself our way
by night, while my saddle lay by, where we slept a little removed?
4 And when I started awake at the phantom, and terror grew
lo! 'twas but my saddle, nought else, and the country was white and
bare.
5 nay, but 'twas a visitor able to wake from his sleep a man,
and pierce him again with anguish that rends his heart in twain.
6 At each of our nightly halts she comes to trouble our rest—
ah! would that she stayed not only by night but when dawns the day!
7 She turned and departed, leaving behind her a gnawing pain,
and sore was my torment when her eyes seemed to gush with tears.
8 Not wine of the white grape, fragrant as musk [when the jar is broached],
and set on the strainer to clear, and ladled from cup to cup—
9 A captive it dwelt in the jar for twenty revolving years,
above it a seal of clay, exposed to the wind and sun,
10 Imprisoned by Jews who brought it from Golan in lands afar,
and offered for sale by a vintner who knew well to follow gain—
11 Is sweeter than is her mouth when night brings me near to her—
nay, sweeter her lips than the wine, and fuller of pure delight.
(rahil:)
12 At dawn I went forth on a steed clean-skinned, as a palm-branch lean:
I trained him until his flesh was worn down and fined away:
13 His cheeks long, perfect in shape, none finds in him naught to blame;
a bay of a bright red tinge, one leg ringed, a star on brow:
14 A proud man I ride on his back to where sit the chiefs in mott.
I ponder within which course to take with the most of gain:
15 Pursued, he outstrips all speed: pursuer, he wins with ease:
he knows how to thread all straits, and gain for his master spoil.
16 Behold how he gallops, gay, on his back a full-armed knight:
when all of the troop are spent, he prances from side to side.
17 On him have I ridden, one of the raiders in far-stretched line,
who meet in the folk they raid a spear-play to match their own.
176 Kerstin Eksell
18 He bounds like a young gazelle that springs from the covert, tall
and head-high he answers when thou callest on him for speed:
19 He gushes, as forth spouts fast the flow of a pent-up fount
beneath in the sand, where gravel and bushes lay bare the spring.
(The final part of this poem consists of faxr and hikma)]"
A long poem of more than twenty lines does not always constitute a tripar-
tite qaslda according to the definition of Ibn Qutayba: it may consist of a
naslb, or of an atläl + a rahll, or it may consist of a faxr or a hamäsa only.
In the last case, it certainly appears as a completed whole; in the first cases,
where one or more of the preludatory parts stand without any "final part,"
we lack a way of categorising it: is it complete or not? Of course many
poems have been handed down in fragments only, here as in other litera-
ture.
The final part offers special difficulties, since it can be so many themes.
Bloch distinguishes a very special type of poem which contains a definite
message to a named person, which he calls a "Botschaft-gasida." 3 1 And
many poems actually do have a message. They may be composed in a con-
vention where the poet addresses a definite person, or they may be given
the character of a message by the occurrence of a "you" in the text, thus
making any vague proposition look like a message since there is an ad-
dressee mentioned. The last option is quite common, in fact, as the poetry
is very often rhetorically presented as a dialogue. One may speculate
whether the factual messages were so many that such poems should be
considered a separate genre.
Finally, such a qaslda cannot be characterised, as a whole, emotively, by
intention or effect. It is defined by concrete motifs, whether related to its
objects or to the protagonist in his situational context, as well as by the or-
der of the motifs. There is a great deal of variation among the preserved
qasldas, with regard to how many of the three motifs of the prelude are in-
cluded in the poetical text such as it now stands, but the order of their ap-
pearance seems to have been totally obligatory. It is logical that the Arabs
did not include this text type among the agräd.
In summary, one of the ordinary agräd, the ritä', death elegy, may easily
be termed a genre; and possibly another one, the higä', satire or defama-
tion. All of them are thematically determined and all of them have an emo-
30 Muraqqish the Younger, 1-19; in Al-Mufaddal ibn Ya'la al-Dabbi, Al-Mufaddaliyat, vol.
I, pp. 493 ff.; vol. II, pp. 186-87.
31 Alfred Bloch, "Qaslda," Asiatische Studien 2 (1948), pp. 106-32.
tive aspect. In addition, the qasida may be termed a genre, and its first
three passages mini-genres, but it is not a garad in the conventional mean-
ing of the term because it does not carry any specific emotive function.
Modern critics often agree that the travel qasida and the death elegy
should be called genres and that those two text types differ from other po-
etical texts because of their complexity of defining criteria. However, hav-
ing stated this, we must nevertheless remember that we are dealing with
two genres that have differing origins and basis, one with an emotive func-
tion, the other without. Blachere prefers to call the agräd types "themes,"
while the qasida and the ritä' are "cadres" or "moules" (moulds). He
specifies the following "themes":
faxr (self-praise), satire, erothic, bachique, saptentieux et religieux, le
chant de guerre, le deploration sur un mort, laudatifs, descriptifs [e.g., the
thunder storm; animal descriptions]. 32
This terminology refers to content rather than to sender-receiver relation

but is otherwise consistent with the traditional agräd classification. The
term "theme" is practical and extends just so far; it explains just so much
about the text type but not more. And it is an incontrovertible fact that
those themes do exist as such. According to Blachere, the themes have de-
veloped out of the "cadres" and "modes d'expression" (the last-mentioned
concept is never clearly explained). 33 The differentiation or distinguishing
of the separate thematic fields of motifs is then conceived of as a progres-
sive, linear development, an early correspondence to the differentiation of
agräd which later took place in the classical Islamic period. The later dif-
ferentiation process, however, could be connected with social and cultural
development in the period. As for the early differentiation in Jähiliyya, it
is, in my opinion, more uncertain whether we can really talk of a develop-
ment. Those themes may be old and well established in the poetical tradi-
tion, being the kind of subject matters considered appropriate for poetical
treatment, or worthy of being inspired, or even a sort of natural lyrical
modes, more or less unavoidable in a society that associates prosodically
structured discourse with emotions.
32 Regis Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes des origines ä la fin du XVe siecle de
J. C., vol. II (Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1964), pp.
386-453.
33 Cf. Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes, vol II, pp. 368-69; p. 374.
178 Kerstin Eksell
Prosodic Modes
The artistic texts may be roughly grouped into what we may call prosodic
modes, according to their rhythmical organisation (how the poem
sounds). There are three of those modes: 1) The grandes metres with
varied rhythm; 2) the " r a g a z " (and similar types) with a simple rhythm,
and 3) al nathr al-fanni, often sag', which has no organised rhythm.
Firstly, there is the qasld. Etymologically, the word is a collective noun,
the singular of which is qaslda (plural of this, qasä 'id). The singular is
used for the type of poem described above, but the collective occupies a
wider semantic space; qasld as such means "aimed at; sought, desired,"
and thus secondarily with regard to poetry "perfect; complete." The per-
fection referred to is often understood in a narrow sense as poetry which
is complete with regard to having two hemistichs of a verse, not just one.
This implies that the poetry is composed in one of the so-called "grandes
metres," which all have two hemistichs and are called tawil, kämil, basit,
wäfir, madid (all of which may mean something like "perfect"). Rhyth-
mically, these metres show a characteristic change between the parts of
the verse with a different quantity of syllables, which gives a pleasant,
varied rhythm, e.g., tawll in the famous mu'allaqa (long ode) by Imru'
al-Qays (the first two verses):
qifä ncibki min dikrä hablbin wa-manzili bi-siqti liwä bayna d-Daxüli
fa-Hawmali
fa-Tudi'a fa-1-Miqräti lam ya'fu rasmuhä limä nasagathä min fanübin
wa-sam 'ali
Halt, friends, both! Let us weep, recalling a love and a lodging
by the rim of the twisted sands between al-Daxül and Hawmal,
Tudi' and al-Mikrat, whose trace is not yet effaced
for all the spinning of the south wind and the northern blasts14
Metrical scheme:
_ -χ I χ χ I —-x I — xx
or kämil, as in the almost equally famous mu 'allaqa by 'Antara (the first

two verses):
34 W. Ahlwardt (ed.), The Divans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets Ennabiga, Antara,
Tharafa, Zuhair, 'Alqama and Imru' ul-Qays (Biblio Osnabrück, 1870), p. 146; A. J. Ar-
berry, The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (London: George Allen
andUnwin, 1957), p. 61.
hal gädara s-su 'arä 'u min mutaraddamin am hal 'arafta d-dära ba 'da
tawahhumi
yä dära 'Ablata bi-l-Jiwä Ί takallami wa- 'ammi sabähan dära 'Ablata
wa-aslami
Have the poets left a single spot for a patch to be sewn?
or did you recognise the abode after long meditation?
Ο abode of Abla al-Jiwä, let me hear you speak;
I give you good morning, abode of Abla' 5
Metrical scheme:
A synonym of qasld is qarld, from a verb that means to cut, to chew; the
semantic development here is uncertain, but this term has also somehow
come to mean poetry composed in the grandes metres.
The term qasld (or qarld) may be used together with the term ragaz, and
it is the coupled use of these two terms as opposites of each other that sig-
nals the modal differentiation: ragaz, etymologically explained as the
walking rhythm of the camel, is unanimously regarded as a simple metre,
so simple that it is not fitted for higher poetry, or poetry with a high artistic
aim. It is composed with short verses, each corresponding to one hemistich
of the grandes metres, each rhyming in the end, and furthermore, all parts
of the verse have the same number of syllables, so that a monotonous
rhythm is produced.
Metrical scheme:
χ χ - - | χ χ · — |χ χ
The simple, accentuated rhythm and the short verses are accompanied by
repetitional and imitative devices with regard to syntax and lexicon.
The use of ragaz is connected with some specific functions. 36 Thus, it is
used in the war cry, the introductory oath or cry to war (Kampfgeschrei). In
the call for battle, a special formula consists of the "I am So and So " state-
ments, or rather outbursts, which state the name, followed by a short faxr,
self-praise, or higä', defamation of the enemy. Other oaths, such as the
promise of blood revenge, may also be in ragaz• Another large group of
ragaz poetry is work poetry of all kinds, what Bloch calls "Handlungs-be-
gleitende" poems, or rather songs, to be performed when driving camels,
fetching water, dancing, playing and nursing children. A third group of
35 Ahlwardt (ed.), The Divans..., p. 44; and Arberry, The Seven Odes, p. 179.
36 The following after Manfred Ulimann, Untersuchungen zur Ragaz-Poesie (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1966), pp. 18ff.
180 Kerstin Eksell
ragaz poetry consists of humorous poetry, low or high, anecdotal, "Knit-

telverse, Wortspiele und Zungenbrecher." Blachere 37 calls ragaz poetry
"spontaneous poetry"; this type of poetry is not consciously artistic and it
has a character of improvisation.
Examples:
At the beginning of the battle:
anä abä hayyata wa-srnl Wad'än
lä dara'un tiflun wa-lä 'awdunfän
kayfa tarä darbt ru 'üsa l-aqrän
Ich bin Abu Hayya und mein Name ist Wad'än. (Ich bin) kein Schwächling, kein Kind, auch kein
hinfälliger Greis. Wie gefällt es dir, wenn ich auf die Köpfe der gegner haue? (Amidi Mu'talif 146:
4ff.)
Magical formula:
känat 'alayhi nufarah
ta 'älibun wa-hirarah
wa-lhaydu haydu samarah
an ihm (dem Kind) hängen ein Amulett, Fuckse und Katzen (d.h. Zähne dieser Tiere) und Gummi-
harz, nämlich das Gummiharz der Acacie (Nuwayri Nihäya 3, 120, 6f.)38
The third prosodic mode would be artistic prose (al-natr al-fannl).39 It does
not have metre but may be rhymed: in the latter case, it is called sag'. With
poetry it shares rhetorical devices, which it may actually demonstrate to a
higher degree than does poetry, such as tropes and figures, parallelism, as-
sonances and rhythmical prosody. It belongs to the literary corpus. Its
function and intentions may be more or less serious, higher or lower on the
literary scale. To the more important, culture-bearing kinds belong hukam,
wisdom sayings, and amtäl, proverbs or parables. These were of course
important as a documentation of collective experiences and rules of behav-
iour and they were often very beautifully phrased and rhythmical, coining
striking comparisons and metaphors. The xitäba, the rhetorical speech de-
livered in various important settings, deals with moral advice and reflec-
tions and was performed with rhetorical devices, as well as hukam, amtäl
and sag' components. The wasiyya was a particular xitäba of advice or ad-
monition directed at friends and relatives; its special signification of "will,
testament" implicates a limited field of function. A particular type of artis-
37 Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes, vol. II, pp. 369-70.

38 from Ullmann, Untersuchungen zur Ragaz-Poesie, pp.l9ff.
39 Cf. al-Khafägi, Diräsät fi l-adab al-gähill wa-l-isläm, pp. 42-79.
tic speech was the dialogue, the muhäwara: here two speakers competed as
combatants in being most eloquent; the intention of the artistry could be
self-praise or satirising the opponent.The use of magical sag' was restric-
ted to the kähin, the professional wise man of the tribe. Thus, its function
was not presentational but magical. Sag' could be used for curses, prophet-
ic statements and the like.
A beautiful piece of rhetoric sag' spoken by a kähin is given by Serjeant,
of which I quote the first part:
xaba 'tum Ιϊ φ ganäh-in a 'naq, tawlla l-rigli abraq, idä taghalghala hallaq, wa-idä
nqadda fattaq, dä mixlab-in mudallaq, ya'lsu hattä yuxlaq...
You have concealed for me the owner of a wing with a long neck, lengthy of leg, black mixed with
white, when it hastens it soars and circles in its flight, when it stoops from the height of the sky it
splits [its prey] from end to end, owner of a keen-pointed claw, living until worn out.40
Comparing the three modes with each other, we find that the qasld is the
one endowed with a high degree of literarity, according to the Arabs, and
that all of the agräd are represented there, as well as the two genres defined
by modern scholars. As to functional or thematic preciseness, the term
qasld is very vague and has not yet been defined by literary theory.
Ragaz, although still poetry in the technical sense of the word, on the
other hand, has a very low degree of literarity, partly because of the sim-
plicity of the prosodic rules and a high degree of functionality.
Artistic prose is not poetry because it does not possess any metre, but it
is literature, in the sense that it is deliberately artistically composed with an
intention of seriousness and morality. Artistic prose is also function re-
lated. The sag' in particular is used for magical purposes.
All three modes share the use of rhetoric, baläga. In fact, ragaz and ar-
tistic prose seem to abound in it (repetitive and imitative devices, imagery).
Composition: Long and Short Poems
Another problem worth discussing is the relationship between the qaslda,

the long poem, versus the qit'a, the short poem, and the question of which
parts define a long poem. With a usual definition, a poem exceeding about
twenty verses was considered long, with a right to be called a qaslda. A
40 R. B. Serjeant, "Early Arabic Prose," in A. F. L. Beeston, Τ. M. Johnstone, R. B. Ser-

jeant, G. R. Smith (eds.), The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature
to the End of the Umayyad Period (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), p. 126.
182 Kerstin Eksell
short poem, a qit'a (e.g., "something that has been cut off, a piece"), was
shorter than that. Unfortunately, the criteria for short and long differ: Ibn
Rashlq, an eminent theoretician, counted ten as the dividing level; others
would accept even shorter poems, down to three lines. A qit'a was then by
definition shorter. A qaslda is furthermore defined as (possibly) poly-
thematic, wheras a qit'a is monothematic. It is still discussed whether both
forms are independent, or if one of them has developed out of the other,
and, if so, which one comes from which? In our present study, the qit'a of-
fers fewer difficulties. A short, monothematic poem may rather easily be
registered as one of the agräd. But which intention or function does a poly-
thematic poem have? One main and several subordinated? Several equally
weighty ones? Neither of these distinctions?
In my opinion, the distinction in length should be reduced to a state of
minor importance. Since the Arabs never defined any criteria to go with
the length or the brevity, there were probably not any to be made. It was a
practical definition which does not per se say anything more than it imme-
diately seems to. It is obvious even at a short glance through the corpus
that many poems must have originally been short, less than twenty lines, or
less than ten lines, yet being complete in themselves and never fragments
of a larger whole.
Discourse Modes
Dealing with the Arabic qaslda, we must be aware that it is quite an elusive
concept. Jacobi calls it non-lyrical and differentiates between epic, descrip-
tive and rhetorical passages. 41 Her classification is obviously stylistic and
based on syntactic criteria. It does not take function or content into ac-
count. However, it is somewhat unsatisfying to use the term "epic" for a
rhapsodically narrated episode in a poem which typologically is anything
but epic. But she is right in pointing to the importance of the changing
mode of discourse: dialogic, argumentative as it often is, at other times
with narrative markers, yet again, a meditative monologue.
In conclusion, we note that the text passage was allowed to expand or
contract, and to be combined with other passages, within a very broad
frame, such as faxr or hukm. When theoreticians determine the garad in
later periods, they are content to find a couple of verses, disregarding any
41 Jacobi, Studien zur Poetik der Altarabischen Qaside, pp. 208ff.

other themes or intentions that may be found in the surrounding textual

context. Whether the poem as a whole contained heterogenous parts or not,
or which parts were more or less necessary, or essential, seems not to have
been the issue.
The Missing Mode
There is one type of discourse that is conspicuously missing, namely the

narrative. Narrative prose does exist in the corpus of Jähiliyya literature,
short narratives of events, wars, customs, framing the poems. But this dis-
course is not included in the description of literary types. Artistic prose
does not include the narrative as such, a description of a sequential course
of actions, in which the process of action is in focus, not the moral of it, or
the way it is textually formalised according to the defined rules.
Male and Female Poetry
The overwhelming majority of the poetical corpus consists of poetry re-

cited in public and for a public which is male, or mixed male and female,
even if working songs and situational poetry, both of a non-literary kind,
may be found for particular female spheres. The poets are usually male.
However, there are female poets as well, and to an extent that shows that
women as such were not barred from the poetical profession, although
their role was somewhat marginal, for reasons which are at present not ful-
ly understood. Thus, the elegy is ordinarily connected with women. It was
considered a genre mostly executed by women, and the most famous elegy
poet is al-Khansä', a woman. Women further played a part as magicians
and as encouraging poets in war, and some of this poetry has been pre-
served.
In summary, the poetical corpus demonstrates an uneven complexity of dif-

ferent typological entities, time levels, function, prosodic structures, etc.
The following criteria are all used for typological classification/s/ of Jähi-
liyya poetry:
intention-effect (agräd)\
theme (the subject of the agräd; what they are about);
184 Kerstin Eksell
conventionalised motifs and their order in the poem: travel-qaslda·,

death-elegy v. all other poetry which is not generically defined; the elegy
occupies a special position in the system by exposing two other criteria: the
poet/the I as a relative of the deceased; delimited function (elegy over de-
ceased person);
prosody: poetry for work, play, other actions, such as war, and magical
poetry are composed in simple metre, the ragaz• Rhythmic prose, magical
or elevated, has another, more simple rhythm and accent. The main bulk of
the preserved corpus has complex metres (mostly tawll, also has it, kämil,
wäfir and madid)',
syntactic repetition, other rhetoric devices: typical of simple prosody
(ragaz or sag')·,
practical function: magical; for work or play; aesthetic/emotive; other/
smaller divisions...;
poly- or monothematic composition, (qaslda and qit'a)·,
length of poem: from three to twenty verses (qit'a), or more (qaslda)(—
ca. a hundred verses);
stylistic text modes (Jacobi's classification resembling that of Aristotle):
text passages as epic, descriptive, or rhetoric.
It should also be mentioned that simple poetry is often anonymous, where-
as advanced poetry is ascribed to named poets.
Every poem may be classified according to the presence or absence of all

these criteria. Only the death elegy and the travel qaslda have a complex
grid of prosodic, thematic, motival and functional criteria.
II. The Diachronical Perspective: The Parameters of Prosody,

Context of Performance, and Function.
Prosody: Simple versus Complex Metres
The bulk of the poetry preserved consists of advanced poems. Of these, a

large number are vaguely differentiated with regard to function and inten-
tion, as well as being more or less polythematic. The above classifications
are thus not sufficient to explain all the essential typological features of the
poetry.
However, a sort of pattern seems to emerge. One major group of poetry
is the ragaz. This usually has a motive or thematic area, and a practical
function, but it does not have a specific form, apart from its metre, and no
garad, in the sense of a particular intention to move, or to express a senti-
ment. If sag' is included here, the same criteria apply with regard to motive
and practical function, such as to facilitate work or to move supernatural
powers. We may talk of spontaneous poetry, or practical and/or magic
poetry.
Another major group consists of the types of the grandes metres. This
group has motive or theme but it does not have a context-bound function
(except ritä'), nor an identifiable form; traditional agräd belong here. This
is the artistic poetry.
A third group consists of the travel qasida, or, possibly, of its subgenres,
the atläl, the naslb and the rahil. Neither the whole nor the prefatory parts
have a known function, but there are formal criteria of order and of obliga-
tory parts.
How can we interpret the meaning of these differences, between simple
and functional on the one hand, and complex and non-functional on the
other, and where in the development does the travel qasida belong?
The Prosodic Origin: Theories
The Arabic word for poetry, si'r, is commonly supposed to be related to

Hebrew sir meaning "reciting." 42
Did prose come before poetry, or was it the other way around? The ex-
perts disagree. It has been maintained that the oldest literary texts we have
preserved are poetical, for example Homeros for Greek culture, Beowulf
for Anglo-Saxon. And poetry, as the argument goes, is made for orality,
which is characteristic of ancient societies. It appeals to the imagination
and its prosodic devices facilitate its being memorised. Prose, on the other
hand, fits a scriptural culture, being easily adaptable to logical and slow,
deliberate thinking. The arguments are lined up by al-Khafagl who also re-
futes all of them. 43 Prose has existed for at least as long as poetry, especial-
ly non-artistic prose. (We may think of legal prose, memorial inscriptions,
narrative prose.)
The point of relevance in this study is the relation of sag', or artistic
prose, in relation to poetry. Here, we meet with a traditional view, common
42 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Supplementbd 1 (Leiden: Brill,

1937), p. 19.
43 Al- Khafagl, Diräsätβ l-adab al-gähili wa-l-isläm, pp. 43-47.
186 Kerstin Eksell
to Arabic scientists and Western scholars, which says that first came sag'
and then came poetry. Arabic poetry developed out of sag': artistic prose
was first, poetry came next.
This view is usually connected with another closely related one, that
ragaz, the simple metre, developed out of sag'. Ullmann expresses it as
follows:
Wie schon GOLDZIEHER gezeigt und wie HÖLSCHER p. 362f. an Hand
mehrerer Beispiele dargelegt hat, hat sich der Ragaz aus dem Sag' entwick-
elt. Ragaz ist im Grunde nur 'rhythmisch disciplinirtes Sag' (Goldz. Abh. I
76). Kennzeichnend für den Sag', die altarabische Reimprosa, das Aus-
drucksmittlel der Zauberer und Beschwörer, ist der ein bestimmtes Kolon
abschliessende Reim. Im Kolon selbst gelten keine Regeln für die Akzent-
un Quantitätenfolge. Doch ist auch hier schon eine gewisse natürliche ten-
denz zur Rhythmisierung wirksam, so dass gelegentlich Übergangsformen
zwischen Sag' und Ragaz entstehen.[Example follows]. 44
The simplicity of ragaz has always been recognized. Its rhythm is also
light and easy to catch. Its vulgar connection is undoubted. We have noted
the types of poetry documented in ragaz above and may add that there is
poetry for which it is definitely not fitted, mainly the faxr and the rita,
both designating heroic themes. No one would doubt that all types of
poetry where ragaz is used are fundamental for any society: working
songs; dancing and playing; all kinds of songs accompanying action. We
are now talking of "song" rather than poetry. The relationship between the
two could be described as song determining the text as far as ragaz is con-
cerned.
However, with regard to the actual relation between sag', ragaz and
poetry of the grandes metres, there is more to be said. Brockelmann pro-
poses the theory of development from sag' to ragaz and from there to the
grandes metres. This theory is stated again by Wagner, who points to the
archaic use of parallelisms and assonances, in ragaz and sag', that is remi-
niscent of ancient Semitic poetry. 45 The underlying idea, of course, is that
the more complex form must be secondary to the simpler one, and that it is
natural to assume an actual dependence between coexisting forms rather
than separate developments.
What is the alternative? Nöldeke strongly advocates an opposite view.
Ragaz has not developed from sag' but from hazag, another (simple)
44 Ullmann, Untersuchungen zur Ragaz-Poesie, p. 10.

45 Ewald Wagner, Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Bd. I: Die altarabische
Dichtung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987), pp. 43ff.
metre. Thus, there would be no such homogenous process of development.

Blachere treats the two main kinds of poetry, spontaneous poetry and the
poetry of the grandes metres, as two different types, and does not try to es-
tablish any connection between the two. 46
So we are left with several proposals: prose came before poetry; or vice
versa; ragaz developed out of artistic prose, sag'; the poetry of the grandes
metres developed out of ragaz', or it did not develop from there. I am in
favour of the line taken by Nöldeke and possibly Blachere: spontaneous
poetry exists everywhere and has always existed. It is useless to try to trace
artistic Arabic poetry directly from this highly functional, sung poetry.
And as for sag', this is an artistic form as well: any metre, not just ragaz,
could have developed out of it. As an artistic form, it is anyway not simpler
than ragaz, so there is nothing automatically probable in its giving birth to
a very simple metrical form.
It is interesting that sag' and ragaz both show a similarity to ancient Sem-
itic poetry, which was based on parallelism and assonance, but not on fixed
metre or rhyme. It is puzzling, though, that those devices, contrary to their
use in Semitic highly artistic poetry, are typically met with in the function-
al poetry belonging to the low strata of literature. The non-functional
poetry of the grandes metres, however, belonging to the high strata of lit-
erature, does not depend on parallelism or assonance. True, these devices
do occur, but they are rather sparsely spread out in the varied rhythm
groups and the long verse.
The Context
The Production of Poems: Improvisation or Composition in Advance?
This may have something to do with the improvisatory way of performing

the recital of a poem. Jähiliyya poetry is essentially oral, as is shown by
several criteria. 47 But the production of poems is individual and deliberate,
according to Arabic tradition. According to tradition, the poems were not
46 See, e.g., Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes, vol. II, p. 372.

47 Cf. Michael Zwettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character and
Implications (Columbus OH: Ohio State UP, 1978); H. Kilpatrick (rev.), "M. Zwettler,
The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic," Journal of Arabic Literature 13 (1982), pp.
142-47.
188 Kerstin Eksell
written down but were nevertheless the result of painstaking composing

over a (long) period of time. "The best poem is the one which is composed
over a period of one year," is a well-known saying. Yet the poems are most
often presented in a context where they appear to be improvised, spontan-
eously produced for a particular situation. Blachere seems to suggest a
compromise: The poet has spontaneously recited his verses on the spot, but
thereafter spent some time pondering over the elaboration and completion
of the poem, which he has then presented anew. 48 We certainly need to im-
prove our understanding of the production process.
The Magical Connection
All simple poetry is strictly functional. The practical function is obvious.

The magical function has been given its proper attention by the Arabs. It
was so central that all poetry was sometimes supposed to have been in-
spired by jinns.
"I had pronounced human poetry and I had pronounced jinn-in sphered
poetry," said one pre-Islamic poet. 49 So part of the poetry, at least, was in-
spired by jinns; every poet was supposed to have his own jinn (also named
saitän, rä'iy, täbi'). A traditional interpretation of the word for "poet,"
sä'ir, as "a knowing one," defines the role of the poet in the tribe as one
who is in possession of extraordinary knowledge, who has access to super-
natural powers. Higä', defamation, is a type of poetry which we believe
was considered inspired by jinns. Here, it is not the intention as such that is
relevant, but defamation as context bound and with a practical function, as
an important component of warfare. Poetry served to strengthen the fight-
ing spirit by defaming the enemy.
Underlying the magical and other practical functions of poetry is the
idea that to utter words, to act verbally, is an action on the same level as
other actions. Cf. the word dabar in Hebrew, which means both word and
event. 50 To say is to act, utterances act on their object as do physical ac-
tions. The poets were well aware of the power of words, see, for example,
48 Regis Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes des angines a la fin du ~X\'e siecle de
J.-C., vol. I (Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1952), p. 88.
49 Wolfhardt Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und grieschische Poetik, pp. 32-33; p. 32,
notes 1-2.
50 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New
York: Methuen, 1982), p. 19.
the following passage by 'Abld ibn al-Abras, where he expatiates upon the
idea of poetry as a weapon, in this case against his old rival and contestant,
the famous poet Imru' al-Qays:
12 Am I not the man to break off a man's speech, when his bitter tongue
spits forth odes, some of them insults, and all of them meant to
wound?
13 Then do I stay his clamour and choke him with his own spittle,
and he speaks, after I have done with him, with words of humbleness.
14 Yea, how many a raging adversary have I handled thus, and left him
after I have spoken, with no power more to sharpen a phrase!
15 And I have returned with glory from the contest—for I was given a
tongue sharp as a sword
whereby the clamour of the antagonist is reduced to impotence,
161 cut therewith the sinews of thy feet, and they were severed,
and after my satire had sped thou hadst no more power to rise;
171 smote thee with notable verses, full of strange startling words,
a blow thou didst cower beneath, and thy heart was well-nigh dead.51
A magical origin has been suggested for the tripartite qaslda. Several con-
temporary Arabists have tried to establish a ritual model for its origin, mo-
tivated by its apparent lack of function in combination with its formalised
structure. 52 The suspicion that this type of poem goes back to an early ori-
gin is confirmed by the fact that the three subgenres within the poem have
fixed motifs and highly conventional imagery. With regard to the travel
qaslda, it would seem justified to relate some parts or traits of the ad-
vanced poetry back to a preceding, magical phase. Hunting motifs and ani-
mal descriptions, either independently or within larger odes, may also be
assumed to have had originally magical connections. 53
The Historical Function
But what about the bulk of non-functional poetry, whole poems or parts of
poems, the mixture of motifs and the unclear intention? Before paying at-
tention to the performance situation, it must be mentioned that the Arabs
have endowed Jähiliyya poetry with quite a specific, holistic function: it is
51 'Abld X, 12-17, in 'Abld ibn al-Abras, The Diwans..., pp. 34-35; p. 33.
52 See, esp., S. P. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and Poetics
of Ritual (New York: Cornell UP, 1993).
53 See Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes, vol. II, p. 451; Kerstin Eksell, Meaning in
Ancient North Arabian Carvings, Stockholm Oriental Studies 17 (Stockholm: Acta Uni-
versitatis Stockholmiensis, 2002), pp. 138^14.
190 Kerstin Eksell
a documentation of Arabic history, the Diwän of the Arabs, their "register,

assembled records": "It was the main means for transmitting information
about these days [the wars of the Arabs during the sixth century], and the
confirmation of their having taken place." 54 The concept diwän al-'arab
has often been used, but it is doubtful whether all of its implications have
been fully investigated and understood. That a poetical corpus should lay
claim to so great a historic validity and be in possession of such a weighty
authenticity is certainly a pretentious statement.
This definition should be viewed in the perspective of poetry to a large
extent being organised within the historic or pseudo-historic corpus called
axbär "information; news," narratives in the form of episodes or anecdotes
about the deeds of the Arabs, usually those of war. From the beginning,
those texts were completely oral (see supra, "Introduction"). The poems as
historical documentation belong within the context of the axbär-texts.
They seldom contain any precise facts. They ordinarily state names of
places and of individuals but without giving historical dates. Blachere
states that the two major text modes, poetry and history writing, are "in-
separables" but he does not specify how. 55 The most obvious connection is
that of situational context. A xabar is narrated, it is a piece of information,
an episode, with a protagonist, an action, a beginning and an end, and with-
in this episode, or immediately following it, a poem is recited. Often the
hero himself, or the protagonist in the episode, is also the one who recites
the poem. The acting poet, or the knightly-princely poet, is a stereotype.
He may choose to start reciting at a turning-point of the episode, so that the
poem appears as part of a textual strategy, or after the end of the episode,
elaborating on the description of what has happened, or presenting his
view of the events. The relation between text and the referential material
may be read both ways: the historical event lends weight and interpretation
to the poem, or vice versa, the poem lends weight and pregnacy to the his-
torical event.
The Situation of Performance in Modern Bedawi Poetry: A Comparison
There is some compensation for the incomplete state of Jähiliyya texts.

Modern Bedawi literature from the same area has preserved a similar nar-
54 'Abd al-Rahman, Al-si V wa-l-ayyam al- 'arab, p. 7.

55 Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabes, vol. I, p. 93.
rative tradition, in which a historical event is presented as a dramatical nar-

rative with inserted poems. Although the two traditions cannot be identical,
their similarity has often been observed. Take, for example, the modern
poems composed in metres which closely resemble the grandes metres of
the Jähiliyya poetry, especially the tawil.56 Blachere quotes Musil and
Socin, who wrote about Bedawi culture in Arabia at the beginning of the
twentieth century. 57 Today, we have access to more reliable sources in the
form of tape recordings which reproduce the performance directly without
later editing. The following presentation is based on Narratives and Poems
from Hesbän,58 a study of poetry and narration of sheep rearing Bedouins
in central Jordania (part of the Arabia area). The narrator is a professional
poet telling different stories (of which he has a large supply). According to
Palva, these historical narratives may cover memories of events from very
long time ago. 59 However, as the text in question demonstrates, the histori-
cal adequacy is uncertain in the prose sections accompanying the poems.
After a period of a hundred years, as in the actual text (dealing with events
from the mid nineteenth century), the facts have become blurred and partly
misinterpreted. The texts from Hesbän which will be dealt with here claim
the same kind of historical character but since they take place on the level
of internal tribal affairs, it is difficult for an outsider to verify their historic-
ity. However, they should be kept apart from other types of oral narratives
which are obviously marked as fictive, legends, stories involving super-
natural powers and the like. The literary frame may not be very different
but the intention behind the two sorts differs clearly. These historical nar-
ratives are about real persons living in a time not too distant from the narra-
tor.
The language in the narratives is a dialectal, artistic koine, so it is
different from the spoken every day language and signals an elevated level.
The syntax is typically oral with short main sentences. The course of action
is swift, with consequential actions standing out against each other. The
56 See P. M. Kurpershoek, Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia, vol. I (Leiden,
New York, Köln: Brill, 1994); Heikki Palva, Narratives and Poems from Hesbän:
Arabic Texts Recorded Among the Semi-Nomadic l-'Agärma Tribe (al-Balqä, Jordan),
Orientalia Gothoburgensia 3 (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1978), pp.
llff.
57 Blachere, Histoire de la literature arabes, vol. I, p. 88.
58 Palva, Narratives and Poems.
59 Heikki Palva, Studies in the Arabic Dialect of the Semi-Nomadic al-Agärma Tribe
(al-Balqä District, Jordan), Orientalia Gothoburgensia 2 (Gothenburg: Acta Universita-
tis Gothoburgensis, 1976), p. 56, note 1.
192 Kerstin Eksell
narrative has a strong dramatic character, the third person discourse con-
stantly challenged by the protagonists breaking into the narrative with their
own statements.
The narrative is consistently interfoliated with poems. The narrator/poet
recites them a first time and then he sings them to the accompaniment of a
rebäb (a wooden instrument with one string). The poet repeats each verse
before he continues with the next. Palva suggests that this is a device to
give him time to remember and organise the following verse. 60 As typical
of oral literature, the text is based on a source but realised somewhat differ-
ently each time.
Turning our attention to the poems, we find that they occur suddenly in
the context, as if naturally motivated by the course of events. Therefore,
they also give the impression of being spontaneously composed for the oc-
casion by the poet/protagonist. Textually, they are a means of increasing
the artistic complexity. They intensify the dramatic tension and provide an
aesthetically pleasant change from one text mode into another.
The intentions behind the different poems are either explicitly explained
in the narrative text or clearly apparent from the context. I have found the
following types:
a) the praise of a woman; (pp. 46-47.)

or of another person; (p. 42; pp. 64-65.)
b) commemoration of a person or an action, either directly brought about
by the course of events, or recalled in memory by some contextual fac-
tor; (pp. 30-31.)
c) a coded message which is to be transferred to a friend through an enemy
line; (pp. 72-73.)
d) the defaming of an enemy; (pp. 36-37.)
Reading the poem within its narrative frame is often necessary for an un-
derstanding of it. Outside its context, it appears unmotivated, with a them-
atically vague content.
Commentary on Performance and Historical Function
We receive an immediate and strong impression of the poem as a monu-

ment, how it is used to give weight and importance to a historical event, to
register a person or a course of events. It is indeed part of the Diwan of the
60 Palva, Narratives and Poems, p. 11.
Arabs. In this scriptless society, where the written text does not have any
prestige, where an oral oath means more than a written agreement, the
poem functions as a monumental inscription. Carefully formed by artistic
means such as rhythm, metre and rhetoric imagery, and in the hands of a
trained reciter, it can be preserved and secured against oblivion as effec-
tively as the engraved message on a monumental stele. The importance of
the monumental or commemorative function of the poetry can, in my opin-
ion, hardly be overestimated.
The function of memorial poetry must be compared to the importance of
memorial documentation generally in the Near East. In the sedentary civili-
sations, this genre is abundant. It is usually non-literary. Its manifestations
are the inscriptions so generously dispersed all over the area from earliest
historic times: grave inscriptions; inscriptions dedicated to an important
event such as a battle, or to a god or a temple; memorial inscriptions of em-
perors, warriors and rich merchants; graffiti inscriptions of otherwise un-
known Greek soldiers, Arab Bedouins, travellers temporarily visiting a
place. All this may be typical of a sedentary society with access to script.
Oral tradition may continue, more or less aesthetically developed. The
need to document history, to fix oneself and one's place in history, is
everywhere manifest.
Numerous, too, are the letters conveying messages between rulers,
threats and invectives, self-praise, the recording of historical events, on the
solemn level, apart from occasional practical messages of all kinds. This
type of communication occurs on many levels, and in all times.
Comparing the modern Bedawi poetry to the Jähiliyya texttypes of the
grandes metres, we note the similarity between the two poetical traditions.
Intentions, or agräd, are alike. The artificial language of poetry is still
emotive. The Botschaft-gasii/a turns up in a very specific function in the
modern corpus. However, the documenting/memorial function as reflected
in the modern corpus seems to have an overall and dominating function. It
is more important than whatever single intentions may produce a poem in
various contexts.
The vague thematisation, the imprecise message, may be viewed in the
perspective of the framing narrative. There is no need for explicitness in
the poem itself, since the listener will already have understood its function-
al and intentional prerequisites from the situation presented in the narrative
discourse.
A contributory ground may be that the poem is supposed to be com-
posed spontaneously, which calls for a certain impressionism. It may well
194 Kerstin Eksell
be that polythematic composition, viewed as the ability to shift subject

matter, was considered part of poetical skill.
Concluding Discussion
Here is an attempt at sorting those types and contexts and classifications

out by organising the texts in order of progression, applying a historical
perspective. Both emic classifications of themes and more taxonomic clas-
sifications of genre will be inserted into the frame of a historical process.
The following presentation does not aim at precise delimitations of text
types or evolutional stages but wants to underline the dynamic and prag-
matic flexibility of the poetic development.
All poetry had from the beginning a practical function.

This is, in my opinion, the presumption that best fits the evidence of the
poetical corpus such as it has been preserved. The starting point would be
poetry, primarily the word, as an action, able to actually change a state of
affairs as effectively as a concrete object. The manipulated word, the
poetic expression, is used as a weapon, or as a tool. As such, it could be
used in all sorts of situations. Some contexts were ceremonial or ritual.
Others would have been any event more or less spontaneously developing
and with some dramatic tension which called for poetic intervention as a
means of heightening or emphasising the tension, of escalating it, reducing
it or simply documenting it. Since poetry was a means to control reality,
the individual poet, or a hero, must be trained to meet those demands in
any problematic situation, such as the meeting of an enemy, the bursting
out of praise, the conveying of a message of some complexity or elaborate-
ness, or the simplification of work, or the handling of a period of dryness.
In the literary tradition, recording recitals of poetry as being spon-
taneously produced on the spur of the moment also served to stress its
character as originally superhuman, inspired by jinns.
Those types of poetry that were bound to specific rituals or other contexts
and thus constantly repeated in similar circumstances became formalised.
One of these is the ritä', death elegy. Another would by deduction be the
tripartite prelude of the travel qasida, since it, too, is formalised, although
both function and context was later lost.
An initiation rite, or another part of the death ritual, both seem to be

plausible suggestions.
Pure magical rituals have hardly been preserved at all but there are resi-
dues, for example of a rain song. Here, we may well talk of genres in the
sense of both formally and functionally determined text types.
Other types of poetry, such as the higä', defamation, and the hamäsa,
war poem, come close to being formalised when used as an incentive to
battle in an initial war context, or as glorification of one's own tribe. The
degree of formalisation seems here to be connected with the use of simple
metre (ragaz). However, both types could be used within more general
frames and are thus borderline cases of genres.
Memorial poetry (other than the ritä') was usually faxr (but also naslb,
hamäsa and other types). This, too, was clearly functional poetry, aiming
at documenting history and great deeds of the tribe. Here, as well as for the
pure genres, it is possible that certain contexts may have brought into exist-
ence, or promoted, its use. It is possible for example that faxr was once
particularly connected with some situation like the death of an important
person, or naslb recited at a wedding, but no residue of such traditions ex-
ist, in fact, no indication of them at all, so we cannot presume this origin. It
is at least equally plausible that it originated and was cultivated in particu-
lar spaces for literary fabrication, such as telling and recital by the evening
fire, and/or great celebrations (there are traditional reports of both). In the
literary corpus, memorial poetry is clearly the dominant type, and in the
narrative discourse of the text its occurrence is always fictionally motivat-
ed by the turn of events. Whatever its precise origin, its importance as his-
torical documentation cannot be overestimated.
Poetry used as a message is related to memorial poetry. Here, another
level of communication is intended, more limited in time and space and di-
rected to a particular receiver, but in a scriptless society, poetical construc-
tions were a means to make a message both easier to memorise for the
messenger and more striking and impressive in its effect.
So, all poetry seems to be originally functional, whether ritual or occa-
sional (or festive), because to pronounce words had power like actions.
This dynamics in the use of poetry explains at least to some extent the
vagueness of generic criteria for most of it. As a means of controlling real-
ity, it had to be elastic and open to improvisation at moments of need.
Whether ritualised or mainly occasional, poetry could be either simple,
composed in ragaz, or complex, composed in qasid, the grandes metres.
The often claimed precedence of the simple over the complex is untenable.
196 Kerstin Eksell
Strophic singable poetry does not automatically lead to complex, recited

poetry, nor is there any validity in the argument that song or melody and
the like should have come before rhythmical prose or rhythmical recital.
The ritä' may serve as a demonstration of the high age of the grandes
metres. It is extremely likely that the death elegy should be one of the first
poetical forms to develop. And ritä' is always composed in a grande metre.
So is the travel qaslda (which we presume to be equally ancient). There is
every reason to believe that both prosodic types have developed independ-
ently of each other and that both are very ancient.
Memorial poetry of the grandes metres is as functional as spontaneous

poetry in its origin. However, memorial poetry was later chosen for aes-
thetic development.
The difference between the prosodic modes is not in age, or in functionali-
ty (including degree of ritualisation): here, the two modes stand equal. The
differences are related to function and degree of emotive and practical ef-
fect. The poetry of simple metres is primarily magical and emotive, used
for bringing about an immediate effect, such as intimidation of the enemy,
or the falling of rain. The poetry of the grandes metres is primarily memo-
rial, used—with emotive connotations—for a more neutral and non-con-
crete effect, that of recording history, for example, praising a hero, a battle
or a dead person. Simple poetry uses the potential of the poetry of imita-
tion, moving mainly within the register of sound. Complex poetry is fo-
cused on narration and description, within the more complex register of the
lexicon and the syntax.
It remains to explain in detail how complex, memorial poetry developed,
why it followed its own course instead of staying close to the one exempli-
fied by simple poetry, with its wealth of rhetoric (and its resemblance to
the ancient Semitic poetical tradition). Artistic prose, however, did follow
in the same path as traditional Semitic poetry, as if they were both parts of
the same poetic continuum. Further structural studies seem called for. An-
other obvious area for future studies would be detailed studies, especially
of the faxr-hamäsa complex. It is probable that more or less embryotic
structures are awaiting discovery there, with regard to the compositional
and syntactic organisation of motifs, and that something more like a proper
generic classification can be expected.
Be that as it may, it was memorial poetry that proved to be the cultivat-
ing ground for a more aesthetic development of poetry. Once released from
the constraint of magical imitation, it could be freely elaborated artistical-
ly. Longer verses and a varying rhythm were coupled by extensive descrip-
tions, rich with strange adjectives and daring similes. Poetry swelled far
out of its memorial frame and became admired for its beauty of expression
more than for its intended memorial effect.
Summary
In its first phase, poetry is pragmatical, functional, either magical or Hand-

lungsbegleitende, or memorial, used for historical documentation and the
transmission of messages. It is necessary to the processes of society, a
means and a weapon for specific social purposes.
In the second phase, memorial poetry tends to be recognised for its aes-
thetic values, its pragmatical function blurred (but not annihilated).
In the third phase, the emotive agräd with practical functions have (def-
initely) been transferred from their sphere of practical function into the
sphere of aesthetic intentions/effects.
This development must have occurred over a long period of time. At the
present stage of research, it is not possible to give definite historical dates
for any change. In very general terms, the first poetical phase must have
been in existence well before the beginning of the sixth century, and a
paradigm shift onto the second phase must have taken place before the es-
tablishment of the Jähiliyya corpus, that is, before AD 500. A second para-
digm shift took place after the transformation of Arabic society from a no-
madic into a sedentary culture, resulting in the third poetical phase.
However, both spheres of categorisations, the practical and the aestheti-
cal, are based on a perception of certain, limited lyrical-emotive categories
as fundamental, as being general cognitive, psychological properties of the
human mind. Thus, the cognitive/emotive properties of poetry, with its
connection to the channels of human communication, stimulate both the
establishment of practical-functional poetry, and the establishment of aes-
thetically oriented poetry. Practical-functional poetry in its turn may de-
velop into aesthetically oriented poetry, thereby gradually losing its func-
tional motivation.
198 Kerstin Eksell
List of Terms
(only those which occur more than once)
dlwän register; accountance book; collection of poetry (Per-

sian)
fann, pi. funün genre, kind, artistic form
garad, pi. agräd genre; intention; motif
gazal love poetry
hamäsa war poetry
higä' satire; defamation
hikma, pi. hukam wisdom saying
Jähiliyya the period of Arab history before the coming of the Islam
kähin magician; wise man
mu'allaqa one of seven or ten poems considered to be the best of
Jähiliyya poetry
madh praise, panegyric
naslb love poetry
naw' genre, kind, type
qasld stylistically superior metres
qasida ode; an ode consisting of certain parts in a specific order,
a long poem
qit'a a poem shorter than ten ( or twenty, or three, lines)
ragaz a simple metre
rahll the travel part of an ode
ritä' death elegy
sag' rhymed prose
tcimtjl extended simile; analogy; parable
wasiyya admonitory speech; sermon
wasf description
xutba admonitory speech; sermon
B O UTAS
"Genres" in Persian Literature 900-1900
Indigenous Concepts of "Literature" and "Persian Literature"
There are a great number of "histories of Persian literature." Among the

most authoritative we may count Browne's Literary History of Persia I - I V
and Rypka's History of Iranian Literature in the West and Safä's Persian
Tärlkh-i adablyät dar Irän (History of Literature in Iran) I - V in Iran. 1
There is, however, as far as I know, no real attempt at defining "Persian lit-
erature," that is, at delimiting the subject. This is without doubt problem-
atic—in many dimensions. First of all, the concepts "Persian" and "Iran-
ian" are used in a confusing way, both in English and in Persian (färsl and
Irani, respectively). This is in itself a complicated matter, which cannot be
dealt with here. However, the strictest use of the terms should imply that
Persian /färsl refers to the language "Persian" and Iranian/iram to either
what concerns the country of Iran (or, in other contexts, the collective of
the various "Iranian" languages, such as Persian, Kurdish, Pashto etc.).
This use will be followed here. It should be noticed, however, that it is not
followed in the titles of the literary histories of Rypka and Safä (and many
others), both of them using "Iranian literature" or "literature in Iran" in the
more confined sense of "literature in the Persian language" (mainly in Iran
and not so much in India, for example).
Apart from this problem, there are no clear and broadly accepted criteria
for what should be included in "Persian literature," either from a modern
Western point-of-view or from a modern Iranian point-of-view and defi-
nitely not from a Classical Persian point-of-view. The modern European
1 E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vols. (London: Cambridge UP, 1902-

24), Czech version 1956, German version 1959, enlarged and revised English version
1968; Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1968); Safä,
Dhablhu'lläh, Tärikh-i adablyät dar Irän, vols. 1 - 5 (Tehran: Ibn Slnä/Firdausl 1338—
64/1954-85).
200 Bo Utas
concept of "literature" has clearly been copied into the modern Iranian
term adablyät, which is originally a collective plural formation from the
adjective adabl, which, in its turn, is a derivation of the Classical Arabic
(and Persian) adab "politeness, urbanity, good-breeding, refined educa-
tion, etiquette etc." 2 Adab was, in fact, one of the concepts that were used
in Classical Persian for phenomena that would be covered by our modern
term "literature," but, as indicated by the translations given above, it also
included numerous things that we would not think of as "literature." In the
earliest Classical Persian usage, it probably stood close to the concept
farhang (on which the Arabic concept adab was coined, at least partly).
In early New Persian (i.e., Islamic Persian) usage this farhang was still
strongly coloured by the pre-Islamic (i.e., Sasanian) concept of frahang, a
word covering "good education" in general, including the "liberal arts" as
well as practical skills, such as riding, horse-polo, chess and backgammon.
In later (New) Persian usage the meaning of farhang was gradually con-
fined to "dictionary" and generalized to "culture." The changes that this
word has undergone through the centuries are indicative of a general diffi-
culty in a diachronic study like the present. All terms that belong to the
vague sphere of "literature" have continually—and considerably—
changed their frames of reference during the more than eleven centuries of
Persian usage.
The most central word in early Classical Persian texts for something that
would definitely fall under our conception of "literature" is probably su-
khan, properly meaning just "word," in this context the "word" par prefer-
ence, the pregnant, elevated, elaborated "word" (sukhan-i ärästa). Already
in one of the oldest preserved fragments of New Persian poetry, from
around A D 900, we read:
If you do as you said [to me],
the word (sukhan) itself will take place in your heart.
Plant the root and stock of wisdom in your heart,
then its trunk and branch and leaves and fruit will grow!3
2 Cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 1-. (Leiden: Brill, I960-), i.V., and the contri-
butions on Arabic literature by Kerstin Eksell in this volume and by Bo Holmberg in vol-
ume one of this series, Notions of Literature Across Times and Cultures.
3 See W. B. Henning, "Persian Poetical Manuscripts from the Time of RüdakT," in S. H.
Taqizadeh [Festschrift], A Locust's Leg (London: Percy Lund, Humphries, 1962), pp.
94-95; Bo Utas, "Arabic and Iranian Elements in New Persian Prosody," in L. Johanson
and B. Utas (eds.), Arabic Prosody and its Applications in Muslim Poetry (Stockholm:
Swedish Research Inst, in Istanbul, 1994), p. 130.
This "word" is here equated with "wisdom," but it is also characterized by

its elevation, that is, its aesthetic qualities. Around 1156, Nizäml 'Arüzi in
his literary work Chahär maqäla (Four Treatises) states that FirdausI, the
author of the national epic Shäh-näma (around AD 1000), "brought the
word (sukhan) to the highest heaven." 4 However, this elaborated "word" is
generally judged according to its efficiency. The same Nizäml 'Arüzi gives
the following definition of "the essence of the art of poetry and the virtues
of the poet":
Poetry is the art through which the poet arranges the elements of [his]
imagination and shapes conclusive analogies, so that he can make the
meaning of the small big and the meaning of the big small and show the
beautiful in an ugly cloak and make the ugly appear in a beautiful form.
Through amphibologies he agitates the powers of rage and passion, so that
through this [human] nature experiences contraction and expansion and this
causes big things in the order of the world. 5
This quite instrumental definition of poetry remains dominant during the

Classical Persian period. The literary works are full of stories of the efficacy
of a poem or even a single verse, like Rüdaki's recital of his poem on the
Müliyän river that made the Samanid Amir Nasr ibn Ahmad (913-942) rise
from his seat in Badghis and jump onto his horse, even forgetting his boots,
and ride at full gallop back to his beloved capital, Bukhara (it took two para-
sangs for his courtiers to catch up with him and give him his boots!)/'
This elaborated or elevated "word" is first of all found in bound form,
that is, poetry (nazm). It is formed according to rules that soon were de-
scribed in works of the two branches of poetics that developed in Iran from
the eleventh century onwards: 'ilm-i 'arüd ("the science of metrics"—in-
cluding 'ilm-i qäfiya "the science of rhymes")—and 'ilm-i badl' or 'ilm-i
bayän ("the science of rhetoric"), both under strong Arabic influence. "The
science of metrics" is, of course, only applied to poetry, but still not to all
kinds of verse. There were also at all times popular verses and songs that
were passed on orally and to which neither "the science of metrics" nor
"the science of rhetoric" were applied. Consequently, such verse did not
belong to the Classical realm of sukhan or adab.
Bound form (nazm) characterizes art poetry (shi'r) during the whole pe-
riod treated here. This allows of a clear-cut classification of poetry accord-
4 Nizämi 'Aruzi, Chahär maqäla, Μ. QazvTm (ed.), 2nd ed. (Tehran: Zavvär, 1341/1962-
63), p. 26.
5 Ibid., p. 26.
6 See Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. 1, pp. 16-17.
202 Bo Utas
riod treated here. This allows of a clear-cut classification of poetry accord-

ing to outer form—based on the actually existing works as well as on expo-
sitions in the Classical handbooks on poetics. From the very beginning of
New Persian literature, in the tenth century CE, up to around 1900 there is
a stable and quite limited repertoire of poetic forms. They are basically of
two types, one based on the Arabic qaslda mono-rhyming pattern (a, a; b,
a; c, a; ...; x, a) and the other on a pair-wise rhyming of half-verses (a, a;
b, b; c, c; ...; χ, χ). The latter is called mathnavl, an Arabic term ("in
pairs"), although the form is only rarely found in Arabic poetry, where it is
called not mathnavl but muzdawij ("coupled"). The qaslda type may be
either full qasldas of about twenty to two hundred verses or shorter forms:
the ghazal of five to twenty verses, the rubä'l ("quatrain") of two verses,
the qit'a ("fragment") of two to some ten or fifteen verses (generally not
rhyming the two first half-verses) or even t h e f a r d , an isolated verse (rhym-
ing either a, b or a, a). There are also a few stanzaic forms of minor impor-
tance: tarjl'-band ("return-tie"), tarklb-band ("composite-tie"), murabba'
("foursome") and musammat (with recurring rhyme every sixth hemistich)
and so on. 7 Bound types are, furthermore, characterized by fixed metrical
patterns based on quantity, not on stress. There are no less than some three
hundred different patterns, but the specific pattern chosen for a given poem
is kept meticulously all through that poem. However, the basic patterns (all
occurring in many varieties) are only twelve, 8 and although there is no
strict assignment of one basic pattern to one form or topic, there is a ten-
dency, changing through the centuries, of choosing a specific pattern for a
specific combination of form and topic. To a great extent, this seems to de-
pend on emulation of successful works.
Being the "science" of rhetorical figures and other elaborate forms of
expression, the 'ilm-i badl' was, in principle, also applicable to prose, al-
though the examples given in the early works on poetics are almost exclu-
sively taken from poems. In fact, the early master of Arabic adab, the Ira-
nian author Ibn al-Muqaffa' (d. 139/756), both introduced a style of elabo-
rate or ornate prose and wrote the paradigmatic handbook on adab: al-Ad-
ab al-kablr (The Great [Book on] Adab). His kind of artful Arabic prose
formed the model, when Persian prose began to be written systematically
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was the style of the important
7 See E. J. W. Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 1 (London: Gibb Memorial Trust,
1900), pp. 90-94; Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, pp. 94-96.
8 See Utas, "Arabic and Iranian Elements," pp. 132-34.
class of civil servants called the dablrän ("scribes"). This shows that the
borderline between poetry and prose was not that sharp. From a "literary"
(•adabl) point-of-view the important distinction was rather between "elabo-
rate" and "plain" language. There were, furthermore, many mixed forms:
ornate prose richly illustrated with verses or, the other way round, poetry
systematically introduced by prose, as well as a special form of rhymed,
rhythmic prose known as saj' or, in its actual occurrences, musajja'ät (also
taken over from Arabic).
Outside of the realm of texts that were composed—orally or in writ-
ing—in elaborate style, according to the rules of rhetoric and, when applic-
able, metrics, lay not only the field of popular verses and songs but also
that of narrative prose, which was generally passed on orally, as well as
more or less "plain" writing on history, theology, philosophy, natural sci-
ences and so on. On the whole, stories of various types (dästän, qissa,
hikäyat, afsänä) were held in low regard, unless they were adapted and in-
tegrated into literary works of high standing. They constituted a rich basic
stock of narratives that were widely circulated but generally only in oral
form. Even when they were taken down in writing, for instance the Persian
versions of the Arabian Nights (themselves to a certain extent of Persian
origin) and the Alexander Romance, they were not considered to belong to
adab and would thus not fall into any kind of Classical "literary category."
The same applies to the little that is known about theatrical performances
(characterized as bäzJ, "play"), which were regarded as simple popular en-
tertainment.
However, through the course of the centuries, more and more elaborate
prose forms appeared. Already at an early stage "scribes" developed an art-
ful type of epistolography (inshä') that definitely qualified as adab, and
even more important for the development of Persian prose was the form of
treatise called risäla (originally meaning "what is sent," that is, written to
be sent), also taken over from Arabic (where it was created under Greek in-
fluence). 9 Such treatises were originally expositions on a given topic, sup-
posedly composed as a reply to questions by someone not present. The
risäla form soon became used for a wealth of topics, from religion (often
mysticism) and philosophy to literature and science. Risälas were often
written in highly elaborate language, using both rhymed prose (saj') and
exemplifying poetry. Out of the risäla, finally, an especially artistic form
of prose appeared, the so-called maqäma (beginning with Badi' uz-zamän
9 Cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v.

204 Bo Utas
Hamadänl d. 398/1007), written in rhymed prose intermixed with verses,

generally featuring the adventures of a witty vagabond. Here we meet a
kind of prose that is elaborate enough to be considered adabl but still is in-
tended for entertainment. This form has even been characterized as "art for
art's sake." 10 Incidentally, the maqäma became more important in Arabic
than in Persian, and it may, furthermore, be considered as one of the ances-
tors of the European picaresque novel.
At this stage it is necessary to remark that this is a seemingly completely
masculine world. There is hardly a single woman among the poets, writers,
theorists and the like mentioned in the Classical sources. This does not
mean that no women composed poetry, wrote treatises and so on, but the
system obviously kept such efforts out of sight. The very few whom we
know by name are more legendary than real, for example Räbi'a bint Ka'b
QuzdärT Balkhl and MahsatI Dablra Ganja'I, both of whom were supposed
to have lived in eastern Iran in the early eleventh century. 11 Only when we
reach the nineteenth century do we meet well-known female poets and
writers, like the Babi poetess Qurrat ul-'Ain who was executed as a heretic
in AD 1852.12
On the whole, the situation sketched above stayed intact until the begin-
ning of the twentieth century. Forms of expression and uses of those forms
changed gradually in ways that have been suggested above, but the system
itself, as regards both poetry and prose, remained until new, external influ-
ences appeared together with a completely new political situation. The turn
of the twentieth century was the time for the first constitutional movement
in Iran, and it was also the time for the birth of a modern, western-type
concept of "Persian literature." Under European influence francophone in-
tellectuals set out to create a national "litterature" and coined the previous
ad-hoc formation adablyät as the corresponding Persian concept. But this
was a nationalistic project, and consequently the new "literature" was
called Iranian not Persian.
Thereby the persophone literatures of what was then emerging as the
modern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India were, so to say, or-
phaned, and the non-Persian literatures of the Iranian cultural sphere, like
Kurdish and Balochi, were left homeless. This was handled in various
10 Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 223.

11 See Fritz Meier, Die schöne Mahsati: Ein Beitrag zur Geschchte des persischen Vier-
zeilers, Band I (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1963).
12 See Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. 4, p. 154; Rypka, History of Iranian Lit-
erature, p. 324.
ways. In Central Asia, where Persian had been both a lingua franca and a
literary medium for a millennium, Classical Persian literature started to be
referred to as Tajik or Persian-Tajik. This is mirrored in Soviet/Russian
terminology, as in the title of Bertel's excellent overview Istorija per-
sidsko-tadzhikskoj literatury (History of Persian-Tajik Literature, written
in the 1940s but only published posthumously in 1960). In Afghanistan, a
new term was introduced for both the Persian language and the literature
written in that language, namely dari (a term originally meaning "courtly"
that had been used for "Persian" in the early centuries of the existence of
that language). In the Indian subcontinent the exceedingly rich Persian
heritage was pushed aside and started to be forgotten, especially in India
after partition.
In Iran, the coverage of this new concept, adablyät, had to be construct-
ed. The Classical concept of adab, of which adablyät is a collective deriva-
tion, was quite exclusive. It referred to artful pieces of poetry and prose
composed according to specific, traditional rules, regarding both form and
topic. The new, Europeanized concept was given a much wider scope.
Most texts preserved from older periods were, at least potentially, regarded
as "literature," and narrative and popular prose was, in principle, included
as well. This new-modeled "literature" was made a corner-stone in the na-
tionalistic programme of the emerging (pseudo-)modern state of Iran. It
was introduced as a central piece in the curricula of the new schools and it
was invested with enormous official prestige. The Iranian historian and
journalist Ahmad Kasravi (d. 1964) described this as a monumental plot.
He maintained that European scholars, such as E. G. Browne (cf. above),
in collaboration with Iranian imitators, such as Muhammad 'All FurüghT,
created this "literature" in order to turn the attention of the nation to a glo-
rious past rather than to the needs of building a modern state. 13 Leaving the
conspiratory motivation aside, this must nevertheless be regarded as a fair-
ly accurate description of the "literarization" process that took place in Iran
during the first half of the twentieth century. However, this is only one side
of the coin. The important functions of "literature" in the construction of a
national consciousness and identity should, of cause, also be considered,
but that is outside the scope of this paper.
13 Ahmad Kasravi, Dar pirämün-i adabiyät (About Literature), 3rd ed. (Tehran,
2536/1977-78), pp. 14-20.
206 Bo Utas
A Working Definition of "Literature"
So far I have tried to summarize the indigenous perspective on phenom-

ena that could be regarded as "literature." What, now, can we do with
this in a European work on the history of "literatures" at various times in
various cultures? The best thing to do seems to be to fix a reasonably co-
herent definition of what is most suitable for the purposes of this investi-
gation (and useful for comparative studies) to regard as "literature" with-
in the Persian text world. Such a definition must necessarily be partly in-
dependent of the various and shifting terms and concepts that may be ex-
tracted from indigenous sources from various periods. Thus I propose to
base my definition on two main characteristics of texts: elaboration of
language and narrativity. In this I have been inspired by the concept of
"presentationality" as presented by Anders Pettersson in his contribution
on "Concepts of Literature" to the first volume of this series as well as in
his book A Theory of Literary Discoursed Various types of narratives or
stories often make up essential parts of bigger prose forms: historiogra-
phy, mirrors for princes, saints' biographies (vitae), homilies and the
like, as well as of poetic forms: heroic or historical epics, romantic epics,
Sufi-didactic epics and the like. Such mixed texts are also regarded as
"literature" in the sense that I propose to use here. For the purposes of
this article I shall thus regard as "Persian literature" texts (written or oral)
in that language that are characterized either by being composed in elab-
orate/elevated ("artistic") language (sukhan, adab) or by being narrative
(idästän, etc.) or by being a combination of both. It should be noticed,
however, that this is a modern, practical definition, which is not covered
by any precise term in the Classical Persian texts. From here on this is
what I mean when I refer to literature and literary (without quotation
marks).
As already stated, Classical Persian texts generally belong to one of
three kinds: prose (unbound form, nathr in Arabic/Persian), poetry (bound
form, nazm in Arabic/Persian) or a mixture of the two. I have also stated
14 Anders Pettersson, A Theory of Literary Discourse (Lund: Lund UP, 1990), esp. pp.
185-213. In his introductory chapter of volume one of this series, Notions of Literature
Across Times and Cultures, Anders Pettersson distinguishes between informational, di-
rective and presentational discourse and defines the latter as "texts and utterances domi-
nated by the ostensible ambition to 'present,' in Wolterstorff's sense, a representational
content to an addressee." However, he develops this concept towards a definition of "im-
aginative literature" that I find less useful in the present context.
that the most important distinction in our context is not between prose and
poetry but between texts in elaborated form and texts in plain language.
Nazm is already by definition elaborate and, I would suggest, literary. 15
There are special difficulties with non-metric (in the Classical sense, i.e.,
non-'arüd) verses and songs that must have existed all along, although
they are rarely attested until modem times. In the Classical sources short
examples are adduced now and then, often pieces in dialect (referred to as
fahlavlyät). By indigenous definition they are neither elaborate nor adab,
but they are still in some ways "bound" and constructed, even if uncon-
sciously, to give a specific effect. In principle at least, I think such verses
must be included in our literary concept.
Our problem of delimitation is thus mainly concerned with prose texts.
The kind of prose that was written according to the badl' rules tended to
be regarded as adab, but there was always a scale towards less and less
sophisticated forms and, I imagine, towards more informational or direc-
tive than presentational discourse (in the terminology of Pettersson).
With the definition of literature adopted here, the line between literature
and non-literature would necessarily be fluid. Texts in elaborate lan-
guage would qualify as literature already through their style and another
set of texts through their narrative character, but then there is a wide ar-
ray of prose texts without badl' pretensions and narrative characteristics:
many types of scientific, philosophic, theological, etc., texts that would
fall outside of our definition.
There are, of course, many kinds of narratives, often oral and only pre-
served in late traditions (if at all), that were never considered as being in
any way part of Classical adab. In this context it is important that narrativ-
ity is not based on the idea of "fiction." Persian stories (dästän) are often
fantastic, but they are generally presented, and probably also understood,
as real, as something that has really happened, although "far away" or
"long ago." Even jinns and fairies are real. Stories might also have, at least
implicitly, an admonishing or moral element, that is, they express some
kind of intention. At times they might also aim at some kind of aesthetic or
emotional effects, but first of all they are seen as entertaining ("adven-
tures"). They might be polished in language and elevated in style, but are
not necessarily so. These narratives could hardly be defined as "works of
fiction," nor as "consciously created reality," or "imaginative literature," to
15 In other traditions (e.g., Indian) bound form may be seen as an insufficient criterion for
"literature."
208 Bo Utas
mention some current attempts at defining prose literature, but they will
still be regarded as literature in this study.
In his interesting entry on "Fiction" in the Encyclopaedia Iranica16
J. T. P. de Bruijn suggests that the fact that most literary activities in
pre-Islamic Iran, both lyrics and narration, were oral led to a use of mne-
monic devices that tended towards bound forms and that this, in its turn,
led to the preponderance of poetry in the literary conception of Islamic
Iran. This is a precarious assertion, however, since oral literature—in
bound as well as unbound form—obviously was an important cultural ex-
pression in Iran from time immemorial and has remained so till yesterday
(i.e., before the advent of radio, etc.). Thus we know from Greek sources
that the Iranians at least from Akhaemenid times enjoyed narratives and
epic performances (e.g., the story of Zariadres and Odatis described by
Khares of Mytilene as recorded by Athenaios). It might be argued, how-
ever, that such stories, and the cycles of such stories, were authorless, loose
in form and unstable over time. They are still clearly literary, according to
our definition, and they did not lead a life in isolation from other cultural
expressions. On the contrary, they formed, and still form, a repository of
themes, plots and motifs for new literary creations. In spite of the fact that
we have only indirect evidence, we can take for granted that interplay be-
tween oral and written traditions has been characteristic of Iranian culture
up till very recently.
From the point-of-view of literary history there can be no principal dif-
ference between oral and written works, but for older periods the under-
standing of orally transmitted "texts" is, of course, greatly hampered by the
fact that they are only observable in their reflection in written texts. This is
most obvious in storytelling, almost by definition an oral art. Stories, both
isolated and in collections or cycles, are transmitted unnoticed by literate
tradition for centuries but may turn up in more or less adapted, elaborate
and polished form in literary texts that happen to be still extant. Similarly,
both epic and lyric poetry may be composed and transmitted orally before
being recorded in writing and in certain cases might continue to be trans-
mitted orally in parallel with a written transmission. The so-called "nation-
al epic," Shäh-näma, is an especially interesting example of the last-men-
tioned situation. Another instance is lyric poetry that was obviously sung
with musical accompaniment in Sasanian (i.e., pre-Islamic) times as well
16 Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica (London, New York: Bibliotheca Persica
Press, 1982-), vol. 9 (1999), pp. 572-79.
as in early Islamic times, as is attested, for instance, by anecdotes on the

combined poetical and musical proficiency of the minstrel-poet Bärbad at
the court of Khusrau Parvez (591-628) and the tenth century poet
Rudaki. 17 It is difficult to ascertain how far and how long this combination
of music and poetry remained the norm, but oral composition, performance
and transmission of poetry, with or without musical accompaniment, was
certainly common all through the classical period (up to the fifteenth cen-
tury). 18
Especially since Walter Ong's influential book Orality and Literacy.
Technologizing of the Word the dichotomy orality/literacy has been given
much attention. It has been used to explain deep-seated cultural differences
by referring to the fundamental difference between the "oral" and the "lit-
erate" mind. On the evidence of Iranian cultural history such conclusions
seem doubtful. A grave mistake in such a model is an apparent assumption
that the language of oral literature 19 or "orality" is the same as that of free,
extemporized speech and fundamentally different from that of written dis-
course. To me it seems to be the other way round: the language of oral and
written literature is more akin, by being normalized, conventionalized and
consciously shaped to be remembered (what I call "memorabilia"), while
the spoken language of social interaction is something unkempt and differ-
ent ("ephemera" in my terminology). Looking at the parallel existence of
oral and written literary traditions for more than two thousand five hundred
years of Iranian history, one must conclude that, at least from the point-of-
view of literature, "orality" and "literacy" must be regarded as supplemen-
tary rather than alternative cultural techniques. Apart from that, "literacy"
should be taken to mean just the ability to record language in writing and
then recall it as sounded language—not a specific kind of culture and even
less a way of thinking, as some followers of Ong tend to claim. Since
Akhaemenid times Iran has been at the same time a literate, a literary and
an oral culture.
In order to summarize this somewhat lengthy discussion on what litera-
ture could mean in an Iranian context, I propose the following schematic
presentation:
17 See Mary Boyce, "The Parthian gösän and Iranian Minstrel Tradition," Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society (1957), pp. 10-45.
18 See also Ehsan Yarshater, "Affinities between Persian Poetry and Music," in P.
Chelkowski (ed.), Studies in Art and Literature of the Near East (New York: Univ. of
Utah and New York UP, 1974), pp. 59-78.
19 A concept derided by Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
(London and New York: Methuen, 1982), pp. 11-14.
210 Bo Utas
Language acts
Ephemera Memorabilia
Non-literature Literature
(non-elaborate, non-narrative) (written or oral)
Narrative forms Theater Folk songs Elaborate forms
Stories Tales Legends Fables Prose Prose & poetry Poetry
Indigenous Classifications and a

Working Definition of "Genre"
There is not much in Classical Persian literary theory that may be com-
pared to our modern concept of "genre." The most general term for a class
or category of anything, including "genus" in a botanical sense, is jins
(plur. ajnäs), a word that happens to be etymologically related to our "gen-
re," since it is a borrowing from Greek genos. Another word for "kind," in-
cluding "species" in a botanical sense, is nau' (plur. anvä'). Both words
are used occasionally in literary contexts, for example ajnäs-i shi'r (e.g.,
Shams-i Qais) or anvä'-i shi'r "kinds of poetry," but there seems to be no
worked-out typology on a botanical pattern, making jins the wider concept
and nau' Ά species within that class. As already mentioned, Classical works
on literary theory are on the whole only of two kinds: treatises on rhetorical
figures and modes of expression (badV and bayän) and treatises on meter
and rhyme ('arüd and qäfiya). Types or categories of literary works, then
generally poetry, are only mentioned en passant, for example turuq va
anvä'-i shi'r "ways and kinds of poetry," 20 probably just referring to the
poetical forms (i.e., qaslda, ghazal, etc.). A word that is more clearly used
to refer to contents or "themes" is shlva ("manner"), as, for example, we
find it in a poem by the learned twelfth century poet Khäqäni (1121-1199),
censuring the works of the poet laureate of the previous century, 'Unsuri
(d. 1038-40). There he says that the latter only mastered one of the ten
shlva that make up "the craft of poetry," surely referring to panegyrics.
Consequently, there must have been some idea of a fixed system of poetic
20 NizamI 'Arüiji, Chahär maqäla, p. 29.

themes at that time. Unfortunately, Khäqänl only mentions three of them:

tahqlq ("science"), hikmat ("philosophy") and pand ("advice"). 21
There is also a third type of Classical work on literature, the so called
tadhkira or "memoirs," that is, collected biographies—to a great extent
legendary—of poets illustrated with rich quotations from their works. A
typical example is the Tadhkirat ush-shu'arä (Memoirs of the Poets) by
Daulatshäh Samarqandl from 1487, notoriously unreliable as regards bio-
graphic and bibliographic data and lacking theoretical deliberations. A
more fruitful source is the Chahär maqäla (Four Treatises) by Nizam!
'Arüdi from around 1156, in which theoretical approaches are mixed with
traditional biography, anecdotes and illustrative examples, and from which
I have quoted a few times already. However, the traditional works on
poetics 22 have peculiarly little of this sort of classification. There are also
some early works of the type "Mirror for Princes," especially the Qäbüs-
näma from 475/1082-83, which among many other things treat the arts of
the word. This work even gives a crude classification of poetry {shi 'r) as
consisting of "ascetic homilies" (zuhdlya), "praise" (madh), "love songs"
(,ghazal), "satire," that is, defaming of the enemy (hijä), and "mourning"
(marthiya)P
Even if a systematic classification of types of literary works is missing,
there are elements in the traditional discourse on literature that may be re-
garded as relevant for a discussion of "genres." There are, first of all,
far-reaching and penetrating discussions of the relation between "form"
(,$ürat) or "utterance" (lafz) and "meaning" (ma'nä), but these are more re-
lated to philosophy and religion than literary analysis. So if we want to
consider the subject-matter of a literary work in relation to its form (sürat),
we should perhaps not look for this in terms of ma'nä ("meaning") but
rather in concrete concepts like madmün ("contents") or matlab ("inten-
tion" or "[intended] subject-matter").
21 Quoted by Dhabihu'llah Safa, Tärlkh-i adabiyät dar Iran, vol. 2, 3rd print (Tehran: Ibn
Sinä, 1960), p. 350.
22 E.g., Rädüyänl, Tarjumän ul-balägha (The Interpreter of Eloquence) from 1088-1114,
A. Ate? (ed.), (Istanbul: Ibrahim Horoz Basimevi, 1939); Rashld ud-dln Vatvät Hadä'iq
us-sihr (The Gardens of Magic) from ca. 1150, Ά . Iqbäl (ed.), (Tehran: Sanä'I/TahQrl,
1362/1983-84); Na§Ir ud-dln Tüsl, Mi'yär ul-ash'är (The Standard of the Poems) from
1201-1274, J. Tajlll (ed.), (Tehran: Jam!, 1369/1990-91); Shams-i Qais ar-RäzI,
al-Mu'jam fi ma'äyir ash'äri-l- 'Ajam (The Book of Enlightenment on the Standards of
the Poetry of Persia) from 1232, M. Qazvinl (ed.), 3rd ed. (Tehran: Zavvär, 1360/1981-
82).
23 Kai-Kä'Qs ibn Vushmglr, Qäbüs-näma, Badavl (ed.), (Tehran: Ibn Sinä, 1956), p. 173.
212 Bo Utas
Thus the textual form remains the most tangible criterion for the classifi-
cation of Classical literary works, on the first level: nazm (or shi'r, poetry),
saj' (rhyme-prose) and nathr (prose). Rhyme-prose and prose are not easi-
ly further analyzed according to form, but poetry may be neatly divided
into the qaslda-type forms (qaslda, ghazal, rubä'l, qit'a and fard), into the
pair-wise rhyming epic form: mathnavi (plur. mathnaviyät), and into the
stanzaic forms (tarjV-band, tarklb-band, murabba' and musammat). For-
mally akin but rarely treated by the Classical prosodists are popular verse
forms like the du-baitl or chär-baitl. The poetic forms listed above are
often treated as "genres" in Western works on Persian literature, but such a
use of terms seems little apposite, since they are mere empty forms that
may be used for widely shifting topics and intentions. The old Arabic
qa$lda might be another matter, because there we find a fairly strict
thematic order (mirrored in the earliest Persian qasldas of the tenth and
eleventh centuries but soon completely abandoned).
If we want to find something more concrete on the topics actually treat-
ed in these traditional forms of poetry, we shall have to go to the works
themselves, especially to their organization in the Classical manuscripts. In
fact, the best way to approach the poetic world of Medieval Iran is prob-
ably to study the only available authentic medium: the hand-written books.
Such manuscripts are often exquisite pieces of art, not only through their
elegant calligraphy but also through their binding, miniatures and orna-
mentation. 24 These works of art give a good indication of the aesthetic
properties of Persian poetry. The poems calligraphed into those books
were certainly made to give refined joy. Furthermore, many manuscripts
are quite comprehensive. They may contain something close to a small li-
brary: thousands of poems and tens of extensive epics.
In the collections of poems, so-called Divans, there is a clear hierarchy
between the various forms, that remains quite stable from the earliest
manuscripts until the initial disintegration of the traditional system (thir-
teenth-nineteenth centuries): First come qasldas, then ghazals, then qit'as
and finally rubä'ls. Mathnaviyät are generally not mixed with the qaslda
forms, but when they are, they are placed at the end or are written in the
margins. The qasldas are often given in alphabetical order of their rhymes,
except for the first qasldas, when those are invocations of God and the
Prophet. Many poems (especially qasldas) are given individual headings
24 Johannes Pedersen's description in The Arabic Book (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984) is
highly relevant also for "The Persian Book."
that allow us to sort them into various topical categories, such as fiΊ-madh
(in praise), marthiya (threnody) and so on. There are a great number of
such topical labels, apart from the two just mentioned, for example: tauhld
(invocation of God), munäjät (personal prayer to God), zuhd u 'irfän
(asceticism and mysticism), akhläq u mau'ida (ethics and preaching, i.e.,
homiletics), pand u akhläq (advice and morals), 'äshiq u ma'shüq (lover
and beloved), hajv or hijä (satire), tanz (mockery), hazl (obscene jokes),
habslya (prison poem), shakvä'l-gharib (lamentation of the stranger),
munäzara (tenson). These are, however, not bound to any specific poetic
form.
According to the traditional conception, the very essence of Persian lit-
erature, i.e., poetry and elaborate prose, is the carefully calculated and art-
ful expression. Every verse or sentence should, at least in principle, have a
forcefully presented pointe, and all elements and concepts in that verse/
sentence should relate to each other according to one or more of the rheto-
ric devices prescribed by the 'ilm-i badV. Although the power of the poem
(text) as such is measured by its efficiency in getting a message through,
the means are decidedly aesthetic. The original meaning of badV is "new."
This refers to "the new style," that is, the one that was introduced by Ara-
bic poets of the newly founded Baghdad Caliphate in the eighth century,
especially Bashshär b. Burd (d. 167/783) and Abu Nuväs (d. 198/814), un-
der the strong influence of the courtly traditions of Iranian poetry and mu-
sic. This "new style" became the basis for a specific poetical theory in
Arabic that was transferred into Persian from the twelfth century onward,
with Rädüyäni's Tarjumän ul-balägha as the oldest preserved example.
This treatise describes no less than 54 badV devices: apart from those taken
over from the Arabs, also some specifically Persian, for example husn
ut-ta'lil (generally translated "fantastic etiology," i.e., presenting a phe-
nomenon as the result of a fantastic cause), 25 murä'ät un-nazlr (image
based on semantically related words) and al-ma'nain az-ziddain (image
with contrary meanings). These rhetoric figures are strikingly often based
on two principles: hyperbolism (mubälagha or ighräq) and amphibology
(;ihäm).26
25 See Hellmut Ritter, Über die Bildersprache Nizämls, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur
des islamischen Orients, Beihefte zu Der Islam 5 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1927).
26 See Bo Utas, "'Ambiguity' in the Savänih of Ahmad Ghazäll," in B. Fragner et al. (eds.),
Proceedings of the Second European Conference of Iranian Studies (Rome: Istituto Ita-
liano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1995), pp. 701-10.
214 Bo Utas
The whole culture of poetic rhetoric furthermore put severe restrictions on

the topics that could be treated. The symbolic or metaphoric character of de-
scribed phenomena, for instance descriptions of nature or human beauty, be-
came increasingly dominant, resulting in a steadily growing repertory of
conventionalized tropes. This covers the whole field of sukhan and adab.
Certain devices are not reserved for certain categories of works, which
means that aesthetic means as such cannot be used for a differentiation of
types of literature—apart from excluding popular poetry and narratives.
Seen from the perspective of the author, his composition has a gharad,
"intention, purpose." In Arabic theory, this concept has been used for clas-
sifications of various types of literary discourse, 27 but, to my knowledge, it
has not been used systematically in this way in Persian theory. 28 Still it
may be found in ad hoc uses and covers well what must have been a central
preoccupation of composers/writers of literary works. Choosing a theme,
such as, for example, madh "panegyrics" is an expression of a specific
gharad. This gharad might be further specified by the choice of a certain
form, for example a qaslda, possibly also a meter, such as ramal, and cer-
tain rhetoric figures.
Even less than what may be found about authors' intentions in the tradi-
tional comprehension of literature is at hand regarding the receivers' ex-
pectation or anticipation (intizär means just this but is hardly used as a
term), when they meet a certain theme and a certain form. The closest we
come to this is rather discussions on interpretation (ta'vll). On reception in
general we have mainly the many anecdotes on the unprecedented effects
of some literary piece, generally a poem, such as the one mentioned above
about the Samanid Amir who jumped on his horse to ride back to Bukhara,
when Rüdaki had sung his qaslda Büy-i jüy-i Müliyän äyad harm (The
Scent of the River of Müliyän Comes [to us]) to the accompaniment of his
harp. 29 On that occasion Rüdaki had a very specific gharad, much more
specific than a main theme or topic, and through the power of his art he
succeeded in producing the desired effect in the addressee. The anticipa-
tion of the Amir, when he sat down to listen to the poem, would not have
been exactly that, but as soon as he heard the first line he understood some-
thing of the type of poem that was to be expected and tuned his ears ac-
cordingly. In this type of presentation, the receiver is regularly seen as the
27 Cf. the contribution by Kerstin Eksell in this volume, "Genre in Early Arabic Poetry."
28 In later Persian usage the word matlab (also borrowed from Arabic) is more commonly
found in this sense.
29 Cf. Nizäml 'Arüdl, Chahär maqäla, pp. 30-33.
object not the subject. Classical Persian literary works have a long life.
Many of them live even today—in the case of this poem by RüdakI for
more than a thousand years—and in the process of time the mode of the
reader's or listener's reception may change completely. Here a strong
diachronic dimension of the seemingly stable literary system comes to
light.
From what has been said above it should be clear that there exists no
neat, unified concept in pre-modern Persian that could be taken to corre-
spond to some modern Western conception of "genre." In the concluding
chapter of this volume, Anders Pettersson defines "three ways of viewing
literary genres": the traditional (established), the classificatory and the
communicative (intrinsic) perspective. 30 The traditional way of referring to
types of Persian literary works is predominantly based on formal criteria:
this is a mathnavl and that is a ghazal and so on. In a more loose way, ref-
erence is also made to various types of topical content, such as madh, "pan-
egyrics," or marthiya, "threnody." Classification according to form gives a
reasonable differentiation as regards the bound forms, poetry, while from
that point of view prose remains on the whole an undifferentiated mass.
The little there is of traditional classification of prose would use either
topical criteria, like "work of history" (tärlkh), or compositional, like
"treatise" (risäla).
When one comes to what Pettersson calls "the classificatory view of lit-
erary genres," one must conclude that very little of the sort exists either in
indigenous or in Western works on Persian literature. In fact, "traditional"
and "classificatory" genres on the whole coincide up till now—a case in
point is the otherwise admirably penetrating theoretical introduction to
Rypka's History of Iranian Literature. The communicative view of genres,
on the other hand, must rather be concerned with implicit than explicit cir-
cumstances. Still, this seems to me to be a crucial concept, especially for
the understanding of the diachronics of Persian literature. Therefore, I shall
try to establish a pragmatic system of Persian literary genres, which takes
into consideration all three of the mentioned perspectives and is based on
the following components:
(1) (outward) form—sürat or, seen from the phonetic side, lafz\
(2) subject matter or content—madmün or, in a non-philosophic sense,
ma 'nä\
30 Anders Pettersson, "Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and Theories of

Genre," in this volume.
216 Bo Utas
(3) aesthetic means (style)—badV (bayän, balägha) and 'arüd & qäfiycv,
(4) author's intention—gharad\
(5) receiver's anticipation (intizär) and interpretation (ta'vll).
This does not mean that I presume the existence of some kinds of innate
genres that I try to expose. I completely agree with Pettersson that what we
can do—and should do—is to establish certain genre concepts that are vi-
able as tools for the kind of investigation we are pursuing. For the sake of
my present study, I have deemed it especially important to find ways of re-
fining the historical analysis of Classical Persian literature. In the follow-
ing sections I shall apply the proposed genre concept (an ensemble of spe-
cific form, subject matter, aesthetic means, author's intention and re-
ceiver's anticipation) on some central types of that literature. In this way
the literary forms may be seen to be more or less precisely or vaguely re-
lated to certain topics under certain circumstances, however changing
through the thousand years of their use.
Genres of Narrative Poetry
The simplest Western classification of Persian poetry based on form main-

tains that mathnavl is equal to epic poetry, while all the qasida types are
supposed to be "lyrical forms." This distinction works reasonably well as
regards the mathnavl, which is realized as a long form, generally of thou-
sands of verses (Shäh-näma some fifty thousand!). Indigenously, such
poems are designated with the name of their form: mathnavl (plur.
mathnavlyät). Epics of this type obviously have a long prehistory in Iran-
ian culture. Before Islam and the appearance of the New Persian language,
various types of epics were certainly part of the oral literary tradition. In
our written sources, however, there are only a few scattered traces of such
an epic tradition. I have already mentioned the romance of Zariadres and
Odatis, which according to Greek sources, 31 was popular in Iran in Akhae-
menid times. We know nothing about its form, but it might have been com-
posed in some kind of verse. Probably some centuries earlier—in Eastern
Iran—the Yashts of the Avesta were put together, containing age-old mate-
rial on mythical heroes of the Zoroastrian religion and presented, at least
partly, in metrical form.
31 Athenaios 13, p. 575.

This heritage, both the secular and the religious, lived on through oral
transmission in Sasanian times (third-seventh centuries CE), when
glimpses of it may be caught in the voluminous but patently non-literary
Zoroastrian texts in Book Pahlavi. The most interesting fragment of an
epic is found in the so-called Ayyätkär l Zarerän (Memoir of the Zarer
Family), which retells a piece of legend that is already referred to in the
Avesta. 32 The name of the hero, Zarer, is the Middle Iranian form of
Avestan Zairivari. Strangely enough, this should also be the Iranian origin
of the name that the Greeks wrote Zariadres, since it is mentioned by Ath-
enaios that he was a brother of Hystaspes, that is, Vishtäspa of the Avesta.
Whatever bound form the pre-Islamic epics could have had, we can say for
sure that it differed considerably from the mathnavl that appeared in New
Persian in the tenth century. The strict and obligatory rhyming scheme and
the metres adjusted to Arabic 'arüd that characterize the latter form were
not at hand before Islam.
After the islamization of Iran and the emergence of New Persian as an
Islamic language in Arabic writing and a rich Arabic loan-word vocabulary
(soon close to fifty percent of the lexemes), a Persian literature started to
develop. Although there is very little preserved from its first centuries, it
seems that the outer forms of Classical Persian poetry were well estab-
lished by the year 900. A fragment from that time of a mathnavl in the
metre ramal (- / / χ 2) and on the theme of Bilauhar u
Büdlsaf {i.e., the Buddha legend) happens to be preserved (not in Arabic
but in Manichean writing). 33 This shows that the mathnavl form was al-
ready there and was used for a narrative of a religious character under the
Samanids (ca. 900-1000) in Eastern Iran.
We are on somewhat firmer ground when we reach the first prominent
figure of New Persian poetry, RüdakI (d. 329/940-41), that is, the court
poet who sang so beautifully about Bukhara that his Amir forgot his riding
boots. In later sources he is accredited with eight mathnavl poems. Some
fragments of his Kallla u Dimna and Sindbäd-näma have been preserved.
Like the above-mentioned Bilauhar u Büdlsaf they were composed in the
metre ramal. There are, furthermore, isolated verses ascribed to RüdakI
preserved as testimonies in the old dictionaries that suggest that he also
wrote mathnavlyät in the metres sari' (- — - /- — - /- — - x 2 ) , hazaj-i
32 Bo Utas, "On the composition of the Ayyätkär I Zarerän," in Monumentum H. S. Nyberg,

vol. 2, Acta Iranica 5 (Tehran and Liege: Bibliotheque Pahlavi, 1975), pp. 399^118.
33 Cf. Henning, "Persian Poetical Manuscripts"—and the quotation above regarding
sukhan.
218 Bo Utas
akhrab-i maqbüd (--~/~-~-/~--x2), mudäri'

2), khafifi- - - - / / χ 2), mutaqärib ( _ - - / _ - - / / - - χ 2)
and hazaj-i sälim / / - - - χ 2). 34 It should be noticed that all
consist of 2x11 syllables, except the hazaj-i akhrab that has only 2x10.
These are also the meters met with in all later mathnaviyät, except for the
mudäri', which later on is used exclusively in the shorter forms.
Interestingly, Kallla u Dimna is the name of the Persian and Arabic ver-
sions of the collection of Indian fables that Ibn al-Muqaffa', the founder of
the Arabic adab tradition, had translated into Arabic (from Middle Per-
sian), and Sindbäd-näma (Book of Sindbäd) is another collection of Indian
stories, also known as "The King's Son and the Seven Viziers," that came
to be incorporated in the Arabian Nights. Häjjl Khalifa mentions 'Am'is
un-nafä 'is (The Precious Brides) as the title of another mathnavl ascribed
to Rüdaki. That suggests a poem of a romantic type, but we have no infor-
mation on its contents. All this goes to show that the mathnavl form was
used as early as the beginning of the tenth century for various types of nar-
ratives, probably often taken from oral tradition. At this first stage the
mathnavl was obviously used for narrative poetry generally. There is, how-
ever, too little preserved of this "general epic genre" to allow of any con-
clusions on the use of specific metres for specific topics. The use of embel-
lishments, images and rhetoric figures was already there but to a lesser de-
gree than in later epic poetry.
Already in the next century, the eleventh, we find a differentiation of
epic poetry that may be described as the establishment of distinct epic gen-
res. The epochal work was the heroic-historic epic Shäh-näma (The Book
of Kings), which was began by Daqlqi, the successor of Rüdaki under the
Samanids, but mainly composed and finished by FirdausI, who, ironically
enough, in 1009-10 presented his great work on the heroic history of the
Iranians to the new Turkish ruler, Mahmüd of Ghazna, the first in a long
series of Turkish rulers of Iranian lands. Shäh-näma was written in the me-
ter mutaqärib, which henceforth became the specific meter of what may be
designated as a distinct genre: the heroic-historic epic.
Simultaneously, a distinct tradition of romantic narratives in verse (ro-
mantic mathnaviyät) was established. The first example of this genre to be
preserved is the poem Varqa u Gulshäh (Leaf and Flower-King) by a cer-
tain 'Ayyüqi, who also lived at the time of Sultan M a h m ü d of Ghazna.
34 Sa'id Nafisi, Muhit-i zindagi va ahväl να ash'är-i Rüdaki, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Amir Kabir
1336/1956-57), pp. 532-48.
This is a Romeo and Juliet type of story, and the names of the two lovers
are curiously reminiscent of Flores and Blanzeflor (a motif that penetrated
even to Scandinavia, appearing in Norway in the so-called Eufemia-
visorna in 1312). It is written in the same meter as Shäh-näma, that is,
mutaqärib, and this may be seen as just the beginning of a new, distinct
genre. At about the same time, the poet laureate of the court of Sultan Mah-
mud, Abu'l-Qäsim 'Unsurl, also wrote three romantic mathnavlyät that
have been preserved only in isolated verses and, in one case, a larger frag-
ment. Two are composed in mutaqärib·. Vämiq u 'Adhrä and Khing-but u
Surkh-but (the titles are, as usual in this genre, made up of the names of the
two principal lovers), and one in khafif. Traces of these stories are found
also in later recordings of oral prose narratives. At least in one case, the
story can be shown to have a foreign origin. Vämiq u 'Adhrä, of which a
sizeable fragment remains, can be shown to go back to a Greek romance
from the first century BC, that of Parthenope and Metiokhos. 35 Somewhat
later is the comprehensive romantic epic Vis u Rämln by Fakhr ud-dln
As'ad Gurgän!, which has a Tristan and Isolde theme and obviously uses
pre-Islamic material. It is written in the meter hazaj-i sälim, which hence-
forth became a preferred meter for romantic epics.
At about the same time we meet the first specimens of the mathnavl
form used for didactic-homiletic-mystic purposes. In 1053 the Ismaili
propagandist Näsir-i Khusrau (d. ca. 1075) wrote a mathnavl with the title
Raushanä'1-näma (The Book of Light), combining ethical instruction with
a cosmographic-metaphysical exposition and a mystical perspective. For
this Näsir-i Khusrau still used the meter hazaj-i sälim, but a generation
later Hakim Sanä'i (d. ca. 1130) started to use, instead, the meter khafif for
this type of homiletic-metaphysical poem. His extensive mathnavl Hadlqat
ul-haqlqa (The Garden of Truth) as well as his smaller mathnavlyät, espe-
cially Kärnäma-yi Balkh (The Book of Deeds of Balkh—something as un-
usual as an ironic title) and Sair ul- 'ibäd ila Ί-ma 'äd (Journey of the Serv-
ants of God to the Place of Return) became models for countless later such
poems, generally of a distinctly Sufi character. This is a more complex cat-
egory of texts than the heroic-historic and the romantic epic, and it is
somewhat doubtful if it could be regarded as one, clearly defined, genre.
Such poems have often been referred to as Sufi or Sufi-didactic, but the
Sufi character of the works of the first exponents of this type of text, that is,
35 Tomas Hägg and Bo Utas, The Virgin and her Lover: Fragments of an Ancient Greek
Novel and a Persian Epic Poem (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003).
220 Bo Utas
Näsir-i Khusrau and Sanä'I, is questionable. 36 At the next stage this type
was completely appropriated by Sufis, but that was also the case of most
other poetic forms. Admittedly, the Sufi mathnavi incorporates a great deal
of narrative material, but the narrative perspective is generally not the pri-
mary one, and it is thus somewhat misleading to call it a type of epic. (Be-
low I shall come back to the effects of the profound influence of Sufism on
the whole system of poetical genres.) But let us provisionally regard this as
a genre, the homiletic mathnavi.
From the twelfth century onward Persian mathnavlyät may thus be di-
vided into three topically defined categories: heroic-historic, romantic and
homiletic (or Sufi-didactic) epics, which may be taken as three genres. Ac-
cording to traditional literary history, these categories or genres were char-
acterized by specific meters: the heroic-historic by mutaqärib, the homi-
letic and Sufi by ramal and sari' and the romantic by hazaj-i sälim?1 How-
ever, this scheme is not followed in any precise way, and the proposed gen-
res are not mirrored by any precise, old and indigenous terminology.
Today hamäsa is generally used for "epics" in general but also more spe-
cifically for "heroic(-historic) epic" (the latter also known as hamäsa-yi
pahlavänl), but that is a word that was used in the classical language with
the meaning "bravery" and as a reference to a specific Arabic genre,
named after the famous anthology al-Hamäsa by Abu Tammäm (d. 849).
As already stated, the Shäh-näma of Firdausi (around AD 1000) formed
the paragon of the heroic-historic epic, which constantly remained associ-
ated with mutaqärib, a meter that is strongly suspected to be an adaptation
into the Arabic type of metrics ('arüd) of a pre-Islamic Iranian metrical
pattern. 38 It might be seen as a natural choice for a "national epic," but we
have already seen that in early literature it was also used for romantic
epics.
After Shäh-näma, mutaqärib became the meter for historical and pseudo-
historical epics, and this combination remained stable into the twentieth
century, while the real topic of this type of epic poem gradually changed
into panegyrics of the ruler in power, like the Zafar-näma written in 1402-
04 by Nizäm ud-dln Shäml, which eulogized the world-conqueror Tlmür.
36 Cf. J. T. P. de Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in
the Life and Works of Hakim Sanä'I ofGhazna (Leiden: Brill, 1983).
37 Cf. J. T. P. de Bruijn, "The Individuality of the Persian Metre Khafif' in Johanson and
Utas (eds.), Arabic Prosody, pp. 36 ff. and refs. there.
38 Cf. Gilbert Lazard, "La metre epique baloutchi et les origines du motaqäreb," in Johan-
son and Utas (eds.), Arabic Prosody, pp. 81-90.
At the end of the fifteenth century, with the Shi'ite drive of the Safavid
dynasty already on the way, the historic mathnavl was mustered for the
Shi'i cause, when, for example, the exploits of Imam 'All was made the
theme of the poem Khävarän-näma by Maulänä Muhammad ibn Husäm
(d. 875/1470). Meanwhile, the original Shäh-näma lived on through the
centuries (both as a book and as an orally performed epic). On suitable oc-
casions it was used to enhance the national feelings of the Iranians. This
probably reached a peak when it was made something of a mainstay for the
Pahlavi nationalist programme from the 1920s until the Islamic revolution.
It is interesting that when this heroic-turned-panegyric epic was parodied
by one of the few great parodists of Classical Persian literature, 'Ubaid-i
Zäkänl (d. 772/1371), in his well-known Μfish u gurba (The Mouse and
the Cat), he chose to start with two introductory verses in mathnavl form
and the hazaj-i sälim meter but wrote his mini-epic itself in qaslda form
(ninety-two mono-rhymed verses) combined with the "heroic" meter mu-
taqärib. Maybe his intention was to hit at Persian and Arabic chauvinism
at the same time.
For romantic epics (i.e., "love stories"), on the other hand, the predomi-
nant meter eventually became the hazaj, probably after the example set by
Gurgänl's Vis u Rärnin, but this never became the "romantic meter" in the
way that mutaqärib monopolized the heroic-historic epic. The paradig-
matic figure in this context was Nizami of Ganja (d. 605/1209), still cele-
brated as the master of Persian romantic epic. He wrote five epic poems
(his so-called Khamsa, "Fiver") and used a different metre for each of
them: sari' for his Makhzan ul-asrär (The Treasury of Mysteries—a poeti-
cized homiletic poem in the style of Sanä'i), hazaj-i sälim for his Khusrau
u Shlrln (a historic romance of the Sasanid king Khusrau Parvez and his
Armenian beloved Shirin, certainly modeled on Vis u Rämln), hazaj-i
akhrab for his Laill u Majnün (two Arabic Bedouin lovers—like 'Ayyüqi's
Varqa u Gulshäh), khafifiov his Haft paikar (Seven Portraits—a story of
an ideal ruler in the perspective of a philosophy of beauty and love) 39 and,
finally, mutaqärib for his Iskandar-näma (The Book of Alexander—built
on the traditional Alexander Romance). Both from the point of view of
subject matter and outer form (especially the uses of the various meters)
and with regard to the full application of all the aesthetic means of badl'
(inner form), the work of Nizami accomplishes a complete review of the
39 On the use of khaflf for poems of courtly revelry in both Arabic and Persian poetry, see
de Bruijn, "The Individuality," pp. 37-39.
222 Bo Utas
arts of the mathnavl. In a way, this review covers all the three epic genres,
but the five poems are written in a style and a way of composition that
make them belong more to the romantic genre than to any other one. All
five became paradigmatic for romantic epics in coming centuries. With
Nizam! a definite association of a certain meter with a certain mathnavl
genre was established. Since him it has become common to refer to a poem
as vazn-i Khusrau u Shlrln ("The Meter of Kh. & Sh."), vazn-i Laili u Maj-
nün ("The Meter of L. & M."), vazn-i Makhzan ul-asrär ("The Meter of
M.") and so on. This refers not only to the metre but as also to the type of
poem associated with this meter—as a kind of subgenre of the romantic
epic. 40
The case of the homiletic or Sufi-didactic mathnavlyät is more compli-
cated. Didactic, religious and mystical texts are problematic with regard to
the definition of literature that I am using here. If we return to the distinc-
tion made by Pettersson between "informational," "directive" and "presen-
tational" discourse, and assume that only the latter may be regarded as lit-
erature in a narrow sense, we could come to the conclusion that texts that
are aimed at philosophical instruction, moral teaching, religious edification
or mystical contemplation rather fall within the first two categories than
within the third. On the other hand, such texts are generally presented as
adab, use elaborate language with rhetoric devices and conventional
imagery and employ all kinds of narratives. Thus we must, after all, regard
them as literary texts in form, content and style, whatever the authors' in-
tentions and the readers' reception could have been.
In the process of the vigorous expansion of the Sufi orders and the
establishment of an institutionalized type of Islamic mysticism in the
eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the Sanä'i type of mathnavl became a fa-
vorite medium for Sufi teachings. Less than a hundred years after Sanä'i,
the genuinely Sufi poet Farid ud-din 'Attär wrote a series of influential
Sufi mathnavls. With him exquisite storytelling was put in the service of
Sufi instruction. 41 His famous Mantiq ut-tair (The Language of the Birds—
mistakenly also translated "Conference of the Birds") as well as his Musi
bat-näma (The Book of Affliction) are allegories that relate the journey of
the soul towards its divine origin. However, for this he did not use the
meter khafif but ramal, the meter of general didactics, employed already by
40 On romantic epics in general, see Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987), pp. 77-236.
41 Cf. Hellmut Ritter's detailed analysis of this in Das Meer de Seele (Leiden: Brill, 1954).
Rüdakl. For his Asrär-näma (The Book of Mysteries), a series of uncon-

nected exemplary stories, and his Ilähl-näma (The Divine Book), which
has something of the plot of a romantic poem, he chose instead the "ro-
mantic" meter hazaj-i sälim. It is obvious that the choice of meter depends
on the subject matter and the intentions of the author, but there is no simple
one-to-one correspondence. Within rather strict limits, the meter seems to
add a mode, a tone to the poem—a little like the choice of key for a piece
of music.
The poet who brought the specific Sufi mathnavl to its peak was Jaläl
ud-dln Rümi (d. 672/1273, known as Maulavl in Iran and Mevlana in Tur-
key). For his extremely influential MathnavJ-yi ma'navl (The Poem of In-
ner Meaning) he chose the meter that 'Attär had used for his Mantiq
ut-tair, that is, ramal. This extensive poem has remained the masterpiece
of the Sufi mathnavl up to our days, and it has been continually read and
commented upon by Sufis all over the Muslim world, above all in the Mev-
levi order that was founded in Turkey by Jaläl ud-din's son, Sultan Valad,
but also in almost all other orders. It has also been, and still is, a favorite
reading among non-Sufis who obviously transform the original mystic
message of the poet to a profoundly aesthetic experience. This aestheticiz-
ing mode of reading has probably been dominant in Iran since the original
Sunni Sufi orders were more or less wiped out there by the vehemently
Shi'i Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 42
By the thirteenth century we thus have a firmly established genre of
what we, following J. T. P. de Bruijn, 43 might call homiletic mathnavlyät
that remained stable in its forms, but not in its interpretations, until the end
of the nineteenth century. One might also discern a number of subgenres: a
Sufi-didactic one using the meter khafif, a Sufi-homiletic one using the
meter ramal and a Sufi-romantic one using the meter hazaj-i sälim. These
three are, however, not neatly distinguishable types but rather tendencies
that combine a certain form with a certain subject matter, aim and interpre-
tation. As mentioned earlier, poems written in the hazaj-i sälim meter tend-
ed to signal a romantic story, but since a Sufi interpretation of all kinds of
poetry became dominant, romantic stories could in principle always be
read as mystic allegories, symbolizing the quest of the human soul for the
divine beloved. Thus also the romances of NizamI, such as Khusrau u
Shlrln and Laill u Majnün, would be interpreted as truly Sufi works by
42 Cf. Bo Utas, "The Aesthetic Use of New Persian," Edebiyät 9 (1998), pp. 1-16.
43 De Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry, p. 146.
224 Bo Utas
readers with such inclination. Apart from the three eleven-syllable meters
just mentioned, the ten-syllable meter hazaj-i akhrab also remained in use
for Sufi-didactic or homiletic poems, as, for example, in the mathnavl
Misbäh ul-arväh (The Lantern of Spirits) ascribed to the Shaykh Auhad
ud-dln Kirmänl (d. 635/1238) but probably written by an otherwise un-
known Shams ud-din b. Il-Tughän Kirmänl. 44 This poem, like the Sair
ul-'ibäd of Sanä'i and a number of others in this tradition, describes the
journey of the human soul to both hell and heaven in a way reminiscent of
Dante's Divina Commedia.45
All this shows that certain set combinations of form (defined by rhyme
and meter), content and author's intention went through a gradual develop-
ment. In spite of the fact that no neat terms for the various types of epic
that ensued seem to have existed, ideas of such types must somehow have
crystallized, since they obviously regulated both the author's composition
and the reader's/listener's understanding of the respective works. Con-
sidering the fact that there were no real terms for these concepts, it is inter-
esting to consider how this conceptualization could have taken place. Pro-
visionally, it may be argued that the emulation principle was formative and
that the genre concepts in question were shaped as composite expressions,
something like: "a Shäh-näma type of poem," "a Hadlqa type," "a Math-
ηανϊ-yi ma 'navl type" or a "Khusrau u Shlrm type."
Based upon the discussion above we might attempt to add a section to
the "grid of forms and genres," the upper part of which was given above:
Poetry
Long forms (mathnavT) Short forms
Historic-heroic {hamäsa) . Romantic HomileticiSufi-didactic)
(Historic) (Panegyric) (Shi'ite) (Philosophic-didactic) (Sufi-homiletic) (Sufi-romantic)
44 Cf. Bo Utas, "The Manuscript Tradition of Misbäh ul-arväh and the Application of the
Stemmatic Method to New Persian Texts," in Jes P. Asmussen [Festschrift], A Green
Leaf: Papers in Honour of Jes P. Asmussen, Acta Iranica, Hommages et opera minora 12
(Leiden: Brill, 1988), pp. 237-52.
45 See Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 180.
Genres of Non-Narrative or "Lyrical" Poetry
While it is possible to find a structure in the history of mathnavlyät by

looking at the combination of form, subject-matter and intention/reception,
the situation of what I have called qaslda types of poetry is much more
complicated. As already mentioned, these forms have often been referred
to as "lyrical." Apart from the great difficulty of defining what that would
be even in pre-modern European literature, this is not a very apt term for
the kind of poetry we are considering here. What is meant is really the
shorter forms of Persian art poetry, often referred to in modern Persian us-
age as shi'r-i ghinä'l (originally meaning "song poetry"). I say "shorter,"
that is, in comparison to the mathnavlyät, since the longest of the forms in
question, the qaslda itself, may comprise up to two hundred verse lines.
The main forms were described above. Through the dominating qaslda
pattern there is, from the beginnings of this type of Persian poetry some
time in the ninth century, an extremely strong Arabic influence. No doubt,
the first Persian qa$ldas to be composed were simple transpositions of Ar-
abic models into Persian made by bilingual poets. No complete examples
of those early attempts have been preserved, but small pieces appear in
various anecdotes in historical and similar works. One of the most substan-
tial is a piece of a qaslda composed in Persian (in the meter ramal) in
praise of the Amir Ya'qüb ibn Laith (reigned 861-879) by Muhammad ibn
Väsif as-SijzI. An anecdote in the old local history Tärlkh-i Slstän (History
of Sistan)46 tells us that after a successful battle the Amir was praised in
Arabic verses by one of his court poets, but since he was an uneducated
man he did not understand them and asked his retinue why they were recit-
ing poetry that he could not appreciate. Then the above-mentioned Persian
poem was presented as an innovation.
The panegyric qaslda, modeled on an Arabic pattern, was only one of
the origins of the short forms of Persian art poetry. The other was an indig-
enous tradition of poetry of praise, wine and love that was transmitted oral-
ly and sung to the accompaniment of instruments like the harp or the lute.
There is next to nothing of that kind of poetry preserved in pre-Islamic
sources, but later tradition (from Arabic histories to the Shäh-näma of
Firdausi) gives us glimpses of a flourishing minstrel tradition at the Sasa-
nian court. Most of these stories are concentrated to the time of Khusrau II
Parvez, at whose court the legendary minstrel-poets Bärbad and Naglsä are
46 M. Bahär (ed.), Tänkh-i Slstän (Tehran: Zavvär, 1314/1934-35), pp. 209-11.

226 Bo Utas
supposed to have been active. Later sources even supply us with some ex-
amples of "royal songs" ( s u r ü d - i khusravänl), but it is more or less impos-
sible to discern what is legendary lore and what may be regarded as au-
thentic original verse. Of the more popular types of songs and verses that
must have flourished in those days we have no material whatsoever. One
thing is quite clear, however, and that is that pre-Islamic Persian poetry dif-
fered from Arabic poetry in two essential respects: it was not regularly and
obligatorily rhymed and the meter was not based on quantitative patterns
(but rather on regularly occurring stress accents). It is thus peculiar that,
when in the eighth-ninth centuries the first examples of New Persian poet-
ry appear, they are thoroughly shaped according to the Arabic models as
regards rhyming patterns and meter ('arüd), whether formal qasldas that
were recited in the Arabic manner or ghazals that were sung in the tradi-
tional Iranian way. One wonders what that could have meant for the musi-
cal system of the time.
That this was still the normal order of things at the end of the eleventh
century is testified by the "mirror for princes" Qäbüs-näma, which has one
chapter "On the Customs of Poetry" 47 and one "On Minstrelcy." 48 The
author (Kai-Kä'üs) makes a clear distinction between panegyrics ( m a d h ) ,
satire (hijä), threnody (marthiya), ascetics (zuhdlya) and invocation of the
one God ( t a u h l d ) that are expressed in the qasida, on the one hand, and the
states of love and the like that are expressed in " g h a z a l and song ( t a r ä n a ) , "
on the other. The singer ( k h u n y ä g a r ) , that is, the performer of " g h a z a l and
taräna," is instructed to use heavy meters/rhythms at the sessions of kings
and quicker meters/rhythms (called khafij) for young people. Especially for
children and women and men of gentle disposition he should use the "me-
ter of songs ( v a z n - i taräna)," which possibly refers to the specific meter of
the quatrain. Among the themes to be treated in the ghazal the same source
lists "separation and union" (i.e., of lovers), "reproach, blame and rebuke,"
"rejection, refusal and acceptance," "fidelity and cruelty," "beneficence
and favour" as well as spring, autumn, winter and summer songs. Other
themes that are mentioned are description of women, praise of wine and
wine drinking, war, bloodshed and bravery. Such light, entertaining
wine-and-love poems/songs remained a vital genre for centuries and may
be designated "anacreontic."
47 "Dar rasm-i shä'iri," chap. 35 in Kai-Kä'us ibn Vushmgir, Qäbüs-näma, pp. 171-74.
48 "Dar khunyägarl," chap. 36. Ibid., pp. 174-78.
Against this stands the originally strict order of themes in the qaslda:
first a prelude (naslb) of a topical or erotic character, then a clever transi-
tion (makhlas) leading over to the main part, the eulogy of the patron
(inadlh), ending perhaps with the poet's praise of his own proficiency
(fakhrlya) and a prayer {du'a) or a request (talab) to the patron. This was
surely the kind of qaslda that Muhammad ibn Väsif composed for Ya'qüb
ibn Laith and that the court poets of the Samanids in the tenth century, the
Ghaznavids in the eleventh century and the Saljuqs in eleventh-twelfth
centuries wrote in praise of their Persian or Turkish lords. However, the
Arabic "modernists" (muhdathün) of eighth and ninth century Baghdad
had already introduced new themes into the qaslda, and their Persian emu-
lators followed in their steps and used the qaslda form for topical poems of
many kinds. Thus the above-mentioned poet/singer/musician Rüdaki (d.
329/940^11) wrote a famous qaslda (in the mixed meter munsarih) on the
making of wine and the enjoying of it at the banquet of the Amir. Single
topics were already assigned to the form called "fragment" (qit'a), in the
Arabic models of the early Persian poets, but in Iran both the ghazal and
the qaslda were soon adapted to a broad array of single topics, so that there
was often little or no difference between these three forms from a topical
point-of-view. In those cases the main feature allowing of a classification
was formal: the qaslda a poem longer than about twenty verses (distichs),
the ghazal generally between five and twenty and the qit'a, finally, either
shorter than five or without rhyme between the two first half-verses (pat-
tern a, b\ c, b\d,b\ ... x, b).
As was the case with the mathnavl, during the eleventh century philo-
sophic-homiletic-didactic contents were introduced also in the qaslda/
ghazal type of poetry. Again the portal figures were a new kind of moral
poets, like Näsir-i Khusrau and Hakim Sanä'L Like the mathnavl, too, this
prepared the path for a strong mystic (Sufi) tendency, as witnessed a centu-
ry later in the divan of Farid ud-dln 'Attär (d. ca. 617/1220) and especially
in the Dlvän-i Shams of Jaläl ud-din Rüml (d. 672/1273). This Sufi use of
poetry had two sources. One was the didactic-homiletic tradition just men-
tioned and the other was a metaphorical reinterpretation of the traditional
poetry of love, wine and praise. In the circles of mystics that during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries crystallized into what later on was called
Sufi orders (properly tarlqa, plur. turuq "path, way") such poetry was
regularly used, often with the accompaniment of musical instruments, in
sessions concerned with the contemplation of the Godhead. Thus the wine
could be seen as symbolizing the ecstatic state (häl) of the mystic, carnal
love {'ishq) the love of Truth (haqq, i.e., God), and praise of the patron ad-
228 Bo Utas
dress to the Perfect Man (insän-i kämil), that is, the personified symbol of
the Divine. Originally, quite profane songs and poems could be reinter-
preted and reused in this way, but soon Sufi poets adopted this imagery and
used it systematically. In fact, from the twelfth century onwards most
Persian poetry was infused with a Sufi tendency, that is: all poetry had a
potential Sufi reading, for whatever purpose it had been written. This ten-
dency was furthermore strengthened by the neo-platonic view that all
worldly phenomena are metaphoric anyway. Thus a concrete beautiful per-
son, referred to as a but "an idol" (originally itself a metaphor < Indian
Buddha, i.e., the Buddha statue/figure), is per se a symbol for the (divine)
principle of beauty, and so on.
As a matter of fact, the exceedingly strong influence of Sufi mysticism
re-wrought the whole poetic scene from the twelfth century onwards. It
simply annihilated the generic differences that were based on the various
forms, that is, the qaslda, the ghazal, the rubä'l, the qit'a and even the
mathnavl.49 The totality of the Sufi claims made minor formal and linguis-
tic differences irrelevant. Here we stand on the threshold of the transition
form what Iranian literary historians call "the style of Khorasan" (sabk-i
khuräsänl) to the "style of Iraq" (sabk-i 'iräql).50 In the earlier, East-Iran-
ian "style" the qaslda was the central form of art poetry, while in the later,
West-Iranian "style" the ghazal came to dominance. At this stage the amal-
gamation of profane and Sufi imagery was complete. The complex, Classi-
cal Persian ghazal had been shaped, a genre that is characterized by a
well-balanced ambiguity, an equilibrium between the mystic and the
worldly and between the exhortative and the aesthetic. The apogee of this
kind of ghazal is found in the dlvän of Häfiz (d. ca. 1390). This should, in-
deed, be regarded as a distinct genre, but it is difficult to assign a descrip-
tive name to it, so I shall just call it "the Classical ghazal."51
In cultural contexts, equilibrium is probably an unstable state. In combi-
nation with profound changes of a political and religious character, the lit-
erary scene soon changed again. During the rule of the Safavids, in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, the original Sunni Sufi orders were sup-
pressed and more or less disappeared from the central parts of the newly
49 See Utas, "The Aesthetic Use of New Persian."

50 E.g., Muhammad TaqI Bahär, Sabk-shinäsl yä tärlkh-i tatavvur-i nathr-i färsi, vols. 1 - 3
(Tehran: Amir Kablr 1337).
51 For further discussion, see Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, pp. 237-98, as well
as her Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry (London: Taylor
and Francis, 2003), pp. 45-54.
shaped, pre-modern state of Iran. Sufi poetry as well as court poetry of the
traditional types found less fertile soil, and many poets moved to the
Mughal Empire of India. The Sufi interpretation of poetry, both previously
composed and newly written, was weakened and a more and more aes-
thetic reading gained the upper hand. Now, the so-called "Indian style"
(,sabk-i hindl) was introduced. The Classical ghazal remained dominant but
the emphasis on rhetorical devices, formal elaboration and aesthetic refine-
ment increased unabated. Poetry was often enjoyed in fragments (mu-
qatta 'ät) and even single verses (fard) of markedly aesthetic character. A
reaction against this "Indian style" did not come until the end of the nine-
teenth century with the beginning disintegration of the whole traditional
poetic system.
The gradual change of the comprehension and reading of much of the
poetry that was produced over the centuries was not, however, all-perva-
sive. There were genres that remained rather stable, albeit with an increas-
ing limitation of topics and conventionalization of imagery—especially so
the panegyric qasida. Thus, for example, the court poet Qä'änl of nine-
teenth century Qajar Iran was still regarded a master of that genre. On the
whole, it is extremely difficult to establish a neat kind of genre system for
this type of poetry. If we look at the topical side, there are themes or
"circles of motifs" that certainly may be, and have been, regarded as dis-
tinct genres, such as the so-called qalandarlyät, featuring a combination of
a specific wandering, antinomian Sufi figure (qalandar) and an imagery of
debauchery (rindl). Although de Bruijn does not hesitate to call this a
"genre," 52 it hardly fits the definition I use here. It is rather a theme that is
not clearly associated with a specific form or forms—it might appear as
one of many topics in any kind of poem and in prose as well. The case of
the habsJyät (prison poems) is similar, and there are many others. The clas-
sification zuhdlyät (found already in the quotation from Qäbüs-näma given
above) may, on the other hand, be regarded as a term rather coinciding
with "homily" as used here. Hijä, generally translated as "satire" but mean-
ing more specifically "defaming of the enemy," is closely connected with
the eulogy (madh) and could even be included as an aspect of that. Finally,
it could be argued that marthiya (the threnody) should be seen as a specific
genre, although that is also closely associated with the eulogy. However,
the conflation of forms makes it very different to draw lines here.
52 J. T. P. de Bruijn, "The Qalandariyyät in Persian mystical poetry, from Sana'I onwards,"

in L. Lewisohn (ed.), The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Suflsm (London and New York:
Khanaqahi Publ., 1992), pp. 75-86.
230 Bo Utas
In the case of the epic forms I tried to use the choice of meter as a crite-
rion in the generic analysis. In the case of the shorter forms this is much
more difficult. Many more meters and variants of meters are used (up to
three hundred different patterns).53 Here the way in which various meters
coincide with various forms, topics, intentions and so on should be mapped
chronologically.54 It may be suspected that the use of various meters for
various subject matters and the like is partly a deeply intuitive matter and
partly a matter of imitation of or allusion to well-known models—again,
but in a more complex way than in the case of the mathnavl, somewhat like
the use of various keys and harmonies for various types of music.
In order to summarize this tentative analysis, I shall review the five gen-
re components proposed above in a historical perspective. The poetic
forms remain stable through all the thousand years we are concerned with.
There might be a shift in the use of the various meters, but I do not have
enough material to draw any certain conclusions about that. On the surface
the subject matter is also astonishingly constant, but the shifting possibili-
ties of metaphoric and allegoric reading imply profound changes in literary
culture—and growing out of this we have the over-powering Sufi perspec-
tive, which in its deepest sense points at a non-literary experience. As for
the use of aesthetic means, we also find little change on the surface. The
number of rhetoric figures increased through the centuries and the imagery
was both gradually developed and conventionalized, but not until the six-
teenth century and the introduction of the "Indian style" was there a defi-
nite tilt towards aesthetic poetry as a game for connoisseurs. Authors' in-
tentions, on the other hand, went through many dramatic changes, from the
minstrel's role as entertainer mixing with the more stern Arabic panegyric
scheme, to the ethically, religiously and philosophically motivated exhor-
tative use of all the poetic forms. This was followed by the Sufi adoption of
the whole scale of poetic ways of expression with basically non-literary
aims, and when the Sufi context was weakened and the mystic sincerity
faded, the poetic scene was left open for more and more aestheticizing
exercises. The reception of the poetry, that is, the possible readings and in-
terpretations of it, followed the stages just sketched for the poet's inten-
53 Cf. Utas, "Arabic and Iranian Elements," p. 133.

54 A good starting-point for such a complicated investigation is found in L. P. Elwell-Sut-
ton, The Persian Metres (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976) and Finn Thiesen, Manual
of Classical Persian Prosody (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1982), both of whom supply
rich information on the actual occurrences of the many metrical patterns in Persian poet-
ry at large.
tions with the important difference that the readings and interpretations of
each period were also applied to poetry created at earlier stages with differ-
ent intentions. This was a living tradition, which was reconstructed for the
purposes of every new generation.
Unfortunately, this greatly simplified resume of the development of the
shorter forms of Persian art poetry through one thousand years does not
help us very much in establishing neat genres. An attempt at showing
something of the intricate relations between forms and themes may be ex-
pressed in the following addition to our "grid of forms and genres":
Poetry
QasTda Ghazal Qit'a Fard Ruba'i Stanzaic forms
Panegyric Threnody Homiletic Mystic Anacreontic Classical
The Quatrain and its Relation to Folk Poetry
Midway between the forms of art poetry just discussed and popular forms
of verse we find a type of poem that has a long and peculiar history, name-
ly the so-called "quatrain," rubä'l (plur. rubä'lyät). This form is character-
ized by a seemingly Arabic structure, using the qaslda type of rhyme, only,
however, for two verses: a, a; b, a. Its meter is also theoretically adapted to
the Arabic metrical system through a number of possible but abstruse mu-
tations of the hazaj: - - freely alternating within the
same poem with - / - - ( i n both cases thirteen syllables
or, rather, twenty morae). As I have argued elsewhere, 55 this pattern should
rather be analyzed as a falling rhythm that preferably could be written:
It is, on the whole, an accepted fact that this Arabic straitjacket has been
put upon some previously existing, pre-Islamic poetic form. Furthermore,
55 Utas, "Arabic and Iranian Elements," p. 135.

232 Bo Utas
the Classical Persian rubä Ί has a unique thematic structure, with the two
first half-verses setting the theme (xx), the third (non-rhymed) entering an
unexpected element (y) and the final half-verse resolving the tension with a
neat pointe (z>x). The question is just what the pre-Islamic form could
have been and from where it came. Gerhard Doerfer has recently collected
evidence and arguments for a Turkic origin with possible connections also
to Chinese poetry of the Tang period. 56 He even quotes a poem by Li Bai
(d. 762) with a similar thematic progression and the same rhyme pattern as
the rubä'l, i.e., a, a, b, aP
Of whatever origin, rubä 7-like poetic pieces and fragments occur in the
earliest sources of New Persian poetry at least from the ninth century, often
anonymously or ascribed to obscure figures. 58 From the beginning of its
New Persian life, the rubä "ι seems to have been an extemporized form of
poetry, a type of epigram with which clever poetizers astonished their
company, short poems that could catch the ear and be passed on like anec-
dotes. Even up to our days this has been a favorite form in so-called mu-
shä'aras, i.e., poetry contests, for instance with someone entering an open-
ing verse and someone else quickly adding a witty completion. Such ex-
temporization is most probably the background of the famous "Quatrains
of 'Umar Khayyäm" (cf. below), but long before him a great number of ru-
bä 'lyät were in circulation, covering a wider range of topics than ordinary
art poetry. We find early examples deploring the transience of life and ad-
vocating the temporary joys of worldly life, especially wine and love.
This type of wine-and-love lyric was also incorporated in the Sufi uni-
verse. Thus the Khorasanian Shaikh Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khair (d. 440/
1049) is known to have used quite secular quatrains in his Sufi sessions,
supplying them with a new meaning through a new context, and soon lead-
ing mystics, like Ansäri of Herat (d. 481/1088), composed specifically Sufi
rubä'lyät. After him collections of rubä'lyät are ascribed to most Sufi
poets, but the form still remained a diversified means of poetic communi-
cation rather vaguely attributed to various authors. A philosophic and
skeptic type became especially associated with the eleventh century mathe-
matician and astronomer Khayyäm, and the number of rubä 'lyät ascribed
to him grew steadily through the centuries. When his poems reached their
modern fame through FitzGerald's successful renderings, a great deal of
56 Gerhard Doerfer, "Gedanken zur Entstehung des rubä "ι," in Johanson and Utas (eds.),
Arabic Prosody, pp. 45-59.
57 Ibid., p. 47.
58 See list in Doerfer, "Gedanken zur Entstehung des rubä'l," pp. 57-59.
energy was spent on attempts at establishing what quatrains of his could be

considered genuine—a rather meaningless exercise. The reading and inter-
pretation of the Khayyam corpus of rubä'lyät is also unsettled. Like so
much of Persian poetry these quatrains may be interpreted as carpe diem
epigrams as well as Sufi allegories. After all, they coexist with a great
number of truly mystic rubä 'lyät. It seems most appropriate to designate
the rubä Ί per se as a specific genre and to regard its various uses as sub-
genres: anacreontic, philosophic, mystic.
FitzGerald's version of the Khayyamian rubä 'lyät became extremely in-
fluential, first in the West, but later also in the East, including Iran itself.
The enormous interest in these poems coincided with the propagation of
"literature" as one of the corner stones of Iranian nationalism in the first
half of the twentieth century. Thus the mathematician Khayyam, a non-
poet, became one of the defining elements of the new literary culture, and
numerous editions of his poems and interpretations of them were pub-
lished. Thus the leading exponent of the new Persian short story, Sädiq
Hidäyat (d. 1951), for example, published his own version of them
(Taräna-häy-i Khayyäm) in an attempt at recovering the true spirit of the
original Iran. At the same time, more traditional literary critics retain the
old distrust of the rubä'l as a form of true art poetry. A more nebulous
composer of quatrains is known as MahsatI (or MahastI) of Ganja, one of
the few instances of old reports on female poets. She is supposed to be
contemporary with Khayyäm, and a great number of rather erotic quatrains
are ascribed to her.59
As already mentioned, the rubä Ί stands close to more popular and less
elaborated types of verse, especially the so-called du-baitl ("of two
verses," at times also called chär-baitl, "of four verses"). Like the rubä'l
this form consists of two distichs, generally rhyming a, a\ b, a, but it is
composed in a simpler meter, hazaj-i sälim — / - — / - - - ) and lacks
the thematic progression of the rubä'l (xxyz>x). Since this is folk-poetry, it
has generally not been recorded in earlier centuries, and we can only make
guesses about its history from what we know from recent records. In liter-
ary history there is, however, one name closely associated with this type of
verse, namely Bäbä Tähir 'Uryän, who might have lived in Luristan or Ha-
madan in the eleventh century. His du-baitls are similar to what are called
fahlavlyät in both old and modern sources, that is, verses wholly or partly
composed in dialect. As for subject matter, du-baitls are generally passion-
59 See Fritz Meier, Die Schöne MahsatI.

234 Bo Utas
ate love lyrics of a profane character, but as such they are always open also
to a mystical interpretation. The du-baitls that have been collected during
the last century all over the Persian-speaking area (i.e., Iran proper, Af-
ghanistan, Tajikistan and adjacent parts of Central Asia) are all of a similar
character. In modern times they are not generally sung with musical ac-
companiment but rather chanted in a peculiar style. We have no means of
ascertaining what such folk-poems could have been like and how they
were performed in earlier centuries, but it is possible that this way of sing-
ing them is quite old. There are, furthermore, other types of folk poems and
songs, including forms that are based on accentual metric structures. Ex-
amples of such are found in a few modern collections, 60 but they are, as far
as I know, still very little known and studied.
In order to summarize this, we might add some new branches to our
"grid of forms and genres":
Short poetic forms
Non-quantitative folk poems & songs Du-baiti Ruba 'i Stanzaic forms
Anacreontic Philosophic Mystic
Genres of Prose and Rhymed Prose
From the point of view of a generic analysis of literature, prose texts are
certainly problematic. As seen from the "grid" sketched at the end of the
section "A Working Definition of 'Literature' " above, prose texts appear
in a number of places in the scheme: as "non-literature," as "narratives," as
elaborate prose and in mixed forms. There is, however, a gray zone be-
tween elaborate and non-elaborate language, and even patently informa-
tional and directive texts tend to include extensive narrative material (sto-
ries, anecdotes, parables etc.). To my knowledge there are few serious at-
tempts at sorting this out. It is typical that Rypka in his ambitious theoreti-
cal introduction has a short chapter entitled "Prose," but of those twelve
pages (108-119) only the two first are really concerned with prose. 61 He
60 E.g., Panähl Simnanl, Taräna-häy-i milli-yi Iran. Sain dar taräna να taräna-sarä'l dar
Iran (National Songs of Iran: Α Review of Songs and Composition of Songs in Iran), (Is-
fahan, 1364/1985-86).
61 Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, pp. 108-19.
gives, however, a typological classification of "belletristic and related

prose":
A. Fiction:
1. Tales of heroism and chivalry;
2. Separate fairy stories and tales;
3. Collections of narratives, anecdotes and fables, united in a com-
mon framework;
4. Allegorical tales.
B. Meditations:
1. Essays, including those of Sufi origin (especially on the subject of
love);
2. Biographies of Süfis;
3. Ethical works, including politics;
4. Diplomatic, official and private epistolography.
C. Works closely connected with A and B:
1. Biographies and anthologies (tadhkira);
2. Theory of literature (especially poetics and style).
D. Scholarly works in poetical style, consisting largely of historiogra-
phy.
E. Memoirs.
Of these, A is basically concerned with the oral sphere, Β is an extremely

vague label and C seems to be a misnomer. D (to which at least B. 3 and C.
2 should be moved), finally, conceals the central problem with the phrase
"in poetical style" (i.e., my "elaborate"). Since the situation is far from
clear, there will be an element of arbitrariness in the following attempts at
a generic analysis.
During the early centuries of the Caliphate, the administration of the
Iranian provinces was carried out first in Middle Persian and then in
Arabic. It was not until the middle of the tenth century that the Samanid
government in Transoxiana, as part of a conscious policy of independ-
ence, introduced New Persian as an administrative language and fur-
thered its development as a written and hence literary medium. In this
connection they also commissioned Persian translations of two funda-
mental Arabic works: the Tärlkh (History) and the Taj'sIr (Koran Com-
mentary) by Tabari (d. 310/923). These translations were of great impor-
tance for the subsequent development of Persian prose, but they can
hardly be regarded as literature in the sense used here, in spite of the fact
that, in particular, the resulting history (Tärikh-i Bai'ami) includes much
236 Bo Utas
narrative material. 62 History and exegisis of the Koran and the Sünna (tra-
dition) remained central in Persian prose production and later on often de-
veloped literary characteristics (elaboration, narrativity). 63 Both types of
text were also, although in more hidden ways, dependent on pre-Islamic
Iranian written traditions.
The chanceries of the various Iranian states, from the Akhaemenids of
the fifth-third centuries BC onwards, obviously kept written records of
events, as testified, for instance, in the Biblical Book of Esther (2.23, 10.2),
which mentions "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and
Persia." In view of the many profound political changes in the region, there
could not have been any physical continuity in the state archives, but the
Sasanian Empire itself lasted for some four hundred years and certainly
had collected voluminous archives, including chronicles. Nothing of this
has been preserved in original documents, but we know something about it
from Arabic sources. According to them, there was a Sasanian Khvatäi-nä
mak (Book of Rulers) which was translated into Arabic by no one less than
Ibn al-Muqaffa' (cf. above). This text is unfortunately lost, but we find this
official Sasanian chronicle quoted by Arab historians (Tha'alibi et al.), and
it certainly influenced Arabic historiography—and thereby also Persian.
Theology was another matter: the pre-Islamic Iranian state religion, Zoro-
astrianism (Mazdayasna), had a strong theological tradition, though oral to
a great extent. It was perhaps not written down on a larger scale until Is-
lamic times, and because of the severe confrontation between the two reli-
gions, influences from it did not creep into Islamic theological writing in
Persian until much later.
A type of prose that at an early stage had developed elaborate forms in
Arabic was the writing of official letters, the so-called inshä' or epist-
olography. In the inter-ethnic setting of the Caliphate, Arabic inshä' held
the ground for a long time, but when, gradually, it was transplanted into
Persian, it contributed to the creation of a specific Persian prose style. On
the way some of its characteristics changed. Thus the already-mentioned
Qäbüs-näma64 of the eleventh century advises scribes not to use rhymed
prose (saj'), since that, although highly appreciated in Arabic letters, is
62 Cf. Julie Scott Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999), pp. 24-37.
63 On literary aspects of historiography, see Meisami, ibid., esp. p. 3 (narrative character of
history), p. 289 (rhetorical and persuasive character), p. 291 (poetic insertions as docu-
mentary material), p. 292 (affinity between histories and adab anthologies).
64 Kai-Kä'üs ibn Vushmglr, Qäbüs-näma, p. 187.
considered ugly in Persian. This is an obvious reference to the fact that in

Persian rhymed prose had become a characteristic of the preaching style of
the mystics, no doubt under the inspiration of the Koran. The officials of
the king were not supposed to write like preachers. Later on, the specifical-
ly Persian development of inshä', highly ornate, became the model for
Turkish, Indian and other variants.
As already stated, the main part of what may be considered pre-Islamic
literary culture was oral: poetry and narrative prose perhaps completely.
This makes it very difficult to assess what kind of continuities and discon-
tinuities we may have between pre-Islamic and Islamic Persian literature.
In poetry we can see how the metrical system was reshaped, while in narra-
tive prose there are no early (i.e., written) sources to tell. There are later
traces of numerous cycles of stories, such as the Hazär afsänak (Thousand
Tales), which later on turned into the Thousand and One Nights, and the
Alexander Romance, which in a number of different versions penetrated
both Persian and Arabic narrative tradition.
The main sources for Persian prose during the coming millennium were
thus Arabic informational prose (history, theology and, later on, philoso-
phy, medicine, science), Iranian historiographical and theological tradi-
tions, Arabic epistolography and Iranian oral discourse. According to the
definitions used here, there are two types of elaborate prose works that
may be regarded in toto as literary genres. One is epistolography, which
was always, since its Arabic beginnings, regarded as the very essence of
adab. This is the art of the officials (dablrän), which at least in principle
should be highly elaborate and forceful. The old handbooks are full of sto-
ries of the efficacy of such letters, excelling in refined formulations and
hidden allusions. In practice, of course, there were all kinds of letters, but
those that have been preserved in collections of prominent examples gener-
ally live up to those ideals. Through the centuries, the inshä' style became
more and more ornate, ending up in almost extreme bombast. The other
type that must be considered literary already by definition is found in
pieces of the rhymed prose (saj') that was favoured by Sufi writers. The
most typical of those are so-called munäjät ("personal prayers to God"),
fervent invocations of God composed in rhymed prose and often starting
with the Arabic vocative ilähl ("my God") or the Persian khudäyä ("ο
God"). One of the first, and definitely the most famous, of the authors of
such invocations was Ansäri of Herat. Centuries after his death (AD 1088)
his rhyming munäjät were copied in ever growing collections, often called
Ilähi-näma (Book of Ilähls), similar to the growing collections of ru-
238 B o Utas
bä 'lyät in the name of Khayyäm. Generations of Sufi shaikhs used rhym-

ing prose in invocations and preaching, at first orally but later on in writ-
ing. We might use munäjät as a provisional label for this genre.
Most kinds of written prose works cover a continuum stretching from
stylistically straightforward informational (e.g., theology) or directive
(e.g., normative ethics) discourse to elaborate and artful texts that may be
regarded as literature. Among this type of texts we may count historiogra-
phy, Koranic exegesis, wisdom texts (mirrors for princes etc.), tadhkirät
(biographies) and risälät (treatises). It is a rather hopeless task to try to sort
works of these kinds into the categories literary and non-literary, but there
is all the same a definite difference between one end of the continuum and
the other. Historiography started out as a reasonably direct way of present-
ing what was regarded as real history, including mythical kings and wars
of the past, but over the centuries it developed more and more refined and
ornate stylistic ideals and ended up as something more close to rhetoric
than informational discourse. Koranic exegesis, as well as theology more
generally, similarly started as direct exposition, but especially commen-
taries and exegesis of a mystic inclination introduced narrative material,
parables and aesthetic modes of expression that move this genre into a lit-
erary sphere.
The exceedingly rich Iranian tradition of "good advice" (pand) found
many forms of expression. Much of the narrative material, stories and
fables, brought in from India already in pre-Islamic times had a didactic
bent, like the collection of fables known in the Arabic and Persian world as
Kallla u Dimna (the names of two jackals) and in later European variants
as The Fables ofBidpai. Ibn al-Muqaffa' translated it from Middle Persian
into exemplary Arabic, and later on it appeared in various versions in or-
nate Persian. On the whole, this genre of pand drew heavily on the reposi-
tory of oral narratives, and as already mentioned it often appears as a com-
ponent in all kinds of work, both in verse and prose. A specific type of wis-
dom text is the "mirror for princes," the most typical Persian example of
which is the Qäbüs-näma, from which I have already quoted repeatedly. A
late type is the one found in Sa'dl's famous Gulistän (Rose Garden), which
is a collection of didactic anecdotes, partly written in rhymed prose (poss-
ibly influenced by munäjät, like those ascribed to Ansärl) and interspersed
with verses in both Arabic and Persian.
Biographies (tadhkirät) describe the lives of poets or mystics. The
former generally give some more or less legendary facts about each poet
and tell some anecdotes about him and then quote more or less extensively
"Genres" in Persian Literature 9 0 0 - 1 9 0 0 239
from his poetry. The latter give ample legendary material about the
so-called "saints" (auliyä), at times using rhymed prose and quoting poet-
ry. Risälät, finally, were summarily described above. This is a type of com-
position that could be used for a wide array of subjects, many of them def-
initely not literary. For a provisional generic analysis, one might perhaps
especially discern a philosophic type (with Ibn Sinä, i.e., Avicenna, as the
most important early proponent), a mystic type (with the Savänih ul- 'ishq
by Ahmad Ghazäli as a typical example) 65 and a literary type (exemplified
by the previously mentioned Chahär maqäla). There is also the special de-
velopment known as maqäma (cf. above), but that specifically artistic form
of prose never became common in Persian literature.
Taking all this into consideration, we might add the following quite pro-
visional scheme as an addition to our "grid of forms and genres":
Elaborate prose
Wisdom texts (pand) History Biography Exegesis Risälät Munäjät Epistolography
Literary Mystic Philosophic Mystic Literary
Without doubt, a vital tradition of storytelling survived all kinds of

changes and political reversals in the history of Iran. This tradition has
many sources. One was the national legend of Iran, starting with the pri-
mordial heroes going down to the conquest of Iran by Alexander the Great
in 331 BC and leading on to the Sasanian era with kings like Khusrau
Anüshirvän and Khusrau II Parvez. Another was tales, fables, legends and
the like that were often brought in from abroad, in Sasanian times especial-
ly from India, but also from the Greek/Hellenistic culture of the Near East.
In Islamic times, Arabic sources also supplied ample narrative material,
both religious (such as stories about the Prophet and other heroes of the
new Faith) and profane stories of chivalry and love.
The difficulty of following and analyzing these oral traditions is obvi-
ous. We have only the testimonies that happened to come down to us. First
65 Ahmad Ghazäli, Savänih ul- 'ishq, N. Pürjavädl (ed.), (Tehran: Bunyäd-i Farhang-i Iran
1359); Nasrollah Pourjavady (trans, from the Persian with a comm. and notes), Sawänih,
Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits: The Oldest Persian Sufi Treatise on Love by
Ahmad Ghazzäll (London, N e w York, Sydney, Harley: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1986).
240 Bo Utas
of all, such evidence is found in the continual use of material from oral tra-
ditions in works of art literature, both in poetry and prose as well as in wis-
dom texts, history, biography, exegesis and the like. Apart from the com-
prehensive and coherent employment of the national legend found in the
Shäh-näma by Firdausi, most written use of material from this rich reposi-
tory will be found in single stories and tales adduced as didactic examples,
illustrations, parables and the like. However, in oral tradition, narratives
were often brought together in extensive cycles, either by being associated
with one specific hero or through various types of frame stories. What we
have preserved of independent narrative tradition is generally found in
cycles that have been taken down in writing. They may belong to the
heroic-national tradition, like various versions of the persianized Alexan-
der Romance (Iskandar-näma) or the stories about the alleged half-brother
of Alexander, the last Akhaemenid emperor Därä(b), son of Därä (Däräb-
näma), or narrative cycles of Indian origin (collections like the Panchatan-
tra, Kathäsaritsägara and the Buddhist Tripitaka).
What happened to be written down of such basically oral narrative
cycles appears in stylistically rather varied forms. Some are found in more
artful adaptations, like the Marzbän-näma of the thirteenth century, while
others show clear traces of their oral background, like the various Iskandar-
näma^ and Däräb-nämas. The latter are written in a stylized seemingly
simple narrator's language and at times give only a skeleton of the story.
However, at certain points, obviously constituting dramatic peaks, the
wording is more elaborate and the actors are quoted verbatim. Such compi-
lations seem to have their origin in some kind of memorizing notes, still
known from storytellers of the twentieth century in Iran.
The kinds of narrative genres that we find in these scattered written
sources belong to the various types found in folklore and popular oral tra-
ditions all over the world. Undoubtedly, it would be possible—and desir-
able—to make a more precise generic analysis of this Persian material, but
that is a big undertaking in itself and, as far as I know, we do not have more
than a small beginning of it. Thus I can only make the following very gen-
eral suggestion for a supplementary piece for our "grid of forms and gen-
res":
Narrative, non-elaborate prose
Heroic stories Adventures Legends Fairy tales Fables

Theater
In order to complete the picture—and fill in the "genre grid," a few words
must also be said about the theater—in itself not an easy task, at least not
historically, since this is traditionally a completely oral phenomenon,
something regarded as popular or even vulgar and thus not regarded as
adab in any sense and consequently not recorded. The situation is aptly
summarized by Jiff Cejpek in the chapter "Dramatic Folk-Literature in
Iran" in Rypka's History of Iranian Literature (pp. 682-693). He distin-
guishes between the ta'ziya, i.e., the religious (Shi'i) passion play, the
'Umar-kushän, i.e., religious parody and farce, the taqlld, i.e., folk-farce,
the maskhara-bäzl, i.e., buffoonery, the shadow-play, the glove puppet
theatre and the marionette theatre. Common to them all is that they prob-
ably have deep historical roots but certainly have also undergone profound
changes through the centuries, and that they are held in low regard (except,
perhaps for the ta'ziya during later centuries) and thus have remained
largely unrecorded. As Cejpek remarks there, a modern type of drama,
based on European models, did not appear until the 1930s.
The End of the Classical System
Finally, the characteristics of the Classical Persian literary system, super-

ficially stable for more than one thousand years, may be seen in a new light
when the system starts to break up at the beginning of the twentieth centu-
ry. Thus a complete generic analysis of that system should include its dis-
integration. This is, however, a demanding task in itself and must be
treated in another chapter in another book.
LENNART RYDEN F
Byzantine Saints' Lives as a Literary Genre
In the histories of Byzantine literature that were written in the second half
of the last century, it was divided into three main parts: secular literature in
formal Greek, 1 secular literature in the vernacular, 2 and theological litera-
ture. 3 This division is, of course, arbitrary, partly because the theological
literature contains works written in the vernacular as well as in formal
Greek. Moreover, the difference between formal and vernacular Greek is
fluid. The reasons for this division were practical rather than theoretical.
Belles lettres and professional literature, however, were not separated. In
the latest history of Byzantine literature, the first volume of which, cover-
ing the period 650-850, appeared in 1999, there is no such separation. 4 In-
stead, Byzantine literature is defined as literature that contains not only in-
formation but also supra-information, that is, what art alone is able to con-
vey. This is the only criterion. Genres are not treated separately.
As Byzantium was a multi-ethnic empire, much of its literature was
written in other languages than Greek, such as Georgian, Armenian and
Coptic. In this paper, however, I am only concerned with literature written
in Greek. Even with this limitation, Byzantine literature is more extensive
than one normally thinks. An eminent Byzantinist has calculated that it
would fill between two and three thousand modern printed volumes. 5 Of
this large amount about eighty percent is of a religious nature, hagiogra-
phy—various sorts of literature concerning the saints and their relics—be-
ing the most voluminous kind. In secular literature, historiography was the
1 Herbert Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, 2 vols. (Munich:
C. H. Beck, 1978).
2 Hans-Georg Beck, Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur (Munich: C. Η. Beck,
1971).
3 Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich:
C. H. Beck, 1959).
4 Alexander Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850) (Athens: Institute of
Byzantine Research, 1999).
5 Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1980), p. 233. The chapter on literature, pp. 233-55, is unusually instructive.
most important genre. History was not so much written in order to show
wie es eigentlich gewesen ist as to save great men and great events from
falling into oblivion. Time was regarded as an enemy that like a torrent
carries away everything, unless you save it in advance. Because of this un-
derstanding, historical narrative tended to have a strong literary character.
Of epic poetry there is only one example, the Digenis Akritas, albeit in two
different versions. In the twelfth century and in late Byzantium the late an-
cient romance experienced a renaissance, with the difference that the ro-
mances were now mainly written in verse, whereas in late antiquity they
had appeared in prose.
It should be noted, however, that the various kinds of literature are not
equally frequent during the long history of Byzantium. For example,
Church history disappears as a separate genre after the end of the Early
Byzantine period circa 650, not to return until the fourteenth century,
whereas the romance, in prose as well as in verse, appears only in the
twelfth century and in the late period. Hagiography is especially produc-
tive before circa 650 and in the ninth and tenth centuries—during the pe-
riod 650-800 there is almost no literary activity at all because of the Arabic
occupation of Byzantine territory. Also during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries there is very little hagiographic activity, this time because of the
cultural development. Few new saints appeared, and those who would have
been regarded as saints earlier were neglected now. Another inhibiting
factor was that hagiography was no longer written in the vernacular. New
literary standards had been set by the very successful menologium 6 of
Symeon Metaphrastes (late tenth century), in which the language of hagio-
graphy had become impersonalized, as it were.
It should further be noted that hagiography consists of many different
kinds of texts that together do not constitute a literary genre. One important
subgroup, however, the Lives of the saints, certainly constitutes a literary
genre. In principle, they are all preceded by a preface and end with an epi-
logue. The main part in between consists of a mixture of biography and
edifying episodes in varying proportions. The spiritual world, invisible but
made visible through dreams and visions, plays an important part. The
hagiographer has great freedom to write as he likes, provided that he does
not neglect his main duty, to edify his reader (or listener) and convince him
of the sanctity of the person described. Despite its religious aim, this genre
6 A menologium is a collection of saints' Lives arranged according to the order in which

the saints were celebrated by the church during the year.
244 Lennart Ryden f
has great literary potential. Many of the Lives (in Latin vitae, in Greek
βίοι, bioi) are both interesting and entertaining. They certainly help to fill
the gap felt after the loss of the ancient genres. Speaking of genres, the
Byzantine intellectuals were not interested in literary theory. They did not
work out a genre system of their own. Still, they used a few genre names,
such as the bios just mentioned and the diegesis, a short, precise and enter-
taining story, a few examples of which will be given later. The Lives of
saints are of many different kinds. They may have a polemical purpose,
they may propagate for a certain church or cult centre, they may describe
the life of a hermit or the life of a more active saint such as a patriarch or an
abbot, of a woman who lives a saintly life within the restrictions of a fami-
ly and so on. Most of this vast material, it must be said, is of little literary
interest. Here I intend to present a few different Lives which, to my mind,
clearly have literary qualities. 7
But first a historical summary. The first Life of a saint was the Life of St.
Antony, a hermit, written in the middle of the fourth century by Athana-
sios, patriarch of Alexandria 328-362. s Athanasios gives an account of An-
tony's whole life, and this after the pattern found in the Bible rather than
that of the ancient Greek biography. Thus Antony emerges as a man of
God (θεοΰ άνθρωπος) as against the Greek divine man (θείος άνήρ). There
then follows a series of portraits of Desert Fathers. The desert and the city
are described as opposed to each other. On occasion the dividing line is
transgressed. The most drastic example is Symeon the Holy Fool, who is
said to have spent three decades in the desert before he entered Emesa,
where he played the fool for the sake of Christ. He suffered badly at the
hands of the citizens of Emesa, but at the same time, in his awkward man-
ner, he managed to convert some of them to a more virtuous and spiritual
life. His Life was written by Leontios, Bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus (now
Limassol), most probably in the 640s. The most prominent hagiographers
of the early period were, in addition to Athanasios and Leontios, Theodor-
etos, Cyril of Scythopolis and John Moschos. John Moschos, however, did
not write saints' Lives in the strict sense, but rather described a tour to holy
men in various parts of the empire whom he characterizes and brings to life
in short episodes pregnant with meaning. The language of almost all hagio-
7 By texts with literary qualities I mean not only texts that go further than a text just writ-
ten to inform, but more precisely texts in which the narrative or poetic element strikes the
reader as particularly pleasure-giving and thought-provoking.
8 Gerard J. M. Bartelink (ed. and French trans.), Athanase d'Alexandrie: Vie d'Antoine
(Paris: Cerf, 1994).
graphy of this period is lively and easy to read, only rarely tainted by rhet-
oric. The heroes are hermits, stylites, monks, converted sinners and prosti-
tutes, a rather colourful crowd. In addition to the importance of the contrast
between city and desert it is further characteristic of the early period that,
usually, the saints belong to the parts of the empire that in the seventh cen-
tury were lost to the Arabs.
Because of Arabic expansion in the seventh century, Byzantium lost its
primary monastic areas, i.e., Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. From now on and
until the eleventh century, the Byzantine Empire consisted of Asia Minor,
parts of the Balkan peninsula including Greece, further Crete (except for
the period 828-961), Cyprus (after 965) and the islands of the Aegean Sea,
Sicily (until the ninth century), and parts of southern Italy. In addition to
this external change, due to Christianization and economic and social
changes, there followed a transformation of the Byzantine Empire from
within. The ancient Greek city with its rich, varied social life disappeared.
Only Constantinople, which from now on played a dominant role, and to
some degree Thessalonica, remained. All this resulted in an almost total lit-
erary standstill that lasted until the end of the eighth century. Lives written
after that date, if they did not happen to be written in Syria, were not con-
cerned with desert fathers or rebellious city saints but with defenders of the
holy images against the attacks of the iconoclasts, with founders of new
monasteries and prominent leaders of the church, with some remarkable
exceptions, among them a generous rich landowner described as a new
Job; more on him below. Later, these holy men are joined by married fe-
male saints living a saintly life within the family, further by pious em-
presses, and in the tenth century by fantastic figures like Andrew the Holy
Fool, the visionary Basil the Younger and the likewise visionary Niphon as
well as the female ascetic Theoctiste of Lesbos, some of whom will be pre-
sented more fully later on. In this period one also notices a tendency to col-
lect old saints' Lives and to present them in a common stylistic shape. The
last step in this development came in the late tenth century, when Symeon
Metaphrastes, perhaps at the request of the emperor, created an immense
collection of standardized Lives of saints. The language and style of these
Lives steered a middle course between the vernacular and classical, arti-
ficial Greek. Lives of the latter kind are particularly typical of the first half
of the ninth century. A characteristic feature of this middle Byzantine
hagiography is that many hagiographers are anonymous, and those who are
named are often unknown but for their names.
246 Lennart Ryden t
At the start of the eleventh century hagiographical production begins to

peter out, partly because of the impact of Symeon Metaphrastes' meno-
logium and partly because at this time people began to think that there
were no new saints to write about. In the twelfth century some Lives were
written by well-known authors like Theodore Prodromos, although, gener-
ally speaking, the saint's Life was an improductive genre. In the thirteenth
century new enemies appeared, in the first place the Catholic church,
which contributed to the occupation of Constantinople by the crusaders for
more than half a century. Those who fought on the orthodox side against
the enemy were compared to martyrs and attracted the attention of the
hagiographers. In the fourteenth century there was a new wave of rewriting
old Lives, but also, in part owing to the conflict between the hesychasts
and their opponents, of writing new ones, although these Lives often fail to
reach the quality of the old ones.
How much of this huge bulk of texts can be said to possess literary
qualities? Certainly more than has so far been assumed, as attention has
been paid to their edifying purpose and the frequent use of topoi rather than
to the many innovative and entertaining elements. It is true that, among
others, the author of the Life of St. Blasios of Amorion (first half of the
tenth century) constantly destroys its considerable literary potential by ir-
ritating moral lecturing. However, the exceptions to this kind of openly
moralizing hagiography are many. The Life of St. Leo of Catania (ninth
century), e.g., is a story reminiscent of the Arabian Nights with consider-
able entertainment value. The Life of St. Andrew the Fool (tenth century)
contains, among many fascinating chapters, an impressive apocalyptic de-
scription of the last emperors of Byzantium and their reigns, and the Life
of St. Basil the Younger (tenth century) presents eschatological visions
that are worthy forerunners of Dante's Divine Comedy. The Life of St.
Philaretos the Merciful (ninth century) is a highly competent combination
of several well-known motifs that together constitute a real work of art.
Despite all the topoi and repetitiousness, Byzantine hagiography displays a
literary originality that has too long been neglected.
I hope a more detailed presentation of the Lives mentioned and of a few
more will explain what I mean. The first example is the Life of St. Mary of
Egypt, by one manuscript attributed to Sophronios, patriarch of Jerusalem
634-638, and in any case written in the seventh century. 9 This story ap-
9 Text in the Patrologia Graeca, 87, col. 3697-3726. English trans, by Maria Kouli in
Alice-Mary Talbot (ed.), Holy Women in Byzantium (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks,
1996), pp. 65-93.
pears in several versions, of which the one attributed to Sophronios is the

most elaborated. At the beginning of the story an ascetic and priest living
in Egypt, Zosimas by name, who wants to improve his ascetic way of life,
is urged by a voice to go to a certain monastery on the Jordan. Arriving
there he is received in a strictly regulated community. According to the
rules of the monastery the monks every year spend the time of pre-Easter
fasting in the desert on the east side of the Jordan. There they are supposed
to spread out so that no one is able to see any of the others. Zosimas also
goes off, perhaps even further than the others, for suddenly he notices a
naked, sunburnt figure that tries to avoid his attention. But Zosimas fol-
lows the figure, who finally finds that he cannot escape. Instead he shouts
to Zosimas, even using his name, to throw him a piece of clothing so that
he can cover his nudity. Zosimas does so, whereupon he approaches the
unknown figure, which turns out to be a female ascetic. In the manner of
ascetics they kneel before each other, exchanging prayers. Zosimas im-
plores her to tell him her story, which she finally agrees to do. She comes
from Alexandria in Egypt. When she was twelve years old she left home,
urged on by sexual desire, and began to devote her whole life to the satisfy-
ing of this desire. She lived like a harlot, with the difference that she did
not charge anybody for putting her body at their disposal. She supported
herself by spinning, it would seem.
One year she accompanied a group of young men who were going to the
Feast of the Exaltation of the True Cross, which was celebrated in Jerusa-
lem on September 14 and attracted visitors from all directions. The first
part of the journey was by boat, but Mary refused to reveal any details
about the sexual orgies in which they indulged during the crossing. Arrived
in Jerusalem, she continued to live a wild life. When the feast began, she
joined the crowd that streamed into the church to see Christ's true cross.
But when she came to the threshold between the narthex (entrance hall)
and the naos (nave) she was unable to go further. All the others entered
freely but she could not pass the threshold, however much she tried. At last
she withdrew exhausted to a corner in the narthex. After much weeping
and pondering she at last understood that the reason for her rejection was
her impurity, contracted through her loose living. Above the spot where
she stood there was an image of the Mother of God. She prayed to her, en-
treating her not to refuse to let her see the cross on which her son gave his
life in order to bring the sinners to repentence. She promised to put an im-
mediate stop to her loose living and implored the Mother of God to lead
her out into loneliness. Then she tried to enter the naos again, and this time
248 Lennart Ryden t
she went in easily. Having worshipped the cross she returned to the image
of the Mother of God and asked for her guidance. She heard a voice saying,
"If you cross the Jordan you will find peace." When she left the church an
unknown man gave her three coins for which she bought three loaves of
bread. She went on her way to the Jordan where she received the Holy Sac-
rament in the church of St. John the Baptist. The following day she found a
boat which took her over to the other side, and from there she went out into
the desert. When Zosimas asked her when this happened she answered that
it was forty-seven years ago. She therefore seems to have been over sixty
when Zosimas met her. Before they parted she asked Zosimas not to men-
tion anything about her to anybody. She further asked him to spend the
next Lent in the monastery, not leaving it until Maundy Thursday. Then he
should take three loaves of Sacramental bread, go to a certain place on the
Jordan and wait for her there, so that she could partake of the Communion
according to the ritual, as Zosimas was a priest. And so they parted.
When the next Lent began Zosimas became feverish, which reminded
him of what the ascetic woman in the desert had said. He soon recovered
but remained in the monastery until Maundy Thursday. Then he took holy
bread and wine and went to the place on the Jordan she had described. Af-
ter a long wait—it was already night and moonlight—he noticed her stand-
ing on the other side of the river. She made the sign of the cross over the
water, whereupon she crossed over to him, walking on the water. So, after
forty-eight years, she at last partook of the Communion. When Zosimas
had finished his prayer, she kissed him on the mouth, as spiritual brothers
did. She had a last wish, namely that after another year he should come
back to the place where she told him the story of her life—it annoyed him
that he had not asked her her name, for unlike her he did not know in ad-
vance the names of the people he met. A year passed and according to the
rules of the monastery Zosimas went out into the desert when the fasting
began, trying to find the place in question. When he had found it, he could
not see her at first, but after a while he discovered that she lay dead on the
ground. He also noticed that something was written beside her head. The
writing said, "Father Zosimas, bury the body of humble Mary who died on
this spot in the month of Pharmouti [April], in the very night of the suf-
fering of our Saviour, after I had the divine and mystical meal." Zosimas
understood that she had returned at once to die at this spot after her Com-
munion on the Jordan. But it was difficult to dig a grave in the hard soil of
the desert. Looking up Zosimas discovered a big lion. At first frightened,
he then ordered the lion to dig the grave for him, which it did. Thus he
could bury Mary, whereupon he returned to the monastery. He told the

brothers his story, which was then handed on from generation to genera-
tion of monks until it was written down by the author. This information
looks like a discreet warning that the reader should take the story with a
grain of salt. In fact, there are older, simpler and rather different versions
of the Life of Mary. In any case, this story can certainly compete with even
the best folk-tales. And like them it had its literary models and became a
model itself for later stories as well.
The story of Mary of Egypt became, to a certain extent, the model for a
Vita written about three hundred years later by Niketas Magistros, a
high-ranking official in Constantinople, who even mentions Zosimas in
one passage. 10 Once he accompanied the admiral Himerios on an expedi-
tion to Crete, which at this time was occupied by the Arabs. Off the island
of Ios they were stopped by a headwind and therefore returned to Paros.
While waiting for fair wind they explored the island, which was uninhabit-
ed because of the raids of the Arabs. It had a very beautiful Theotokos
church, a church that still exists in reconstructed form. Inside the gates they
found the beautiful ciborium. Unfortunately it was broken. While they
wondered who had committed this wicked deed, an old monk, marked by
many years of asceticism, appeared. His name was Symeon. Symeon told
them that Arabs from Crete had planned to take it with them but when they
approached the gates the ciborium suddenly grew so that they were no
longer wide enough. The Arabs then widened the gates but still they were
not wide enough. At last they gave up, and in their annoyance they de-
stroyed the ciborium. Nisiris, their leader, was punished, however, for he
drowned soon after when his ship was lost off Euboia.
Then Symeon told the following story, which he urged Niketas to write
down for his own reward and the edification of others. Once upon a time
hunters from Euboia came to Paros to hunt. One of them told Symeon the
following: "Once when I came to Paros to hunt and as was my custom
went up to the church of the Mother of God to pray, I noticed a pit in the
ground containing water and beans, because of which I assumed that there
was a hermit nearby. After a successful hunt I returned to the church.
When I approached the altar I was stopped by a voice saying, 'Stop! I am a
woman and do not want to appear naked before a man.' I threw my cloak
to her and she stepped forward. She was white-haired, so tanned as to be
black, almost nothing but skin and bone. She told me that she was a nun
10 Text in the Acta Sanctorum, Nov. IV (1925), pp. 224-33.

250 Lennart Ryden t
called Theoctiste and that she came from Methymna on Lesbos. When she
was eighteen years old the Arabs from Crete had pillaged the island and re-
duced the inhabitants to slaves. Then they had brought the slaves to Paros,
where Theoctiste had managed to escape and remain unseen until they left.
From then on she had lived as a hermit on Paros for thirty-five years. Now
she had a wish. Next time I came to Paros she wanted me to bring holy
bread in a clean box, for during all these thirty-five years she had never
partaken of the Communion. When I came to Paros again to hunt wild
goats and unicorns, I could at first not find Theoctiste, probably because I
was accompanied by my fellow-hunters. But when I returned alone I found
her and could give her the holy bread. She said, 'Lord, now let your servant
go home in peace.' Then I returned to the hunt, but when we were about to
set sail a few days later I went up to the church to say farewell to Theo-
ctiste. I found her lying dead on the ground. What should I do? I cut off a
hand and took it to the ship. Late at night we put to sea. The sailing seemed
to progress perfectly, but in the morning we found that we had remained on
exactly the same spot. I understood that it was all my fault. I went up to the
church and returned the hand that I had cut off. Then the departure was
quick and easy. I told my fellow-hunters my secret. They immediately re-
turned to Paros in order to bury Theoctiste. But her body was not to be
found, only its imprint in the soil."
His story finished, the hunter beseeched Symeon to pass it on. Symeon
in turn urged Niketas to write it down. As can be seen, the story has much
in common with the story of Mary of Egypt. Both stories are about a fe-
male hermit who lives in complete solitude until, after several decades, she
is found by a man. She tells the man the story of her life, whereupon she
asks him to bring her holy bread, and when she has received the Commun-
ion, she dies in peace. Both stories have tale-like elements, a lion digging a
grave in the first, unicorns in the second, and supernatural hindrance from
moving in both, the linking of several stories, one superimposed on the
other, in the Life of Theoctiste, corresponding to the oral tradition in the
case of the Life of Mary of Egypt. Thus both indicate a distance between
the author and his sources that gives him great freedom to shape his story
at will. However, there are also considerable differences. Theoctiste is a
nun and not a harlot, which means that her asceticism is not dependent on a
need to do penance as in the case of Mary. The language in the story of
Mary is simple and natural, whereas the language of the story of Theoctiste
is classicizing, even containing phrases borrowed from Thucydides and
Achilles Tatius. The former story is set in the desert, the latter on an island
in the Aegean sea, because in the tenth century the Byzantine empire no
longer included any desert. The difference reflects the fact that times had
changed. But it also shows that the tenth century author was capable of
making use of a given topic in a creative way.
The next example is the Life of St. Symeon the Holy Fool, written by
Leontios, bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus, probably in the 640s. 11 A holy fool
is a sinless person who plays the fool in the presence of others in order to
fight sin in this foolish world on its own conditions. Leontios introduces
his story with a carefully worded prologue, in which he emphasizes that
Symeon's foolish appearance at Emesa (in Syria, now Homs) was a single
combat with the devil, a fight that he did not take up until, after many years
of asceticism in the desert, he had liberated himself from all carnal desire
and was fully prepared to fight the devil in the city, which with its theatre,
taverns and brothels was the devil's own ground.
The story itself is divided into two parts. The first begins with the feast
of the Exaltation of the True Cross, with which we are familiar from the
story of Mary of Egypt. Symeon and his mother, said to be eighty years
old, a symbolic number it would seem, travel from Syria to take part in the
festivities. In Jerusalem Symeon meets a young man called John, married
and twenty-two years old (another symbolic number, in this case indicating
that John will become a new Amun, a well-known Egyptian ascetic). How
old Symeon is at this time we are not told, but despite his mother's age he
appears to be approximately the same age as John. The two young men,
who belong to well-to-do families and, despite their Syrian origin, have a
complete mastery of Greek, become friends. After the feast they do not
want to part. When on their way home they approach the Jordan, John
points towards the road leading to the monasteries on the Jordan, and says,
"Look at the road that leads to life!" Then he points to the road that leads
towards home, and says, "And look at the road that leads to death!" To de-
cide which way to choose they draw lots. Symeon is standing at the road
leading to the Jordan, i.e., life, and the lot falls to him. Here Leontios
breaks off to explain how he can know all this. He says that his source is a
deacon in the church of Emesa, John by name, who in turn had heard it all
from Symeon himself. For chronological and other reasons, this is not to be
trusted.
11 Lennart Ryden (ed.), Das Leben des Heiligen Narren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis
(Uppsala: Almqvist and Wikseil, 1963). English transl. in Derek Krueger, Symeon the
Holy Fool: Leontius's Life and the Late Antique City (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
Univ. of California Press, 1996), pp. 131-71.
252 Lennart Ryden t
Then Leontios tells how Symeon and John entered the monastery of
Abba Gerasimos, situated in the Jordan valley, where they received the
holy garment, and with it fatherly advice from the abbot Nikon. When they
were tonsured, they were dressed in a festive attire that, according to the
rules, they must take off after seven days. However, Symeon and John did
not want to part from this wonderful attire but decided to leave in time and
go out into the desert. John wondered what they should live on, but Sy-
meon reassured him, saying that they should live like boskoi, grazing ani-
mals, an established form of extreme asceticism. The abbot Nikon antici-
pated that he would not be allowed to keep two such fine ascetics. He
waited for them when they were about to leave the monastery at night, not
to fence them in but to give them his last advice. Then the two young men
left the safe monastery to go out into the wilderness, to be precise the val-
ley along the river Arnon to the east of the Dead Sea. Their privations and
hardships are not described in any detail. Leontios concentrates on their
prayers for the members of their families and the vision through which
Symeon and John learned that their mother and wife, respectively, had died
at the same time. Then they lived another twenty-nine years in the desert,
i.e., altogether circa thirty years, a period that corresponds to the thirty hid-
den years of Christ and which Leontios treats summarily.
After the end of this long time Symeon felt that he had been liberated
from all desire and no longer reacted to cold or heat or hunger. He said to
John, "Here we are only helping ourselves. Let us leave and save others as
well!" But John was not yet ready to leave the desert, particularly not in or-
der to make fun of the world, as Symeon suggested. After an emotional
farewell Symeon left and went to Jerusalem to pray at the holy places that
he would remain unknown and misunderstood until his death. And as he
wished, his prayer spread over the hearts of those who witnessed his deeds.
From Jerusalem Symeon continued to Emesa in Syria. Outside the city
gate he found a dead dog on a dunghill. He took the rope he had around his
waist and tied it to a leg of the dog, dragging the dog behind him as he en-
tered Emesa. Inside the gate there was a school. The children ran after him,
shouting, "Look, a crazy monk!" The following day was a Sunday. Sy-
meon put nuts into his pocket, entered the church at the beginning of ser-
vice, threw nuts and put out the candles. When they tried to get rid of him,
he jumped up on the ambon and threw nuts at the women. At last he was
turned out. He then overturned the tables of the pastry cooks, in answer to
which they beat him black and blue. And so it goes on, one prank follow-
ing upon the other. Most of them have a hidden purpose. Once he placed
himself in front of a stage on which mimes were being performed. One of

the performers was a conjurer. When he began his performance, Symeon
took a little stone, made the sign of the cross over it and threw it at the con-
jurer's right hand. Immediately it was paralysed. During the following
night Symeon appeared before the conjurer in his dream and said, "If you
don't swear never to perform anything like this again, your hand will never
get well!" The man swore, and in the morning his hand was cured. Another
time, on a chilly day, Symeon sat warming himself by the oven of a Jewish
glass-blower together with some other poor people. Symeon said, "Do you
want a good laugh? Every time the glass-blower makes a glass I shall make
the sign of the cross, and the glass will crack." The glass-blower cracked
seven glasses in a row. The poor people told the glass-blower the reason
for all the cracking, and Symeon was thrown out of the shop. Symeon
shouted to him, "Indeed, until you have made the sign of the cross on your
forehead, you will crack everything!" After the glass-blower had cracked
another thirteen glasses in a row, he did as Symeon had told him, and no
more glass was cracked. Thus the glass-blower became a Christian.
All these episodes are well told. They give fascinating glimpses of life at
Emesa in the Early Byzantine period. For a modern reader they are both in-
teresting and amusing. For a medieval reader they must also have been edi-
fying. However, they are not told in chronological order. Unlike the first
part of the Life, it is impossible to know how long Symeon lived like this at
Emesa. A certain contact between the two main parts of the Life is main-
tained by pilgrims who first meet John, now living near Jericho, and then
visit Emesa, where they also meet Symeon.
Being a saint, Symeon knows when he is going to die. When the mo-
ment is drawing near, he appears to John in a vision, exhorting him to join
him, and so they are reunited at the moment of death. Symeon acts oddly as
usual. In the hut where he used to spend his nights, the only furniture was a
bunch of twigs which served as his bed. This time he did not lie down on
the twigs but under them. When it was found out that he had died, his body
was carried to a cemetery for strangers by two men, without being washed
and without hymns and incense. When they passed the Jewish glass-shop,
the glass-blower who had been converted by Symeon heard wonderful
hymns sung by innumerable singers. But when he looked out, he saw no-
body except the two men who carried Symeon's body. Evidently the
hymns came from angels. When his friend John the Deacon heard of
Symeon's death, he hastened to the cemetery in order to dig up Symeon's
mortal remains and give them an honourable burial. But they were not to
254 Lennart Ryden t
be found. God had taken them away. Now all the inhabitants of Emesa woke
up as from sleep and told each other of all the wonderful things Symeon had
done. At last they understood that his foolishness had been feigned.
In the epilogue, Leontios compares Symeon's hidden work to that of a
number of men in the Holy Scripture. Moral: Heed yourself and not the
others, for each one has his own burden to carry and will receive his re-
ward from the heavenly King.
As far as can be judged, Leontios's source material consisted of a
number of anecdotes featuring Symeon playing pranks at Emesa. Leon-
tios's own achievement probably consisted in giving the anecdotes a
hagiographical shape and in adding a prologue, an introductory first part
that put the anecdotes within a biographical frame and so gave them a
deeper meaning, and an epilogue. In so doing, he transformed hardly pre-
sentable material into an edifying narrative that could be accepted by the
church, and Symeon himself into a well-known and appreciated saint.
Looking at the Vita from a literary point of view, one notes that Leontios
had a talent for story-telling and an eye for composition (prologue three
pages, background and purpose twenty-one pages, Symeon's activities at
Emesa twenty-four pages, epilogue two pages) and consistency (the inter-
play between Symeon and John is never forgotten, despite the physical dis-
tance). In addition, it would seem that Symeon's thirty years in the desert
as well as his parodic entry into Emesa discreetly represent him as a true
imitator of Christ. From this point of view Symeon's good friend John
would reflect John the Baptist. In any case, the Life of Symeon the Holy
Fool contains quite a number of veiled allusions to the Bible, the New Tes-
tament in the first place, that elevate the subject and make Leontios's ac-
count rich in associations. Compare, for example, Symeon overturning the
tables of the pastry cooks at the entrance of the church with Jesus overturn-
ing the tables of the money-changers outside the temple (Mt. 21:12, par.).
In short, this is a carefully prepared and well-written Vita and an admirable
piece of literature.
Like Mary of Egypt, Symeon the Holy Fool became the model for an-
other, fictitious, saint in the tenth century. An enigmatic hagiographer who
calls himself Nikephoros and pretends to be a priest at St. Sophia in Con-
stantinople and to be writing in the middle of the sixth century, after circa
950 wrote the Life of an equally enigmatic saint called Andrew. 12 Accord-
12 Lennart Ryden (ed. and trans.), The Life of St Andrew the Fool, 2 vols. (Uppsala: Acta
Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1995).
ing to the Life, Andrew came to Constantinople as a Scythian slave boy in

the reign of Leo I ( 4 5 7 ^ 7 4 ) . He was bought by a distinguished man called
Theognostos, whose favourite slave he soon became. He loved reading the
Lives of the saints, from which he was aroused to imitation of the saints'
good way of living. One night as he rose from his bed to say the midnight
prayer, the devil appeared and scared him back to his bed. Falling asleep,
he dreamt that he was standing in the hippodrome surrounded by, on the
one side, men dressed in white, on the other, an immense crowd of black
Ethiopians, among them a huge black man, with whom they wanted the
men in white to wrestle. From above a beautiful young man descended
with three precious wreaths in his hand. Andrew wanted to buy one of
them for his master, but the young man explained that they were designed
for those who conquered the Ethiopians. Andrew said that he was ready to
challenge the huge Ethiopian. The young man prepared him by saying that
an Ethiopian may seem dangerous, but in reality he is as feeble as a rotten
vegetable. When the Ethiopian lifted him up, he should grapple him
"crosswise" (probably meaning that he should make the sign of the cross
over him). Then Andrew challenged the Ethiopian and, following the
young man's instructions, threw him to the ground. All the Ethiopians dis-
appeared and the men in white rejoiced. The young man gave the wreaths
to Andrew, saying, "Fight the good fight naked [cf. 1 Tim. 6:12]. Become
a fool for my sake [cf. 1 Cor. 3:18] and I shall make you a partaker of many
good things in my kingdom."
In the morning Andrew came to Nikephoros, who advised him to be-
come a fool for the sake of Christ, just as the young man had told him in
his dream. The following midnight Andrew began to play the fool. Think-
ing that his favourite slave had gone insane, his master sent him to be
chained up in the church of St. Anastasia, who was believed to appear to
the insane in their dreams and deliver them from their demons. She also
appeared to Andrew, but instead of "curing" him she supported his deci-
sion. The following night he was attacked by the devil, but St. John the
Apostle defended him. He further dreamt that he visited the heavenly
King's palace. The King asked if he would like to serve him with all his
heart, giving him first something sweet and pleasant and then something
pungent and bitter, just to give him an idea of what it meant to serve the
heavenly King. Andrew hesitated, but when the King also gave him some-
thing that was extremely sweet and pleasant to illustrate what it meant to
become a fellow heir in his kingdom, he fell into a trance, and when he
woke up he implored the King to accept him.
256 Lennart Ryden f
Having spent four months in the church of St. Anastasia, Andrew was
released as being incurable. In the evening he came to Nikephoros and told
him everything. The following morning he went out to his spiritual work.
A number of episodes illustrate how he was beaten and ridiculed. Eventu-
ally he met a young man called Epiphanios, who became his secret friend
and confident, to a certain extent replacing Nikephoros. He should prob-
ably be identified with the Epiphanios who was patriarch of Constantin-
ople 520-535. Andrew's holiness began to make itself felt. For example,
he knew Epiphanios's name in advance, he elevated during prayer, he
spoke languages that he had not studied, he opened locked church doors
with the sign of the cross. But if someone happened to notice his wonderful
gifts, he forced him to keep silent and not reveal it to others. During a win-
ter storm that lasted two whole weeks, when he normally would have fro-
zen to death, he slept the whole time, dreaming that he visited Paradise and
Heaven. The devil attacked him, but to no avail. Andrew's feigned foolish-
ness was rewarded with a fascinating insight into the world of the demons
as well as the history and future of the world. In a long conversation with
Epiphanios he explained how God created the aeons and the world, and in
another he described the last reigns of Byzantium and the end of the world.
It seems to me that the last emperors of Byzantium have been patterned on
Constantine the Great and his first successors, but this hardly diminishes
the impact of Andrew's apocalyptic panorama. It certainly indicates that
the author was not entirely uneducated.
One morning Andrew died in the porticoe of the hippodrome, having
prayed all night for those in affliction and the whole world. A woman liv-
ing in a hut close by felt a wonderful fragrance and discovered that it came
from Andrew's dead body. She told her neighbours, but when they arrived,
the fragrance was still there but Andrew's body had disappeared. God had
taken it away, as He had taken away Symeon the Holy Fool. Andrew was
sixty-six years old, a fictitious number indicating perfection.
Several details in this story indicate that Nikephoros knew Leontios's
Life of Symeon. Symeon is even mentioned at the beginning of the narra-
tive. However, the differences between the two Lives are striking. In the
Life of Andrew there is no long biographical beginning such as had pre-
pared Symeon for his playing the fool at Emesa. Instead, Nikephoros con-
fines himself to preparing Andrew for his work with dreams and visions,
and this in just a few months. On the other hand, Symeon has none of the
visionary gifts that Nikephoros attributes to Andrew. In the Life of Sy-
meon foolishness for the sake of Christ is the main topic. In the Life of An-
drew, in contrast, foolishness is rather a necessary prerequisite for the

saint's supernatural insights. Nor does the Life of Andrew possess the
strict composition of the Life of Symeon. Apart from a short chronological
beginning and an equally short chronological end, the whole Life is some-
thing of an excuse for conveying knowledge of the invisible spiritual world
that surrounds the human being, as well as of heaven and hell, the creation
of the world and its end. However, this does not mean that the examples of
Andrew's feigned foolishness that are presented are casually told. In fact,
the Life is a sum of well-told and interesting, albeit often unconnected epi-
sodes and expositions. One may perhaps wonder if descriptions of the cre-
ation of the world and its end possess any literariness. But to my mind they
certainly do, at least when handled as in this text. Together they comprise a
grand work of art that made life in a prescientific age meaningful and el-
evated.
Among Leontios's remaining writings there is also a Life of St. John the
Almsgiver, patriarch of Alexandria 610-619. 13 This Life was not meant as
a biography in the strict sense but as a supplement to an already existing
biography written by Sophronios and John Moschos and—in contrast to its
predecessor—on a level of style that could be understood by all. Leontios
pretends to have received most of his material from a certain Menas,
oikonomos of the church of Alexandria at the time John was patriarch.
Such more or less invented informants are common in Byzantine hagiogra-
phy. John's first move as a patriarch was to note down all those that he
called his masters, i.e., the poor and the beggars, for only they can give us
the kingdom of heaven. These "masters" turn out to be no fewer than seven
thousand five hundred in number. So many people were supported by
John. His next move was to introduce a strict standard for all measure-
ments and weights. He further took rigorous measures against corruption.
Twice a week he sat down in front of his church, making himself access-
ible to the needy and wronged. When the Persians overran and plundered
Syria, many of those who were affected fled to Egypt, and John took care
of them. He told those who wondered at his generosity that when he was
fifteen years old he dreamt that a beautiful lady with a wreath on her head
appeared before him. She explained to him that she was Eleemosyne, the
first among the King's daughters, and added, "If you make me your friend
I shall introduce you to the King. No one has his ear like me. It was I who
13 Andre Jean Festugiere and Lennart Ryden (eds. and French trans.), Leontios de
Neapolis: Vie de Symeon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1974).
258 Lennart Ryden t
made him incarnate himself and save mankind." With these words she dis-
appeared. John hurried to the church. On the way he met a man trembling
with cold. At once he took off his cloak and gave it to the shivering man.
Now, he thought, I will learn whether my vision was real or if it came from
a demon. Not yet arrived at the church, he met a man dressed in white who
gave him one hundred gold pieces, saying, "Take these, brother, and do
with them as you like!" Now he knew that his vision was real. While Alex-
andria was still full of refugees from Syria, one of them wanted to put John
to the test. He went to meet John three times, each time in a new dress, ask-
ing for money. The first two times John gave him six gold coins, and the
third time he gave him twelve, although he understood that it was the same
person. He gave them to him because he thought that it was Christ himself
who was putting him to the test.
Thus one episode follows upon the other until the Persians capture Alex-
andria and John has to flee. His plan was to go to Cyprus where he was
born and Leontios himself was bishop when he wrote John's Life. But be-
fore John left Alexandria, the patrikios Niketas advised him to go to Con-
stantinople instead, to help the emperor with his prayers. John accepted,
but when his ship reached Rhodes, a eunuch with a radiant face and a staff
in his hand appeared before him and said, "Please, come! The King of
kings asks for you." He broke off his voyage to Constantinople and went to
his home town, Amathous in Cyprus, where he died, destitute. When he
was buried and put in a grave in which there already were two bishops,
they made room for him in the middle as if they were alive.
No more than the Life of Andrew the Fool is the Life of John strictly
planned and structured. Nevertheless, it impresses its readers with its many
well-told episodes, all of them worth remembering. But if we pass to the
Life of another merciful saint, Philaretos the Merciful, we find something
quite different. 14 The contents of this Vita, which was written in the Pelo-
ponnese in 821-22, may be summarized as follows:
Philaretos was a rich landowner living in Asia Minor in the eighth centu-
ry. Philaretos was not only rich, he was also generous. Whenever a poor
peasant lost an animal—no doubt a frequent event in this epoch—he could
go to Philaretos and get a new one. But the more Philaretos gave away, the
richer he became, for God rewarded him a hundredfold. This went on for
many years, to the growing irritation of the devil. At last the devil asked
14 Lennart Ryden (ed. and trans.). The Life of St Philaretos the Merciful Written by his
Grandson Niketas (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2002).
God, "What is so remarkable about giving to the poor out of one's abun-
dance?" Then God gave the devil permission to put Philaretos to the test.
The next time Philaretos gave away an animal, God did not replace it. He
began to fall into poverty, not only because of his generosity, but also be-
cause of the devil's harassment in the form of Arab raids and the greed of
neighbouring landowners. At last he had nothing left but his house, a yoke
of oxen, a horse, a donkey, a cow with its calf, and his beehives.
This development is described in general terms and in just a few lines.
But from now on the narrative becomes more detailed. In six lively, amus-
ing episodes the author describes how, to the exasperation of his wife and
children, Philaretos also gave away his last property. In their view he was a
fool, but he explained to them that he had sold his cattle and put the money
in a safe place, and with this they had to be content.
Then unexpectedly there appeared an embassy from the imperial court.
The envoys were searching for a bride for the young emperor Constantine
VI (780-797). So far their search had been in vain, but now they dis-
covered that one of the granddaughters of Philaretos, Mary by name, was
exactly what they were looking for. She had the right stature, she looked
like the ideal portrait they were carrying with them, and the model shoe
fitted her foot perfectly. Accompanied by Philaretos and the whole clan,
Mary was brought to Constantinople for the final decision. There she had
ten competitors, but she surpassed them all in beauty and charm and was
married to the emperor. The wedding took place in November, 788, as we
know from the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor.
In Constantinople, Philaretos was given the title of consul and provided
with so much money that he could go on giving to the poor without run-
ning the risk of being ruined again. He had stood the test. His children and
grandchildren were also amply rewarded. They now realized what Philare-
tos had meant when he said that he had put his money in a safe place.
Four years after his granddaughter's wedding, Philaretos understood that
his time was up. He gathered his offspring and enjoined them not to keep
their wealth on earth but invest it in heaven by giving it to the needy. Hav-
ing also predicted the future to some of them, he took leave and died. His
sainthood was proven at the funeral, when a man possessed by an evil
spirit was cured as he touched his coffin. Three days later it was further
proven by a dream, in which Philaretos's favourite grandson Niketas,
standing at the narrow bridge that leads from this world to Paradise, saw
him sitting there on a throne in the guise of Abraham.
260 Lennart Ryden +
In this Vita the episodes do not follow one upon the other at random but
in such a way that they illustrate a development that at first seems to lead
up to a catastrophe but suddenly takes a turn for the better and ends in com-
plete happiness. Such a consistently described course of events is relatively
rare in Byzantine hagiography. It is further clear that the narrative is based
on a few well-known literary motifs, the Job motif in the first place, second
the limitless generosity that we have already met in the Life of St. John the
Almsgiver, with the difference that John in contrast to Philaretos did not
give away his own property but that of the church, third the bride-show
motif, which is not uncommon in Byzantine literature of the middle period
and, fourth, the legend of the narrow bridge leading from this world to
Paradise, widely spread in the Middle Ages. All these motifs have been
elaborated in an original and clever way, and are very naturally combined.
The literary, in part secular, character of this Vita does not prevent it from
being highly edifying. In other Lives the edifying purpose may be empha-
sized to such a degree that the literariness is lost, but here the main motif,
mercy, is so competently handled that there is no need for pointers. In-
stead, it combines edification with literariness in a sophisticated way.
Probably in the same century, or possibly in the tenth—the criteria are
weak—another Vita was written that distinguishes itself by the same eye
for development and thrills: the Life of St. Leo of Catania. 15 After a de-
scription of the volcano Etna close to Catania, the Vita proper begins with
an account of how Leo was chosen Bishop of Catania and a presentation of
all his good qualities and his fight against idolatry. In the long version Leo
is dated to the second half of the seventh century, when idolatry is unlikely
to have existed in Sicily. In any case, at the same time as Leo, there lived at
Catania a man called Heliodoros, a man brought up as a Christian but dis-
liked by everybody. He wanted to become an eparch, but despite all his at-
tempts he failed to reach his goal. Finally, he sought assistance from a Jew-
ish magician, who gave him a piece of writing and told him that when
night came he should go to the graveyard of the heroes and mount a high
pillar. Then a horrifying figure would descend from above, but he should
not climb down until the figure had promised to grant his request. Helio-
doros went to the place described, mounted the pillar and raised his hands,
15 This Vita has been preserved in two versions, one longer edited by Vasilij Latysev in
Neizdannye greceskie agiograficeskie teksty [Zapiski imperatorskoj akademii nauk. Is-
toriko-filologiceskoe otdelenie. Ser. VIII, 12:2] (St. Petersburg: Akademija Nauk, 1914),
12-28, and one shorter ed. by Augusta Longo in "La Vita di S. Leone Vescovo di Cata-
nia e gli incantesimi del Mago Eliodoro," Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 26
(1989), pp. 80-98.
holding the piece of writing. In a moment the devil descended through the
air, sitting on a huge stag. The devil said, "If you want to have your request
granted, you must deny Christ. If you do that, I shall give you a servant that
will help you with everything you want." At once Heliodoros denied
Christ, climbed down from the pillar, kissed the devil's hand and received
the assistant. His name was Kaspar, just as, according to tradition, one of
the three Magi was called.
From this moment Heliodoros is the main person in practically the
whole Life. He is an antihero who does not get his punishment until the
end of the Vita. Until then he creates great confusion at Catania as well as
in Constantinople. For example, he makes young women of prominent
families so wild with sexual desire that they leave home and devote all
their time to debauchery. He distorts other women's vision so that they lift
their skirts, thinking they are walking through water. He also distorts the
vision of those who are buying in the market so that they think they are
buying gold, silver and jewels, but after the purchase they find that they
have bought just trivial things. As a consequence, all business in the mar-
ket comes to an end. The eparch sends a letter to the emperor in Constanti-
nople, Constantine IV, who reigned with his son Justinian II, who is also
mentioned, between 681 and 685, giving an account of what is happening
at Catania. The emperor sends Herakleides, his first courier, to bring He-
liodoros to the capital. When they are about to return, Heliodoros suggests
that they first have a bath. He asks Herakleides and his men to dip their
heads into the water, and when they stand up they discover that they are in
a bath in Constantinople, their clothes lying at their side. The emperor sen-
tences Heliodoros to death for being a magician. Before the execution he
asks for water. His request is granted. But instead of drinking, Heliodoros
dives into the water, and at the same moment he is back at Catania. Again
Herakleides receives orders to bring Heliodoros to Constantinople. Helio-
doros does not refuse to go back. This time he draws an outline of a ship in
the sand and places himself and Herakleides and his men in the ship with
their luggage in the middle. Then he calls Kaspar, who launches the ship,
and the ship brings them to Constantinople in one day, entering a harbour
near the imperial palace. As soon as they have gone ashore, the ship disap-
pears. Herakleides' wife spits in Heliodoros' face. He reacts by putting out
every light in the capital. They can only be lit again with the fire he has
made in the woman's lap. Again the emperor sentences Heliodoros to
death, but when the executioner raises his sword to cut off his head, bal-
loons suddenly grow out from his shoulders, lifting him up through the
262 Lennart Ryden f
hole that at the same moment appears in the ceiling. As he disappears he

shouts, "Look for me again at Catania!" At Catania Heliodoros continues
to perform his tricks. During a horse race he gives Leo's young relative
Chryses a white horse, with which he beats all his competitors. After the
race the white horse disappears. Heliodoros is caught by the police but es-
capes by bribing the guards with a gold nugget, which later turns out to be
a stone. Leo tries in vain to bring Heliodoros to reason. During a service
led by Leo he begins to kick like a mule and play other tricks that entice
some into laughing. He even promises to make the priests as well as the
bishop himself jump during the liturgy. But this is more than God can per-
mit, so it comes to nothing. Leo understands that he must get tough with
Heliodoros. He throws his pallium around his neck and brings him to a
place of execution called Achilleion. Here Heliodoros is burnt at the stake,
held by Leo with the pallium. Heliodoros is burnt to ashes, whereas Leo is
not hurt by the fire at all. The emperor sends for Leo and pays reverence to
him, particularly after he has seen him burning incense in his mantle. This
is a miracle that, like Heliodoros's tricks in the church, seems to be in-
spired by similar episodes in the Life of Symeon the Holy Fool. When Leo
dies and is buried, another miracle occurs. In the epilogue the author speaks
to Leo himself, reminding him of all the good deeds he did during his life.
In this combination of Faust-legend and the Arabian Nights the antihero
is given exceptionally great space. It would seem that we have here a piece
of drastic storytelling in the guise of hagiography. All the same, the edify-
ing purpose is clearly indicated. For instance, in the introduction the author
tells the story of how the Greek philosopher Empedokles's body was con-
sumed by the fire of Mount Etna. At the end we are correspondingly told
how Heliodoros's body is consumed when Leo holds him over the fire
without suffering any injury himself. Moral: do not play with fire, in other
words, do not think that you can serve the devil with impunity.
Another Vita in which an antihero takes up unusually great space is the
Life of Ignatios, patriarch of Constantinople 847-858 and 867-877. 1 6 It is
true that Ignatios's life is described in great detail from birth to death. But
from the day Ignatios is forced to step down and Photios made patriarch,
Photios (858-867, 877-886) tends to predominate. As if he were the devil,
he becomes a constantly present evil power. It is remarkable that, having
described Ignatios's death and the posthumous miracles occurring at his
grave, the author does not finish the Vita but proceeds to describe Pho-
16 Patrologia Graeca, 105, col. 488-574.

tios's second patriarchate, although he is aware that in so doing he begins

to write history instead of the Life of Ignatios. It is evident, however, that
much of what is said about Photios contributes to giving Ignatios a more
precise profile, although the Life of Ignatios is far from being an objective,
analytical biography. Rather it is a pamphlet directed against Photios as
much as a Life of Ignatios. As such it is probably more interesting than a
pure biography of the rather colourless Ignatios would have been. The lit-
erary value lies in the portrait of Photios, distorted though it is, or perhaps
for this very reason, rather than in the portrait of Ignatios. In this respect
the role of Photios to a certain extent resembles that of Heliodoros in the
Life of Leo of Catania. Edification appears mainly in the pious advice put
into Ignatios's mouth.
A Life that clearly follows the pattern of the late ancient romance is the
story of Xenophon and his family. The original must have been written in
the Early Byzantine period, 17 but now it is most conveniently available in
Symeon Metaphrastes's menologium, mentioned above. 18 Xenophon was a
rich and prominent official in Constantinople. He was a model Christian,
pious, generous, considerate toward the poor. He had a wife, Mary, who
was equally pious, and two sons, lohn and Arcadius. After the birth of Ar-
cadius, Xenophon and Mary abstained from sex. When the sons had grown
up, Xenophon sent them to Beirut to study law—Beirut had a well-known
law school from the third to the sixth century, so evidently we are in the
Early Byzantine period. After a while Xenophon fell seriously ill and re-
called his sons to Constantinople. But, contrary to expectation, Xenophon
recovered and lohn and Arcadius could return to Beirut to finish their
studies. Unfortunately, they were caught in a storm and their ship was lost.
However, they managed to reach land with the help of scattered parts of
the wrecked ship, albeit at different places, so that neither of them had any
idea of the fate of the other. Their servants were also saved, although none
of them knew whether any of the others survived. In their despair lohn and
Arcadius took the vows, though in different places. Two years passed, and
Xenophon began to wonder why he did not receive any message from his
sons. At last he sent a servant to investigate the cause of their silence.
When the servant failed to find them in Beirut, he went on to Athens,
thinking that they had continued their studies there. It evidently follows
17 See the version published by Luigi Galante in the Analecta Bollandiana 22 (1903), pp.
377-94.
18 Patrologia Graeca, 114, col. 1014-1043.
264 Lennart Ryden t
that we are in the period before 529, when Justinian closed down the aca-
demy of Athens. Anyway, on his way to Athens the servant happened to
come across one of the servants that had accompanied John and Arcadius.
Like his masters, he was now a monk. He told his fellow-servant of the
shipwreck, adding that he assumed that John and Arcadius were dead. The
investigator returned to Constantinople, telling Xenophon and Mary of the
disaster, at first in very veiled terms. When Xenophon and Mary at last
realized the painful truth, they reacted calmly, like Job in the Old Testa-
ment. They gave away a substantial part of their wealth to the poor and de-
parted for Beirut with the rest. At last, after much searching, they found
their sons in Jerusalem with the help of a visionary monk; perhaps he was
an angel in the guise of a monk. The recognition scene is drawn out, as if to
enhance the thrill. Then Mary entered a convent, whereas Xenophon be-
came a hermit, and their sons continued their monastic life, still in different
places. So they met at last, but only to separate again, obviously thinking
that they would be reunited definitely at the Resurrection.
With its shipwreck, separation and eventual reunion this story is clearly
patterned on the late ancient romance. But there is also a significant differ-
ence, namely that in the romance two lovers are separated and reunited,
whereas in the Vita the parents are separated from their sons and the sons
from each other. The husband and wife are never separated until they
choose different ways of serving God at the end. The difference is, of
course, due to the fact that in the saint's Life the main topic is Christian
virtue, whereas in the romance it is romantic love.
Another Life that contains novel-like elements, although it does not fol-
low any late-ancient pattern, is the Life of St. Theodore of Edessa (the
present Urfa in south-eastern Turkey). 19 According to inner criteria it was
written in the second half of the ninth century, but it may also have been
written later. 20 Theodore's parents first had a daughter, who gave birth to
Blasios, with whom the author identifies himself. They also wanted a son,
but time passed and nothing happened. After many years of fasting and
asceticism the martyr Theodore appeared to them on his own day together
19 Ivan V. Pomjalovskij, Zilie ize vo svjatych ottsa nasego Feodora archiepiskopa Edesska-
go [Zapiski istoriko-filologiceskago fakulteta imperatorskago S.-Peterburgskago univer-
siteta, 29] (St. Petersburg: Akademija Nauk, 1892).
20 According to Alexander Kazhdan, it was written in the tenth century. See The Oxford
Dictionary of Byzantium, s.v. Theodore of Edessa. See also Jean Gouillard, "Super-
cheries et meprises litteraires: L'oeuvre de Saint Theodore d'Edesse," Revue des etudes
byzantines 5 (1947), p. 137.
with the apostle John and promised them a son. When he was born, he was
naturally named Theodore. At the age of two he was baptized, and at five
he was sent to school. Unfortunately, for some reason or other he could not
learn anything. He was beaten by the teachers and mocked by his school-
mates. At last he took refuge in the church, where he hid under the altar. In
a vision Christ appeared to him, gave him honey and predicted him a future
as a monk and shepherd. When the bishop discovered him and heard about
the vision he made him a reader and included him in the clergy. From this
moment he easily acquired all kinds of knowledge, including secular
knowledge. When he was eighteen to nineteen years old, his parents died.
Then he wanted to escape from the world. He first went to Jerusalem to
pray at the holy places and then to the famous Sabas monastery, situated
south-east of Jerusalem. Its abbot consecrated him and prepared him for
the self-denial he had to practise as a monk.
Theodore became a model monk, liked by all the brothers. After five
years he was appointed oikonomos, after the abbot the most important
monk of a monastery, an appointment he accepted, although his goal was
to live in tranquillity. After another seven years he was allowed to with-
draw to a cell of his own. There he spent the following twenty-six years,
interrupted by stays in the Jordan desert. Living on bread and water he
drove away the spirits of evil with his prayers. He also copied manuscripts,
which were still to be seen at the time of the author, and gave spiritual in-
struction for the edification of the brethren and visitors.
Here the author inserts a story about Theodore's young relative Michael
who, guided by Theodore, had become a monk. Michael made baskets
which he sold in Jerusalem, whereupon he gave away the profit, partly to
the monastery, partly to the poor. Once he met Queen Seides who was
visiting Jerusalem with her husband, the "Persian king," i.e., caliph,
Adramelech. Seides fell in love with the beautiful young man but failed to
seduce him. She avenged herself by calumniating him before Adramelech.
He, however, did not believe her accusations. Instead, he started a religious
discussion with Michael, trying to convert him to Islam. Michael did not
listen but called Muhammed an impostor. The caliph lost his patience and
put him to the test by making him stand on burning coals. Michael was not
hurt. Then he gave him deadly poison. Michael did not react. At last he or-
dered him to be brought to the place of execution and executed. The monks
managed to bring his body back to the monastery, where it performed mir-
acles. The author says that he inserted this story as a bit of spice and a
source of further edification.
266 Lennart Ryden t
In the following chapters Blasios describes Theodore's asceticism, his

eloquence and fame. A stenographer takes down his preaching in one hun-
dred paragraphs, although he does not insert them in this section but saves
them for a later occasion, where they will fit in better. Evidently he has an
eye for composition.
The bishop of Edessa dies and the heretics tend to take over. Theodore is
appointed his successor, which arouses the enthusiasm of everybody ex-
cept Theodore, who wants to continue his tranquil monastic life. Neverthe-
less he goes to Edessa, where he is warmly received. To meet the heretics
he begins to teach orthodox theology. He also visits the ancient columns
still standing outside Edessa. On one of them the stylite Theodosios is liv-
ing. He encourages Theodore in his struggle against the heretics. He even
predicts that one day he will convert the "king of the Persians." Theodosios
also tells him an edifying story.
The story is about a very rich man called Ader. Ader lives at Edessa and
has a wife and three children. Suddenly he is struck by the thought of life's
vanity, leaves his wife and children and becomes a monk in the Sabas
monastery. In her thoughts the wife rebukes her husband: "You have has-
tened to save your soul, leaving all responsibility for children and home to
me. May God judge between me and you!" One night Ader appears to his
wife in a dream, saying that he will take care of the children. He also ap-
pears to Theodosios, predicting that the two eldest children will die, where-
as the youngest one day will take over Theodore's cell in the Sabas monas-
tery and a few years later become patriarch of Jerusalem. His wife will re-
tire from the world as well and become abbess of the monastery of St.
George, situated near Theodosios's column. These predictions come true.
The wife laments for her two eldest children. When the youngest one also
falls ill and seems to be dying, she is seized with despair. She takes him in
her arms and runs to Theodosios. On the way she meets a harlot. She puts
her son in her arms, asking her to pray for it. The woman hesitates as she
considers herself unworthy, but at last she begins to pray, and the child re-
covers. This makes such an impression on the harlot that she gives up her
sinful life and withdraws to a dark cell in which she remains for the rest of
her life.
The heretics continue to harass the orthodox. At last Theodore decides
to go to Baghdad to seek assistance from the caliph. In this journey Bla-
sios, the author and son of Theodore's elder sister, takes part. Once in
Baghdad they put up at the house of the metropolitan, who seems to head a
large Christian community. Mauias, the "king of the Persians," i.e., the
caliph, is sick and cannot receive Theodore. But Theodore cures the caliph,
which gives him prestige. Eventually Theodore gets the opportunity to
state his business. At once the caliph orders that the Nestorians shall have
their tongues cut out and that the Eutychians shall be banished from Syria
and their churches demolished. He asks Theodore to remain for a time.
When the caliph's decision reaches Edessa, most of the heretics have
themselves baptized. Those who remain heretics are banished and Edessa
becomes an orthodox city again.
A brother of Theodosios's called John lives in a dark cave not far from
Baghdad. Theodore goes to see him, gives him a much longed-for Sacra-
ment and delivers a letter from Theodosios. Being a holy man, he knows
the contents of this letter in advance.
Returned to Baghdad, Theodore slowly introduces the caliph into Chris-
tian doctrine. Eventually the caliph declares himself Christian to Theodore.
During a hunt Theodore takes the opportunity to baptize the caliph secretly
in a river. As a Christian the caliph is now called John.
The caliph desires to have a piece of the Holy Cross. Theodore suggests
that he should write to the Emperor Michael III, who at this time reigns in
Constantinople together with his mother (842-856). The caliph does so,
and Theodore takes the letter and goes to Constantinople, where he is well
received. In his reply, Michael congratulates the caliph on his conversion.
He sends Theodore back to Baghdad with a piece of the Holy Cross in a
jewelled golden box. On his way Theodore stops at Edessa, looks after his
herd, distributes the gifts he received from Michael and visits Theodosios.
When he comes back to Baghdad, the caliph rejoices at the precious relic.
The close relationship between him and Theodore continues.
The Jews and the Muslims are envious and insist on a public debate be-
tween them and Theodore. A debate is arranged, but it does not last long
for suddenly the Jewish spokesman becomes mute and cannot speak. The
Christian community grows. The Jew repents, is baptized and regains his
faculty of speech.
After a time the caliph sends Theodore back to Edessa, giving him plen-
ty of gifts, even presenting him with the relic of the Holy Cross, presum-
ably anticipating that he will soon die. After a long, edifying farewell
speech Theodore departs. The caliph now wants to confess his Christian
faith. He gives an order that his subjects shall assemble at a certain open
space. He prepares himself by taking the Sacrament and arraying himself
in a splendid dress, whereupon he appears before the whole people and de-
clares himself to be a Christian. He takes a cross in his hands, turns to the
268 Lennart Ryden t
east and gives it a kiss. The crowd flies into a fury and kills him, shout-
ing, "May he be killed who has betrayed our belief and confessed
Christ!" His dead body is thrown out into the countryside. During the
night, however, he appears to his great men, threatening them if he does
not get a Christian burial. Then he is buried by the metropolitan and put
to rest in the church. He also appears to Theodore, telling him of his fate
and thanking him. Three years later he again appears to Theodore, this
time to summon him to heaven. Theodore speaks to his herd, exhorting
them to stick to the orthodox faith. He then goes to Jerusalem to pray at
the holy places and then to the Sabas monastery where he dies in his old
cell after three weeks.
It has been pointed out that the didactic parts of this life mainly derive
from other sources, and for this reason it has been dismissed as worthless. 21
This is a one-sided, purely historical judgment. In the first place, the Life
of Theodore should be judged as a historical novel. The author is a good
narrator who knows how to keep up the interest of his readers, sometimes
with a strange story, as that of Ader or that of Theodore's young relative
Michael, but usually by putting Theodore himself in remarkable situations
in various places. The story of the caliph's conversion and martyrdom is,
as far as I know, unhistorical, but from a literary point of view rewarding.
For a Byzantine reader it must have been fascinating. The spiritual world,
always present, is not only interesting from the point of view of the history
of religion but also of great literary value. It gives the author unlimited op-
portunity to vary his subject-matter and to give his story depth and univer-
sality.
My last Vita is the Life of a certain Basil written in Constantinople in the
middle of the tenth century by an author who calls himself Gregory. 22 Basil
lived as a hermit in Asia Minor until he was brought to Constantinople on
suspicion of being a spy. Despite terrible torture he made no admission. At
last he was bound and thrown into the Bosporos. He was saved by a dol-
phin and, strangely enough, returned to Constantinople. In the course of
time he became famous for his miraculous powers. Some even believed
21 See Gouillard, "Supercheries et meprises litteraires," pp. 137-57.

22 In order to read this long vita one has to combine three partial Russian editions, two by
Aleksander N. Veselovskij in Sbornik otdelenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti im-
peratorskoj akademii nauk 46 (1889-1890), suppl. 3-89; 53 (1891-1892), suppl. 3-174,
and one by Sergej G. Vilinskij, Zitie sv. Vasilija Novago ν russkoj literature, vol. 2, Tek-
sty zitija [Zapiski imperatorskago novorossijskago universiteta. Istoriko-filologiceskij
fakultet, 7] (Odessa: Technik, 1911), pp. 5-142.
that he was John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Prominent families that
wanted to have a holy man in their house took care of him. Gregory, the
author, heard of him and wanted to become his pupil. Thanks to his super-
natural power Basil knew everything about him in advance and accepted
him at once. From this moment Gregory accompanied Basil almost until
his death. Basil told him about his life, although, it would seem, nothing
about his family or his childhood and adolescence, as nothing of this is
mentioned in his Life. Gregory describes Basil's activities in Constanti-
nople and relates a number of picturesque episodes that bear witness to the
author's excellent knowledge of the capital. The reader also learns that
Gregory owns a farm or estate in Thrace, although in Constantinople he
earns his living as a servant. On his deathbed Basil asks Gregory to write
his Life. After his death Gregory enters a monastery.
There is something strange about Basil and his hagiographer. As inti-
mated above, they may both very well be fictitious. This impression is sup-
ported by the fact that Gregory himself plays the main role in a consider-
able part of the Vita, although Basil is indirectly present all the time. The
Life seems to be a pretext for conveying apocalyptic and eschatological vi-
sions, Gregory being the one who has the visions and Basil the one who
makes this possible. The visions are remarkable works of art in their genre.
Gregory has his first vision when he has resisted a married woman's at-
tempts to seduce him. He has the impression that he passes the frightening
chasm that separates this world from Paradise. He then comes to a marvel-
lous courtyard containing great barrels filled with olive oil. He is told that
this oil is spiritual and that Basil uses it to clean the sinners who come to
him. Basil appears, and they enter a dark room. Basil's face shines like the
sun. The dragon of the depth appears in the guise of a huge rat, which Basil
smashes with a stone. He tells Gregory to throw a stone at the rat as well.
He does so, and Basil says that never more shall the dragon of the depth be
able to beat him.
A short time later, Basil's loyal servant Theodora died. Gregory wanted
to know how she was rewarded in the afterlife. When he had gone to bed, a
young man appeared, telling him to get up and go to see Basil. When he
came to his house, he was told that Basil had gone to see Theodora. He
should therefore go in the direction of Blachernae, a district in the northern
corner of Constantinople. On the way he reached a narrow, dangerous pas-
sage, obviously corresponding to the narrow bridge leading from this
world to Paradise mentioned in the Life of Philaretos as well as in many
other medieval apocalyptic visions, not only Christian ones. On the other
270 Lennart Ryden t
side of the passage there was a gate, behind which he noticed a beautiful
house. Theodora came out from the house and let him in. She told Gregory
of her death, how her body had been dismantled piece by piece with the
help of various tools and how at last her soul had jumped out when she was
given a bitter drink. On her left side stood Ethiopians, on her right beautiful
young men, both groups eagerly waiting for her soul, the latter at last
catching it. Basil had come and given her a purse filled with coins with
which she could redeem herself, should she get caught in any of the cus-
tom-houses her soul had to pass on its way to heaven. There was one cus-
tom-house for every sin, the first for slander, the last for heartlessness, all
of them manned by malevolent demons who did their best to capture her
soul. Safely arrived in heaven, in part thanks to the purse Basil had given
her (one now gets the impression that Gregory followed Theodora on her
way to heaven as an invisible witness), she was first allowed to visit the
dwellings of the blessed, then the infernal habitations. However, the re-
wards and the punishments had not yet started. For the time being the souls
were just contemplating the fate prepared for them after the Judgment.
After forty days they reached a palace designed for Basil. In front of the
palace was a courtyard in which a feast was celebrated with Basil as host.
Paradise was close to the courtyard, and Theodora was instructed to show
Gregory its plants. The garden was spiritual, and when Gregory examined
his body he discovered that it had become spiritual as well. Then Gregory
woke up from his vision.
Some time later, Gregory was haunted by heretical thoughts about the
Jews. "They believe in the same God as we do, so what is wrong with
them?" he thought. He went to Basil to get guidance from him. On the way
he took the opportunity to see a horse-race at the hippodrome, something
he must have known was inappropriate in the eyes of Basil. When he ar-
rived, Basil at once revealed his thoughts about the Jews and his visit to the
hippodrome. Concerning the Jews he said that those who do not venerate
the Son also fail to venerate the Father. Gregory asked him to give him a
vision to support his weak judgment. In the following night Gregory had a
splendid vision of the Last Judgment, the creation of a new heaven and a
new world, the bliss of the righteous and the sending off of the sinners to
the infernal fire. The sexually immoral but merciful are saved from the
eternal fire by Eleemosyne, the personified Mercy, God's first daughter,
whom we have already met in the Life of St. John the Almsgiver. The
righteous and the sinners are divided into a number of groups. Among the
latter the Jews occupy a special place. Moses appears, saying that he pre-
dieted the arrival of Christ, something that the Jews always denied. At the
very bottom of Hell Judas and Arius are found together with Satan. At the
end of the vision Christ himself speaks to Gregory in order to edify him
and make him capable of edifying others. He shall communicate what he
has seen to the churches of God and to all his people. He shall direct a spe-
cial admonition to the clergy and the leaders of the church. 23
These briefly related visions give the Life of Basil its special character
and contribute a great deal to making it very well worth reading, even if a
modern reader is disgusted by its intolerance and anti-Jewishness. They
further demonstrate the great thematic capacity of a saint's Life. A Life can
incorporate material of many different kinds without losing its genre char-
acter. In a saint's Life, the way of life is as important as life itself.
The similarities between the Lives of Basil the Younger and Andrew the
Fool are striking. As a matter of fact, the Life of Basil seems in part to have
been planned as a supplement to the Life of Andrew. Whereas the latter
predicts the reigns of Byzantium's last emperors, the former describes the
Last Judgment and its consequences. And while the Life of Andrew pre-
tends to be dealing with a historic saint, the Life of Basil is about contem-
porary events. The differences in presentation and structure, however, are
so considerable that I no longer think that the two Lives were written by
the same author, as I once suggested. I do think, however, that they were
created in the same intellectual circles in Constantinople, perhaps spon-
sored by the same person, and had a similar message.
Despite obvious differences with regard to time, place and story, these
eleven Lives have much in common. The most important common feature
is that they all open up the invisible world of good and evil for the medie-
val reader. This must have strengthened the feeling that his existence was
much more complex, meaningful and important than his limited material
conditions indicated. It also gave him other heroes than warriors to look up
to and try to imitate. In a secularized era it is difficult to visualize how im-
portant this imaginary world was. But if we want to understand this medie-
val literature, we must try. It is also interesting to note how anxious so
many of the authors were to account for their sources, real or imaginary,
particularly so when they are writing pure fiction.
23 On the critical tendency of the Life of Basil the Younger as well as that of the Life of An-
drew the Fool, see Paul Magdalino, '"What we Heard in the Lives of the Saints we Have
Seen with our own Eyes': The Holy Man as Literary Text in Tenth-Century Constantin-
ople," in James Howard-Johnston and Paul A. Hayward (eds.), The Cult of Saints in Late
Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford: Ox-
ford UP, 1999), pp. 83-111.
272 Lennart Ryden t
These Lives were written long before the invention of the art of printing.
They have been preserved in many manuscripts and usually in different
versions. Obviously, few of these texts were regarded as something that
had to be preserved in its original form. In the case of the Life of Andrew
the Fool, for example, there are more than one hundred manuscripts of
various sizes and stylistic forms. It is a tedious but necessary task to com-
pare all these manuscripts with each other and with other sources in order
to establish the original text as precisely as possible. This is not to say that
the late versions are not worth studying, for they often display interesting
new stylistic and literary trends.
On occasion, especially in the tenth century, Byzantine saints' Lives
also contain so-called narrationes animae utiles, stories good for the soul.
Despite this designation, they are often brilliant short stories. A few ex-
amples in addition to the two already mentioned: In the Life of St. John the
Almsgiver there is a story about a monk from Gaza called Vitalios, who
wanted to put the patriarch to the test and see if he listened to slander and
passed premature judgments. 24 He went to Alexandria and began to work
as a day-labourer. At sunset he went to a harlot, gave her money and said,
"Give me this night instead of fornicating!" She accepted and he placed
himself in a corner of her room opposite her bed and prayed for her all
night long. Before he left in the morning he obtained a promise from her
not to reveal his intention to anybody. And so he continued, taking on a
new harlot every night. As one of them began to tell people that he came to
them in order to save them and not in order to fornicate, she became pos-
sessed by a demon. His fellow-workers began to make fun of him and
criticize him for breaking his monastic vow. He answered angrily, "Do I
not have a body like everyone else? Or does God mean that the monks
shall die from abstinence?" Some advised him to take off his monastic
habit, marry and produce children. But he did not listen, asking them to
mind their own business. To judge is God's business. Nor did the patriarch
listen when reports of his behaviour reached him. In any case, Vitalios's
activity yielded results. Some of the harlots married, others became her-
mits, but no one tried again to reveal that they had been converted by Vita-
lios's prayers.
One morning as he left a harlot, he met a man on his way in to fornicate.
The man gave Vitalios a vigorous box on the ear, saying, "You villain who
are making fun of Christ, when will you stop doing this?" Vitalios
24 See Festugiere and Ryden (eds. and French trans.), Leontios de Neapolis, chap. 38.
answered, "Be sure, you will receive a box so vigorous that all Alexandria
will gather as they hear your screaming!"
Not long afterwards Vitalios died in his hut, situated near one of the
city-gates. In the neighbourhood there was a church in which the harlots
used to attend Vitalios's services, which contributed to his bad fame. When
he died, the man who had given Vitalios a box on the ear was himself hit
by a demon, who said, "Here is the box on the ear that Vitalios sent you!"
It was so vigorous that it was heard at the distance of the shot of an arrow.
The man fell down, foaming at the mouth. Almost all Alexandria gathered
around him. When he woke up a few hours later he shouted, "Vitalios,
servant of God, I have done wrong, forgive me!" Accompanied by all the
people he went to Vitalios's cell. There they found Vitalios dead but kneel-
ing as if in prayer and a message written on the floor: "Men of Alexandria,
do not judge prematurely, before the Lord arrives!" The Alexandrians were
taught a lesson, and the man became a monk in Vitalios's monastery at
Gaza. He even received Vitalios's cell, and there he spent the rest of his
life.
The Life of St. Nicholas the Studite, written in the first half of the tenth
century, contains the following edifying story. 25 A young soldier who took
part in the Emperor Nikephoros's (802-811) campaign against the Bulgar-
ians for some reason lagged behind the other soldiers. In the evening he
looked for accommodation for the night. A rich woman received him in her
house. She offered him a delicious meal and gave him a comfortable bed,
whereupon she went to bed as well. But it was not long before she got up
and tried to seduce him. He rejected her advances. The woman withdrew,
only to return after a while, but with the same result. When she tried a third
time, he got up and rode away. She sent her servants to kill him, thinking
that he would spread abroad what she had done. The soldier, however,
managed to escape on a by-road. On this he came to a mountain. Suddenly
he heard a voice from the top of the mountain calling him. He went up and
found that it belonged to an old man dressed in white sitting on the ground
with his legs stretched out before him. He asked the soldier to put himself
on his right side. He pointed at the plain below the mountain, where the
Byzantine army had drawn up in front of the Bulgarian forces. When the
battle began, the old man put his right leg upon his left, whereupon the
Byzantine army attacked the Bulgarian forces with great success. But
when the Bulgarians were on the point of taking to flight, the old man put
25 Palrologia Graeca, 105, col. 893A-897D.

274 Lennart Ryden f
his left leg on his right with the result that the Bulgarians gained the upper
hand and the Byzantine army suffered great losses. 26 Thus the fighting con-
tinued with changing success until the old man put his legs parallel in front
of him. In that moment the battle came to an end. The old man stood up
and drew the soldier's attention to an empty spot among all the dead.
"There," he said, "you would have been lying and become food for the
birds, had you not kept your body unpolluted and your soul immaculate."
With these words the old man disappeared. The soldier went down from
the mountain and rode back until he came to Atroa, a plain below the
Olympos mountain in Bithynia, where there were hermitages. There he
stayed for the rest of his life.
The Life of St. Blasios of Amorion was written about the same time as
the Life of Nicholas the Studite and tells an edifying story at the very be-
ginning. 27 It goes like this. A young monk called Euphrosynos worked in a
monastery kitchen. He was sooty and dirty and therefore despised by the
other brethren. One day the abbot felt an urge to know each monk's true
way of life. He went into a trance and thought he was in Paradise. He tried
to pick one of its wonderful fruits, but it turned out to be impossible. To his
astonishment he caught sight of Euphrosynos. He wondered what he was
doing there. Euphrosynos answered that God had entrusted him with free
use of this wonderful garden. The abbot asked if Euphrosynos could give
him one of the fruits. Euphrosynos took down three apples and gave them
to the abbot. When soon thereafter the abbot woke up, he found to his as-
tonishment that he held three apples in his hands. He assembled all the
monks of the monastery and told them of his vision. He also called Eu-
phrosynos, who had a dirty face and dirty clothes as usual. The abbot asked
where he had been during the night. Euphrosynos was silent at first, but at
last he answered, "Father, do you not know where we were, both of us?"
The abbot took out the three apples and asked if he recognized them. Eu-
phrosynos answered, "Of course, I gave them to you!" The abbot praised
him, falling down before him. The apples were divided so that the monks
recieved one piece each. Euphrosynos, however, could not bear their
marks of respect but disappeared without leaving a trace.
Having told this story as a first course, the author of the Vita proceeds to
tell about Blasios's parentage, childhood and adolescence. The Vita proper
26 Cf. Exodus 17:11. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he
lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.
27 Acta Sanctorum, Nov. IV (1925), pp. 658D-659E.
is also interesting, although its literariness is destroyed by too much moral

lecturing.
Short edifying stories are not only to be found as delicious titbits in-
serted into Lives of normal size but also as independent pieces. Among
these I shall here relate the story of Ioustos the Merciful and his son Philo-
theos. 28 It appears to be later than any of the texts mentioned so far.
Ioustos was a rich and prominent man in Constantinople but, like Philar-
etos the Merciful, he was so generous that he at last became destitute. He
decided to sell his son Philotheos and initiated him into his plans. Philo-
theos did not object. Before selling Philotheos he told him that if he was
sent out by his master on an errand and happened to pass a church of the
Mother of God at the time of a service he should go in and by no means
leave before the service had ended.
Then Philotheos was sold for fifty gold coins to a patrician, Constantine
by name. One day when Constantine, accompanied by Philotheos, was in
the imperial palace the emperor summoned him. Unfortunately, Constan-
tine was not properly dressed for a meeting with the emperor. Philotheos
offered to ride home and fetch the dress his master needed. When he came
home, Constantine's wife happened to be in bed with one of the servants in
her and her husband's bedroom. Philotheos did not notice this, but they
saw him and feared they would be exposed. However, Constantine got his
dress and could return to the emperor. When he returned home, his wife ac-
cused Philotheos of having raped her and demanded to see his head sev-
ered from his body, or else she no longer wanted to be called the wife of
Constantine.
The following day Constantine returned to the Palace. When he met the
eparch, he said, "If I send you somebody who says, Ί am your brother
Constantine's servant and he sends word, saying, "Send me the answer," '
you shall order the executioner to cut off his head and send it to me." The
eparch promised to do as told.
The following morning Constantine sent Philotheos to the eparch with
the message: "My master wants you to send him the answer." On his way
to the palace Philotheos passed the church of the Mother of God at
Myrelaion, where a service was being held. He entered and stayed until the
end of service, as his father had told him. But when his head was not sent
back to Constantine, the real fornicator offered to go to the palace and
28 F r a n c i s Halkin (ed.), in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 37 (1987), pp. 3 1 -

37.
276 Lennart Ryden t
fetch the answer, thinking that he would bring Philotheos's head. Instead
he was decapitated himself, as he arrived before Philotheos. And so it hap-
pened that Philotheos came back with the fornicating servant's head in a
parcel. The wife was in despair and admitted her fault. Constantine for his
part interrogated Philotheos and learned that he was the son of a prominent
man who had ruined himself through charity. Constantine offered to let
Ioustos live with him in his house for free, which Ioustos accepted with
gratitude. He continued, however, to give to the poor, now from the dishes
that were served up on Constantine's luxurious table. He stayed in Con-
stantine's house until his death twelve years later. Thereafter Constantine
regarded Philotheos as his own son and made him his heir. Thus order was
restored, roughly as in the Life of Philaretos. Moral: Do not leave church
before the end of the service. This story may make a modern reader think
of Thomas Mann's elegant short story Die vertauschten Köpfe, based on an
Indian legend. In this legend, however, mercy does not play any role at all.
Common to the narrationes animae utiles is the fact that they all have a
clearly expressed moral purpose but few, if any, edifying comments. They
are short, very concrete and display no sentimentality. The invisible world
of good and evil makes itself even more visible than in the Lives. As a rule
they lack historicity. Although they can be included in a Life, they belong
to a different genre.
What, then, gives literary value to stories about persons who rarely
achieved anything remarkable in times of warfare and political trouble; to
stories whose main purpose was to edify their readers (and listeners) and
remind them that God in every generation makes certain men and women
appear who, through their way of living, their miracles and their visions,
point out that beyond the plain life on earth there is a superior and more
meaningful existence? It is certainly not through revealing realism and
keen-sighted psychology. But one important factor is probably that the
Byzantine concept of history on which hagiography is based is a work of
art in itself.
According to this concept God has always existed, at first in a timeless
condition. But suddenly God decided to create time and with it man and
the whole world. The creation took six days. As, according to the Bible,
with the Lord a thousand years are like one day, it was assumed that the
world would exist six thousand years. Unfortunately, it went wrong from
the beginning. Man abused his free will, which resulted in the Fall. To save
mankind, God eventually sent his only-begotten son, an event that was dat-
ed to circa five thousand five hundred years after Creation. Accordingly,
the world would end circa AD 500. As the world did not end at this time, it
was assumed that it would come to an end some time during the seventh
millenium instead, corresponding to the day God rested after his creation
work. When the world came to an end, the vault of heaven would be rolled
up like a liturgical roll, a new heaven and a new earth would appear, Christ
would return and the Last Judgment take place, whereupon time would
cease to exist again. In the Life of Andrew the Fool the seven millenia are
likened to the seven laps of a hippodrome race, and man is described as a
helpless prisoner of time, from which he would eventually be liberated at
the end of the world. Then there will be a timeless continuum of bliss for
the good and torments for the evil. In this magnificent panorama world his-
tory is regarded as an insignificant drop in a sea of infinity. The saints'
Lives reminded their readers more or less clearly of man's position at the
centre of the world, of world history and God's grandiose plan for his crea-
tion. This must have given the Byzantine reader an overwhelming feeling
of his importance and of the meaning of his life.
Another factor may be that hagiography, as we have seen, sometimes
adopted the pattern of certain forms of secular literature, like the romance
and the folktale.
But the most decisive factor is probably that the hagiographers simply
enjoyed telling a good story. It is significant that hagiography particularly
flourished in times when secular literature in the form of epic, romance and
the like, was rare. This shows that the need for literary entertainment was
perpetual, although this need at times had to be satisfied within a Christian,
morally secure frame. Many holy men are described as a kind of superman
and therefore compensate for the lack of epic and folktale heroes. To this
may be added that hagiography did not exclude any category of readers or
listeners, but in various forms adressed itself to all kinds of people, culti-
vated as well as uncultivated. Moreover, in a saint's Life one looks in vain
for concrete descriptions of what people looked like or of the environment
in which they lived, except for details absolutely necessary for the story.
Instead the hagiographer focuses on the story itself, on what people do, on
what they say, on what they see in their visions. When there are not too
many moral pointers, this results in very clear and concentrated stories, or
in collections of stories as in the Lives of Andrew the Fool and John the
Almsgiver.
Within hagiography, which as a whole does not constitute a literary gen-
re, the saint's Life stands out as a literary genre in its own right. This is not
to say that there is only one kind of saint's Life. In fact, as we have seen,
278 Lennart Ryden t
there are many kinds, fairy tales like the Life of Leo of Catania, Lives pat-
terned on the romances like the Life of Xenophon and his family, libels
like the Life of Ignatios, advocates for certain Christian virtues like the
Life of Philaretos, spiritual encyclopedias like the Life of Andrew the Fool,
history in the form of hagiography like the Life of Porphyrios (not summa-
rized here), apocalypse and eschatology as in the Lives of Andrew the Fool
and Basil the Younger, and so on and so forth. These various kinds of
saints' Lives may warrant separate study, but they are not distinctive
enough to be regarded as genres. In this paper I have chosen to present a
few Lives that make excellent reading, but the study of the genre in its en-
tirety of course requires that Lives of less literary interest also be included.
ANDERS PETTERSSON
Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and

Theories of Genre
Thinking Pragmatically about Genres
Up to a point there appears to be widespread agreement about what a liter-

ary genre is. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a genre as a kind, sort,
or style, while also ascribing a more specific sense to the word: "A particu-
lar style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work character-
ized by a particular form, style, or purpose." 1 The definitions of critics nor-
mally agree quite well with such an explanation of the word. For instance,
Chris Baldick writes, in his Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms'.
"A literary genre is a recognizable and established category of written
work employing such common conventions as will prevent readers or audi-
ences from mistaking it for another kind." 2 And David Duff defines "gen-
re," in his collection of genre-theoretical essays Modern Genre Theory, as
a "recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural, thematic
and/or functional criteria." 3
Thus a literary genre is a type of literary text. 4 The concept of genre
points to groups of texts that exhibit significant similarities in form, con-
1 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (eds.). The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., vol. 6
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 446.
2 Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford and New
York: Oxford UP, 1990), p. 90. The expression "written work" is infelicitous, since we
commonly speak also of oral literature, and oral literature is just as rich in genres—estab-
lished categories of oral work—as literature in writing.
3 "Key Concepts," in David Duff (ed. and introd.), Modern Genre Theory (Harlow, Eng-
land: Longman, 2000), p. xiii.
4 Or a type of literary work; or a kind, or class, or category, or form of text/work. I will ig-
nore the differences between these modes of expression since I do not find them signifi-
cant in the present context.
That literary genres are normally understood as types, kinds, classes, categories, or
forms is evidenced by, e.g., the article "Genre," in Jacques Demougin et al. (eds.), Dic-
tionnaire des litteratures franâise et etrangeres (Paris: Larousse, 1992), p. 620 (the
study of literary genres has to do with "une typologie des formes, des categories litterai-
tent, or function, or, if one wishes, to configurations of formal, content, or

functional features that define such groupings.
Genre figures within the context of the series Literary History: Towards
a Global Perspective because it represents a problem for the study of trans-
cultural literary history. There are a large number of literary cultures, and
their genre systems are often more or less different. 5 How can we make the
genres or the systems comparable when we write comparative studies tran-
scending important cultural boundaries? Or should we give up such ambi-
tions? This is a genuine methodological crux, and also an instance of an
even more general problem: how are we to proceed when making intercul-
tural comparisons in the field of literature?
The present essay is mainly theoretical. It is an analysis of genre and
genre theory from a pragmatic point of view and with transcultural literary
history in mind, a sustained reflection on genre aimed at laying a firmer
foundation for the use of genre perspectives in transcultural literary histo-
ry. By "pragmatic" I do not mean "related to linguistic pragmatics," though
I do in fact draw on linguistic pragmatics in the next section. Nor do I
mean "related to philosophical pragmatism," though affinities to that
standpoint may indeed be discerned in some of the things that I write. By
"pragmatic" I mean, simply, "practical." Unlike most genre theorists, I
conceive of genres as intellectual instruments rather than as independent
objects of knowledge.
This is how I regard the matter. As students of literature (and also as ordi-
nary speakers) we often have compelling reasons to group texts together on
grounds of form or content or function. In that sense, genre can be said to
constitute an important and frequently used category in literary criticism, his-
tory, and theory. On the other hand, when we distinguish such groups or such
configurations of features, we do this for different reasons in different con-
texts. The rationale behind our categorizations varies and, naturally enough,
the whole character of the groupings or of the defining traits varies with it.
res, des types de discours"), or by Frederick Garber, G. N. G. Orsini, and T. F. V. Bro-

gan's article "Genre," in Alex Preminger et al. (eds.), The New Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 1993), pp. 456-59 ("The term 'g.' is
often used interchangeably with 'type,' 'kind,' and 'form.' "; p. 456), or by Jeremy
Hawthorn's entry "Genre" in his A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory (London:
Arnold, 1998), pp. 137-38 ("The traditional sense of genre as a literary type or class sur-
vives in the present day, with the term form sometimes confusingly used interchangea-
bly with that of genre," p. 137).
5 The expression "literary cultures" should not be understood as implying that Western lit-
erary culture, Chinese literary culture, etc., are homogeneous and unchanging entities.
The generalizing talk of literary cultures is to be taken as convenient shorthand.
A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and Theories of Genre 281
This fact makes the unity of the phenomenon of genre more nominal than
real, while it also explains—as I will attempt to demonstrate later—much of
the confusion and the air of mystery that surrounds genre theory.
Many theorists of genre would object that genres are something much
more substantial than the result of practically motivated distinctions. They
would insist that genres are formations with actual existence, not classes-
of-texts or configurations-of-traits that we can compose at will. For example,
Alastair Fowler, who is critical of the view of genres as the outcome of clas-
sifications, emphatically maintains that genres "objectively exist." 6
There is indeed a sense in which genres exist, but it is easy to make too
much of that observation and believe that researchers should not construct
text classifications on their own, or that accounts of transcultural literary
history should be restricted by the genre consciousnesses displayed by the
literary cultures dealt with. In essence, my essay will be an attempt to rela-
tivize such beliefs and to introduce a wider perspective on genre, more
favourable for the understanding and writing of literary history across tem-
poral, national, and cultural boundaries.
Genres are often seen as important factors in communication. 7 The next
section ("Verbal Communication") contains a brief description of verbal
communication, which leads on to the presentation of my analysis of genre
in the subsequent two sections ("Three Ways of Viewing Literary Genres";
"Do Genres Exist?"). After that, I take up my main question, that of the
handling of genre perspectives in transcultural literary history ("The Trans-
cultural Description of Genres"; "Applying Western Genre Terms to Other
Literary Cultures").
Verbal Communication
Understanding human communication—that is, understanding how per-
sons can convey representations and mental views to each other—is of
help when we attempt to understand genre and conceptions of genre. 8
6 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 73.
7 Thus, in Fowler's view, genre "is a communication system, for the use of writers in writing,
and readers and critics in reading and interpreting." Ibid., p. 257. More about this below.
8 Perhaps I should say "linguistic communication" rather than, more generally, "human
communication," since literary genres are naturally thought to be types or kinds or
classes of texts. For several reasons—not least because of the fuzziness of the borderline
between the linguistic and the paralinguistic—I nevertheless prefer to retain the broader
formulation.
During most of the twentieth century, real-life communicative acts (ac-

tual utterances or actual written messages directed to another person or
other persons) were standardly seen as being governed by conventions
(codes, rules) in a very straightforward fashion. It was thought that speak-
ers or writers have something they wish to convey—let us call it "ideas"—
and that this exists in their heads, mentally coded as it were. Access to the
linguistic code of a natural language enables them to encode the content
(the ideas) linguistically: to translate it into a sequence of linguistic expres-
sions that stands for precisely that content by linguistic convention. Other
linguistic conventions make it possible for them to use speech or writing—
physically instantiated phonemes or graphemes—to represent the sequence
of linguistic expressions in question, thus producing a physical message
capable of being transmitted to listeners or readers. The listeners or readers
will then, in their turn, have a chance to work their way from the physical
message, through the sequences of phonemes/graphemes and linguistic ex-
pressions, to the content (the ideas) by applying the linguistic codes back-
wards. 9
This older way of looking at real-life linguistic communication (what
Saussure called "parole"10) is clearly too idealized. Its most problematic
aspect is its overoptimism with respect to the comprehensiveness and de-
terminacy of the "codes" referred to. It has long been obvious that not all
features of a content allow themselves to be "coded," and that there is in
fact no one-to-one correspondence, in either direction, between physical
utterance and phoneme/grapheme sequence, or between phoneme/graph-
eme sequence and sequence of linguistic expressions, or between se-
quence of linguistic expressions and content (ideas). To put it simply, the
linguistic "code" is something much more fragmentary, ambiguous, and
open than was once imagined. If we apply the rules of language to a
physical or expressional linguistic message, no definite content will
emerge, but rather a multitude of more or less different semantic possi-
bilities. 11
9 See, e.g., Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Charles Bally, Albert
Sechehaye and Albert Riedlinger (eds.), Wade Baskin (trans.), (New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill Book Co., McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, 1966), pp. 1-12; Wallace L. Chafe,
Meaning and the Structure of Language (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1970), pp. 15-16; Jerrold J. Katz, Semantic Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1972),
p. 24.
10 About langue and parole, see Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, pp. 7-15.
11 Cf., e.g., Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), pp. 26
and 112-13, and Adrian Akmajian et al., Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and
Communication, 4th ed. (Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 348-51.
There are several reasons for this. First, to ascribe an exact content to
deictic expressions (like "him" and "me" in "Please go and find him for
me"), one has to know not only the text and the linguistic "code" but also
the context surrounding the conveyance of the utterance or text. Second,
deictic or not, linguistic expressions—lexemes, phrases—are often more or
less ambiguous when taken as pure linguistic forms ("Flying planes can be
dangerous"). Once again we need to consider the circumstances surround-
ing their production in order to be able to disambiguate them and establish
their meaning in the situation at hand (their occasional meaning; the mean-
ing of the utterance as opposed to the meaning of the sequence of linguistic
expressions in itself). Third, even if the descriptive content of a text is en-
tirely unequivocal, we will have to interpret it in the light of the speaker's
or writer's likely intentions if we are to understand the text properly. Take
an utterance like "Go to the Music Library and find a copy of Lana Wal-
ter's Petite Mass." Even if we know who the addressee is, and precisely
which library is being referred to, important aspects of the occasional
meaning remain to be accounted for, as the utterance "could have the force
of a command, an order, a mere request, or just a suggestion, depending on
the intentions and purposes of speaker and hearer and on whatever power
relation or institutional authority may obtain between them" (William G.
Lycan). 12
For these and other reasons, the "conventionalist" understanding of real-
life human communication has gradually been replaced by a kind of "prag-
matic" or "cooperative" model in linguistics and related disciplines. Ac-
cording to this approach, the speaker/writer attempts to make it obvious to
the hearer/reader what content she intends to convey to him. Nothing like a
univocal code is at her disposal, but with the help of the linguistic code,
and of what should be obvious to every rational addressee from the situa-
tion or from experience, and of eventual extra markers, she will normally
be able to make herself relatively clear. The hearer or reader, on his part,
will have to do his best to recover the intended content, basing himself not
only on the linguistic expressions themselves but also on all the clues pre-
sented to him, on the totality of linguistic and pragmatic material that the
speaker/writer appears to have meant him to be aware of. 13
12 William G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction (London and

New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 180.
13 A good and easily accessible account of the cooperative view is provided in Gillian
Brown, Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), chap. 1.
Let us now revert to the idea of "force" that surfaced in the quotation
from Lycan above. The factor referred to as "force" is in fact of fundamen-
tal importance in linguistic communication.
Speakers or writers always introduce descriptive contents. They describe
actual or imagined states of affairs, for example the state of affairs where
the addressee goes to the Music Library and finds a copy of Lana Walter's
Petite Mass. The introduction of such a state of affairs is, however, not an
end in itself. The communicative act always has a point; there is always
something that the speaker or writer attempts to achieve through perform-
ing it (for instance, to make the addressee go to the Music Library and find
a copy of Lana Walter's Petite Mass).
When uttering, "Go to the Music Library and find a copy of Lana Wal-
ter' s Petite Mass," the speaker would no doubt normally expect the hearer
to comprehend that she wished him to go to the Music Library and find a
copy of Lana Walter's Petite Mass. She would also expect him (more or
less firmly) to fulfil the wish, once it had been made obvious to him that
she had it. This observation can be generalized: A speaker or writer nor-
mally hopes, more or less consciously, that the hearer or reader will under-
stand both the descriptive content of the text and the implicit demand
which it makes, conform with the demand, and thus effect a desired change
in the situation into which the text is being introduced.
The demands and changes in question may be of various kinds. They
can, moreover, be described from different points of view and with more or
less attention to the details of the situation. The word "kinds" seems apt
here: as I pointed out earlier, we do discern types or kinds of purposes be-
hind texts, types or kinds of ways in which speakers or writers expect their
texts to be taken. In connection with the Music Library example, Lycan
spoke of "command" or "order" or "request" or "suggestion." Where de-
clarative utterances are concerned—for example, "You will find the Music
Library in Marquette Street"—one could speak of a "piece of information"
or of a "statement" or "explanation" or "contention" or "assertion." (Here,
the speaker would no doubt normally expect the hearer to comprehend that
she believes that the Music Library is in Marquette Street. She would also
expect the hearer—more or less firmly—to come to share that belief, once
it has been made obvious to him that she holds it.)
It is primarily speech act theorists who have studied such types or kinds
of communicated purpose. Sometimes the theorists have constructed typol-
ogies of so-called "illocutionary forces" and "illocutionary points." The
best known of these systems is probably the taxonomy devised by John R.
Searle in 1975. Searle groups utterances into declarative, assertive, direc-
tive, expressive, and commissive illocutionary speech acts (in reality un-
derstanding speech acts, in that connection, as one-sentence texts). 14 It is

important to observe, however, that there are also communicative purposes
behind larger texts. It may be impossible to characterize an extensive nar-
rative simply as a complex assertion or the like, but it certainly makes sense
to speak of ways in which such narratives may be meant to be taken—as
autobiographical, as a true story, as a piece of fiction, as a yarn, et cetera.
If one gives very detailed and differentiated descriptions of what I have
called "the communicated purpose" of texts, it will no doubt be possible to
ascribe a unique communicated purpose to every text. Conversely, if one
contents oneself with summary characterizations, the communicated pur-
poses of texts will be reduced to a number of more or less abstract kinds.
There are traditional conceptualizations of kinds of communicated pur-
poses which are also lexicalized—that is to say, kinds associated with
fixed verbal designations like "command," "suggestion," "statement,"
"contention"—and which help us to orientate ourselves intellectually in
this field. The command, the statement, and so forth could be said to fall
under the definitions of genre that I cited initially. Each is "characterized
by a particular [...] purpose," is "an established category [...] employing
such common conventions as will prevent [...] audiences from mistaking it
for another kind," is a "recurring type or category of text, as defined by
[...] functional criteria."
Commands, statements, and the like are recognizable prototypes of ver-
bal utterance, each carrying with it its own partly unique rights, responsi-
bilities and demands, and enveloping speaker/writer and hearer/reader in
these. Familiarity with such prototypes and their pragmatic implications
forms an important part of the mutual knowledge on which speakers/
writers and hearers/readers draw when producing or deciphering verbal
messages. The speaker may, for example, intend something as a command
and indicate this by means of suitable markers, confident that the hearer
will be able to detect these clues, identify the utterance as being meant as a
command, and appreciate the practical import of commands. The fact that
the utterance is (intended to be understood as) a command will then consti-
tute a crucial part of its (occasional) meaning.
Just like commands, statements, and the like, literary genres may assist
the communication of meaning. Arguably, it may also form part of the
meaning of a given literary text that it belongs to a certain literary genre.
The author may, for instance, intend to write a detective story—to produce
14 John R. Searle, "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts" (1975), in Searle, Expression and
Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979).
a novel possessing the characteristics of such works and catering to the in-
terests and needs traditionally associated with them. She may indicate this
through suitable markers, confident that the reader will be able to detect
the clues, identify the novel as being meant to be read as a detective story,
and read it in that spirit. The fact that the work is (intended to be read as) a
detective story will then constitute a crucial part of its meaning.
Three Ways of Viewing Literary Genres
Cultures have names not only for types of everyday utterance but also for
types of text. Such designations, which are in effect names of textual gen-
res, were already known in the most ancient literate civilizations: in Sumer
and in Ancient Egypt. 15 Yet the concept of a genre, and a designation of the
concept, did not come into being until very much later. (Just as a culture
may have words for pigs, sheep, dogs, and the like, without possessing the
term or concept of a biological kind, it is possible to use genre terms with-
out having formed the general concept of a genre.)
Our term "genre" goes back to the Latin word genus (Greek genos),
which means, among other things, "sort" or "kind." The word was some-
times employed, both in classical and medieval Latin, in connection with
references to styles or to kinds of speech or writing (in expressions like
"genera narrationum," "genera loquendi," "genus canendi"). 16 The word in
itself does not however really seem to have acquired the meaning "genre"
in Latin, as opposed to the general meaning "kind." 17 It is difficult to ascer-
15 See, e.g., Joachim Krecher, "Sumerische Literatur," in Wolfgang Röllig et al. (eds.),
Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlags-
gesellschaft Athenaion, 1978), pp. 116-17, and John L. Foster, "Literature," in Donald
B. Redford et al. (eds.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. 2 (Oxford: Ox-
ford UP, 2001), esp. p. 301.
16 These are examples from medieval Latin (Johannes von Garlandia, first half of the thir-
teenth century; Johann Balbi 1286; Sicco Pollentone, circa 1437). See Irene Behrens, Die
Lehre von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst, vornehmlich vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert: Stu-
dien zur Geschichte der poetischen Gattungen, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische
Philologie 92 (Halle an der Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1940), pp. 53, 58, and 65.
17 See the headword "genus," esp. 2 a, in Thesaurus linguae latinae: Editus auctoritate et
consilio academiarum quinque germanicarum, vol. 6:2 (Leipzig: In aedibus B. G. Teub-
neri, 1925-34), col. 1900. True, the word "genus" could be used in isolation, without a
genitive attribute, and then sometimes appears closer to meaning "genre" tout court. For
example, "[that part of poetry] quae Epica dicitur, omnium maxima est, plurimaque
genera complectitur." A. S. Minturno 1539, quoted from Behrens, Die Lehre von der
Einteilung der Dichtkunst, p. 86.
tain precisely when and where the meaning "genre" first came into being,
but it existed in France at least in the late seventeenth century. 18
All literary cultures seem to possess names of textual genres: consider
the rich material of such names from Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Persian,
and Bengali referred to in the preceding essays. The concept of a literary
genre as we know it may, however, as far as I can tell, well be specifically
Western in origin (like the concept of literature itself), even if kindred in-
digenous conceptions exist in some cultures—see Lena Rydholm's discus-
sion of the Chinese concept of wenti in her essay in this volume. In what
follows, I will restrict myself to Western material in my discussion of the
theory of genre. 19
There is a vast genre-theoretical literature in the West. 20 Understandably
enough, this thinking about genres normally takes traditional, established
genre concepts as its point of departure (that is, concepts like "poem,"
"novel," "short story," "ballad," "drama," "tragedy," and so forth). For ex-
ample, such formations are the centre of attraction in Alastair Fowler's
Kinds of Literature, possibly the most influential modern work on genre
theory (Fowler refers to them as "kinds"). 21 Jean-Marie Schaeffer, for his
18 "genre d'ecrire 'variete de composition litteraire' (1654, Racan), genre (seit Rich
1680)." Walther von Wartburg, Französisches etymologisches Wörterblich: Eine Dar-
stellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes, vol. 4 (Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn,
1952), p. 116. There are, however, already Italian sixteenth century sources in which the
word "genere" is used without a genitive attribute and appears to tend towards the mean-
ing "genre," just as in the passage from Minturno adduced in note 17 above. Thus
Torquato Tasso calls the word "canzone" a "nome del genere" and Gios. Malatesta, in
discussing the main kinds of poetry, refers to "quei generi predetti." Behrens, Die Lehre
von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst, pp. 99-100.
19 This is probably entirely justified where only the concept of genre is concerned. Because
of the Western character of that concept, no equally significant discussion of it may have
occurred elsewhere. As the mention of wenti indicates, other literary cultures may, how-
ever, have other conceptions applicable to the systematic grouping of texts. The Western
focus in my essay is, at bottom, due to my restricted knowledge of non-Western literary
cultures and languages.
20 Two brief introductory essays containing useful bibliographies are Frans de Bruyn,
"Genre Criticism," in Irena R. Makaryk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary
Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: Univ. of Toronto
Press, 1993) and Demetrio Estebanez Calderon, "Generös literarios," in Calderon, Dic-
cionario de terminos literarios (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1996). See also Garber et al.,
"Genre."
Three relatively recent anthologies of genre theoretical essays are Duff (ed. and in-
trod.), Modern Genre Theory, Gerard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov (eds.), Theorie des
genres (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1986); Eva Haettner Aurelius and Thomas Götselius
(eds.), Genreteori (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997).
21 About kinds, see Fowler Kinds of Literature, pp. 55, 74, et passim. Fowler's book is "the
major mod. study" according to Garber et al., "Genre," p. 459. It is "currently the stand-
part, explicitly maintains that "the genre names are our only stable socle"
and "traditional genre names are the only tangible reality from which we
can start when we postulate the existence of genre classes." 22
As the last quotation from Schaeffer indicates, these traditional, estab-
lished genres are often thought to actually exist in one sense or another.
Fowler observes that they are text-types which speakers/writers and
hearers/readers in the culture do in fact reckon with, at least implicitly, and
which therefore possess psychological reality within the culture; this moti-
vates his earlier-mentioned view that genres "objectively exist."
Also the role of traditional, established genres for literary communica-
tion is strongly emphasized by genre theorists. For Fowler, genre "is a
communication system, for the use of writers in writing, and readers and
critics in reading and interpreting." 23 Genre "is ubiquitous in literature, as
the basis of the conventions that make literary communication possible." 24
I have already said or implied that there seem to be traditional, estab-
lished genres in all literary cultures. There is no reason to doubt that these
are important phenomena in the literary field, or that it is motivated to
study the horizons of expectation (sometimes sharper, sometimes more dif-
fuse) to which they are related and the gradual change or dissolution of
these. At the same time, however, the strong focus on traditional, estab-
lished genres seems to me to impede thinking about genre phenomena in
important respects.
Other perspectives on genre are indeed possible. Benedetto Croce's
questioning of the significance of the category of genre is well known.
Croce did not believe in the deeper reality of genres. In his view, anyone
may legitimately use genre terms for "referring informally and roughly to
certain groups of works, to which, for one reason or another, he wishes to
draw attention," but he should be understood as "using words and phrases
and not establishing laws and definitions." 25 Croce denied that there are
"aesthetic laws that [...] govern the artistic and literary genres" and com-
ard work on genre theory" according to Beata Agrell and Ingela Nilsson, "Introduction,"
in Agrell and Nilsson (eds.), Genrer och genreproblem: teoretiska och historiska pers-
pektiv/Genres and Their Problems: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (Gothen-
burg: Daidalos, 2003), p. 11.
22 Schaeffer, Qu-est-ce qu'un genre litteraire? (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989), pp. 75 and
66-67 respectively; transl. mine.
23 Fowler, Kinds of Literature, p. 257.
24 Ibid., p. 36.
25 Benedetto Croce, The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in
General (1902), Colin Lyas (trans.), (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 42 and 4 2 -
43 respectively.
pared genre classifications to the classification of books in a library, a clas-

sification which, for all its "necessity" or "usefulness," creates "groupings
that are purely arbitrary and answering solely practical needs." 26
In modern genre theory, it is Tzvetan Todorov who is best known for
having criticized what could be called "the traditional view of literary gen-
res." In his Introduction ä la litterature fantastique (translated as The Fan-
tastic), he distinguishes between genres historiques, historical genres (that
is, for all practical purposes, what I have here called traditional, established
genres) and the kind of genre constructs which he himself advocates and
dubs theoretical genres, genres theoriques. The latter are the outcome of
theoretical deductions. To put Todorov's idea in very simple terms: when
classifying literary works we should base ourselves on distinctions that are
highly significant from a literary-theoretical point of view and define our
set of genres with their help. If a given traditional, established genre—the
comedy, to take the example hypothetically or counterfactually introduced
by Todorov—does not fit into the system, it may well be the case that its
existence is in fact only illusory. 27
Croce's and Todorov's criticism of the traditional focus may not initially
sound very convincing. Both seem to neglect the importance of the liter-
ary-historical factuality of traditional, established genres. As regards To-
dorov's ideas about a deduction of genres from fundamental literary-theo-
retical views, they lack concretion, and Todorov himself appears to have
been quick to leave them behind. 28 Still, there is in reality an important
challenge to the focus on traditional, established genres behind the criti-
cism. The traditional, established genres may be precisely that—tradition-
al, established—but why should we believe in the legitimacy of carving up
literary reality precisely in the traditional, established manner?
There is in fact room for alternatives to the traditional view. The one
represented by Croce and by Todorov's 1970 ideas could be called "the
classificatory view of literary genres." It is worth reflecting for a moment
on the subject of classification and on the methodological problems that it
forces us to resolve.
We have seen that a literary genre is generally understood as being a
type of literary work. Literary works can be sorted into types according to
26 Ibid., p. 43.
27 See Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction ä la litterature fantastique (Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1970), esp. pp. 18-19 and 25-26.
28 His views are substantially modified eight years later, in Les Genres du discours (1978).
See Cvetan Todorov, Genres in Discourse (1978), Catherine Porter (trans.), (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1990), p. 17, note 9.
many different principles. (The definitions adduced in the opening of this

essay mentioned form, style, or purpose; conventions employed; structural,
thematic, and/or formal criteria.) It seems relevant to ask not only what
types of literary work have in fact been discerned by people and given a
name, but also whether the classifications thus performed are good or bad.
What makes a given classification good or bad? The answer must argu-
ably be: its adequacy or inadequacy for the purpose for which it is intro-
duced. This opens up another way of thinking about genres. We should sort
literary works into types, into genres if one wishes, in a way that fits the
purpose of our classification. 29 Typological classification of literary works
is in fact performed in many different kinds of investigations and for vary-
ing reasons, so we should expect rather different classifications to be called
for in different contexts.
This seems to me to be plain methodological common sense. Scholars
and critics are responsible for the adequacy and usefulness of the concepts
which they employ. If you describe a certain literary period, and the genre
concepts of which you make use in your account are fuzzy or self-contra-
dictory or ill suited to the literary realities dealt with, you cannot silence
your critics by demonstrating that those genre concepts are in fact tradi-
tional, that they are indeed the very concepts used in the literary culture
you are describing. True, you cannot ignore the culture's own perspectives
on its literary art. You will have to describe how it looked from the inside,
as it were, and as part of that account you may well have to discuss the
genre-consciousness within the culture and some of the traditional, estab-
lished genres that it perceived. Yet your task, as a literary scholar or critic,
is not simply to reproduce folk theory—it is, within reason, to advance our
knowledge or understanding of literature in a variety of respects. Where
genres are concerned, this may very well mean that you will be forced to
create wholly new concepts of your own, or depart from popular views and
definitions of the traditional genre concepts. Such departures necessarily
involve the creation, perhaps under traditional genre names, of genre con-
cepts that do not, in that form, possess psychological reality for authors and
readers in the culture, concepts that are, at bottom, the products of newly-
performed classifications of your own.
The need for such conceptual creativity is especially easy to demonstrate
where transcultural literary history is concerned. Transcultural comparison
would be impossible if we were not allowed to introduce transcultural or
29 The intellectual result that we seek to obtain by means of our classification should, of
course, also be worth achieving.
supracultural text types. For instance, "poetry" is not a traditional genre

concept in China—"a general category of 'poetry' is unknown," say Wilt
Idema and Lloyd Haft in their Guide to Chinese Literature30—while
concepts such as "shi," "'ju" and "ci" stand for traditional Chinese genres
and designate what we would regard as specific types of poetry. If we want
to study similarities and differences between classical Western and classi-
cal Chinese poetry, we must therefore make use of a genre construction,
"poetry," which functions, in this context, as a non-traditional, purely clas-
sificatory concept, despite its being traditional within Western culture.
Without the help of some such "artificially" created concept, we would
clearly not be able to discuss an important aspect of the relationship be-
tween Chinese and Western literature.
In contemporary mainstream genre theory, one finds not only a strong
focus on traditional, established genres—which is, in its own way, justified
and often productive—but also pronounced scepticism of other perspec-
tives, which to me appears limiting and even distorting. The frequent ob-
servation that genre theory cannot be reduced to a question of classification
is in itself unobjectionable. 31 However, the theorists seem impercipient of
the need in literary studies to transcend the focus on traditional, established
genres when constructing historical or systematic typologies of literary
works. Nor is there, more generally, much perceptible interest in a prag-
matic perspective on genre, in reflecting on the various practical and theo-
retical roles that genre discussions may play within literary studies.
Schaeffer, for example, explicitly brackets all questions about the practical
importance of genre considerations, about "the variety of functions that
identifications of genre assume." 32
"Many years have passed since Mikhail Bakhtin and later Tzvetan To-
dorov changed the direction of genre study from classification to its func-
tions in human speech and behavior," says Ralph Cohen in the introduction
to a recent collection of essays on genre. 33 It may be an overstatement that
genre studies today are focused on the function of genre in human speech
and behaviour, but it is certainly true that some important investigations of
30 Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: The Univ. of
Michigan, 1997), p. 97.
31 See, e.g., Fowler, Kinds of Literature, p. 37, and Schaeffer, Qu'est-ce qu'un genre lit-
teraire?, p. 172. E. D. Hirsch Jr. is even more outspoken in his Validity in Interpretation
(New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1967), where he talks with scorn of "arbitrary classi-
fications set up by the interpreter," p. 109.
32 Schaeffer, Qu'est-ce qu'un genre litteraire?, p. 129; transl. mine.
33 Ralph Cohen, "Introduction," New Literary History 34 (2003), p. iv.
genre take genres as communicative realities as their central point. Cur-

rently the best known example of this is perhaps Bachtin's essay "Proble-
ma recevych zanrov" ("The Problem of Speech Genres," written in the ear-
ly 1950s but not published until 1979).34 In this essay Bachtin demon-
strates that genres analogous to literary genres exist also in ordinary speech
and play an important role in everyday linguistic transactions.
A more radical example—now normally overlooked—of an emphasis
on the communicative importance of genre is E. D. Hirsch's treatment of
genre in his Validity in Interpretation, in which he introduces the concept
of "intrinsic genre." 35 According to Hirsch, the speaker/writer has a special
kind of meaning in mind, and the hearer/reader must try to make a correct
guess about what kind of meaning the words are intended to convey. An
intrinsic genre "is that sense of the whole by means of which an interpreter
can correctly understand any part in its determinacy ,"36
When speaking of intrinsic genres, Hirsch seems to me to be thinking
of something like the forces of utterances, taken in a rather concrete fash-
ion (though the concept of an illocutionary force, and the whole outlook
associated with it, was practically unknown when he was writing his
book 37 ). The illocutionary forces that Searlean speech act theory allows
for are placed at a rather high level of abstraction. For example, com-
mands, orders, requests, and suggestions are all seen as instantiations of
the directive illocutionary force. Hirsch's intrinsic genres could be un-
derstood as illocutionary forces taken in a much more concrete vein: his
intrinsic genres are far more, not far less, specific than such things as or-
ders and commands. 38
34 In Bachtin, Estetika slovesnogo tvorcestva, S. G. BoZarov et al. (eds.), (Moscow:

Iskusstvo, 1979; 2nd ed. 1986). English transl. in Μ. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and
Other Late Essays, Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (eds.), Vern W. McGee
(trans.), (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1986).
35 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, chap. 3, esp. pp. 78-89. What I offer below is meant as
an interpretation of Hirsch's theory of intrinsic genres, which is not, in itself, entirely
clear.
36 Ibid., p. 88.
37 The first real specimen of speech act theory was the series of lectures by J. L. Austin
published in 1962 as How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures De-
livered at Harvard University in 1955 (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1962; 2nd ed.
1975), but only John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969) made the approach widely known in the humanities.
David Duff has pointed to the affinity between Hirsch, Bachtin, and speech act theory.
See his "Introduction" to Modern Genre Theory, p. 15 (and also his comments on p. 83
in the same book).
38 "Under 'command,' for example, there are numerous subtypes, such as the military or-
der, the parent's demand, the boss's request, and under each of these a great number of
As Hirsch sees it, every text has one, and only one, intrinsic genre (and
different texts may have the same intrinsic genre). The intrinsic genre is an
essential component of the meaning of the text (as is the force according to
speech act theory). Implicitly, we are led to understand that intrinsic genres
are not normally lexicalized: no conventional designations for intrinsic
genres apparently exist in natural languages. The intrinsic genre of a text or
an utterance, as Hirsch describes it, can be said to be the exact way in
which the linguistic composition in question is meant to be taken. 39 It is
true that several texts or utterances may share the same intrinsic genre ac-
cording to Hirsch's analysis. But his intrinsic genres are nevertheless high-
ly individualized and clearly separate from traditional genres.
An approach like Hirsch's makes it obvious that a communicative focus
represents yet another way of transforming the everyday concept of a liter-
ary genre into a tool for academic criticism or scholarship, an approach
which differs from the concentration on traditional, established genres.
One could speak, here, of "the communicatory view of literary genres."
As I see it, the student of literature has every reason to take an interest
not only in understanding the individual force of literary texts, but also in
investigating institutionalized types of text and their role in the literary
process, and in creating sensible classifications of texts, classifications
governed by the research interests behind the particular study. These three
ways of conceiving genre do not exclude but complement one another. 40
Do Genres Exist?
One can often sense, behind genre-theoretical statements, the conviction

that genres somehow actually exist. I have repeatedly quoted Fowler's as-
varieties which reach to the intrinsic genre of the utterance." Hirsch, Validity in Inter-
pretation, p. 100.
Unlike speech act theory, which in practice concentrated on one-sentence utterances,
Hirsch (and Bachtin) are also interested in the force of extended utterances in speech or
writing.
39 Fowler criticizes—with reason, it seems to me—the multiplication of genres to which
Hirsch's approach inevitably leads as being impractical. See Fowler, Kinds of Literature,
p. 113.
40 Ways of understanding genre may themselves be classified in many fashions. The tri-
chotomy introduced here is, above all, motivated by the need, in my present context, to
demonstrate that a focus on traditional, established genres, while entirely justified in it-
self, cannot meet all the multifarious interests that the student of literature has in connec-
tion with genre.
sertion that traditional, established genres "objectively exist." The Todorov

of The Fantastic seemingly contradicted that claim when he maintained
that some traditional, established genres may in fact prove illusory, but in
saying this he, too, clearly presupposed that genres may have actual ex-
istence (or be devoid of it). I have also mentioned Schaeffer's readiness
to "postulate the existence of genre classes," classes of which we may ac-
quire knowledge if we follow the lead of traditional, established genre
names.
Schaeffer once maintained, in a genre-theoretical essay, that ontological
questions about the existence of genres are not relevant for literary theo-
ry.41 I am of a different opinion. If we want to be clear about what kinds of
things can be said about genres, and about what kinds of things there are to
disagree about, we will inevitably have to think through what genres are
from an ontological point of view. That is why I raise the question: "Do
genres exist?" The answer that I propose to give is: "Yes and no, depend-
ing on what kind of existence one has in mind."
John Searle has distinguished, in several contributions, between two
kinds of reality: natural reality and social reality. The gist of his distinction
is that some things just exist, independently of our minds: neutrons, stones,
and stars, for instance. One could say that they have a material or natural
existence. Other things that exist—one could mention literary works, lec-
tures, and learned societies as examples—have a kind of virtual existence:
they exist thanks to our shared ideas and practices. 42 What makes a certain
book a copy of a novel is not, for example, its material properties. It is the
complex of mutual expectations surrounding the physical object: the idea
that the patterns of printer's ink on its pages should be interpreted as repre-
senting letters, words, and sentences, that the propositions conveyed by
those sentences should be understood as being presented in a fictional ra-
ther than factual spirit, and so on. Novels form part of social reality, not of
natural reality.
It should be obvious that genres, too, are social phenomena. In one
sense, genres do not exist: they have no material existence—at least I find
it hard to understand how a convincing argument for their material exist-
ence (or, for that matter, for their abstract existence as some kind of Platon-
41 Jean-Marie Schaeffer, "Du texte au genre: Notes sur la problematique generique"

(1983), in Gerard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov (eds.), Theorie des genres, esp. pp. 179-
81.
42 John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), esp.
chaps. 1-2. (Cf. Searle's subject index under facts, brute; facts, institutional; facts, so-
cial.)
ic entities) could be mounted. If human kind were to be wiped out while

the rest of the world remained intact, neutrons and stones and stars would
continue to be there—at least according to realist ontologies of various de-
scriptions—but not literary genres. In another sense, however, literary gen-
res do exist, the novel for example. Within modern Western culture, people
have ideas—relatively unclear ideas perhaps, but that does not matter—
about what something has to be to be accepted as a novel. No doubt they
can, normally, name a number of novels, sort texts into novels and
non-novels relatively competently, and so on. So a literary genre like the
novel possesses a social existence or, with perhaps a clearer formulation,
ideas about such literary genres as the novel exist in people's minds.
There is no reason to regard this mental or social mode of existence as
shadowy or unimportant: ideas motivate actions, and are thus liable to
change realities, both material and social, in a most palpable way. The
mental or social mode of existence should not, however, be conflated with
the material or natural one.
Thus traditional, established genres exist in the sense that there are con-
ceptions of such genres, conceptions that are shared at least to some extent
and that influence writing and reading to some degree. They do not, how-
ever, exist independently of human minds, so there is no mind-independent
truth to be had about genres like the novel, the poem, and the comedy. This
means that it is no use asking whether our current ideas about the novel are
right or wrong, for there is nothing to be right or wrong about. The novel
and suchlike are our own constructions. Certainly, we may ask ourselves
whether they are good or bad constructs, whether they improve or hinder
our literary transactions in such and such respects, whether they ought in
fact to be reconstructed. We may also ask all sorts of questions about the
texts that are novels according to the definitions that we have set up, and
about the relationships, historical and otherwise, between those texts. But
that is all.
Our ideas about natural, material phenomena like stars or quasars con-
cern astronomical realities that are, in one sense at least, independent of
our minds, realities against which our ideas can be tested. We should be-
ware of supposing that there exists, correspondingly, some sort of mind-in-
dependent object, the novel, for our theories about the novel to model more
or less successfully. Our ideas about the novel may be wrong in the sense
that we may completely or partially misconceive the properties of the texts
normally classified as novels, or in the sense that we may completely or
partially misconceive the ideas normally associated with the word "novel."
They may, however, not be wrong in the sense that we may completely or
partially misconceive an object, the novel, which has its own objective
characteristics independently of how it is perceived by humans.
The fact that traditional, established genres exist as intellectual con-
structs does not necessarily imply that they are good constructs. Nor does it
follow from the objective existence of traditional, established genre con-
cepts that they are the only kind useful in academic contexts. Like all hu-
man constructions, both material and mental, they may in principle be well
or poorly conceived, eminently productive or relatively useless. A given
traditional genre concept may also be useful in one context but not in an-
other. For instance, the concept of fu is probably inevitable in any ambi-
tious account of classical Chinese poetics but perhaps not very natural to
use as one of the fundamental categories in a transcultural discussion of the
varieties of poetry. Categories playing such a role will presumably most
often have to be constructed expressly for the purpose.
In Genres in Discourse, Todorov suggests that "we agree to call genres
only the classes of texts that have been historically perceived as such." 4 3 1
would not for a moment deny that traditional, established genres are the
pivotal phenomenon in the area of genres: it is obvious that the very idea of
genres has its roots in reflection on classes of texts that have been histori-
cally perceived as such. The word "genre" might of course be restricted to
a designation of such types of text—or again we could stick to the some-
what wider use which is in fact current. That is a terminological choice on
which I will not deliberate here. But the choice is, precisely, terminologi-
cal. No way of employing the word "genre" can convert traditional, estab-
lished genres into entities existing independently of mind or into entities
capable of fulfilling all the legitimate roles that groupings of types of text
currently perform in literary studies.
The Transcultural Description of Genres
The three ways of viewing genre earlier referred to are all relevant to trans-
cultural literary history. In order to achieve a literary understanding of the
texts of a given culture it will be necessary to comprehend their communi-
cated purposes (their "intrinsic genres"). Consideration of how the texts
are related to the genres that are traditional and established within the cul-
ture is also inevitable in that connection. The need for an "intrinsic" ap-
43 Todorov, Genres in Discourse, p. 17.

proach and for attention to traditional, established genres is therefore easy

to see. In addition, it will often be necessary to introduce some kind of
newly-constructed classification of texts to be able to compare genres and
genre systems belonging to different literary cultures. Hence the need to
adopt a classificatory approach as well.
I have commented on the role of genre in verbal communication in
earlier sections and will not go deeper into a discussion of the associated
hermeneutical complexities. I will concentrate, instead, on the transcultural
classification of types of text.
Let us look at a concrete example. In his African Oral Literature, Isidore
Okpewho surveys the literature of several African oral literary cultures.
The second part of his book is entitled "Types and Themes." There, Ok-
pewho gives an overview of important types of text and of significant
themes. This forces him to introduce a textual typology, and thus to take up
a position on how such typologies are to be constructed.
Many European and American scholars—Malinowski, Bascom, and Ben-
Amos being perhaps the most notable—have suggested that whatever sys-
tems of classification we apply to the folklore (including oral literature) of a
people must be based on the systems traditionally recognized by the people
themselves. On the face of it, this looks like a very good idea. The citizens
of a community are perhaps better qualified than outsiders to determine into
what aspect of their lives a particular song or story fits. There will be no
point, for instance, in grouping a song under a category such as "praise
poetry" when the people who sing it would prefer to group it under "funeral
poetry," or in considering a story an "explanatory" tale when the people
themselves treat it as a "historical" account. But the trouble with relying
solely on the judgment of the indigenes is that we will be unable to see each
society in relation to another. 44
In order to relate the African literary cultures to one another, Okpewho

consequently introduces a classification of types of text which is by no
means native to the cultures themselves. He creates a basis for comparison
by constructing an independent set of genre designations and bringing var-
ious traditional, established genres of different cultures together under
these concepts. The basic categories set up by Okpewho are songs and
chants, oral narratives, witticisms (proverbs, riddles, puns and tongue-
twisters), and musical and dramatic forms (including ritual drama and pop-
ular drama).
44 Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity

(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1992), p. 127.
Though Okpewho's strategy is common and unremarkable, it is of

course not above discussion. The standpoint ascribed to Malinowski, Bas-
com, and Ben-Amos amounts to a vindication of traditional, established
genres as the only kind of genre concepts that should be applied. Yet to re-
main faithful to traditional, established genre classifications would be to
treat the literary cultures as so many worlds of their own, sealed off from
consideration in non-indigenous terms. Such an attitude may seem respect-
ful, but it also appears to segregate and marginalize the literary cultures in
question and to prevent them from being treated as partners in a dialogue.
It is naturally impossible to enter into a genuine intellectual exchange with
a foreign culture without also attempting to translate its views and concepts
(properly understood) into one's own categories of thought. For that rea-
son, I sympathize with Okpewho's general approach. (As Okpewho rightly
notes, it is, however, easy to distort the picture of another literary culture
through insensitive descriptions from an outside perspective. I will present
some reflections on the understanding of other literary cultures in the next
and final section.)
The contributions to this volume can often be used as illustrations of
how problematic it would be to rely on the viewpoint of the culture under
study in one's typology. In Lena Rydholm's essay, for example, we learn
how during the Six dynasties period in China (220-581 CE) the genre sys-
tems in use "were functionalistic and served utilitarian purposes in govern-
ment administration. Major importance was placed on distinguishing
'prose' genres, that is, all kinds of documents used in politics and adminis-
tration, based on function, and prescriptive genre descriptions instructed
people how to write appropriately in these forms." When discussing Chi-
nese literature during the Six dynasties, we must naturally take account of
the self-understanding of that literary culture, as far as we are able to repro-
duce it. But why should we let that self-understanding govern our own per-
spective on the culture? Could we not legitimately group texts from the pe-
riod in ways unforeseen by the culture itself, and do this for intellectual
purposes equally alien to it? Traditional genres are associated with the in-
sider' s perspective and classificatory genres with that of the outsider, and
to me they both appear indispensable.
Back to Okpewho. His principal genre concepts—"song," "chant," "oral
narrative," "witticism," "ritual drama," "popular drama," and the like—are
not only applied to the cultures from the outside, they are also introduced
basically ad hoc. The latter circumstance, too, is controversial. Many seem
to believe that there are requirements, specifiable at least in principle, that
genre concepts employed in literary history have to meet.
Irina Grigor'evna Neupokoeva, for example, apparently the main theo-

rist behind the magisterial Soviet Russian world history of literature Istori-
ja vsemirnoj literatury ν devjati tomach (History of World Literature in
Nine Volumes), registered with concern that contemporary literary scholar-
ship still lacks definite criteria for determining when something is a genre
(or a period, or a movement, and so forth); she found "the question of the
objective criteria for regarding the processes or phenomena that one is
comparing as being the same, or as being different, from a typological
point of view" insufficiently clarified. 45 Neupokoeva hoped for future
theoretical advances, to be accomplished by means of the concept of struc-
ture. 46
David Perkins also gave expression to objectivist intuitions about genre
in his well-known critique of literary-history writing, Is Literary History
Possible? In that work he sees the question of the validity of the literary
historian's grouping of phenomena into "genres, periods, schools, tradi-
tions, communicative systems, discourses, and epistemes" as being pivotal
for determining what he calls the "plausibility" of literary history. 47 And he
considers that
the strongest argument that a classification has validity must be drawn from
its historical impact. In other words, when a classification has been active in
forming works, it is grounded in realities of past life. [...] A sorting by
genre is valid if the concept of genre was entertained by the writer and his
contemporary readers. For in this case the expectations associated with the
concept were effective in forming both the work and the responses to it.48
Thus, according to Perkins, the literary historian's genre concepts should

not be constructed ad hoc. He even suggests criteria for the validity of gen-
re classifications and similar groupings:
When a classification fulfills these criteria of referring to a group that felt
itself to be a group, was effective in history as a group, and created what
seems to us a genuine synthesis of works, it is as valid as a literary classifi-
cation can be. With these criteria we can measure the relative degree of jus-
tification for the various classifications that are used. It is, therefore, poss-
ible to classify wrongly or badly, and all classifications are not equally valid
or arbitrary. 49
45 I. G. Neupokoeva, Istorija vsemirnoj literatury: problemy sistemnogo i sravnitel'nogo

analiza (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Nauka, 1976), chap. 1, esp. pp. 120-21, 146, 154-55.
Quotation from p. 121; transl. mine.
46 Ibid.. esp. pp. 122-30.
47 David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP,
1992), pp. 4 (quotation) and 20.
48 Ibid., p. 115.
49 Ibid., p. 118.
A group of authors effective as a group may, of course, be well worth

drawing attention to in a literary history. But why should our "sorting by
genre" and other classifications be governed by the consideration of pre-
cisely such phenomena? Perkins does not tell us this. His real reason for
the standpoint lies, I believe, in his fear of "arbitrary" classification, exem-
plified at the end of the last block quote. For Perkins, genre groupings of
the kind that I call "classificatory" appear unhistorical. In particular, Per-
kins criticizes Croce for genre-theoretical nominalism:
I cannot agree with Croce that literary classifications are in all cases merely
practical conveniences or conventions or that we can group texts and
authors in any way we like with equal legitimacy or lack of it. It is clear that
classifications must address our present interests and must therefore change
as the present does. Yet a classification that is merely perspectival, that
reflects merely the points of view of readers in the present, would be self-
contradictory in a literary history, since it attempts to describe the past. 50
I certainly do not hold "that we can group texts and authors in any way we
like with equal legitimacy or lack of it" (nor did Croce, as far as I know).
First, I regard the classificatory use of genre concepts as one of several
legitimate options. Second, I also believe that the intellectual value of a
given classificatory genre construction can be rationally discussed. Such a
classification should help produce literary-historical insight, and it is con-
sequently not necessary (or likely) that all such classifications will be
equally legitimate.
As I see it, a genre classification can never justifiably be based "merely"
on the reader's (or historian's) point of view. It must also be based on the
characteristics of the literary works that are being grouped together or kept
apart. However, literary works possess an immense multitude of character-
istics, and it is possible to highlight certain of these in a certain context (for
certain purposes) while passing over others, and to turn one's attention to
other characteristics in other contexts (for other purposes). In this way and
others, classifications will indeed always reflect the points of view of read-
ers in the present (but they should not merely reflect that).
I have defended the idea that genre classifications that are independent
of traditional, established genre categories have an obvious role to play in
transcultural literary history, and also the idea that such categories may be
constructed ad hoc, that there are no rational grounds for specifying such
and such substantive (as distinct from methodological) requirements that
genre constructs have to fulfil. In a transcultural literary history we nor-
50 Ibid., p. 117.
mally had best, I think, to proceed as Okpewho does. We should make sure
that we understand the literary cultures under scrutiny and their respective
genre consciousnesses as well as possible, and then construct a genre grid
suitable for highlighting the traits on which we find it justified to focus
(given the overall aims of our account). The grid may be made relatively
distinct and definite (as in Okpewho) or relatively elastic and malleable,
but I do believe that well-integrated and well-focused literary-historical ac-
counts normally presuppose some such intellectual scaffolding.
Is it possible to say anything more about the kinds of trait on which it is
justified to focus in transcultural literary history, about what a suitable gen-
re grid could or should look like? My belief that it must be possible has
dwindled during my work on this essay. As I see it now, we should simply
focus on important points of view, on traits that we find significant in con-
nection with literature and literary history. That is a flexible and accommo-
dating recommendation, not entirely empty but perhaps not very helpful
either. Yet I believe that nothing more can justifiably be said about the
matter. The concrete conceptual structuring of the work of transcultural lit-
erary history will vary from subject to subject and from historian to histor-
ian, and what could be wrong with that?
On this particular point, I would like to refer with much appreciation to
the position of Gerard Genette in his Introduction ä l'architexte. Genette
underlines that language and communication by their very nature open up a
field of possibilities for the construction and functioning of texts; he men-
tions especially modal, thematic, and formal choices that an author can
make. This field of possibilities constitutes, says Genette, a kind of virtual
landscape in which texts may move. Genette, however, who discusses
many attempts to construct systematic genre classifications in his book, re-
frains from introducing a taxonomy of his own and contents himself with
emphasizing the importance of investigating texts with a view to their
placement in the general space of possibilities to which he has drawn atten-
tion. 51 This seems unexceptionable to me. It must surely be important to
study the various possibilities of literary communication, the options open
to an author and the choices actually made. The upshot will be characteri-
zations of various types of texts—a study of genres in a sense, but without
preconceived ideas about the pre-existence of these genres or of the con-
cept of genre itself. That attitude to the genre problem appears exemplary
to me, also where transcultural literary history is concerned.
51 Gerard Genette, Introduction ä l'architexte (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979), pp. 82-83
and 87.
Applying Western Genre Terms to Other Literary Cultures
Okpewho indicated, in the passage cited, that there is also a risk involved
in departing from a literary culture's own traditional genre classifications.
Typologies created from other points of view may distort the view of the
indigenous texts.
It is true that comparability comes at a cost. When proceeding along
Okpewho's lines, we are inevitably trading detail for overview—as we al-
ways are in our generalizations—and it has to be decided from case to case
whether the price is too high. It should be remembered, however, that we
do not have to make any final and definitive choice between the two per-
spectives, one from within the culture and one from the outside. In prac-
tice, we can alternate between them, as in the viewing of a duck-rabbit fig-
ure, adopting the one or the other according to context and purpose. The
two strategies may consequently be combined in various ways.
One may nevertheless feel that there is a deeper problem here. Paul Jay
has warned of "the danger that globalizing literary studies will colonize
world literatures for Western academic consumption by channelling them
through its own normalizing vocabulary." 52 Okpewho's classificatory gen-
re terms are certainly of Western origin, and this is the rule in international
transcultural literary history, dominated by expositions in English. Ok-
pewho's book is rich in information about African genre systems, as Idema
and Haft's is about the Chinese, but the basic generic points of reference
are unmistakably Western in both cases (concepts like "poetry," "prose,"
"drama," "novel," and the like, being the main anchorage points of genre
determinations in Idema and Haft). Likewise, Earl Miner uses the concepts
of drama, lyric, and narrative as his fundamental grid in his wide-ranging
comparative discussion of the conceptions of literature around the world,
Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature.
The picture appears to be the same in other European languages; our
largest modern world histories of literature, for example, written in Ger-
man and Russian, exemplify the same practice. 53 Must not this carry with it
considerable distortion of the non-Western literatures presented and dis-
cussed?
52 Paul Jay, "Beyond Discipline? Globalization and the Future of English," PMLA 116
(2001), p. 41.
53 I am referring to Klaus von See (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, 24
vols. (Wiesbaden: AULA-Verlag, 1972-2002); G. P. Berdnikov and (from vol. 6) J. B.
Vipper (eds. in chief), Istorija vsemirnoj literatury ν devjati tomach (History of World
Literature in Nine Volumes), 8 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Nauka, 1983-94).
My intuition is that the answer is yes, and that this is not really accept-
able for scholarly reasons alone. How, then, could the situation be reme-
died?
Every description of a literary culture must work with some system of
representation, and no such system is the "proper" one. To quote John
Searle: "Systems of representation, such as vocabularies and conceptual
schemes generally, are human creations, and to that extent arbitrary. It is
possible to have any number of different systems of representations for
representing the same reality." 54 Every description of something implies
the use of some specific system of representation ultimately connected
with purposes, values, and ways of viewing the world.
Thus we cannot hope for a neutral, value-free system of transcultural lit-
erary-historical representation. Yet the heavy reliance on specifically
Western terminology may well be a genuine obstacle to the understanding
of other literary cultures on the part of those thinking and writing in Euro-
pean languages.
Should we, in fact, attempt to construct special intercultural concepts for
use in such literary studies that radically transcend cultural and temporal
barriers? The whole idea may sound Utopian. Yet if transcultural literary
studies were to flourish, and were to be carried out with great sensitivity to
the individuality of literary and cultural phenomena, the need for a partly
new conceptual and descriptive apparatus would probably make itself felt.
Thus I find it entirely conceivable that a less Westernized literary-critical
vocabulary may eventually emerge—as a result of, and as a vehicle for, lit-
erary research with consciously transcultural ambitions.
We are not there yet, however. For the time being, what we have at our
disposal is only our respective vernaculars and the often problematic vo-
cabulary of literary scholarship and criticism. Whatever we want to de-
scribe, construct, or reform in the field of literary studies, it is those we will
have to use. Even if we wanted to create a new terminology, we would
have to employ these words and concepts in explaining it and agreeing on
it.
Someone may want to ask the even more fundamental question whether we
are at all able to understand other literary cultures than our own. In reality,
most students of literature seem to believe firmly in that possibility. Their
54 Searle, Construction of Social Reality, p. 151.

main argument is based on experience, and it does indeed appear evident

that some measure of intercultural understanding is very often actually
achieved. There is, for example, to quote Douwe Fokkema and Elrud
Ibsch, "empirical evidence that [...] cross-cultural communication is some-
times possible, as in negotiations between representatives of states that are
culturally wide apart, and in the sometimes successful translations of liter-
ary texts originally produced under strikingly different cultural condi-
tions." 55 Radical scepticism about the possibility of intercultural under-
standing is sometimes even described as having morally dubious implica-
tions, as when Ülker Gökberk says, following Tzvetan Todorov, that "to
deny the possibility of communication among cultures means to postulate a
discontinuity within the human species; the danger of such a conception is
that it resembles some kind of apartheid." 5fi
I know, of course, that the understanding of other literary cultures may
often be shallow, and that misunderstanding will be frequent even where
there is no lack of good will. "In practice," says Mineke Schipper, "—part-
ly because we know too little about the many existing literatures in our
world, and partly because we unconsciously let ourselves be influenced too
much by our own value systems—we make judgements that are indeed
demonstrably ethnocentric and not as well-grounded, systematic or objec-
tive as our discipline demands of us." 57
As Schipper implies, such judgements are instances of poor scholarship
or criticism. They may be deplorable, but they can of course be corrected.
More theoretically significant is the fact that we cannot, naturally, free our-
selves of what Schipper calls "our own value systems," which leads to the
kind of unavoidable relativity in our descriptions and judgements to which
I have already referred. The impossibility of absolutely neutral and value-
free comprehension of the world does not however furnish an argument
specifically against our ability to understand and describe other cultures; it
is a general condition of human knowledge.
The issue of power is equally sensitive. We have seen that we need some
system of representation to be able to describe other literary cultures, and
55 Douwe Fokkema and Elrud Ibsch, Knowledge and Commitment: A Problem-Oriented

Approach to Literary Studies, Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Litera-
ture 33 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000), p. 178.
56 Ülker Gökberk, "Understanding Alterity: Ausländerliteratur between Relativism and
Universalism," in David Perkins (ed.), Theoretical Issues in Literary History (Cam-
bridge MA and London: Harvard UP, 1991), p. 163.
57 Mineke Schipper, Beyond the Boundaries: African Literature and Literary Theory (Lon-
don: Allison and Busby; W. H. Allen and Co., Pic., 1989), p. 26.
that the system cannot simply be borrowed from the cultures under de-
scription. This gives rise to questions about the use and abuse of power.
When engaging in attempts at cross-cultural understanding, we are, ulti-
mately, as Zhang Longxi expresses it, dealing with "real people in histo-
ry," and we are under moral obligations towards them. 58 If we are powerful
enough, our descriptions may play an important role in determining how
the literary cultures in question will be perceived by third parties, perhaps
even by their own members.
Although these are important questions, they will not be pursued here. I
can, however, see no reason to suppose that the power of description can-
not, in principle, be wielded in a responsible manner. 5 9
58 Zhang Longxi, Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative

Study of China (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998), p. 6.
59 Some of my material and argument in this essay has been presented in earlier studies or
talks. I would like to mention especially "Traditional Genres, Communicational Genres,
Classificatory Genres," in Agrell and Nilsson (eds.), Genres and Their Problems, and
"Describing Other Literary Cultures," Neohelicon 32 (2005), pp. 327-34.
KERSTIN E K S E L Lis Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of

Copenhagen, Denmark. She has worked on language change in Semitic but
also extensively on Arabic literature. She has published the monograph
Descriptions of Water in Jahiliyya Poetry (1997) and several articles on
pre-Islamic poetry and inscriptions, e.g., "On Simile in Pre-Islamic Poetry"
(2006) and the monograph Meaning in Ancient North Arabian Carvings
(2002). She is a translator of modern Arabic literature.
GUNILLA LINDBERG-WADA is Professor of Japanese Studies at Stockholm

University, Sweden. She is the author of Poetic Allusion: Some Aspects of
the Role Played by Kokin Wakashuu as a Source of Poetic Allusion in
Genji Monogatari (1983) and co-editor of An Arctic Passage to the Far
East: The Visit of the Swedish Vega Expedition to Meiji Japan in 1879
(with Urban Wräkberg, 2002). She has translated classic and modern
poetry into Swedish, as well as novels and drama by Endo Shüsaku and
Mishima Yukio.
is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at Stockholm

CHRISTINA N Y G R E N
University. She has published extensively on performing arts in Japan and
China. Ongoing research includes a project on Perspectives on Popular
Theatre and Dance in Bengal (India and Bangladesh). Her most recent
monograph is Ghosts, Generals and Gorgeous Goddesses: Travelling
Theatre Troupes, Religious Festivals and Popular Entertainment in Con-
temporary Japan and China (2000).
A N D E R S PETTERSSONis Professor of Swedish and Comparative Literature

at Umeä University, Sweden, and Secretary-General of the International
Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM). Among his
books and co-edited collections are the monograph Verbal Art: A Philoso-
phy of Literature and Literary Experience (2000) and the collection of
articles From Text to Literature: New Analytic and Pragmatic Approaches
(with Stein Haugom Olsen, 2005).
LENNART RYDEN ( 1 9 3 1 - 2 0 0 2 ) was 1 9 8 0 - 1 9 9 6 Professor of Byzantine

Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. His main field of research was
Byzantine hagiography and he is the author of Das Leben des heiligen Nar-
ren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis (1963), Bemerkungen zum Leben
des heiligen Narren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis ( 1 9 7 0 ) , The Life of
St Andrew the Fool ( 1 9 9 5 ) , and The Life of St Philaretos the Merciful Writ-
ten by his Grandson Niketas ( 2 0 0 2 ) . His articles span a wide range of sub-
jects touching Byzantine history and literature, as well as various aspects
of the Greek medieval language.
LENA RYDHOLM is Senior Research Fellow at Stockholm University, Swe-

den. Her research interests are literature and literary theory in ancient and
contemporary China, and contemporary Chinese media. She is the author
of In Search of the Generic Identity of Ci Poetry (1998) and has published
articles on genre theory, genre and politics in China and the development
of the modern Chinese novel, as well as "China Central Television's
Spring Festival Gala: Entertainment and Political Propaganda" (2005).
NORIKO THUNMAN is Professor in Japanese Studies at Gothenburg Univer-

sity, Sweden. Her research field is modern Japanese literature. She has
studied modern Japanese poetry and novels and is currently engaged in a
research project on haikai as literary genre in Japanese literary history. She
is the author of the monograph Forbidden Colors: Essays on Body and
Mind in the Novels of Mishima Yukio (1999).
Bo UTAS is Professor Emeritus of Iranian studies at Uppsala University,

Sweden. He has published on a wide array of subjects within Iranian lin-
guistics, literature and religion, most recently the monograph The Virgin
and her Lover: Fragments of an Ancient Greek Novel and a Persian Epic
Poem (with Tomas Hägg, 2003). He has edited a number of collection vol-
umes, such as Arabic Prosody and its Application in Muslim Poetry (with
Lars Johanson, 1994).
Index
Abü Nuväs 213 Blasios, author of the Life of Theodore

Abu Sa'Id ibn Abi'l-Khair 232 of Edessa 264, 266
Abü Tammäm 220 Bloch, Alfred 176, 179
Achilles Tatius 250 Boyce, Mary 209
Agrell, Beata 288 Brandon, James R. 151
al-Abras, 'Abld ibn 172, 189 Brazell, Karen 112, 113
Ansäri of Herat 232, 237, 238 Brockelmann, Carl 185, 186
'Antara 178 Brogan, T. F. V. 280
Aono, Suekichi 34 Brown, Gillian 283
Arberry, A. J. 171, 178, 179 Browne, E. G. 199, 201, 204, 205
Aristotle 6, 113, 162, 184 de Bruijn, J. Τ. P. 208, 220, 221, 223,
Athanasios of Alexandria 244 229
Athenaios 2 0 8 , 2 1 6 , 2 1 7
' A p r , Fand ud-dln 222, 223, 227 Cao, Pi 60, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 84
Avicenna 239 Cejpek, Jiri 241
'Ayyüql 218, 221 Chafe, Wallace L. 282
Chang, Kang-i Sun 99, 101
Bäbä Tähir 'Uryän 233 Chatterjee, Sudipto 113
Bachtin, Michail M. 291, 292, 293 Chattopadhyay, Rita 149
Bahär, Muhammad Taql 228 Chen, Shan 103
Balbi, Johann 286 Chen, Shidao 102
Baidick, Chris 279 Chen, Shi-hsiang 68
Balzac, Honore de 18, 25 Chikamatsu, Shükö 22
Ban, Gu 17, 58, 66, 97 Chow, Tse-Tsung 60
Bärbad 209, 225 Chu, Binjie 62, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77,
Bartelink, Gerard J. M. 244 80, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95,
Bascom William 297, 298 104, 105
Bashö 26, 27, 34 Cohen, Ralph 291
Bashshär b. Burd 213 Croce, Benedetto 288, 289, 300
Beck, Hans-Georg 242 Crump, J. I. 136
Behrens, Irene 286, 287 Cuddon, J. A. 15
Ben-Arnos, Daniel 297, 298 Cyril of Scythopolis 244
Berdnikov, G. P. 302
Bertel's, Ε. E. 205 al-Dabbi, Al-Mufaddal ibn Ya'1-ä 174,
Bharata Muni 116, 149 176
Bharucha, Rustom 112 Dante, Alighieri 224, 246
Blachere, Regis 165,167, 177,180,187, Daqlql 218
188, 189, 190, 191 Daulatshäh Samarqandl 211
310 Index
Dazai, Osamu 31,51 Guo, Maoqian 90

Deshpande, G. T. 148
Doerfer, Gerhard 232 Gurgänl, Fakhr ud-dln As'ad 219, 221
Du, Fu 102, 103
Dostoevsky, Fjodor 18 Hafiz 228
Duff, David 279, 292 Haft, Lloyd 63, 65, 66, 98, 291, 302
Hägg, Tomas 219
Eksell, Kerstin 3, 5, 6, 7, 156, 169, 189, Hagiwara, Yöko 51
200, 214 Häjjl Khalifa 218
Elwell-Sutton, L. P. 230 Halkin, Fran£ois 275
Enchi, Fumiko 15 Hamadäm, Bad!' uz-zamän 204
Etö, Jun 33 Han, Yu 102, 103, 105
Hawthorn, Jeremy 280
Fan, Wenlan 79 Hayase, Kei'ichi 51
Feng, Ban 103 Hayashiya, Tatsusaburö 119
Festugiere, Andre Jean 257, 272 Hegel, Friedrich 81
FirdausI 201, 218, 220, 225, 240 Heinrichs, Wolfhardt 162, 165, 167,
FitzGerald, Edward 232, 233 169, 188
Flaubert, Gustave 18, 28 Henning, W . B . 200, 217
Fokkema, Douwe 304 Hidäyat, Sädiq 233
Fong, Grace 101 Hightower, James Robert 62, 65, 74, 75,
Foster, John L. 286 97, 104, 134
Fowler, Alastair281, 287, 288, 291, 293 Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela 18, 19, 24,
Fowler, Edward 19, 24, 25, 29, 43 25, 29
Fujioka, Sakutarö 14 Hirano, Ken 21, 24, 30, 31, 33, 46, 47,
Fujiwara Shunzei, The Daughter of 13 48, 49
Fujiwara, Koreyuki 12 Hirsch, E. D„ Jr. 291, 292, 293
Fujiwara, Takayoshi 8 Holmberg, Bo 200
Fujiwara, Teika 8, 12 Homeros 185
Fukuda, Kazuya 52 Horiguchi, Yasuo 120
Fukuzawa, Yukichi 18 Hu, Yinglin 102
Furüghl, Muhammad 'All 205 Hu, Zhiyu 138
Hunger, Herbert 242
Galante, Luigi 263 Ibn al-Muqaffa' 202, 218, 236, 238
Garber, Frederick 280, 287 Ibn Slnä 239
von Garlandia, Johannes 286 Ibsch, Elrud 304
Genette, Gerard 19, 161,301 Idema, Wilt 63, 65, 66, 98, 291, 302
Ghazali, Ahmad 239 Ihara, Saikaku 35
Gibb, E. J. W. 202 Ishihara, Shintarö 47
Gide, Andre 28 Itö, Sei 19, 29, 3 0 , 3 1 , 3 3 , 34, 47
Gökberk, Ülker 304 Iwano, Hömei 22
Goldziher, Ignaz 171 Izumi, Kyöka 47
Gouillard, Jean 264, 268
Gregory, author of the Life of Basil the Jacobi, Renate 169, 182, 184
Younger 268,269, 270, 271 Jakobson, Roman 161, 163
Gu, Guorui 53, 60, 85 Jay, Paul 302
Guan, Hanqing 140 Jiang, Kui 100
Index 311
Jiao, Xun 103 Li, Fang 89

John Moschos 244, 257 Li, Kaixian 99
Li, Qingzhao 102, 103
Kai-Kä'üs ibn Vushmglr 211, 226, 236 Liang, Qichao 94, 95, 109
Kajii, Motojirö 45 Li Bai 232
Kälidäsa 152 Lidova, Natalia 147
Kan'ami, Kiyotsugu 115, 119, 120 Lin, Shuen-fu 100
Kamura, Isota 31 Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla 1, 9, 11, 12
Karlgren, Bernhard 56, 57 Lindqvist, Cecilia 56
Kasai, Zenzö 22, 23, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40, Liu, James Y. 53, 54, 56, 87, 88
41,42, 4 3 , 4 4 Liu, Xiang 98
Kasravl, Ahmad 205 Liu, Xie 4 , 5 7 , 5 9 , 6 0 , 65, 67, 68, 79, 80,
Katsuyama, Isao 21, 24, 25 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94, 97,
Katz, Jerrold J. 282 101, 104, 105, 106, 108
Kawabata, Yasunari 47 Liu, Yaomin 100
Kawasaki, Chötarö 49 Liu, Zhongyuan 105
Kazhdan, Alexander 242, 264 Longo, Augusta 260
Keene, Donald 13, 15 Lu, Ji 60, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 81, 105
Keith, A. B. 148 Lu, Zuqian 91
al-Khafägi, Muhammad 'Abd al- Lycan, William G. 283, 284
Mun'im 164,166,168,170,180, 185
Khäqänl 210, 211 Magdalino, Paul 271
Khankan, Nathalie 174 MahsatT Dabira Ganja'1204, 233
Al-Khansä' 171, 183 Makino, Shin'ichi 22
Khares of Mytilene 208 Malatesta, Gios. 287
Khayyäm, 'Umar 232, 233, 238 Malinowski, Bronislaw 297, 298
Kirmänl, Auhad ud-dln 224 Malmqvist, Göran 53, 104
KirmänT, Shams ud-dln b. Il-Tughän Mango, Cyril 242
224 Mann, Thomas 276
Knechtges, David R. 74, 75, 80, 82 Marra, Michele 12, 13
Kobayashi, Hideo 28, 29, 30, 34, 35 Maupassant, Guy de 18, 28
Kockum, Keiko 29 Mehta, Tarla 148, 149, 150, 151
Komparu, Kunio 125, 130 Meier, Fritz 204, 233
Kong, Yingda 62, 63 Meisami, Julie Scott 165, 167, 222, 228,
Krecher, Joachim 286 236
Krueger, Derek 251 Miao, Yue 102
Kume, Masao 22, 25, 26, 50 Minamoto, Chikayuki 8
Kurpershoek, P. M. 191 Minamoto, Mitsuyuki 8
Miner, Earl 5, 6, 302
LaFleur, William R. 124 Minturno, A. S. 286, 287
Latysev, Vasilij V. 260 Mishima, Yukio 47
Lazard, Gilbert 220 Miyamoto, Yuriko 46
Leiter, Samuel L. 119 Mo, Di 65
Lejeune, Philippe 20 Mori,Ogai 30
Leontios of Neapolis 244, 251, 252, Morita, Söhei 22
254, 256, 257, 258 Mozi 65
Levinson, Stephen C. 282 Muhammad ibn Husäm, Maulänä 221
Li, Dongyang 96, 102 Muhammad ibn Väsif as-SijzI 225, 227
312 Index
Murasaki,Shikibu 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 Qais ar-Razi, Shams ud-din Muhammad

Mushanoköji, Saneatsu 28 211
Musil, Alois 191 Imru' al-Qays 178, 189
Qu, Yuan 57, 65, 73, 75, 97
Naflsl, Sa'Id 218 Qudäma, Ibn 163, 164
Naglsä 225 Qurrat ul-'Ain 204
Nakahara, Chüya 45 Qutayba, Ibn 169, 174, 176
Nakai, Kazuko 15
Nakamura, Mitsuo 27, 30, 31 Räbi'a bint Ka'b Quzdärl Balkhl 204
Nakamura, Murao 25 Rädüyänl, Muhammad 2 1 1 , 2 1 3
Näsir-i Khusrau 219, 220, 227 al-Rahmän, 'Afif 'Abd 168, 170, 190
Neupokoeva, Irina Grigor'evna 299 Rashlq, Ibn 166, 167, 182
Nikephoros, author of the Life of An- Ren, Fang 64
drew the Fool 254, 255, 256 Rhum, Michael 3
Niketas, author of the Life of Philaretos Richmond, Farley P. 147
the Merciful 258 Ritter, Hellmut 213, 222
Niketas Magistros 249 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 29, 40, 41
Nilsson, Ingela 288 Rüdaki 201, 209, 214, 215, 217, 218,
NizämT 'Arüzl 201, 210, 211,214 223, 227
NizämT of Ganja 221, 222, 223 Rüml, Jaläl ud-din 223, 227
Nöldeke, Theodor 186, 187 Ryden, Lennart 3,5, 242,251, 254, 257,
Nygren, Christina 4, 98, 111 258, 272
Rydholm, Lena 3, 4, 5, 7, 53, 95, 100,
Ogasawara, Masaru 21, 24 109, 132, 133, 137, 287, 298
Okakura, Kakuzö 122 Rypka, Jan 199, 202, 204, 215, 224,
Okpewho, Isidore 297, 298, 301, 302 234, 241
Okubo, Tsuneo 19
Ömori, Sumio 43 Sa'dl 238
Ong, Walter 188,209 Safä, Dhablhu'lläh 199,211
Orsini, G. N. G. 280 Saigyö 26, 27, 34
Owen, Stephen 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 Sanä'T, Hakim 219, 220, 221, 222, 224,
Ouyang, Xiu 105 227
Ozaki, Köyö 35 Sata, Ineko 46
de Saussure, Ferdinand 282
Palva, Heikki 191, 192 Saussy, Haun 61, 62, 64
Panähl SimnänT 234 Schaeffer, Jean-Marie 287, 288, 291,
Pedersen, Johannes 212 294
Perkins, David 299, 300 Schellinger, Paul 15
Pettersson, Anders 2, 56, 84, 109, 160, Schiller, Friedrich 81
161, 162, 206, 207, 215, 216, 222, Schipper, Mineke 304
279 Schöler, Greger 167
Pollentone, Sicco 286 Searle, John R. 284, 285, 292, 294, 303
Pomjalovskij, Ivan V. 264 von See, Klaus 302
Pourjavady, Nasrollah 239 Senuma, Shigeki 21
Serjeant, R. Β. 181
Qä'äni 229 Setouchi, Jakuchö 15, 2 4 , 4 7 , 4 8 , 4 9 , 50,
al-Qairawäni, Ibn Rasiq 164 51,52
Index 313
Shami, Nizam ud-dm 220 'Ubaid-i Zäkänl 221

Shen, Deqian 84 Ullmann, Manfred 179, 180, 186
Shen, Yifu 101 Uno, Köji 26, 34
Shen, Yue 57, 58, 59 'Unsurl, Abu'l-Qäsim 210, 219
Shi, Yidui 100 Utas, Bo 3, 5, 6, 7, 199, 200, 202, 213,
Shiga, Naoya 19, 22, 30, 34 217, 219, 223, 224, 228, 230, 231,
Shih, Chung-Wen 137, 140 232
Shimazaki, Töson 30
SimnänT, Panähl 234 Vatsyayan, Kapila 148, 149
Socin, Albert 191 Vatvät, Rashld ud-dln 211
Sommardal, Göran 55, 63, 64, 77 Veselovskij, Aleksander N. 268
Song, Yu 65, 98 Vilinskij, Sergej G. 268
Sophronios of Jerusalem 246, 247, 257 Vipper, J. B. 302
Stetkevych, S. P. 189
Su, Shi 101, 103, 105 Wagner, Ewald 186
Suzuki, Etsu 45 Wahb, Ibn 166
Suzuki, Tomi 17, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 34 Waley, Arthur 7, 14, 15
Symeon Metaphrastes 243, 245, 246, Wang, Fuzhi 102
263 Wang, Guowei 76
Wang, Li 98
Tabarl 235 Wang, Shizhen 101
Takahashi, Toru 13 Wang, Wenlu 96, 97
Ta'lab 164 Wang, Yuanhua 60, 83
Tamura, Toshiko 45 Wang, Zhuo 103
Tanisawa, Ri'ichi 21, 31, 32, 33 von Wartburg, Walther 287
Tanizaki, Jun'ichirö 15, 35 Watanabe, Sumiko 46
Tao, Dongfeng 60, 95, 102, 108 Wong, Siu-kit 58, 61, 62, 68, 70, 76, 77,
Tasso, Torquato 287 80, 81, 82, 85, 89, 97
Tayama, Katai 19, 22, 35, 45, 49 Wu, Na 92, 93
Terada, Torn 20, 21 Wu, Qiao 97
Theodore Prodromos 246
Theodoretos of Kyrrhos 244 Xia, Tingzhi 138
Theophanes the Confessor 259 Xin, Qiji 101
Thiesen, Finn 230 Xiao, Tong 4, 64, 67, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78,
Thucydides 250 79, 80, 87, 88, 96, 103, 104, 108
Thunman, Noriko 3, 17 Xu, Shizeng 92, 93, 103
Todorov, Tzvetan 161, 289, 291, 294, Xue, Xue 84
296, 304
Tökei, Ferenc 62, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 88 Yamoto, Kenkichi 42
Tolstoy, Leo 18, 25 Yan, Yu 91
Tong, Qingbing 60, 65, 66, 77, 84, 86, Yang, Haiming 101
87, 94, 95, 107 Yao, Lai 94
Trabulsi, Amjad 163, 164, 165 Yao, Xuan 90
Tsubouchi, Shöyö 17 Yarshater, Ehsan 209
Tsuji, Hitonari 51 Ye, Shengtao 94
Tüsl, NasTr ud-dln 211 Yokomitsu, Ri'ichi 28, 29, 47
Tyler, Royall 7 Yosano, Akiko 15
314 Index
Yü, Miri 24, 48,51,52 Zhen, Dexiu 92

Yuan, Haowen 96 Zheng, Guofan 94
Zhi, Yu 72, 73
Zeami, Motokiyo 115, 119, 120, Zhong, Rong 58, 59, 73
122, 123, 126 Zhong, Sicheng 137
Zhang, Binglin 95 Zhou, Yibai 133
Zhang, Geng 132, 133 Zhou Zhenfu 57, 79, 80, 81, 85, 88
Zhang, Longxi 305 Zola, Emile 18
Zhang, Yan 101, 102 Zwettler, Michael 187
Zhang, Yi 59
Volume 3
WDE
G
Literary History:
Edited by
Editorial Board
Margareta Petersson · Anders Pettersson · Bo Utas
Volume 3

Literary Interactions
in the Modern World 1
Edited by
Margareta Peters son

® Printed o n acid-free paper which falls within
the guidelines of the A N S I to ensure permanence and durability.
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p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-3-1 1-018932-2 (set : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 3-1 1-018932-1 (set : alk. paper)
1. Literature-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 2. Literary form. 3.
Literature, Comparative. 4. literature and society. I. Pettersson, Anders,
1946- II. Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla. III. Petersson, Margareta. IV. Ilel-
gesson, Stefan. V. Title: N o t i o n s of literature across times and cultures.
VI. Title: Literary genres, an intercultural approach. VII. Title: Literary
interactions in the m o d e r n world 1. VIII. Title: Literary interactions in the
m o d e r n world 2.
PN441.L486 2006
809 - dc22
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T h e Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;

© Copyright 2006 by Walter de Gruyter G m b H & Co. K G , D-10785 Berlin

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this b o o k may
be reproduced or transmitted in any f o r m or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
writing f r o m the publisher.
Printed in Germany
Contents
VOLUME 3 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE MODERN W O R L D 1
Margareta Petersson
Per Erik Ljung

Stephan Larsen
Keiko Kockum t
Bo Holmberg
Stephan Larsen
Index 201
VI Contents
Leif Lorentzon
Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega
Margareta Petersson
Stefan Helgesson
Marja Kaikkonen
Communist Party 157
Christina Nygren
Gail Ramsay
Roberta Micallef
Stefan Helgesson
Index 324
Contents VII
VOLUME 1: NOTIONS OF LITERATURE ACROSS TIMES AND CULTURES

Anders Pettersson
Literary History 1
Marja Kaikkonen
"Literature" 70
Gunilla Gren-Eklund
Bo Holmberg
A dab and Arabic Literature 180
Leif Lorentzon
Tord Olsson
Index 293
VIII Contents
Noriko Thunman
Lena Rydholm
Christina Nygren
Kerstin Eksell
Bo Utas
Lennart Ryden f
Anders Pettersson
of Genre 279
Index 309
MARGARETA PETERSSON
Introduction:
Cultural Encounters Between Literary Cultures.
The Example of the Novel
When The God of Small Things by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy was
published in 1997, this appeared as a world event. The marketing was glo-
bal. Publishing rights were sold in advance to eighteen countries. Within
six months of the book's release, translations into twenty-seven different
languages were ordered. 1 It has now been translated into at least forty lan-
guages. Today, the village in the novel, Ayemenem, is highlighted in the
Government of India's tourist brochures. At the same time, the global and
the local seem to be out of tune with one another. The local responses to
Roy's book contain court cases filed against her regarding the portrait of a
veteran Communist leader and what was read as obscenity. 2
A novel might be the only literary genre today that could have such a
worldwide appeal. Cultural encounters of different kinds seem to consti-
tute the conditions for this event. It is often maintained that the novel form
itself is a genre created in the West which spread to the rest of the world to-
gether with modernity. The success of this "evolution" seems to be under-
lined by the global triumph of the novel in question. The fact that Roy's
novel is written in English, not in any vernacular Indian language, might
also signify global claims or expectations.
The novel contains several themes that could be read as symptoms of a
globalised world: it configurates travelling and migrating people. Com-
modities and ideologies from the West turn up in India; Western music and
1 Madhusudan Mukerjee, "Why The God of Small Things Sells ," in R. K. Dhawan (ed.),
Arundhati Roy: The Novelist Extraordinary (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999), p. 39.
2 Somdatta Mandal, "From Periphery to the Mainstream: The Making, Marketing and Me-
dia Response to Arundhati Roy," in Arundhati Roy: The Novelist Extraordinary, pp. 2 8 -
29.
2 Margareta Petersson
media belong to ordinary life. The local, again, seems out of time—it is re-
duced to exotic but empty spices for global tourism.
Precisely the friction between the global and the local is often said to be
characteristic of globalisation. 3 The reactions to the novel as well as the de-
scriptive models into which it is fitted create many questions of relevance
to the possibility of writing literary histories with global perspectives to-
day. In India for example, there exist "two numerically comparable sets—
Indian novels written in English and Indian novels translated into English,
and the asymmetry in their reception is evident to all," writes Meenakshi
Mukherjee in a discussion of the hierarchy of cultures. Implicitly, she
writes, this is an elimination of the diversity of India. 4
The goal of these last two volumes in this series is to examine the under-
standing of literary transculturations in late modernity and to analyse a
number of historical cases of literary interactions in order to find new con-
cepts or to problematize old concepts usable for literary histories. The field
is vast since it might include all phenomena that in decisive ways change
the literary cultures under consideration. Political structures like colonial-
ism or globalisation are included, as well as changes in literary production,
including new roles and definitions for authors and readers, the relation be-
tween them, and changes in the definition or function of literary writing it-
self and in the history of literature. We touch upon several of the problems
mentioned but most of the contributions in these volumes concentrate on a
couple of particular and more distinct aspects: on literature written during a
period of intense change and in one way or another responding to literature
and language from other cultures by, for example, generic transformations,
adaptation and translation. A decisive lack of categories and contexts is ob-
vious in traditional literary histories, regarding phenomena on this level.
Late modernity, then, is defined here broadly as the last two centuries.
The concept of modernity, however, is used in critical discourse with
vague and different meanings. I find it useful here since it contains senses
productive for the writing of literary histories. One of the defining charac-
3 Fredric Jameson, "Preface," in Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds.), The Cultures
of Globalization (Durham and London: Duke UP, [1998] 2001), p. xii.
4 Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English
(New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2000), p. 195. Sheldon Pollock has a similar perspective re-
garding the old histories of South Asian literatures and their place in "contemporary
scholarly knowledge in the subcontinent itself," in "Introduction," Literary Cultures in
History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley; Los Angeles; and London: Califor-
nia UP, 2003), p. 3.
Cultural Encounters Between Literary Cultures 3
teristics of modernity is often maintained to be rationalisation, embodied

as technical and social changes (for example the introduction of printing
presses or the development of institutions), and mental changes or the con-
sciousness created by the new experiences, that is, subjectivity, reflexivity,
individualism (expressed for example through new literary techniques, es-
pecially in fictional prose). A split between the partly contradictory
spheres of rationalisation and subjectivation is sometimes said to start with
modernity. 5
Modernity could be understood as synonymous with modernisation and
seems to be a neutral temporal concept. But it is connected with the start-
ing-point of so-called discoveries, conquests and colonialism, thus pro-
duces many ambiguous meanings. Cultural contacts create, as it were, mo-
dernities not only in Europe but also in the colonised world. "Modernity
has uprooted us from the narrow limits of the local cultures in which we
once lived," claims Alain Touraine. 6 In these volumes, we understand mo-
dernity as a polycentric conception, suggesting intensified contacts be-
tween cultures, signifying a world of movement and mixture, an increasing
interlocking of the local and the global. At least the latter part of this period
overlaps with what is often labelled globalisation.
The set of problems in these volumes actualises in a critical way theor-
etical perspectives from philological, comparative and postcolonial tradi-
tions. We are trying at the same time to use and move beyond these tradi-
tions. The philological practice used here approaches the anthropological;
the comparative perspective is enlarged by discussing not only what is tra-
ditionally labelled literary texts but also children's literature and popular
literature, and not only literary texts but also events like theatre perform-
ances and the book as a concrete material object. We are at the same time
expanding the traditional postcolonial paradigm by scrutinizing texts also
from linguistic areas outside the customary postcolonial competence and
outside the sphere of colonisation. It is not only theories and concepts from
the West that are used, of course. We confront Western theories and con-
cepts with concepts from other parts of the world.
Let's see how an overarching frame for building an understanding of lit-
erary interactions is construed in two modern global literary histories. I
take their descriptions of one genre, the realistic novel, as a starting point.
5 Alain Touraine, Critique of Modernity, David Macey (trans.), (Oxford and Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1995), pp. 4 - 5 .
6 Ibid., p. 91.
There are reasons for placing the novel at the centre. Literary interactions
have of course always taken place and are often discussed in terms of
domination and influence. But it is only during the last two centuries that
what looks like one single genre, the novel, has become the dominant liter-
ary genre in the world, thus motivating a study of what is often understood
as a diffusion from the West. Obviously though, the novel in the literary
histories becomes the form where contacts between cultures are made most
evidently explicit, thus evoking other possible explanations of the exist-
ence of the novel, explanations with a generalising potential regarding lit-
erary interactions.
I raise a handful of specific transcultural problems suggested by the lit-
erary histories and related to the concept of literary evolution, problems
like origin and influence, translation, imitation, adaptation, hybridity and
what is labelled, for example, japanisation or africanisation. I then present
the contributions that the articles in these volumes make to these problems.
We want to know how literatures in different parts of the world connect
with each other, influence each other and interplay. We also want to com-
prehend how these interactions have been understood in the literary histo-
ries. Finally, I want to suggest how our results might influence new writ-
ings of global literary histories.
Transformations of Literary Traditions in

Two World Literary Histories
Many national or group specific literary histories have been written during
the last twenty-five years, but almost no global literary histories specifical-
ly not in English. I have chosen two of the latest, both from northern Eu-
rope, to represent modern global literary history: the Scandinavian Verdens
litteraturhistorie, in Swedish version Litteraturens historia (The Literary
History of the World, LH), 1985-93, and Neues Handbuch der Literatur-
wissenschaft (New Handbook of Literary Studies, NH), 1972-. 7 They are
very different in size and perspective. Litteraturens historia comprises
seven volumes while Neues Handbuch so far comprises 24 volumes; this
7 Litteraturens historia, Hans Hertel (ed.), Jan Stolpe (trans.), (Stockholm: Norstedt och
Söners Förlag, 1985-1994). Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, Klaus von See
(ed.) (Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Athenaion 1 9 7 2 - ) . A new volume,
24, appeared in 2002. One last volume is expected. I refer directly to these works in the
text with numbers of volume and page. Translations are my own.
difference in size of course entailing that the depth of the analyses is

greater in Neues Handbuch. A crucial difference is that in Litteraturens
historia, a proportionately uniform perspective on history and on literary
genres is established at the beginning of all the volumes while this is lack-
ing in Neues Handbuch. In the Scandinavian literary history, the editor
Hans Hertel played an important role, while Klaus von See seems to have
delegated responsibility to the individual writers who have worked inde-
pendently on the German volumes.
For comparison, I have chosen some national or regional literary histo-
ries from areas outside the West, for example Roger Allen's The Arabic
Literary Heritage (1998) and a handful of literary histories concerned with
India, from Meenakshi Mukherjee's books (from 1985 and onwards) to
Sheldon Pollock's (ed.) Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from
South Asia (2003).
Not surprisingly, the primary approach in both of the literary histories is
that literature is inscribed into a temporal sequence and localized in nation-
al and/or geographical contexts. Both temporal and spatial categories,
however, could be said to suggest the existence of what has been called
grand narratives. As will be shown, all historical watches seem to be, as
Appadurai declared, synchronized in the world described. 8 A reservation is
necessary. The problems I actualize here are not addressed in any of the lit-
erary histories with other than casual interest. This reservation reveals an
omission in scholarship concerning these problems. "Historically, how-
ever, comparatively little attention has been given to the mechanics of the
intricate processes of cultural contact, intrusion, fusion and disjunction,"
writes Robert Young. 9 A similar view, applied to the field of verbal art, is
pronounced by the Indian literary scholar G. N. Devy: "The difficulty in
understanding the nature of the colonial impact arises from the absence of
appropriate paradigms for studying cross-cultural influences." 10 Today,
postcolonial studies are said to offer a productive approach to problems re-
garding the understanding of alterity and cultural difference, literary inter-
connections and mixings. This approach is one of the possibilities we will
discuss in these volumes.
8 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneap-

olis: Minnesota UP, 1998), p. 2.
9 Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London
and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 5.
10 G. N. Devy, After Amnesia·. Tradition and Change in Indian Literary Criticism (London:
Sangam Books, 1992), pp. 36-37.
The specific complex of problems concerning cultural encounters is im-

mediately emphasized in Litteraturens historia, however, where the editor
gives an introduction which situates the writing of this history in a global
context with the explicit aim of evading ethnocentrism. The scholars have
a "basic global view" (LH 1, p. 18), which supposedly means that the
writers' intentions are to follow the zigzag movement between Europe and
the Orient where the Arabian influence on south European chivalric poetry
during the thirteenth century and the European interest for China during
the rococo is demonstrated as is the Western export of ideologies and liter-
ary forms during colonialism. One meets a fundamentally positive attitude
to cultural encounters: "Generally speaking, the cultural richness of Latin
America depends on the distinctive crossings of, for example, the Catholic
worship of saints and the Indian cult of the dead" (LH 7, p. 409).
In Neues Handbuch, questions dealing with intercultural problems are
actualized mainly in one volume (nr. 5) about the Oriental Middle Ages
(and sometimes in the sections where the writers deal with literature out-
side the West). In an interesting introduction to volume 5, Wolfhart Hein-
richs addresses Orientalism and ethnocentrism searching for methods to
compare literature without getting stuck in eurocentrism in the sense that
one transports concepts and categories from the West, thereby distorting to
some extent the image of other literatures (NH 5, pp. 16-19).
The attempts in at least some parts of both literary histories to avoid eu-
rocentrism are occasionally subverted, however, by the categories used or
by the choice of focus and emplotment, which are, of course, important
elements in literary histories as are metaphors and similes. The terrain is
difficult. Elleke Boehmer notes a neo-orientalist dimension in Western
critical response to what is read as positive otherness, whether this is un-
derstood as "more culturally alive" than the West, or as an "exotic and im-
passioned East." 11 Such a dimension that shows the historicity of concepts
might be found in the literary histories as well. When the vitality of the lit-
erature from the third world is discussed in Litteraturens historia, this vi-
tality is said to depend on that it is written in or derive inspiration from the
periphery where traditional Western literary norms are weakened or not
valid. 12 Another consequence is that globality in this literary history risks,
11 Elleke Boehmer, "East is East and South is South: The Cases of Sarojini Naidu and
Arundhati Roy," in Women: A Cultural Review 11:1-2 (2000), p. 66.
12 This attitude could not be said to be prevalent in NH, but in a subordinate clause, we
meet the following evaluation: some of the most important contributions to the modern
"Weltliteratur" (World Literature) comes from writers living in exile. Solsjenitsyn,
Garcia Märquez, Milan Kundera and Naipaul are mentioned as examples, NH 23, p. 148.
as is often the case, being reduced to the study of the relations between the
West and "the rest," mostly ignoring the interactions between for example
South Africa and India, and other encounters between non-Western coun-
tries. The expected readership is Western. 13 On the other hand, the role
given to literatures outside the West open up possibilities of seeing more
complexities also in the well-known genres or histories.
The description in Neues Handbuch of how African literature in European

languages has developed appears paradigmatic in the respect that it seems
to have acquired a general validity of how we often imagine cultural en-
counters to work. In one contribution on African literature, developmental
stages in three almost Hegelian parts are established. First, imitations of
Western models and adaptations are given an important role. This phase is
followed by its opposite, the high valuation of the native culture, as in neg-
ritude or some nationalistic cultures; and finally, this phase is succeeded by
a synthesis, works that are simultaneously self-critical and contain a criti-
cal discussion of European values. We have reached "truly literary," inde-
pendent creative writing. A stylistic development is analogical to this more
thematic one: primarily mimicry, secondly the use of African rhythm, and
finally a development of an idiom of one's own (NH 21, pp. 491 and
506). 14
Though not always explicitly formulated, the different stages of imita-
tion and adaptation (plus translation), the native antitheses and independ-
13 In the same way, vol. 5 of Neues Handbuch counteracts its introductory discussion since
the fundamental perspective is explicitly Western (which of course in part depends on
the expected audience). Some chapters in this volume are said to aim at making the vol-
ume more interesting for Western readers by showing the Oriental or Islamic influence
on European literature—first, with Dante, who is then treated in vol. 8 without cross-ref-
erences between the volumes, and then with the Spanish-Arabian influence on European
chivalric poetry. One chapter addresses orientalizing literature in Germany from the
Middle Ages and ahead to Goethe and in passing, Rilke and Hesse. The complex of
problems concerning cultural encounters is isolated to issues connected with Western
scholars treating non-Western literature, or with what is called Oriental influence on
great Western works of art and Western writers' orientalizing writing.
14 This perspective is similar to Frantz Fanon's in the chapter "On national culture" in The
Wretched of the Earth, where he talks of the intellectuals in colonized countries and
notes the first phase of "unqualified assimilation" of Western culture, the second phase
of rejection of and withdrawal from the West combined with a recalling of the lost cul-
ture, pp. 178-79. The third phase is not simple or conscious reconciliation, though, but
still similar even if combined with struggle. The intellectual understands himself as
"awakener" of the people but he "fails to realize that he is utilizing techniques and lan-
guage which are borrowed from the stranger in his country," pp. 179-80.
ent writing are noted in passing or exhaustively in the literary histories—

the global as well as the regional. The terms recur for example in a descrip-
tion of Japanese literature where Japanese authors are said to copy, adapt
and partly redevelop Western styles (NH 23, p. 417). Roger Allen uses ex-
actly the same perspective and terms concerning Arabic literature. 15
Thus, the primary model for analysis of cultural encounters in both liter-
ary histories presupposes that literary elements originate from different
distinct cultures (a problem worthy of discussion in itself). The goal then
seems to be to find out from where the various elements in the texts are
taken; thus, installing a dichotomy between native and (usually) Western
influences and between form and content. The most common way is to
claim that the content in the novels is native, even if the stress on realistic
life is new. However, motifs, characters and milieus are taken from the lo-
cal place. Depiction of society or realistic representation of everyday life
becomes characteristic for the novel outside the West. 16
Form, on the other hand, is often understood as being Western. Non-Eu-
ropean writers are said to acculturate specific formal aspects like point-of
view writing or other techniques from European literature. One gets the
impression that countries outside the West ordinarily acquire their subject
matter from their own countries, but import Western literary forms and in-
novations of narrative techniques. 17 It is worth noting that a new genre, i.e.
the Western novel, seems to be necessary to represent complex contempor-
aneity. The Chinese narrative art, like the Japanese, gradually catches up
with the Western in this respect (LH 7, p. 481).—This model is not totally
dominating, though. Many examples of especially traditional regional
forms are said to be adopted in novels. 18
15 Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of its Genres and Criti-
cism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), p. 294.
16 The first novels in Cambodia and in Korea can function as examples (LH 6, pp. 402 and
7, p. 459). The description of society might also be mixed with streaks of myths and his-
tories from oral traditions. This is notable in the first Mongolian novel (LH 6, pp. 4 0 1 -
402).
17 LH 6, p. 423; LH 7, pp. 434 and 460. Christina Nygren in volume 4 in this series dis-
cusses encounters between theatre traditions in a way that contradicts every simple divi-
sion between form and content.
18 The literary forms might also, at least to some extent, be native. Traditional forms are
usually described as oral, especially in the case of Africa. The oral in the novel often
seems to be of a thematic character, but it might also imprint the dialogue, giving space
to proverbs and current phrases (LH 5, p. 372; LH 7, pp. 425 and 465). Lastly, mixtures
can be found both on the level of content and of form, especially in Litteraturens Ilisteria
(LH 6, pp. 4 4 3 - 444; LH 7, pp. 435, 486, 490, 503, 514).
Another way of dealing with cultural encounters is to focus on themes.

The encounter itself might be thematized and illuminate racism from be-
low, for example, or the colonial system. In Neues Handbuch, a thematic
treatment of the cultural encounter or conflict is stressed above all in the
chapter about African literature, thus providing representations of concrete
encounters between Africans and Europeans (in the early texts especially
focussed on missionaries). In Litteraturens historia there is, for example, a
discussion of critical appropriations of what is called European phenomena
such as progress, nationalism and Christianity. The ideas can be represent-
ed as characters placed in opposition inside or outside the native country
(LH 7, p. 406). The encounter or conflict often seems to take the form of an
antagonism between tradition and modernisation. In novels from different
parts of the world, thematic oppositions between the centre and the peri-
phery, civilization and barbarism, city and countryside, the elite and the
masses are thus described. This is particularly stressed in Litteraturens his-
toria concerning the literature of the twentieth century in Latin America
(LH 6, p. 418), but also for example about Algeria (LH 7, p. 489). In all
these oppositions, what are designated as modern ideas or life forms are
Western. 19
The spread of modernity is used as an explanatory frame. It creates
periodizations; these in turn seem to be determined by a figure of thought
which is nowadays seldom expressed explicitly. Literary history is under-
stood as a history of evolution and progress. In Litteraturens historia, the
writers explicitly place world history in a temporal perspective of develop-
ment. Europe during the period 1730-1830 is made to represent the new
time in a cultural typology, while Asia is depicted as living in a prolonged
late medieval period, and Africa and large parts of the two American conti-
nents in a prehistoric age (LH 4, p. 19, compare 5, p. 12).
Similar features can be perceived in separate sections of Neues Hand-
buch. The development in Korea is accordingly understood as a delayed
European development (NH 23, p. 276). The evolutionary perspective is
usually implicit. The narrative design, however, can be found in the organ-
isation of the material and the space given to each culture. The evolution of
literature traditionally starts with the "Die Altorientalischen Literaturen."
Thus, what is called old Oriental literatures (in the Mediterranean region,
centred around the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris) receive great
19 As Marja Kaikkonen shows in her article on Chinese literature in vol. 1 in this series, this
opposition can also be found in literature itself.
space; after that the initiative goes West and the focus is on Western litera-
ture. Literatures outside the West receive very little space. 20 The West is
equated with modernity and thus becomes the focus: world history moves
ahead to the point where West becomes the centre and whatever happens in
the West from now on is spread to the rest of the world.
Europe is thus awarded an important role in the literary histories, which
is further stressed by the representation of a cultural crisis in the rest of the
world, something that makes it susceptible to and in need of Western im-
pulses. 21 The Ottoman Empire is said to have lived in cultural stagnation
up to the national renaissance at the end of the nineteenth century (LH 4, p.
353). Modernisation began in the 1830s, when the British and the French
became teachers in schools and the Turkish upper classes started reading
novels. In Egypt, Napoleon introduced modern time and the process of
modernisation created a vibrant literary life (LH 6, p. 397-8). Students
were sent to France during the early nineteenth century and they quickly
disseminated ideas to the intellectuals back home. 22 Those mediating the
new ideas are often said to be educated in or exiled to the West (LH 5, p.
357), taking part in or creating cultural avant-garde settings in opposition
to native rulers like the Persian Shah (LH 5, p. 360). Decline and darkness
are said to reign in India until the British take over. Partly the same, partly
other perspectives are evident in the regional literary histories. Sisir Kumar
Das uses the periods old, medieval and modern in his Indian Literary His-
tory, but gives them a new meaning. Instead of explaining the medieval pe-
riod as the decline of Hindu power and the advent of the Muslims, he
claims that the medieval period began when the modern Indian languages
emerged as literary languages and the period ended, not with the rise of the
20 Vols. 2 and 3 deal with literature from ancient Greece and Rome respectively, vol. 4 with
late antiquity in Europe. Vol. 5 is dedicated to Oriental literatures from the Mediterrane-
an region to Arabic and Persian literature in "antiquity" and "the medieval period." After
that, 15 vols, are devoted to Europe (and to a very small extent, to America), and then
two partial vols. (20 and 21) and one complete (vol. 23), deal with literature outside these
regions, especially with East Asian literature. This pattern is retained in the thin vol. 24.
Here, pre-colonial literature from south and central Asia occupies more than 80% of the
space. Compare Anders Petterssons overview in vol. 1 in this series.
21 Young points out that such a view is dependent on the nineteenth century models about
cultural encounters as diffusionism and evolutionism, and that it exists in different disci-
plines, Colonial Desire, p. 4. A similar perspective is occasionally suggested in Neues
Handbuch, for example, when Japan is represented as totally isolated until the contacts
were established with the West: "Die Kritik ist sich einig darüber, daß besonders Prosa
und Lyrik erst dann wieder frische Impulse erhielten, als in Japan die Literatur des West-
ens in Übersetzungen zugelassen wurde" (NH 21, p. 407).
22 There is a similar perspective in Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 71-72.
British, but with changes in the modes of literary transmission and reader-
ship. 23 Still, an evolutionary horizon is present. Another view, the harmful
influence of the British, is stressed by Devy. Colonialism, according to
him, created a feeling of shame and inferiority in the colonized. The impor-
tation of Western models had an "unhealthy and crippling impact on native
creativity." 24
If you use other perspectives, then, another world appears. In the intro-
duction to the volume about the Oriental medieval period in Neues Hand-
buch, it is argued that the periodization, medieval (Muslim), darkness and
modern (Western) light, is not self-evident. The cultural prosperity during
the three great Islamic empires is mentioned, the Safavid Empire in Persia
established in 1510, the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and the Mughal Empire
in India in 1526, when Persian becomes the common cultural language. In-
stead of cultural crisis, decline and darkness, we meet something which
can be called an unsurpassed cultural opulence (NH 5, p. 15).25
Evolution and the Novel
The figure of evolution and diffusion could be questioned for many rea-
sons. 26 First of all, the metaphoric use of evolution carries as we have seen
a figure of thought, recognized by anyone familiar with Edward Said. In
the literary histories, the question of why the novel becomes established in
the world outside Europe receives a fairly unambiguous answer. The con-
nection between the novel and modernity constitutes the core of the rea-
23 Sisir Kumar Das, Λ History of Indian Literature, 1800-1910, Western Impact: Indian
Response (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, [1991] 2000), p. 58.
24 Devy, After Amnesia, p. 16.
25 The general outline might hold true for Arabic literature, since very little elite literature
seems to have been written during "the medieval period," but this period "coincides di-
rectly with the efflorescence of popular literature of all kinds," writes Roger Allen in his
account of Arabic literature, p. 7. He chooses to avoid traditional history writing, partly
because the established periodization describes 1200-1700 as "the period of decadence,"
which has brought it about that this period often disappears from research, pp. 5-6. It
also becomes difficult, he notes, to label the period from the nineteenth century and on-
wards modernisation, since what is in that case called the pre-modern period is relatively
unknown. Allen, however, does not deny that the impulses from the West have been im-
portant, but he gives pre-European prose forms a great deal of space.
26 I leave out of this discussion the questionable use of the metaphoric image of evolution
regarding literature. Per Erik Ljung gives some historical examples of it in his article in
this volume.
soning. Modernity usually means an epoch with new modes of social or-
ganisation. It is treated as a singular and homogeneous phenomenon and its
place of birth is Europe. Europe is in fact imagined as "the great Original,
the starting point." 27 The consequence is that the other regions outside the
West become copies or translations, usually associated with repetition and
secondariness. Large-scale historical changes are thus conceptualised as
moving only in one direction, from the West to the rest. Hence, it is obvi-
ous that modernity is established as a discourse, constructing Europe as
modern and the rest as traditional or belated. It is usually stressed, then,
that similar changes in society or in inventions such as occurred in Europe
have been accomplished in other parts of the world, but after a delay.
These areas obviously have to spend some time in what Chakrabarty labels
the "imaginary waiting room of history" before being able to enter the now
of contemporaneity. 28 Historical time, then, becomes "a measure of the cul-
tural distance [...] that was assumed to exist between the West and the
non-West." 29 In a way, this means that Chinese, Indian and Ghanaian histo-
ries seem to be variations of a given narrative. The pasts in different parts
of the world are thus inscribed into the same story. They are, in a way, col-
onized.
Another of the evolutionary presuppositions is the idea, the valuation of
and quest for origin and originality, well known in Europe. This approach,
however, has strongly influenced the metaphoric language and even the
field of sight. Sheldon Pollock shows how this quest has distorted and de-
limited South Asian literary history. "The real plurality of literatures in
South Asia and their dynamics and long-term interaction were scarcely
recognized," since scholars concentrated on an ideology of Sanskrit an-
tiquity and since religion became the dominating lens, thus ruling out im-
portant parts of the literary culture. 30
The narrative pattern is strengthened even more when we reach modern
times and the story of the novel. One can even get the impression that mo-
dernity cannot be expressed except through Western literary genres and
techniques (NH 21, p. 491). This could imply the familiar narrative, where
27 Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, "Introduction: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernacu-
lars," in Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (eds.), Postcolonial Translation: Theory and
Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 4.
28 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Dif-
ference (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), p. 8.
29 Ibid., p. 7.
30 Pollock, "Introduction", in Literary Cultures in History, p. 5.
Asia and Africa, even in metaphorical ways, supply raw material, the sub-
ject matter of the novels, while the West is responsible for its refinement
by providing literary forms for working up the matter.
In these two volumes about literary interactions we try to find other pat-
terns or models for understanding the phenomena. We do not dispute the
facts, however. Printing presses, newspapers and translations belong to the
unproblematic facts—though more historically specific investigations
seem to be needed to be able to grasp their role in the literary cultures
concerned. 31 There exists more problematic facts, though. The narrative
pattern and its slanted way of understanding become obvious when we
place the novel in the centre. Most of the scholars in the literary histories
agree on the diffusion of the realist novel from the West to the rest of the
world.
There seems to be some good reasons for this comprehension which still
might appear as a master narrative. The novels are understood as having
fulfilled a similar function in different parts of the world. The novel often
seems to have opened a space for social and political debates; it became an
instrument for the discussion of social and religious ideas. In India, China
and Latin America the realist novel is celebrated for this reason—like the
Western drama in Japan. 32 The novel seems to be perceived as the quintes-
sence of the West. It is said to bring about Western ideas of reform and en-
lightenment; it reflects and advocates social changes. This is what Tsu-
bouchi Shöyö maintained in 1885 in Japan and the exiled Chinese scholar,
Liang Qichao, in 1902, and retrospectively modern scholars in other areas,
like Mund in India (1997) and Allen in the Arab region. 33 "If one intends to
renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its fiction," wrote
Liang Qichao (LH 5, p. 368). This line of thought is developed by Marja
Kaikkonen and (concerning theatre) Christina Nygren in volume 4 in this
series.—The novel is thus seen not only as an aesthetic phenomenon, but
31 "The narrative of the history of print culture as told for Europe has little resonance in
South Asia," notes Pollock, ibid., p. 22. For other details, compare Kockum and Holm-
berg in this volume.
32 Das even reads Indian novels as social propaganda, A History of Indian Literature, p.
114. He gives examples of novels containing discussions of atheism and religion, the
study of English, or the Indian National Congress: "Such conversations become almost
an essential feature of Indian fiction and drama at the initial stage of their development,"
pp. 294-95.
33 Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, pp. 308-10. Subhendu Kumar Mund, The Indian
Novel in English: Its Birth and Development (New Delhi: Prachi Prakashan, 1997), p.
24.
also as part of a project which is perceived as bringing blessings, that is,

Europeanizing the cultural system. 34
It seems easy, though, to simplify our understanding when we decide on
what belongs to the realm of facts. Is it really a truth that the writers started
to focus on everyday life and problems with the advent of the European
novel? Here we find scholars with other facts. Literatures in India, actual-
ly, began to change and pay attention to everyday life already before the
intervention of the English language and education. 35 Roger Allen, for his
part, stresses one Arabic neo-classic narrative form that seems to have ful-
filled functions similar to the novel. The genre maqamah was used during
the nineteenth century and during a large part of the twentieth century as a
tool for critical analyses and comments on society. 36 Already during the
eleventh century, it had its focus on the poorer segments of society. Facts
like these, which can be found in many parts of the world, complicate the
simple story.
Franco Moretti has written widely about the novel. I concentrate on one
aspect of Atlas of the European Novel, though Moretti has developed and
refined his argument in later articles. 37 Here he uses and strengthens the
more or less Hegelian narrative pattern by way of testing it against what he
understands as empirical facts. It is possible to sharpen his argument by
claiming that he defines facts as elements repeated often enough. He re-
ports from his reading of twenty descriptions of the growth of the novel in
regions such as Brazil, China, the Arab world and Latin America. Inde-
pendently of each other, he claims, they describe how domestic matter is
everywhere cast in Western form. The home-grown novels, however, turn
out as "'[h]alf-baked' replicas of a few successful models all the world
34 Henry Schwarz, Writing Cultural History in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Philadel-
phia: Pennsylvania UP, 1997), p. 15.
35 Das, A History of Indian Literature, p. 64.
36 Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 275. Compare Bo Utas about the genre in vol. 2
in this series.
37 Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 (London and New York: Verso,
1998), "Conjectures on World Literature," New Left Review 1 (2000), "More Conjec-
tures," New Left Review 20 (2003), "Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary
History - 1," New Left Review 24 (2003). "Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for
Literary History - 2," New Left Review 26 (2004), "Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Mod-
els for Literary History - 3," New Left Review 28 (2004). Some assumptions are obvious,
like reasoning in analogies and a specific understanding of form in literature. Moretti
builds his argument about form and content in literature as an analogy to how Creole lan-
guages are often defined: "cultivated syntax and popular lexicon." The form is primarily
understood as plot, following Vladimir Propp, and forms are always read as abstractions
of social relations, Atlas of the European Novel, p. 193, "More Conjectures," p. 80.
over." 38 The European novel is made the formal norm since it is understood
as the origin and, in a way, as the container of the essential features. But
what if the regional literary historians, the fact collectors, depend less on
their indigenous prose heritage and more on the same narrative model, that
is, if they all more or less belong to similar interpretative communities,
sharing the same styles of thought? 39 An Indian scholar, Meenakshi
Mukherjee, has confessed that her generation of scholars were simply
made into ventriloquists and "managed to adopt a British voice literally
and metaphorically, wiping out all local traces." 40 Moretti does not discuss
any perspective such as this. He only notes the existence of imitation and
above all imperfect imitation of successful British and French original
novels in other parts of the world. Deviations are read as shortcomings. 41
His comprehension of historical evolution and of facts seems to determine
what he finds. 42
The history of the novel has thus acquired a teleological character,
where immature traces of what must emerge as a novel are seen in older
prose. When the bud opens, the same flower emerges everywhere. We
seem to have only one modern and genuine prose peak in all the literatures
of the world—the realist novel. This might depend on the fact that the in-
fluence from the older narrative prose forms is often downplayed in tradi-
tional literary histories. But Harish Trivedi notes that the novel in India
was given names from older narrative traditions, thus marking a heritage
not observed from the point of the master genre. 43 In a similar vein Sudipta
38 Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel, p. 195.

39 Jonathan Arac notes in a critical reading that it is important for Moretti's argument that
the local scholars are independent, "that each develop his or her argument directly from
their limited materials," "Anglo-Globalism?" in New Left Review 16 (2002), p. 39.
40 Meenakshi Mukherjee, "Interrogating Post-Colonialism," in Harish Trivedi and Meen-
akshi Mukherjee (eds.), Post-Colonialism: Theory, Text and Context (Shimla: Indian In-
stitute of Advanced study, 1996), p. 4. Compare Per Erik Ljung's discussion of Edward
Shils's intellectuals in India in this volume.
41 Harish Trivedi notes that this was a traditional way of understanding the Indian novel in
different languages, it "was seen as suffering from a deficiency that the West supplied,"
"The Progress of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation," in Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures
in History, p. 1000.
42 "Novels shaped by British history, or the geography of Paris: how can Italian, Russian,
Brazilian readers enjoy them? Because they are all caught up in the same world-histori-
cal whirlwind? True, true...," Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel, p. 192.
43 "Thus, although the novel may have been a new literary form in India it was, as a form of
complex prose narrative, quite old and traditional, in fact, a purana." Harish Trivedi,
"The Progress of Hindi," in Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History, p. 1000. —
Meenakshi Mukherjee made this observation as early as in Realism and Reality: The
Novel and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1985), p. 12.
Kaviraj observes that the Bengali novelists used "the basic repertoire of
earlier literary traditions." 44 Some distortions in the understanding of these
traditions are often made when they are absorbed into the novel tradition. 45
Thus, the traditional way of conceiving the novel and its literary tech-
niques reduces the importance of genres, readings and changes independ-
ent of the West. The uniqueness and individuality of works from different
literatures is of course obscured. These are not innocent descriptions ac-
cording to postcolonial scholars: "any theoretical reflection on the epi-
stemic gestures through which Europe came to be constituted as a univer-
sal force must, given its 'real-life' consequences, be read as political," ar-
gues Simon Gikandi. 46 To take a paradigm or genre for granted might be
the wrong step.
It must then be possible to read deviations or failed imitations in other
ways than Moretti. The history of translation in India has generated ques-
tions about novel readers as a way of understanding why the novel took the
forms it did in the country. One answer could be that there was no distinct
middle class in India who read novels during the nineteenth century. The
readership was predominantly male, connected to the cities and it was ex-
tensive. 47 There are some common elements in the novels they preferred to
read. The most obvious one was that it "lacked" the form of the modern
novel, that is realism. In fact, British realism had "little explanatory or so-
cializing power to offer. The caste, class, colonial, and gender hierarchies
in India left little room for social or economic mobility, romantic love, or
domestic autonomy." The antirealist aesthetic was more familiar and
"bridged the gulf between the premodern world and modernity." 48 Thus,
we are back in the temporal ordering of the world, but the particular situa-
tion in parts of India shows the impossibility of inserting this history in the
traditional narrative of evolutionary stages.
44 Sudipta Kaviraj, "The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal," in Pollock (ed.), Lit-
erary Cultures in History, p. 506.
45 Compare Gunilla Lindberg-Wada about the Japanese monogatari in vol. 2 in this series.
46 Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism
(New York: Columbia UP, 1996), p. 6.
47 Priya Joshi, "Culture and Consumption: Fiction, the Reading Public, and the British
Novel in Colonial India," in Book History 1:1 (1998), p. 211. According to the Census of
1881, female literacy in India was 0.3 percent, male literacy was 6.6. Das on the other
hand, claims that the literature from this period was written by and for the middle class,
p. 44.
48 The two last quotations from Joshi, pp. 211-213. Compare the situation in China, in
Marja Kaikkonen's article in volume 4 in this series.
The use of old literary techniques and genres, like the romance, includ-
ing the seizing of a proud past, could in fact be read as a gesture of cultural
opposition and thus be necessary elements in the novel, as Mukherjee has
shown concerning Tagore. He writes:
We had to learn with dates, the detailed account of how India has always
been defeated and humiliated by other races from the time of Alexander to
the time of Clive. In this desert of shame the only oases were the stories of
Rajput valour. Everyone knows how in those days Bengali novel and drama
eagerly milked every drop of inspiration that Tod's Annals of Raj es than
could provide. This reveals the extent to which we were starved of some-
thing that would sustain our self-esteem. 49
Another way of looking at the novel form could be to assume that there
exists no given norm for the novel. That the novel genre is amorphous and
difficult to define is well known, and this of course makes its triumphal
story debatable. "In an important sense, then, to speak of the 'novel' as
written in Indian languages not only in its early stages but perhaps even
now is to subscribe to the many assumptions about the very form and the
role of the genre in the West that do not apply to its development in India,"
concludes Trivedi. 50
The traditional narrative pattern is especially distorting when literary
transcultural techniques are analysed. One of the principal ways of discuss-
ing literary interactions in the histories is, as we have seen, to analyse liter-
ary techniques such as adaptations in the novels. These techniques are of-
ten placed in the evolutionary model. But transpositions, as for example
such complex processes as imitations, adaptations and parody, are old as
well as central literary devices that in a productively formal way have been
investigated and classified as modes of transtexuality by scholars like
Gerard Genette. 51 Sisir Kumar Das in his history of Indian literatures does
not abandon the evolutionary outline but still finds a greater explanatory
value outside it when he refers to the Bengali writer Bankimchandra, who
defended literary loans and tried to theorize imitation as an ordinary and
important process in literary life. 52
49 Quoted in M. Mukherjee, Realism and Reality, p. 45.

50 Trivedi, in Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History, p. 1001.
51 Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, Channa Newman and
Claude Doubinsky (trans.), (Lincoln and London: Nebraska UP, 1997).
52 Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature 1911-1956, Struggle for Freedom: Tri-
umph and Tragedy (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1995), p. 399.
Perhaps the narrative of diffusion in the literary histories could be created

because its writers in a general way stress similarities rather than differences.
This concerns the understanding of the novel as well as of modernity and is
of course a general problem when you deal with intercultural comparisons.
The first generations of comparativists emphasised comparisons in order to
find similarities between texts and these similarities were often explained as
the result of influence. Later the complexities of the interactions were
stressed, but this is not always obvious in literary histories. In this volume,
Stephan Larsen studies a number of African texts using European hypotexts:
"there is among them no case of simple 'influence' in the traditional
sense." 53 The reflection seems relevant also for Gail Ramsay in these vol-
umes. In the Gulf, she writes, the word muthäqafa, illuminates the compli-
cated literary intercultural exchange, "entailing the coalescence between the
traditional Arabic literary heritage and modern Arabic literature as well as
foreign elements of style and genre resulting in new literary forms."
A similar perspective could be adopted concerning translations. These
play a crucial role in intercultural transfer. We will touch upon a few of the
dilemmas in these volumes in order to stress the importance of translation
studies in new literary histories, and we understand translations as part of a
wider theoretical framework than the traditional questions of faithful ren-
dering of an origin might imply. 54 To take only one example. Aditya Behl
discusses the implications of, for example, translating "Allah" into "Ish-
war": "then I am not only translating between Arabic and Sanskrit, but also
making a statement of equivalence over what some would say is an un-
bridgeable social and ideological difference." 55 (This cultural aspect of
translation is discussed by Kockum and Holmberg in this volume.) The
translation activity also has a variety of meanings, status and functions in
different cultures. Tulsi Das, a Hindi translator from the sixteenth century,
is considered the greatest poet ever in Hindi after his translation (or trans-
creation or rewriting) of Ramayana,56
53 Compare M. Mukherjee's view that the novel in India cannot be understood as a simple
transplantation of European models, The Perishable Empire, p. 3.
54 From a postcolonial perspective, Gayatri Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha lay the basis in
Outside in the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993), and The Location of Cul-
ture (London and New York: Routledge, [1994] 1997) respectively. According to Bhab-
ha "we should remember that it is the 'inter'—the cutting edge of translation and negoti-
ation, the inbetween space— that carries the burden of the meaning of culture," p. 38.
55 Aditya Behl, "Premodern Negotiations: Translating between Persian and Hindavi," in
Rukmini Bhaya Nair (ed.) Translation, Text and Theory: The Paradigm of India (New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 89.
56 Bassnett and Trivedi (eds.), "Introduction," in Postcolonial Translation, p. 10.
A variation of the problem concerning similarities and differences can

be noted in the treatment of Natsume Söseki's Japanese novel Kokoro
(Heart), from 1914, which is now regarded as a classic. In Neues Hand-
buch, Söseki is presented as the writer of existential despair; his novel was
immediately perceived as strikingly modern (NH 23, p. 421). He describes
human alienation—or man's inner division, as it is written in Litteraturens
historia—and there follows: "From the powerlessness of the old world to
the modern human's burden—it was the same theme which dominated the
European literature at the turn of the century. Japan had caught up with the
West" (LH 5, p. 377). The temporal development perspective is visible
again and the perception of the novel is the prevalent one. What is prob-
lematic with these readings? In an article with the telling title "Writing Out
Asia" James A. Fujii stresses that the native context, the native history, dis-
appears, that is, Japan's colonial connections with the rest of Asia. Conse-
quently, the specific conditions for Japanese modernity and nation vanish
as well. These gave rise to the text and to the sense of lost history, which so
strongly colours Japan's experience of the modern. Focus in the criticism
is thus on the growing individualism instead of on the greater forms of mo-
dernity, maintains Fujii. From a Japanese perspective, history becomes re-
ductive; from a global, the role of West as distributor of modernity and
thus the novel is fixed. 57
Stressing differences instead of similarities could be a way out of the
comparative dilemma. (The risk here, though, is that one might reify dif-
ferences into static traits, traditions or cultures, and turn these cultures into
the exotic other.) To focus on case studies, as we do in these volumes,
shows the need for particularities as a necessary ground without which it is
difficult to make generalisations and comparisons. It also complicates the
question of reception. The traditional narrative model, as we have seen,
prescribes that the passive, stagnating or de-cultured countries in the so
called periphery acculturate Western models via imitation and adaptation.
57 James A. Fujii, Writing Out Asia: Modernity, Canon, and Natsume S öseki's Kokoro,"
in Deidre Lynch and William Warner (eds.), Cultural Institutions of the Novel (Durham
and London: Duke UP, 1996), pp. 224—25. He wants to connect the novel to the writer's
travels on the Asian continent, that is, travels in areas occupied by Japan, and "the vital
links between the discourse of nation building, Japan's colonialist behavior on the Asian
continent, and the sense of lost history that deeply colors Japan's particular experience of
the modern (and would lead to the fifteen-year Pacific war between Japan and its Asian
neighbors)," p. 225. Political traces are not lacking in the novel—only in the interpreta-
tions.
The roles of donors and receivers are assigned once and for all, and what is
received is usually assumed to be the same as what was given.
Postcolonial theories today question this way of understanding the re-
ceptive situation. It is argued that people from "the peripheries" do not
simply passively absorb ideologies, values or literary forms, but recreate
them, perhaps in a way not visible inside the traditional comparative para-
digm. The concept of hybridity has often been made to express the unde-
cidability of cultural encounters. When cultures meet and interact, a "con-
tact zone" is established that leads to the dissolution of the binary opposi-
tion between them. 58 Homi Bhabha emphasizes the way mimicry interrupts
the coherence of both Indian and British identities, for example. 59 If this is
so, it seems necessary to give questions of contacts, changes and receptions
new emphasis. This in turn might lead to a disidentification of modernity
and the West. It might no longer seem possible to discuss modernity as one
homogeneous and isolated European phenomenon. The globalisation pro-
cesses take on different shapes in different parts of the world and seem im-
possible to reduce to simple models or explanations.
One specific field within the contact zone is the way the establishment
of British cultural hegemony affects the Wirkungsgeschichte, "the impact
history" of British writers. This field demands new research, as does the re-
cycling of literary figures and themes. The problem is that an inclusion of
the impact history of literary works in a new literary history breaks the tra-
ditional linear account and perhaps the spatial as well. The problem of nar-
rativity in literary history is thus evoked.—It is difficult to decide if rewrit-
ings of Ramayana belong to Indian, Thai or Indonesian tradition, and if
Aime Cesaire's Une Tempete belongs to French, Martiniquan or English
tradition. The slave Caliban's first line in that drama is "Uhuru," meaning
"freedom"—in Swahili! It is often claimed that The Tempest has been pro-
foundly changed by all postcolonial rewritings and counterwritings. It has
become more difficult to read the text as if it only sheds light on timeless
questions.
In these volumes we suggest that modernities arise in historical situa-
tions, where interactions, contacts and confrontations between cultures are
decisive. From this perspective, it is meaningful to point out that the realist
58 Bassnet and Trivedi (eds.), "Introduction," in Postcolonial Translation, p. 14. Mary Lou-
ise Pratt coined the term "contact zone" in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcul-
turation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 4.
59 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 86-89.
novel in the West enters the scene at the same time as colonialism: 60
"novels appear out of the exchanges that take place across the zones of
contact where cultures and nations chaotically cross." 61 Robinson Crusoe is
often mentioned as the first novel in Europe and like Gulliver's Travels it
builds on experiences of and imaginations about other cultures. If we take
Don Quixote to be the first novel, an interesting point might be that the nar-
rator is said to be the Arabian Hamete Benengeli. Another early novel,
Aphra Behn's Oroonoko from 1688, takes place in Surinam with an Afri-
can prince in a central position. This novel is sometimes considered a mile-
stone in the evolution of the English novel. Not unexpectedly, one can note
that the perspective is common in postcolonial contexts and possible to
combine with Bakhtin's dialogical view of the novel. His key term, "het-
eroglossia," is important in this context and, as Brennan has maintained (in
part quoting Bakhtin), has a "basis in actual social life. The period of the
novel's rise is that in which:/ 'the world becomes polyglot, once and for all
and irreversibly.' " 62 We also meet, at least in Litteraturens historia but not
in the regional literary histories, a Bakhtinian perception of the function of
the genre. The novel can be said to be "the site where struggles over cul-
tural identities are most acute." 63
Our Contributions
These volumes focus mainly on literary cultures outside the Western

world. We mix survey articles with historical case studies. This is signifi-
cant. In order to make comparisons possible and to construct new generali-
sations, our studies reveal the need for precise historical contexts when
dealing with literary interactions in order to avoid the simple origin-influ-
60 Firdous Azim, The Colonial Rise of the Novel (London and New York: Routledge,
1993), p. 30. Kurt Otten in Neues Handbuch does connect colonialism and the novel, but
extracts no significance from this. He stresses the view that Defoe's work is permeated
by a cultural ethos which was later expressed in colonial conquests (NH 12, p. 270).
Moretti has changed his view of the autonomous rise of the novel in Europe in "More
Conjectures," pp. 78-79.
61 Michelle Burnham, "Between England and America: Captivity, Sympathy, and the Sen-
timental Novel," in Cultural Institutions of the Novel, p. 63.
62 Timothy Brennan, "The National Longing for Form," in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation
and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 50.
63 Deidre Lynch and William Warner, "Introduction: The Transport of the Novel," in Cul-
tural Institutions of the Novel, p. 4.
ence paradigm, since there seems to exist no passive, or solely receiving

party in cultural encounters. The articles are organized in two books, which
both contain works from different epochs and continents, historiographical
problematizations as well as transcultural explorations.
We start and end with two articles containing implicit and explicit criti-
cal reflections on our project as a whole—showing that a literary history is
always a potential field of tensions. This is obvious in concrete historical
traditions as well as in a global perspective. Per Erik Ljung opens this vol-
ume by discussing the historicity of the writing of literary histories and
other ways of performing literary memory in "Inventing Traditions." He
concentrates on the complex relationship between nation, language and lit-
erary history, thus demonstrating that the writing of a history is charged
with existential and political value whether it is written in Denmark, North
America, India, and Israel or in the imagined nation of Kurdistan. The na-
tional always seems to be created in relation and contrast to adjacent cul-
tures. Some of the cultures concerned, moreover, contain various literary
and linguistic heritages and interactions, which are either included or ex-
cluded in the histories depending on political and institutional circum-
stances. Per Erik Ljung's article aims at demonstrating the fruitful com-
parative research field of literary histories by offering readings of concrete
histories and related, sometimes, unexpected, discourses and practices.
Traditions seem constantly to need invention.
Stephan Larsen shows a precise field of tensions regarding African liter-
ary histories when he questions given categories by reflecting on space or
territory. Is it more relevant to speak of "African literature or African lit-
eratures?" he asks in his title. The first alternative emanates from a Pan-Af-
rican perspective, hence a break with colonial Africa. The latter attempts to
evade generalisations and move towards the more specific and particular,
for example examining literatures divided according to language use or tra-
ditions and conventions in different regions or nations. Larsen discusses
the strengths and pitfalls of each possibility and suggests that the study of
the literatures of the African continent might force us to revise our opin-
ions of the time-honoured categories we use in literary histories.
Literary histories often concentrate on similarities and use metaphoric
language, like periods of flourishing and decay in order to offer surveys.
Seemingly in this tradition, Keiko Kockum constructs five milestones in
the emergence of the Japanese novel in "The Role of Western Literature in
the Formation of the Modern Japanese Novel." At all of the milestones, the
Western influence seems decisive at first sight, not least in the growth of
literary journals and serialized novels. However, the need to move beyond
the diffusionist perspective, without necessarily disregarding the role of
the West, is illustrated when Kockum in rich detail discusses the rewriting
process (including translation) among Japanese authors. She further sub-
verts the traditional perspective by showing how the native roots from the
tenth and eleventh century narratives, like the monogatari (historical tale),
the nikki (diary with personal observations), and the battlefield stories, per-
meate the received literary forms. Another influence that tends to be over-
looked, is the adaptations of Chinese vernacular works of fiction during the
centuries of seclusion (1639-1868). In her conclusion, Kockum shows the
importance of the bundan (literary establishment) in screening off the
"pure" from the popular novel and as a result, insulating it from the West.
Another way of producing a survey outside traditional models is demon-
strated by Bo Holmberg in "Transculturating the Epic." Holmberg ap-
proaches the complex issue of modernisation in the Arab Middle East in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through a study of the preface
to a single book, Sulaymän al-Bustänf s preface to his translation or, in
fact, arabisation of the Iliad, published in Cairo in 1904. Holmberg's con-
textualization stretches from precise observations regarding the very mate-
riality of the book as a physical object to conclusions concerning what is
called the Arab Nahda or Awakening. The book, he claims, is an embodi-
ment of the desire to reassess the relationship between Europe and the
Arab world and a reinterpretation of both.
Sulaymän al-Bustäm uses the word mucarraba for "translated into Ara-
bic" (in the French version on the title page this phrase runs "traduite en
vers Arabes"). The word mucarraba, however, can also mean "arabised,"
thus making the concept of translation broad and intricate. Like Keiko
Kockum, Holmberg shows the need for studying translations as such, in
their own historical and cultural contexts. Arabisation, as well as brazilia-
nisation, africanisation and japanisation are concepts that to a degree
seem to be rooted in territories, or in cultures defined in a territorial way.
Here, however, the concepts are mainly used to focus the complexities of
reception, or to emphasize that writers from Brazil, Japan or different parts
of Africa take a theme, a genre or a particular work from another cultural
field and transform or translate it into their own culture. In this manner,
Stephan Larsen discusses in "Euro-African Dialogue" Anglophone and
Francophone African writers who at first sight could be understood as imi-
tating European works. Each of the African authors, however, has formu-
lated a riposte to a European text, developing and recasting what he has
borrowed, thus infusing new meaning into it, often a meaning diametrical-
ly opposed to the original ones. Hypertextuality, understood in this way,
"might form an essential part of the decolonization of the mind."
Our second volume begins with four articles dealing with hybridity, a
concept that has become important in the postcolonial idiom. Leif Lorent-
zon's "Something Very Light, Perhaps a Little Educative" cuts out a pre-
cise literary historical moment in Ghana, the two-year period between the
fall of Nkrumah in February 1966 and the emergence of Ayi Kwei Ar-
mah's first novel in 1968. This limited survey makes it possible not only to
observe the mere imitations that the elite novels written for foreign audi-
ences of the period turn out to be, but also a significant output of popular
novels in English. Contrary to expectations perhaps, something new and
daring appears in these popular, locally published novels, a specific hy-
bridity where local discourses meet with foreign ones on equal premises.
Hybridity as a way of contesting Western cultural hegemony is elaborat-
ed on the other hand when Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega in "Amerindian and
European Narratives in Interaction" exposes the intertextual dialogue be-
tween the old foundational pre-Columbian or colonial texts and modern
Latin American novels and their reciprocal impressions of cultural differ-
ences. In the modern novels, a powerful fusion between Amerindian
themes and techniques, such as "nahualismo" (used in ancient Mayan oral
narratives), and modern Western themes develop into the diverse kinds of
realismo mägico. Here metaphor and metamorphosis converge to represent
magic as fictional reality. Magic realism became a successful narrative in-
vention, an example of "an equal exchange of literary experiences and
techniques [...] not only with the West but also with the entire world."
Margareta Petersson, provides a background to the hybridity concept as
an aspect of globalisation in her article, "Hybridity in Indan English Litera-
ture." She demonstrates that a shift in the understanding of the status of
(Indian) culture has also affected the appreciation of Indian English litera-
ture. The hybridity concept is decisive in this development but seems itself
to have lost its specificity in the process and Petersson questions its current
usefulness in interpretive work. Stefan Helgesson takes a step further when
he argues for the notion of doubleness or cultural semiosis instead of hy-
bridity, "as a productive disturbance in our epistemological procedures" in
our understanding of modernities. He bases his argument on readings of lu-
sophone literature from Angola and Mozambique.
In this volume we discuss spatial metaphors in literary histories. In the
following volume we conclude with four articles explicitly or implicitly fo-
cusing temporal metaphors concerning modernisation and globalisation as

complicated impacts from the West. We connect with not only literary his-
tory but also literature as national discourse. One way of understanding the
temporal dynamics of modernity, according to Helgesson in "Modernism
under Portuguese Rule," is to expand the traditional scope and see the de-
velopment in Europe as part of a global course, where Europe does not play
any obvious leading part. "Nobody can claim ownership of modernity."
Marja Kaikkonen argues in "The Detective in the Service of the Em-
peror, the Republic, and the Communist Party" that literature, specifically
the detective story, narrates something relevant about the modernisation
process in China. The Western detective novel was introduced in China in
the late nineteenth century and had a peak in the 1920s, a period of politi-
cal changes. It replaced the thousand-year-old tradition of public case
stories but was soon in its turn superseded by Soviet thrillers, the detective
novel then scornfully understood as entertainment literature and named
"Mandarin-Duck-and-Butterfly-school literature." These three types of
"detective fiction" reveal different ideas about man and society. One rea-
son why the Western genre became interesting in China was the transfor-
mation of the role of the "detective" from an elevated half divine judge re-
lying on dreams in his investigations in the public case studies, to an image
(or role model) of an individualistic and independent detective, a modern
man, successfully using rational empirical methods, thereby embodying a
desirable modern mentality.
In the same spirit, Christina Nygren demonstrates in "Appropriations of
European Theatre in Japan, China and India" that the introduction of the
Western drama in three dissimilar regions in Asia became a tool for social
and political expressions. In Japan the introduction was seen as a part of a
democratisation process, in China it was a political tool to advocate
progress and modernisation, later changed into revolutionary goals. In In-
dia it was used to strengthen nationalism in resistance to British colonial-
ism. Her focus on receptions and comparisons between three different cul-
tural worlds shows that the Western drama that was received in China, Ja-
pan and Bengal was in many ways different from what was transmitted
from Europe—and from one cultural context to another. Like Leif Lorent-
zon, she finds interesting artistic experiments rather in the popular than in
the elite culture that seems to be more bound by conventions. The popular
theatre turns out to be a subversive and powerful medium.
A more ambiguous inflection of modernity is forgrounded in Roberta
Micallef's and Gail Ramsay's articles. In "Globalization and Cross-Cul-
tural Writing in the United Arab Emirates and Oman," Ramsay reads mo-
dernity in the Gulf region after the 1970s as promoting nationalism and as
expressing an (indecisive) apprehension, evoking emotions of uncertainty,
insecurity and absurdity. She focuses on short stories and shows that liter-
ary activities have received an explicit role in the modernisation process
and the creation of a national cultural identity. Modernisation is not only
read as Westernisation, however. Instead, the new literature functions in a
certain opposition to the economic globalisation among writers and critics.
They search for connections outside Western cultural hegemony or a return
to old native sources. Literature thus functions as a multaqce, "a meeting
point, for cultural and literary cross-currents spanning vast historical
epochs and geographical spaces."
Roberta Micallef highlights a specific historical moment on the Turkish
cultural scene—the 1990s—when there was a dramatic increase in publica-
tions about Turkish identity in "Cultural Encounters in Contemporary
Turkish Children's Literature: Victims or Heroes?" Partly connected with
the independence of the Turkic states of the former Soviet Union in 1999,
partly with the complicated relation to the European Union, "the question
of identity was gaining momentum in Turkey" and the modernisation
project appeared to be in a crisis. We meet a search for old, authentic roots
common to all the Turkish people, embodied in the epics—a flourishing
genre used as a site of resistance to (colonialism and) globalisation. Mi-
callef here examines two contradictory depictions of identity in children's
literature and sees them as results of situations depending on different cul-
tural encounters and imaginations. According to Micallef, hybridity is not
an option in the configuration of guest workers in Germany, since it equals
cultural extermination. But there are different inflections in the texts de-
pending on whether the characters need a homeland to return to or an iden-
tity that allows for expansion and movement.
In the "Going Global: An Afterword" Stefan Helgesson reflects on the
whole project, of which our two volumes are a part. He starts by discussing
two basic concepts, literature and globality, their respective epistemologi-
cal problems and the relation between them. He sees four paradigmatic op-
tions for the possibility of globalising literary studies, the archival, the
canonical, the formal and the circulational. These concepts all define the
object of study, that is literature for a history. Helgesson contrasts maxi-
malist prospects (archives, most useful for libraries) with minimalist
(canons, important for teachers) as one way of globalising. The other main
routes foreground the constructedness of the approach. Helgesson here
contrasts form and history. The stipulation of formal classifications is

methodologically strict and make global comparisons possible, while in-
stances of how literature enters into transnational circulations, on the other
hand, are less strict and emphasize the historicity also of global studies.
This project, as a whole, takes the second route and points to different acts
of construction in writing a literary history.
Conclusion
The main result of our studies in these volumes is the observation of the
historicity of concepts and of literary interactions, obvious when pasts are
constructed to suit a specific narrative, whether it is a narrative of diffu-
sion, of literary evolution or of the richness of the multicultural/ hybrid
condition.
The use of narrative and its precise meaning when the writing of literary
histories is concerned needs reflection. Often narrative seems to have re-
placed concepts such as coherence, consistency or logic. Strictly speaking,
though, these concepts might belong to different domains. The limitations
of chronology, continuity and coherence are well known. 64 Alternatives
have not yet been developed. Sheldon Pollock, for example, draws atten-
tion to one detail, the fact that no other term besides "ethnohistory" exists
to describe "alternative narratives of temporality." 65
Litteraturens historia and Neues Handbuch could be said to represent
two different models of presentation in history writing. In the former, liter-
ary history is represented from a fairly homogeneous perspective, even if
in some ways the many inserted pictures and captions open the pages for
more voices. In Neues Handbuch, a number of small narratives are col-
lected. Both approaches have advantages, address different goals and have
a different theoretical basis. If experts deal only with their own specific
areas, the risk is that comparisons are made difficult or are isolated in spe-
cific volumes, such as in volume 5 of Neues Handbuch. It might be pro-
ductive to work both with some sort of overarching narrative and with sev-
eral smaller narratives. A number of specific histories might be neces-
sary—the question of translations, of specific writers and groups or spe-
64 Doris Bachmann-Medick, "Is There a Literary History of World Literature," in Herbert

Grabes (ed.) Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 17 (Tübingen:
Gunter Narr Verlag, 2001), p. 369.
65 Pollock, "Introduction," Literary Cultures in History, p. 19n.
cific moments or themes—in order to follow the impact history of a

literary work or to trace, say, Eliot in India and Tagore in Europe. By way
of example, the narrative of hybridity, as opposed to the narrative of diffu-
sion of Western literary forms and genres, suggests a dislocation of the
usual focus in literary histories on the site of literary production to that of
reception.
Some sort of historical and comparative perspective, some form of em-
plotment or common problematic, seems essential, however. Perhaps the
problem could be expressed in another way. Maybe we do not need one
strong narrative with a great demand for explanations and causes, easily
reverting to traditional paradigms of evolution, diffusion and teleology (re-
garding for instance the novel). We do need coherence, however, other-
wise diverse, important threads are endangered and discordant tools risk
being used for the same kind of genre or problem. The need for coherence
is obvious if you regard the discrepancies between different parts of Neues
Handbuch. In the article about African literature, negritude is said to bring
renewal of the French language: words get new meanings or new associa-
tions (NH 21, p. 496). However, this is not mentioned in the articles deal-
ing with modern French literature. One can notice the same statement and
the same deficiency regarding the revitalization of the English language
through literature from the former colonies (NH 21, p. 500). One reason
might be that history never reaches contemporary times. The modern Eng-
lish literature dealt with in the histories dates to between the wars and the
French literature ends with Existentialism and Beckett. The white luso-
phone writers from Africa are not treated in the African section in Neues
Handbuch, since they are said to belong to Portuguese literature. However,
the Portuguese part of the history only reaches up to 1918, so these prose
writers are lost (NH 21, p. 487).
We need coherence then, but maybe not one overarching narrative, ra-
ther several competing or partly competing voices. We need the friction
between translated similarites made universal and local differences. The
question of balance is difficult: one needs to give some sort of historical
thickness to each literary culture and at least to some of its works. Deep
analyses of short periods of time, of one single work, of one specific trans-
lation or receptive situation or of one performance disrupt neat generalisa-
tions. The story of the novel will multiply if we do not subsume all prose
narrative in the world under categories such as novels and short stories.
In these two volumes we have no simple solutions to the problems of
writing new literary histories but we try to complicate the given narrative
pattern by reading literature and literary histories during the last two centu-
ries in concrete historical contexts, giving at the same time a diachronic
perspective on literary changes in the world outside the West, changes that
have often been comprehended as a synchronic and uniform westernisa-
tion. These two volumes try to show some of the different voices and areas
possible. The studies have arisen from a widespread sense of the inade-
quacy of traditional paradigms. We want to uncover questions that must in-
form new writings of global literary histories. We also want to develop
some more heterogeneous models for the study of cultural interactions than
imitation, derivation and Anglicisation. Coming from different disciplines,
we see our non-uniformity as a strength and write in various idioms,
though reasonably consonant with each other. We understand several of
the theoretical terms as terms under discussion and have not homogenized
their usage.
PER ERIK LJUNG
Inventing Traditions:
A Comparative Perspective on the
Writing of Literary History
Literary history—according to a recent specialist encyclopledia—is a

"[tjemporally articulated complex of texts and text corpora (works) as well
as the account of them in a synchronic and diachronic perspective, often
under inclusion of other forms and expressions (other symbolic forms) as
well as actions related to literature.'" To this distinct and clear definition
two points can be added if one is to make some reflections on the historici-
ty of the writing of literary history and the inventing of traditions.
First, "the account of them" always has a historicity of its own. And,
second, the writing of literary history is interwoven with other discourses
and practices surrounding it, such as research, education, and cultural poli-
tics.
The first point is easy to make: a literary history from the late nineteenth
century, say Francesco de Sanctis's impressive and influential one-man's-
work Storia della letteratura italiana from 1872, is in many respects very
different from the collectively organized, James Russel Lowell-prize
awarded A New History of French Literature, edited by Denis Hollier
1989. The second point is equally self-evident. The discourses are per-
formed in situations, very often close to the literature itself, not in the sense
that the distinctions between the texts and the account of them are blurred,
but in the sense that they are embedded in the same historical and context-
ual situation.
1 Jörg Schönert, "Literaturgeschichte," in Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissen-

schaft: Neubearbeitung des Reallexikons der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Harald
Fricke et. al. (eds.), 2 vols, to date, vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
2000), pp. 454-55.
Inventing Traditions 31
My aim here is to show the relevance of maintaining a comparative per-

spective when matters of writing literary history and related practices are
discussed. After some reflections on the concepts of the general and the
comparative within literary studies, I will give some examples on how
existential and political dimensions are involved in issues concerning liter-
ary history for writers and scholars around the world today. From here I go
on to suggest some levels of inquiry. First of all, broadly, how values as-
sociated with literature are manifested in visual phenomena like street-
names, stamps and monuments. Then—closer to the texts themselves—
paradigms and models will be exposed, above all the "historicist" one,
which brings structure to the discourse of literary history. An important as-
pect here is the negotiation between the national and the international that
takes place as soon as new traditions are invented; some scholars have
even suggested "laws" operating in these processes. Finally, I shall briefly
mention the possibility of rhetorical and stylistical analyses.
General and Comparative
La synthese en histoire litteraire: Litterature comparee et litterature gene-

rale is the title of an article by Paul Van Tieghem 1921, promoting the con-
cept of "general literature" to oppose the isolated and isolating study of in-
fluences between writers or literatures. Rene Wellek—in his discussion of
the terms—does not find this distinction viable, and prefers "comparative
literature," which already has, he says, "the immense merit of combating
the false isolation of national literary histories." Tieghem and Wellek,
however, agree in assuming the unity of the Western European literary tra-
dition. "It [comparative literature] is obviously right (and has brought a
mass of evidence to support this) in its conception of a coherent Western
tradition of literature woven together in a network of innumerable inter-
relations," Wellek says. German Literaturwissenschaft (not to mention
"science of literature"), on the other hand, gives false signals in the system-
atic direction, while "Literary scholarship" seems to him to exclude criti-
cism, evaluation, and speculation. 2 Anyway, the "general," in the sense of
the "theoretical," has become a central dimension in the advanced study of
2 See Rene Wellek, Concepts of Criticism, in Stephen G. Nichols Jr. (ed.), (New Haven
and London: Yale UP, [1963] 1969), quotations from respectively, pp. 262; 282; 2;
Tieghem's article was published 1921 in Revue de synthese historique 31 (1921).
32 Per Erik Ljung
literature over the last decades; ever since the 1960s there has even been an
expansion of the "theory of literature" to what has been called "literary
theory," that is, broader interdisciplinary reflections on the conditions of
subject, writing, fiction, and knowledge. 3 The comparative aspect, how-
ever, has not attracted the same amount of analytical attention. World lit-
erature, which Goethe as well as Karl Marx saw emerging during the early
nineteenth century, and which the great literary scholars of the compara-
tive school wished to embrace in their study, became a more ideologically
loaded concept during the second half of the twentieth century. 4 After all it
tended to mean "our" Western literary heritage, plus one or two Indian dra-
3 Cf Vladimir Bid's account of the distinction in the preface to his Literatur- und Kultur-
theorie: Ein Handbuch gegenwärtiger Begriffe (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Ver-
lag, 2001) or Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford and
New York: Oxford Press, 1997).
4 Goethe, who is supposed to have coined the term, never gave any definitive definition of
it. "Ja, er ging offenbar geflissentlich einer prägnanten Formulierung und Verdeut-
lichung aus dem Wege," (Actually, he seems consciously to have avoided a pregnant for-
mulation and explication,) Fritz Strich writes in his classical Goethe und der Weltlite-
ratur (Bern: A. Francke AG Verlag, 1946), p. 15. One has to consider the use of it in all
the suggestions that are put forth in articles, reviews, prefaces, speeches, diaries and let-
ters, Strich says. "Sie umfasst alles, wodurch sich die Völker auf literarischem Wege ge-
genseitig kennen, verstehen, beurteilen, schätzen und dulden lernen, alles was sie auf
literarischem Wege einander näherrückt und verbindet. Sie ist ein literarischer Brücken-
bau über trennende Ströme, ein geistiger Strassenbau über trennende Gebirge." (It con-
sists of everything through which peoples learn to know, understand, judge, appreciate
and endure each other by literary means, everything that makes them come closer and
connect. It is a literary bridge builder over running water, a spiritual road constructor
over awesome mountains. My trans.) Strich writes in an effort to sum up, and ends his
account with a couple of metaphors from the world of trade, which Goethe himself
prefered to use: "Sie ist ein geistiger Güteraustausch, ein ideeller Handelsverkehr
zwischen den Völkern, ein literarischer Weltmarkt, auf den die Nationen ihre geistigen
Schätze zum Austausch bringen" (ibid., p. 169). (It is a spiritual exchange of goods, an
ideal line of trade between the peoples, a literary world market where the nations put
their spiritual treasures up for interchange. My trans.) Marx, as well, makes economic
analogies in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of
the world market given a cosmopolitical character to production and consumption in
every country. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we
find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climates.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency. We have the inter-
course in every direction, universal independence of nations. And as in material, so also
in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become com-
mon property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindness become more and more im-
possible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world litera-
ture." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party in Mortimer J.
Adler (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, vol. 50, Samuel Moore (trans.), (Chica-
go: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 421. Cf. John Pizer's actualizing "Goethe's
'World Literature' paradigm and contemporary cultural globalization," Comparative Lit-
erature 52:3, Summer (2000), pp. 213-28, with a large bibliography.
mas (most often Kalidasa), with some impact on our own canon. When
this was "revealed," literary scholars could politely retreat back into the
national areas and cultivate their handling of the classics with increased so-
phistication.
The comparative concept, which once emerged as a reaction against the
national bias of the history of literature, has thus not been the focus of dis-
cussion within the discipline—at least not in Scandinavia—for a while, in
spite of the efforts of international networks and organizations of compara-
tive literature like the International Comparative Literature Association. In
a country such as Germany a more general Literaturwissenschaft does in
fact have problems in emerging as a discipline of its own. Very often there
is no "Fach" or "Fachbereich," no "Institut," in whose name the concept of
"Literaturwissenchaft" appears. Instead there are "literaturwissenschaft-
liche" sub-departments, under "Anglistik," "Romanistik" etc. "Gemessen
an der Geschichte dieser 'Nationalphilologien' ist die Konzentration auf
Fragestellungen, in denen die enge Bindung von nationalen Sprachen, Kul-
turen und Literaturen mit ihren kanonischen Texten zugunsten gemein-
samer literaturtheoretischer Problemfelder aufgegeben, tatsächlich eine
relativ neue Entwicklung. Erst in den letzten Jahren finden sich zuneh-
mend eigene Lehrstuhle für 'Komparistik' oder 'Allgemeine und Ver-
gleichende Literaturwissenschaft,' " says the "Einleitung" to a recent intro-
ductory Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft.5 Comparative literature,
so Franco Moretti has it in his provocative "Conjectures on World Litera-
ture," has not lived up to its beginnings in Goethe and Marx: "It's been a
much more modest intellectual enterprise, fundamentally limited to West-
ern Europe, and most revolving around the river Rhine (German phil-
ologists working on French literature)." 6 Although Moretti's statement is
not to be taken too seriously, it reminds us of the fact that the heterogenity
of the discipline is not to be underestimated. While the critique of the "old"
literary history in Scandinavia during the 1970s and 80s was carried out
5 "In relation to the history of these national philologies, the abandonment of the concen-
tration on issues pertaining to the narrow connection between national languages, cul-
tures and literatures and the canonical texts in favour of general theoretical problematics
of literature, is actually a relatively recent development. It is only in the last few years
that you can find professional chairs aimed at 'Comparistics' or 'General and Compara-
tive Literature,'" says the 'Einleitung' to a recent introductory Einführung in die Lite-
raturwissenschaft, Miltos Pechlivanos, Stefan Rieger, Wolfgang Struck, and Michael
Weitz (eds.), (Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1995), p. 1 (my trans.).
6 Franco Moretti, "Conjectures on World Literature," New Left Review 1, January-Febru-
ary (2000), p. 1 (down-load version 04-01-12).
34 Per Erik Ljung
from a position of ideology critique—that is a critique of the lack of histo-

ricity—the attacks in the North American context seem rather to have been
formulated from "antihistoricist positions" or even out of general hostility.
"What is shared across the spectrum of opinion is the judgment that literary
history is a kind of necessary failure. The historians consider it literary
criticism and the literary critics consider it elementary," Mario J. Valdes
says in his problematizing contribution to the Rethinking Literary History
volume from 2002. 7
The relative skepticism against the comparatist perspective—for a
couple of decades—was directed against the concept of a cohesive world
literature, as well as against the ideas of how Stoff, themes, and motifs
wander and are transformed between countries and cultures. Titles like
Goethe en France (by Fernand Baldensperger 1904) or Shakespeare und.
der deutsche Geist (Shakespeare and the German Spirit) did not seem as
subversively appealing as they could have appeared in the early twentieth
century, when the tradition from the great national heroes and founding fa-
thers among the literary historians—like George Gottfried Gervinus,
whose Geschichte der deutschen Nationallitteratur was published 1835—
1832, Francesco de Sanctis with his impressive and influential Storia della
letteratura italiana (1872), and George Saintsbury, who summarized his
works about several epochs of the literature of his country in A Short His-
tory of English Literature (1898)—dominated the scene. This tradition was
challenged by modern methodological discussion (where positivist ideals
came up against the synthesizing legacy of Hegel), and international, i.e.
European, perspectives. An important manifestation of the new approach
was to be seen at the Congres d'histoire comparee in Paris 1900; the sixth
section was dedicated to "histoire comparee des litteratures." The entire
tradition—where George Brandes's Hovedstr0mninger i det 19de Aar-
hundredes Litteratur (Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature) in
six volumes 1872-1890 was of decisive importance—is elegantly delin-
eatad in a recent work by the Swedish literary historian Carl Fehrman. 8
7 Mario J. Valdes, "Rethinking the History of Literary History," in Rethinking Literary

History: A Dialogue on Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2000), p. 63. The
antihistoricist positions are also mentioned in the contribution of Linda Hutcheon, "Re-
thinking the National Model," ibid., p. 4; cf. p. 35, note 8 about the debate.
8 Carl Fehrman, Litteraturhistorien i Europaperspektiv (Literary History in European Per-
spective), (Lund: Absalon, 1999); the French version is called Du repli sur soi au cosmo-
politisme: Essai su la genese et revolution de l'histoire comparee de la litterature, Texte
remanie et enrichi, traduit du suedois par Marianne et Jean-Francois Battail (Paris:
Michel de Maule, 2003); the German is more true to the letter, Literaturgeschichte in
However, although one may hesitate today before the harmonizing ten-
dency of the old internationalists—even the honourable Erich Auerbach
discusses how we "possess" the literature of 5000 years, where the human
Geist has been able to manifest itself—the possiblity of working compara-
tively, or rather contrastively, remains an inspiring challenge. 9 It is inter-
esting to see that David Damrosch, with all his enthusiasm for a new circu-
lational understanding of world literature, is well aware of the possible
shortcomings of such an approach. 10 The universals or invariants of litera-
ture which critics have sometimes been dreaming of "quickly shade into
vague generalities that hold less and less appeal today," he says—but
"world literature is not at all fated to disintegrate into the conflicting multi-
plicity of separate national traditions" either.11 Nevertheless it seems natu-
ral and promising to proceed via comparisons and contrasts when histories
of literature themselves are to be the object of reflection, or when the ac-
tual role of literary history or canon formation or related activities in cul-
tural processes are to be discussed.
europäischer Perspektive: Vom Komparatistik bis Kanon (trans. Simon Stuhler), (Leip-
zig and Berlin: Edition Kirchhof and Franke, 2004). See also Peter Madsen, "World Lit-
erature and World Thoughts: Brandes/Auerbach," in Christopher Prendergast (ed.),
Debating World Literature (London and New York: Verso, 2004).
9 The comparative as well the contrastive perspectives were introduced in literary and
philological studies during the 19"' century, after models from the natural sciences; the
zoologist Georges Cuvier constructed in Legons d'anatomie comparee (1800-1805) a
system of the realm of animals, by reconstructing a total view of extinct forms of animals
of which parts of skeletons were known. During the 20 th century, however, the concept
of comparative literature lost the kind of association with scientific rigeur it had for the
French scholars discussed by Fehrman or in an interesting forerunner like Hutcheson
Macaulay Posnett, whose Comparative Literature (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and
Co., 1886) was published within "The International Scientific Series," and who built his
system on sociological concepts like "Clan Literature;" "The City Commonwealth;"
"World Literature;" and "National Literature." Rather comparative literaure — as
Pizer's ("Goethe's 'World Literature' Paradigm ...") points to — has come to mean a lot
of things, ranging from the old sense to just "Great Books," above all in curricular con-
texts.
10 Cf. Stefan Helgesson, "Going Global: An Afterword," in Literary History: Towards a
Global Perspective, volume 4, where he outlines four concepts of "world literature:" the
archival; the canonical; the formal; and the circulational.
11 David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP,
2003), p. 5.
36 Per Erik Ljung
Existential and Political
Leaving academic trends aside, the seriousness of the matter becomes evi-
dent, also on a personal level. The History of Literature might at once ap-
pear as compellingly present as soon as you come to specific situations or
cases. Let me give you an example, which can seem a bit odd, but which
also has the character of an exemplum. On the fifth of December 1998
Mehmed Uzun (b. 1953, in Sweden since 1977) could be seen on Swedish
televison discussing the novel he was writing in the Kurmanji dialect of the
Kurdish language. (Kurmanji is the main dialect used by intellectuals in
the large Kurdish diaspora in Sweden). Leaving aside the complicated
question of who could be said to have written the "first Kurdish novel,"
Uzun no doubt is a pioneer in the field. The great tradition has rather been
in favour of poetry, which also attracted Uzun to begin with. The novel, on
the contrary, which is so often associated with nation-building, had a tough
start and has a long way to go, primarily due to the legal situation of the
Kurds, but also because of the decentered and fragmented cultural life of
the Kurds, scattered out as they are in different nations—Iraq, Syria, Iran,
Turkey, the former Soviet Union. 12 Kurdistan is not acknowledged as a na-
tion of its own and the Kurd language has in fact been forbidden in Turkey.
The government has even declared the language as non-existant; it is main-
tained that Kurdish is simply to be labelled "mountain Turkish."
It was amazing to listen to Mehmed Uzun and his account, within an
everyday Swedish media context. He regards himself as a person who had
been liberated as a writer in his meeting with Swedish literature and the
Swedish language—and tells how he, with the support of mentors like Jo-
hannes Edfelt and other members of the Swedish Academy, found his way
to other significant European authors.
12 The question of Kurd literature is a complex one—for instance there is a rich tradition of
short stories in other Kurd dialects than the Turkish one that Uzun refers to, in Iran and
Iraq; see Ferhad Shakely, Den moderna kurdiska novellen (The Modern Kurdish Short
Story), thesis in Iranian languages (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2001). A most inform-
ative and enlightened discussion is to be found in Hashem Ahmadzadeh, Nation and the
Novel: A Study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Discourses (Uppsala: Acta Universitas
Upsaliensis. Studia Iranica Upsaliensia, 2003); the question of "the first Kurdish novel"
is discussed at some length in p. 126-177; Uzun's novel Ront Mi na Evine Tart Mtna
Mirine (Light Like Love, Dark Like Death, 1998), trans, from Turkish to Swedish by
Claire B. Kaustell in Ljus som kärleken, mörk som döden (Stockholm: Ordfront, 2003) is
commented in pp. 282-91.
It is easy to understand that he finds it important that Kurdistan literature

should have and should receive its own history. And it is likewise under-
standable that he wants his own literary language to become enriched and
flavoured by the Kurdish language. So he went back to the area in order to
collect information and to make tape recordings of the singing tellers of
tales.13
The book where Uzun gives an account of his project is called Granat-
äppleblomning. Essäer om berättande, längtan, sorg (Flowering of Pome-
granate Apples. Essays on Narrative, Longing and Sorrow).14 If you read the
title backwards—sorrow, longing, narrative, flowering— you can imagine
how the book came about. The flowering of story-telling and singing is fun-
damentally connected with sorrow, loss, and exile. That goes for himself as
well as for his almost mythical predecessors around the Mediterranean. And
the same is characteristic of the selective affinities from the last century that
he finds; authors like Gunnar Ekelöf (the Swedish modernist poet, with his
profiled outsider-theme and his exquisite lyrical orientalism), Walter Ben-
jamin (the Jewish Marxist and Modernist) and Witold Gombrowicz (the
Polish-Argentinian "structuralist avant la lettre," according to himself). No-
where can they feel truly at home. Each one of them also establishes his own
variety of canon and his own history of literature.
"In the beginning was the voice and the word" is the title of the long es-
say where Uzun writes about the great "deng-bejs" of Kurdistan, the bards
and story-tellers whom he met in his youth and he is now trying to find in
their different present residencies around the world. He pays attention to
them in their own right as historically unique personalities, but it is also
evident that he wants qualities from their language to echo in his own
writing. In the novel RoniMina Evine Tart Mina Mirine from 1998 (Light
Like Love, Dark Like Death), one notes how these old songs—and other
materials from folklore—are perceivable on a thematic level or in the
background, but also how the sensitivity for linguistic differences is regis-
tered by the characters. As Uzun put it in another context: everything that
has to do with the Kurds tends to be political. 15
Uzun's text is not written in the smart style of the Swedish literary dis-
course of today, as the Swedish novelist Kerstin Ekman remarks in her
13 I borrow the concept from Albert Lord's classic investigation, The Singer of Tales (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1960).
14 Mehmed Uzun, Granatäppleblomning: essäer om berättande, längtan, sorg, Claire Β.
Kaustell (trans.), Kerstin Ekman (preface), (Stockholm: Ordfront,1998).
15 Cf. Ahmadzadeh, Nation and the Novel, p. 130.
38 Per Erik Ljung
preface to Granatäppleblomning. Essäer om berättande, längtan, sorg.

Uzun does not avoid a solemn tone or a rhetoric that can be perceived as
unfamiliar within our more current jargons. At the same time he leaves
room for great simplicity and beauty. It is moving to read, for instance,
about how the father listens to the forbidden broadcasting in the Kurdish
language and how happy he gets, when he hears the powerful and mystical
words, arousing memories of "the breezy summer residences in the moun-
tains, berivan, the beautiful tending girls, the shining moon, freshly rush-
ing floods, playing streams, twinkling stars, the light of the moon, deep
forests, beautiful and simple love [...]."
The same linguistic inspiration is to be noted in Uzun's brave manner
of talking about literature: the epic tone of the great bards and trouba-
dours that Uzun is telling about is heard in his own critical discourse. Or
at least that is the impression one gets. There is hardly any Swedish critic
or any contemporary critic from Western Europe who dares to write
about Homer, that his tales were "as shimmering as the blue seas" or that
his songs "flowed as uninterrupted as the rushing surgings of the waves
of the sea."
Of Uzuns badly treated co-prisoner Alihan, who manages to survive
only by singing time after time the long love epos about Siyabend and
Xece, Uzun writes that he is transformed into "a man whose song wells
forth with the same self-evident strength as the river Tigris, where it flows
ahead somewhere at the foot of the prison."
As a kind of research project the journey to Kurdistan is impressive.
Uzun spent seventeen days together with the great Rifate Dare in the Syr-
ian part of Kurdistan, listened to his voice, made tape recordings of every-
thing he was singing, and collected annotations of words and meaning. He
was deeply involved in looking for the masters of voice and improvisation,
chasing both knowledge and a language that could enrich his own writing
of novels. However, Rifate Dare never appeared where he was to be ex-
pected; he neither enjoyed parties nor participated in festivals, where eth-
nographers would make their findings. Instead he had left for one of his
two yearly wanderings around the villages, in spring and in autumn, when
it was time for harvesting. He, who himself was not able to read or write
was out there, like a Utopian historian of literature, a Kurdish Elias
Lönnroth (the great Finnish collector and editor of Kalevala), in order to
arrange new stories and songs into proper categories in "the library of his
memory for the whole history of a people"—and, in the autumn tour, also
to get his well deserved share of the harvest from certain landed proprietors
and clan chiefs, who were proud to be able to house the poet for a while. It
is—if you want—a sociological situation of literature which is not very far
from that of Homer's time!
Will the Kurds ever get their own history of literature? Would it be the
product of what Benedict Anderson has called "long distance national-
ism," typically emerging in a diaspora community which has been forced
to leave its homeland, as a result of ethnicization of political life in the
wealthy post-industrial states? 16 Do they have one? Do the Kurds, living
in so many countries and using so many different dialects and languages
in their literary creations, have so much of a common denominator as to
make it meaningful to produce a literary history? And what about one of
the other great scenes of conflict: the Balkans? Is the literary history of
Yugoslavia being rewritten these days, with new borders and nations
emerging? The one which already was fairly intricate—with its "East-
ern" epic masters (Ivo Andric and The Bridge over Drina) and its "West-
ern" modernists (like Miroslaw Krleza, who attracted so much enthusi-
asm from a critic like Jean Paul Sartre). Who are regarded as the real Al-
banians within Serbia, or Serbs within Croatia or Bosnia? Is it possible
that the Serbs have clandestinely envied the Albanians for their magnifi-
cent oral poetry? At least the latter is the impression one might get from
Ismail Kadare's phantastic and humorous novel Homer of the Mountains
where a couple of American scholars, believing that they are close to
solving the classical Question of Homer, are taken for CIA agents by Al-
banian governmental authorities. 17
As in the case of Mehmed Uzun—who has recently been prosecuted by
law in Turkey—it should be evident by now that matters of literary history
have personal, ideological, and political dimensions. The personal dimen-
sion could be demonstrated by Stephen Greenblatt, visiting the Lithuania
of his grandparents, meditating upon the celebration of Lithuanian national
identity—in his engaged reply to Linda Hutcheon in Rethinking Literary
History:
This celebration is now the principal cultural project in Lithuania, as it is in
so many of the former Soviet states: new statues of Lithuanian generals,
16 Cf. Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and
the World (London and New York: Verso, 1998), p. 73, quoted by Ahmadzadeh, Nation
and the Novel, p. 162.
17 Ismail Kadare, Bergens Homeros (Homer of the Mountains), Agneta Westerdahl (trans.),
(Stockholm: Bonniers, 1990), p. 191.
40 Per Erik Ljung
poets, statesmen, folk heroes, and intellectuals are springing up every-

where, material emblems of what Linda Hutcheon, in an important essay on
"Interventionist Literary Histories: Nostalgic, Pragmatic, or Utopian?" calls
the "teleological, narrative of continual and organic evolution" with which
literary and cultural histories "create a sense of continuity between past and
present, usually with an eye to promoting ideological consensus.'" 8
The personal reaction of Greenblatt, of course, already involves ideology.

So let the ideological dimension be illustrated by an essay written in a ra-
ther personal vein. Earl Miner, talking about "traffic between canons,"
gives an Asian example from the late nineteenth century of the ideological
power exerted by changes in literary canon formation:
Japan released a tremendous energy when it set about to adapt Western cul-
ture to its purposes. By deliberately enlarging its canons to include Western
thought and practises, Japan took over the centuries-held Chinese role as
teacher and intellectual strongarm. A new education, a new terminology,
and new literary practices were absorbed into old ones to produce Modern-
ism for east Asia. (Lu Xun, usually called China's greatest modern writer, is
but one of many Chinese who recieved his education in Japan.) 19
The political dimension, just to follow up my statement above, should al-

ready be obvious with the account of Uzun and the Kurds.
Apart from this conflictual aspect of the matter, literary history is always
a potential field of tensions within a given ideological situation. "Cultural
wars," wars of canons, competing lists of great books or books of vital edu-
cational interest; the list itself is in fact an essential textual feature of
canon. Governmental (curricular) lists in conflict with the norms of the lit-
erary institution or even the Academy, the critics' (assumedly qualified)
lists versus, or in halfhearted embraces with, the lists of the market (the
bestsellers). 20 Unlimited possibilities of choices from the inexhaustible lit-
erary domain in secondary schools within one country (or part of a coun-
ts Stephen Greenblatt, "Racial Memory and Literary History," in Rethinking Literary His-
tory: A Dialogue on Theory, p. 56; Linda Hutcheon's essay, "Interventionist Literary
Histories: Nostalgic, Pragmatic, or Utopian?" was published in Modem Language Quar-
terly 59 (1998), the quotes are from, pp. 403-04.
19 Earl Miner, "Canons and Comparatists," in Harald Hendrix, Joost Kloek, Sophie Levie,
and Will van Peer (eds.), The Search for a New Alphabet: Literary Studies in a Changing
World: In Honor of Douwe Fokkema (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company, 1996), p. 154.
20 Cf. Achim Hölter, "Kanon als Text," in Maria Moog-Grünewald (ed.), Kanon und Theo-
rie (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. W. Winther, 1977) and John Guillory, "Canon," in
Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (eds.), Critical Terms for Literary Study
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, second ed., 1995).
try)—as in the Netherlands, Flanders, or Sweden—or more strictly organ-

ized documents governing literary education, with huge lists of literary
works for compulsory reading, as in the Russian school culture 21 as well as
debates concerning new readings of older works. An important distinction
is often made in the German discussion between material canon and inter-
pretive canon ("Deutungs- Kanon," "Sinnpflege"), that is between the lists
and the more or less implicit evaluations which are articulated in, for in-
stance, literary histories and prefaces to anthologies. 22
Everywhere the writing of literary history and related practises are
framed by institutional circumstances and all the time they connect with
other discourses or are activated in unexpected situations. Sometimes liter-
ary history links itself with questions of national identity and with what, af-
ter Benedict Anderson's seminal book, is permanently called Imagined
CommunitiesΡ On other occasions it involves questions of canon and poli-
tics of culture within a more restricted educational framework. In fact, ac-
cording to the reflections of Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft in the Guide to
Chinese Literature the very notion of literature grows out of educational
contexts. "If there is a dramatic increase in the number of writings, with a
corresponding differentiation in their content and character, the texts are
likely to be subdivided into the categories of 'high' literature, professional
literature, and popular literature," they say. "Literature" will then be the
term for texts which are felt to be of general educational value and the liter-
ary canon will constitute the basic curriculum of all education. "Literature
is then regarded as having its nucleus in important writings from an earlier
period, which enjoy a special status." 24
21 The situations in the Netherlands and Flanders are touched upon in Jozien Moerbeck,
"Canons in Context," in The Search for a New Alphabet, pp. 156-161. School cultures in
Sweden; Russia; and Finland are compared in Örjan Toreil (ed.), Hur gör man en litte-
raturläsare? Om skolans litteraturundervisning i Sverige, Ryssland och Finland (How
are Readers of Literature Made? About School Literature Education in Sweden, Russia
and Finland), Report f r o m the project Literary Competence as a Product of School Cul-
ture (Härnösand: Institutionen för humaniora, rapport 12, 2002).
22 A short presentation of the extensive German discussion is given by Per Dahl, "Kanon,
Klassikere og Kritiske Udgaver," in Lars Burman and Barbro Stähle Sjönell (eds.), Text
och tradition: Om textedering och kanonbildning (Text and Tradition: On Editing Texts
and Canon Formation). Bidrag till en konferens anordnad av Nordiskt Nätverk för Edi-
tionsfilologer 12-14 oktober 2001 (Stockholm: Svenska Vitterhetssamfundet, 2002), pp.
81-82.
23 Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, [1983]
1991).
24 Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: Center for
Chines Studies, The University of Michigan, 1997), pp. 9 - 1 0 .
42 Per Erik Ljung
Education, of course, is the given mediating level between personal ex-

periences and governmental or national concepts of history. This is also
where "identity politics" is going on in a variety of practices. A central
arena in Western nation states was formal education, and in this field the
teaching of the Mother Tongue has to a large extent been connected to the
national literary heritage. For more than a hundred years Senior High
School Education in Europe remained—and still remains in many coun-
tries—the main institution for the ideological schooling of a considerable
and influential part of young people. Behind it, historically, there there has
been a long continuity of double orientation of the European school system
with its Christian and Humanist Canon—"Das Erbe der Spätantike"—and
later on its ideal of Humboldtian "Bildung." 25 In this process it is well
known that the national literature was particularly important, especially as
the national languages took over the cultural role of the classical lan-
guages. In what was later to become the German national state, for in-
stance, a move away from the reproduction of classical texts to the actual
reading of literature was initiated as early as the end of the seventeenth
century. And it accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century, as
Hans Georg Herrlitz shows in Der Lektüre-Kanon des Deutschunterrichts
im Gymnasium: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der muttersprachlichen Schul-
litteratur (1964). The national bias in the selection of literature was never
challenged; however the outcome could be very different, for exemple in
the two German speaking states, Switzerland and Austria—as shown in the
anthology Literaturdidaktik-Lektürekanon-Literaturunterricht (1990). 26
Similar investigations have been made in Denmark and Norway —the later
case is especially interesting, because the modern national state came
about in a process of liberation, which has many parallels around the world
in the post-colonial era. Here the national and the patriotic aspects received
their special drive, as Torill Steinfeld demonstrates in her Fra dansk til
norsk nasjonalliteratur. Dansk litteratur i det 19 Ärhundres norske skole
(1992), by contrasting the heavy Danish legacy and the emerging indig-
25 Cf. the short pamphlet of Martin Fuhrman, Europas Kulturelle Identität (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2002); the main source still being Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature
and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Harper, [1948] 1963).
26 Literaturdidaktik-Lektürekanon-Literaturunterricht (Didactics of Literature—Reading
Canon—Teaching Literature), Detlef C. Kochan (ed.), (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi
Β. V., 1990). Hans Georg Herrlitz, Der Lektüre-Kanon des Deutschunterrichts im Gym-
nasium: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der muttersprachlichen Schullitteratur (The Read-
ing Canon of the Teaching of German at College: A Contribution to the History of Moth-
ertounge School Literature), (Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer Verlag, 1964).
enous Norwegian literature. It is thus possible to study in detail the com-

plex canon formation, with its peculiar exclusions and inclusions. 27
Names and Values
My point, so far, is that literary history and a wider range of practises

where literary history is involved, are for many reasons worth a compara-
tive and contrastive study of its own. Now, I would like to suggest some
levels, which could be helpful in further investigations.
The inevitable ideological dimensions of writing a literary history
should give us material for a first level of inquiry when we look into a spe-
cific cultural situation. Is there—at all—a written literary history in the
country in question? When was it established, in what ideological and cul-
tural juncture? Does this formation imply identity-building by ways of
radical renegotiations of the literary legacy? As, say, in the DDR from
1945 and onwards, where an increasingly sophisticated "Erbetheorie"
(with its self-sufficient vocabulary of "Schätze," "Testamentsvollstrecker,"
"Nachlassverwalter," "Erbmasse," "völlige Verwerfen" etc.) was intended
to ensure the correct use and reception of the national heritage, 28 or in Tur-
key during its vehement and swiftly organized "modernization" in the
1920s? 29 Is the teaching of literary history an important part of the Mother
27 See also her own contribution, "Pä hjemlig grunn: Norske skolelitteraturhistorier ca.
1900-1940" (The Place of Literary Histories in Norwegian Secondary Education 1900-
1940: Textbooks, Context, Perspectives) and not least Rainar Knapas "Finsk eller svensk
nationallitteratur i Finland — litteraturhistoriska frontlinjer pä 1850- och 1860-talen"
(National Literature in Finnish or in Swedish — Frontiers in Literary History in Finland
in the 1850s and 1860s), in Per Dahl and Torill Steinfeld (eds.), Videnskab og national
opdragelse: Studier i nordisk litteraturhistorieskrivning 1-11 (Writing the Literary Histo-
ry of Scandinavia: Scholarship and National Education), (K0benhavn: Nordisk Minister-
räd, 2001).
28 "[...] where an increasingly sophisticated 'theory of legacy' (with its self-sufficient vo-
cabulary of 'treasures,' 'testament executor,' 'administrator of heritage,' 'total reject'
and so forth) [...]." (My trans.) Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der
DDR (Frankfurt a. Μ.: Luchterhand Verlag, 1993), pp. 58-62; for a full account, see
Karl Robert Mandelkow, "Die literarische und kulturpolitische Bedeutung des Erbes," in
Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (ed.), Die Literatur der DDR (München and Wien: Carl Hansen
Verlag, 1983), pp. 78-119. The volume is no. 11 in Rolf Grimminger (ed.), Hansers
Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart
(München: Hanser, 1980—).
29 See bibliography in Ingvar Svanberg (ed.), Tradition och nyskapande: turkiska spr&ket
och kulturen (Tradition and Innovation: The Turkish Language and Culture), (Lund: Stu-
dentlitteratur, 1997), p. 113.
44 Per Erik Ljung
Tongue education on higher levels of education? What is an author in that

local context?—Michel Foucault's famous question can be posed in a very
concrete way. 30 Is it possible that text is more important than the authorial
names in the Jewish tradition? This is a—possibly superficial—impression
one might receive upon learning that the names of many writers are practi-
cally unknown to a wider audience, while their books are famous, and they
themselves are actually called by the titles of their book! 31
Actually, already at the visual surface level, there are signals to note.
The authors, the names and the images of them stand for something. They
carry values. This makes them attractive in our private mythologies, but
also in broader value systems. They represent something and they stand
there, literally, as statues in our urban surroundings. The Swedish poet and
professor of Greek, Esaias Tegner (1782-1846)—who seems to be one of
the first individuals besides kings to become a statue in Sweden—watches
over the students from his position outside Lund University, as does the
liberal historian and poet Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783-1847) in Uppsala, the
other old university town. Since the late eighteenth century there has been
a myriad of monuments to literary Figures erected around Europe, a prac-
tise that was codified by Johann Gottlieb Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der
schönen Künste (1771-74). The discussion about who would be qualified
for Denkmalwürdigkeit or monumentabilita was accompanied by specified
restrictions concerning size and hierarchy. For Arthur Schopenhauer it
seemed right that poets had to be content with Büste·. "[z]war werden die
Statuen zu Pferde ausschliesslich den Herrschern gewidmet: hingegen
Männern von Genie, also Dichtern, Philosophen, Künstlern, Gelehrten,
also welche eigentlich nur mit Kopfe der Menschheit gedient haben, ge-
bührt bloss eine Büste, die Darstellung des Kopfes." 32
30 Michel Foucault, "Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?" Bulletin de la Societe Francaise de la Phi-

losophie, Juillet-Septembre (1969).
31 1 owe the information to Heidi Laura, who wrote an excellent review article in the
Danish magazine weekendavisen 9-15/1 (2004), dealing with a recent book on Jewish
book art by Ulf Haxen, Det lille mirakel: J0disk bogkunst i tusind ar (The Little Miracle:
Thousand Years of Jewish Book Art), (K0benhavn: Gyldendal, 2003); the Jewish con-
cept of textuality is discussed in Robert Alter, Necessary Angels: Traditions and Moder-
nity in Kafka, Benjamin and Scholem (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1991).
32 "[...] certainly the equestrian statues are exclusively dedicated to rulers, whereas men of gen-
ius, that is poets, philosophers, artists, scholars, those who in fact have only served mankind
with their heads, are only entitled to a bust, the representation of the head." (My trans.) Arthur
Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978), p.161; cf. Jörg Gamer,
"Goethe-Denkmäler — Schiller-Denkmale," in Η. Ε. Mittig and V. Plagemann (eds.),
Denkmäler im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutung und Kritik (München: Prestel-Verlag, 1972).
However, the rebellious August Strindberg, as conceived by the sculptor

Carl Eldh, is placed outside the fortress of the Workers' Union, ardently ges-
turing as he emerges from a cliff. To a literary historian with interests in cul-
tural history all these representations of authors are of great interest. On the
nineth of June, 1889, the monument to the philosopher Giordano Bruno—
burnt alive in 1600 for his heretical world view—was uncovered in Rome,
under vehement protests from the entire Catholic world. A decade earlier he
had entered the Storia della litteratura italiana by Francesco de Sanctis, the
great literary historian of II Risorgimento, as "un santo della scienza." The
epithet signifies Bruno's double status as a prophet and martyr of the religion
of the new age and at the same time as a secular political symbol. 33
The names are placed on banknotes—in Sweden: Selma Lagerlöf, who

else? In the Czech Republic there is, at least Bozena Nemecovam. In Esto-
nia today you can find, for instance, Anton Hansen-Tammsaare, Lydia
Koidula and Carl Robert Jakobson—all of them nineteenth century writers,
associated with the national "awakening." They represent certain values—
and they remind us in a very concrete way of the fact that the concept of
representation emerged in contexts of trade, as payment in cash, as the
proper equivalent. They provide names for streets. In Sweden there are
parts of cities where literary history is practically and systematically spread
out over the urban space. Today you will rather find the names in restau-
rants or on T-shirts.
And we have them on stamps. There one finds not just writers of great na-
tional significance, authors who are associated with national liberation strug-
gles (sometimes also with national anthems) in the nineteenth century, like
Mickiewics in Poland and Petöfi in Hungary. Homage is payed in unusual
locations: you can see Walt Whitman in Bulgaria, Jules Verne in Nicaragua,
Rudyard Kipling in the Republic of Central Africa, Pablo Neruda in Poland.
What about Zimbabwe? I don't know, but quite a few African states have an-
nected Goethe for their stamps.34 In Angola you would find Agostinho Neto
as poet and president on stamps and bills. It is no exaggeration to claim that
literary history is a condition for the appearance of the images on the stamps;
without literary history the image would be pointless.
33 On Bruno and his position among de Sanctis's heroes, see Rene Wellek, A History of
Modem Criticism: 1750-1950 vol. 4: The Later Nineteenth Century (London: Jonathan
Cape, [1965] 1970), p. 113.
34 Peter Luthersson, "Litterär Kanon och Filateli," (Literary Canon and Philately) Res Pub-
lica 4 6 - 4 7 (1999) and Agora 3 - 4 ( 1 9 9 9 ) .
46 Per Erik Ljung
Discussing stamps and names of authors in the above manner may seem
superficial and simplistic. On the other hand it seems as hard to deny that
the socially institutionalized uses of names have some significance. Some-
times they can tell you a lot. If you ask people about books or authors that
have been of great importance on a personal level, you will probably get
answers that say something about the use and status of literature. This
came to mind while I was reading the important Provincializing Europe.
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference by Dipesh Chakrabarty
(2000).35 At the same time I happened to read a sociological report on In-
dian intellectuals from the early 1960s.
First of all one notes the title of Chakrabarty's book—in many respects
it is about time to do exactly that: to provincialize Europe. For example to
become aware of some of the parochial ways of treating authors and using
their names. Such a Verfremdung doesn't immediately implicate a political
critique, as in the 60s when one of the most seminal books in the Swedish
intellectual debate was called An Unfair Reflection (1966). It was written
by the poet and critic Göran Palm, who in his way tried to "provincialize"
Western (and especially Swedish) patterns of thought, by reversing some
everyday ideological key concepts. Chakrabarty, on a more advanced
theoretical level, does not intend to make any drastic counter-movement,
but to denaturalize and question some of our analytical perspectives and
concepts, including "progressive" Marxist analytical terms like "abstract
labor," "use value," "real subsumption," and the more recent "imagina-
tion" of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.
Emphasizing the non-sensationalist character of Chakrabarty's project,
one should, on the other hand, not forget that we are no more than a couple
of decades away from a time when historians could, without excuses—and
without protests—claim that almost everything but the West and its me-
tropolises was "provincial," with small Western informed elites living
within a vast "domestic culture of kinship, tribe and religious outlook." "At
present, the whole intellectual world outside the West, even the most crea-
tive parts of that world, is in a state of provinciality," Edward Shils could
state as late as 1961 in a discussion about intellectuals and their situation in
India. 36 They still remain "outsiders" vis-ä-vis the ruling authorities, in tra-

ference (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), references are made by page number.
36 Edward Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: the Indian Situation,
Comparative Studies in Society and History. Supplement I (The Hague: Mouton and Co.,
1961), p. 13 (italics mine).
dition and governement, and, as Shils puts it, they act in a society "which is
still largely traditional and in which the traditions are not part of the matrix
of a modern intellectual tradition, and in which, finally, the problems of the
relation between province and metropolis in the worldwide intellectual
community have not yet found a happy resolution." 37
Shils's account—after interviews with over 500 Indian intellectuals and
other kinds of research 38 —gives a lot of information and historical back-
ground, but it also, in an ideologically revealing way, insists on its metrop-
olis/province image. The gap between metropolis and province within In-
dia herself is worse than that between Britain and India, it is said, and one
of the problems in those early years of emancipation from Britain, was the
total reliance upon the metropolis. "The universities in the provinces are
modelled on those of the metropolis, down to the syllabi of study, the re-
quired textbooks and, sometimes, even the questions on examinations." 39
One could guess that this goes for the teaching of literary history as well.
Now, Shils's analysis of the conditions of the emergence of an intellect-
ual class in India—which is neither to be discussed or evaluated here—is
not mentioned by Chakrabarty. His "provincializing" effort is of a totally
different character, but it is worth remembering that the seemingly self-
evident and unproblematized view of Shils, regarding what is "metropoli-
tan" and what is "provincial" is not situated very far away or long ago—
i. e. if progress and above all a Western designed concept of modernity are
the teleological given goals of history.
One of the situations that Chakrabarty examines is the position of Ra-
bindranath Tagore among his Indian fellow writers. The great Tagore, of
whom everything was expected, was criticized for a period for not having
accomplished what Baudelaire did for European modernism—that is, he
did not take modern life into poetry and he was even accused of lacking a
true sense of actual reality. In the next phase he would be accused of not
being a "real" Bengali, but an exoticizing artist, who even possessed a
"Western" character. A celebrated Indian scholar pronounced a sharp ver-
sion of the opinion in a letter to Tagore's biographer, Edward Thomson:
"Bengal has not given Rabindranath to Europe—rather Europe has given
him to the Bengalis. By praising him, European scholars praise their own
37 Ibid., p. 14.
38 Ibid., p. 63.
39 Ibid., p. 86; cf. Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule
in India (New York: Columbia UP, 1989).
48 Per Erik Ljung
gift." 40 In the 1960s it was said that Bengali literature in the hands of
Tagore "turned occidental in all but speech." But the issue is complicated
by the fact that Tagore is not only "occidental" in certain ways, he is also
anti-modern right through; he is anti-capital, anti-office and, not the least,
anti-tramcar. The Bengali poets of the 1930s turned to Baudelaire, Eliot,
Pound, Hopkins, rather than to Tagore; i. e. they were "Western" as well,
just not in the specific blend of Tagore, where European romanticism
melted with Hindu metaphysics.
From a conservative or liberal British point of view, the dedication to
the great European and above all English literature that Chakrabarty men-
tions could of course appear flattering. In Edward Shils's 1961 report on
Indian intellectuals there is an account of a meeting with a swami in a
saffron robe in Madras, who suddenly burst out quoting Wordsworth's
Prelude in a conversation. Did he still read English literature? Shils asked.
Of course he didn't, but "more than thirty years ago he had studied it in
Presidency College where a 'wonderful teacher' had instilled in him an im-
perishably loving memory of English literature." 41 The anecdote gives
Shils an opportunity to give an account of a symposium just after the Sec-
ond World War on Books That Have Influenced Me (the results were later
presented in a book by Srinivasa Sastri, C. V. Raman et al., with that title).
Among the contributors were some of the more eminent academic and po-
litical nobilities of the older generation of that time.
Here are some of the influential authors: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats,

Byron, Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau, George
Eliot, Shakespeare, Burke, J. S. Mill, Morely, R. L. Stevenson, Hardy,
Ruskin, Meredith, Plato (above all, The Trial and Death of Socrates),
Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo, Anatole France, Tolstoy, Edward Arnold
(The Light of Asia), James Martineau, Herbert Spencer, James Frazer, Tyn-
dall, Τ. H. Huxley, Renan, Shaw, Ibsen, etc. The twelve symposiasts men-
tioned about one hundred and eighty individual authors or particular books
like the Iliad or Robinson Crusoe. Only one-fifth of the books cited were
Continental or Indian (of these approximately half were Indian—only three
were modern Indian literary figures, the others being religious classics or
modern religious reformers). All the rest were authors in the English lan-
guage, the overwhelming majority British, and an inconsequential minor-
ity—Emerson, Thoreau and Upton Sinclair, to be specific—were Ameri-
can.42
40 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 158.

41 Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity, p. 58.
42 Ibid, p. 59.
For later generations the names changed—but the structure of the canon
seems to have been intact up until the times of Shils's own investigation.
"In the educated classes in India, the understanding and appreciation of
English poetry is, if not so widespread, as perspective as it is in England or
America. The strength of feeling with which it is quoted seems to be as
great and as genuine as anywhere in the English-speaking world." The
background is sketched in the preceding paragraphs on the same page.
"Some of the Englishmen who came out to teach in India were great teach-
ers who loved their subjects and their pupils, and many of the Indian teach-
ers in government, missionary and private colleges had the same qualities.
English literature, above all, took a firm root in the Indian heart." And, as
Shils says, "The truth of the matter is that the British not only ruled India
for a long time but they also took partial possession of the Indian mind.
They did not conquer the mind of India any more than they conquered all
of the territory of India, but where they established themselves they did so
very firmly indeed." 43 The names had come to stay.
Paradigms and Models
When we approach the historiographic works themselves there are still

some general questions to pose. What kind of paradigms and modes of un-
derstanding are manifested in the composition of larger textual amounts?
It is all too easy in the recent discussions, it seems to me, to make postu-
latory statements about the "teleological," "narrative" or "national" fea-
tures of literary history in general. In fact singular literary histories expose
a range of different ways of being organized, when one comes down to the
text. However, it would be as misleading to ignore the prevailing historicist
paradigm, with its obviously immense impact.
David Perkins, in his contribution—"Literary history and histori-
cism"—to the fifth volume of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
("Romanticism"), emphatically associates the idea of continuity and of an
evolutionary, sociologically oriented, organic history of literature with the
thought of romanticism. 44 We can find it in the histories of the Greeks and
43 Ibid, p. 79.
44 David Perkins, "Literary History and Historicism," in Marshall Brown (ed.), The Cam-
bridge History of Literary Criticism vol. V, "Romanticism" (Cambridge UP, 2000), pp.
339-61.
50 Per Erik Ljung
the Romans and their poetry by the Schlegel brothers, and in their lectures
on the art and literature of drama. The present—the modern—from now on
is perceived through interpretations of the past. That is the pattern in
Schiller's Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795) as well as in
Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798); or in Karl Marx's fa-
mous reflections on the superiority of the art of the Greeks in Grundrisse
(1857), given their low level of development of the forces of production. 45
Contexts are pulled into the discussion, the French Revolution, industrial-
ism, philosophy, or just the spirit of the times in general, in order to explain
the state of affairs of today. Yet, the literary works are not really situated,
Perkins says. The romantic historians were limited by their aesthetic con-
cepts, i.e. their ideas on the sublime, genius, original creativity, and so
forth. Literature is making progress—but some works and authors simply
stand out as norms or mysteries : Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare. They are
unpredictable gifts from Nature—transcending every law or chain of cau-
sality or temporality. This is the case, for Schlegel, for Karl Marx and
Georg Lukäcs—and for Harold Bloom. 46 Every fictional work tends to
create its own world, its autonomy—that's an idea of the historicizing
pioneers from the era of Romanticism! And moreover: if art represents
Beauty, how could it reflect any social reality? The contradiction becomes
most acute in those literary historians who at the same time are general his-
torians. It is to be seen in Thomas Carlyle, in Gervinus and in J. E. Sars, the
distinguished Norwegian historian, who stressed the political background
and the emergence of democratic institutions in his delineation of Norwe-
gian history (vol. I-IV 1873-91), but where literary heroes like Holberg,
Wergeland and Bj0rnson tend to be of decisive importance.47 In Carlyle, for
instance, art on the one hand is far above the changes of history and yet every
epoch has its own fagon of representing the beautiful or "the Divine Idea."
However, romantic literary history is not simply identical with literary
history. It has some traits of its own.
Techniques for the establishing of manuscripts, philological acribi,
methods of collecting materials etc. already existed, as one can see for ex-
ample in Nathan Drake's Shakespeare and his Times (1817), where you
can read about book-prices, literacy, knowledge of foreign literatures, reli-
gious views, folklore, ways of living, and what not. The sense of difference
45 Marx's Grundrisse, David McLellan (ed.), (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 44.

46 On Bloom's ostentatively ahistorical position, see Hölter, "Kanon als Text," p. 26.
47 Cf. Asbj0rn Aarseth, "J. E. Sars som Literaturhistoriker" (J. E. Sars as Literary Histor-
ian), in Per Dahl and Torill Steinfeld (eds.), Videnskab og national opdragelse I.
has to be cultivated before you can aquire a genuinely historical apprehen-

sion. For long times the Romans and ourselves were considered parallel
types, for instance in translations of Ovid. There simply were us (the mod-
erns) and them (the Romans). In this context the discovery (or invention)
made by the Romantics, of the genuinely different Middle Age, is of great-
est importance, Perkins says. Singular individuals do not push literature
ahead, but nations and people do; they talk through men. Processes, phan-
tasies—and language!—are super-individual factors which make you root-
ed like a tree in your nation. Or at least: the individuality is restricted by its
conditions. The author bears the "birthmarks" or "wounds" of his time,
Herder says. And these wounds could also be understood as specific social
institutions. In his History of Prose Fiction (1814) John Colin Dunlop
gives some explanations of why the Italians did not write any chivalrous
prose-romances: their inferior esteem of the military profession, their mer-
cantile mentality, their closeness to the culture of antiquity. And as causes
of these causes Dunlop quotes other sociological or historical causes.
However, these causes from "the times" themselves were very often found
in—literature, which was to be explained by "the times." This kind of cir-
cular reasoning was Gefundenes Fressen (A Gift from the Gods) for Rene
Wellek in his objections to the historical study of literature, according to
Perkins. But above all the literary historians of the nineteenth century
thought in terms of evolution—even when there were vast blanks. A long
time may pass before a soul or a disposition can be fully realized. The
"Norwegian" might be smouldering in the ("Germanly" affected) "Dan-
ish," that was forced upon the Norwegians during the nineteenth century,
as Torill Steinfeld has shown in an investigation of "The Place of Literary
Histories in Norwegian Secondary Education 1900-1940." 48 At last, after
many centuries a great spirit may talk to a closely related spirit, who is able
to create works which corresponds to his own, Schlegel says in Vorles-
ungen über schöne Literatur,49
Historical evolution was often thought of as organic; the issue to be un-
folded could be a national literature, a genre, the oeuvre of a singular au-
thor—or for example Greek poetry, as in Schlegel. Often a micro-cosmos
(by way of microscopic explication, the thought-figure returns in an ex-
emplary way in Erich Auerbach's Mimesis) was shown to correspond to
48 "Pä hjeralig grunn. Norske skolelitteraturhistorier ca. 1900-1940," in Per Dahl and Torill
Steinfeld (eds.), Videnskab og national opdragelse II.
49 After Perkins, "Literary history and historicism," p. 347.
52 Per Erik Ljung
the macrocosmos of the same literary universe. In order to gain a real ac-
cess to that universe, you had to be sympathetic, equipped with the gift of
Einfühlung.
But now, if everything is so historically organic and determined—who
are we to exert criticism and deliver evaluations of singular artistic efforts?
Historicism gives birth to relativism and thereby to the difficulty of—si-
multaneously—applying universal norms and establishing super-cultural
standards. History and philosophy give the great narratives or patterns for
the understanding of singular instances. In that way the history of literature
comes to deal with the progress of the human spirit or of nations. Then the
scope can be narrowed, for example in sociological direction, by Gervinus,
who seems to be the most "modern" of the historians under Perkins's con-
sideration, that is, he is less dependent on an overall narrative structure. So
far, Gervinus says, the literary historians actually have been too restricted
in their reading; they have "plowed in the air." However, he does insist on
the importance of a plot. The beginning has to be connected to the present
in the narrative discourse of literary history.
All arguments seem to speak in favour of the t/r-ages, Perkins says:
civilisation destroys original creativity and art—with some great excep-
tions, and those are the ones that produce aesthetic theory. 50 The thought
figure of progress and decline is constant; nowhere does anybody say that
history may go either way or that junctures would be contingent in the con-
temporary sense of the concept.
A solution is given by the classical/modern dichotomy, which does not
necessarily produce a plot, but can be realized temporally as well as an-
thropologically, as by Schiller in Über naive und sentimentalische Dich-
tung (1795) (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry) or Über die ästhetische Er-
ziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (Letters upon the Aes-
thetic Education of Man) (1793—95).51 The success of this classical/modern
figure might be due to its ability to strengthen arguments in favour of au-
thenticity, for instance when one is to claim that something has run off the
rails, so that you have got "French" taste in England or "Danish" German-
isms in Norway in the nineteenth century. Or that concessions to the colo-
nizers have been made, thereby breaking the continuity between original
and neo-African characteristics and values in for example Senegal.
50 Cf. Perkins's amusing catalogue, ibid., p. 353.

51 Schiller's "system" is acutely analyzed in Gerhard Plumpe, Ästhetische Kommunikation
der Moderne vol. I: Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997).
At the same time the classical/modern figure enables the "purely" aes-
thetical to become historical or relativized: there could be different kinds
of Beauty. One cultivated and one "primitive," perhaps.
Perkins's account of the literary history of Romanticism, so it seems to me,
gives us some general and persistent items to investigate when we approach a
given literary history. I think of things like emplotment, overall grand narra-
tives, world-views, chronological vs. systematic views, historical vs. aestheti-
cal postulates, kinds of backgrounds, facts delivered, and evaluations.
Negotiations and "Laws"
The historicist orientation of literary history sketched above is rather loose

and not necessarily restricted to national literary histories. However, there
is a wide consensus that the paradigm has been decisive in practically all
kinds of literary histories and even to literary studies in general. As George
Steiner puts it, "everywhere the history of modern literary studies shows
the mark of this nationalist ideal of the mid- and late-nineteenth century." 52
The view is widely acknowledged and stated from the beginning in Per-
kins's Is Literary History Possible? "The [nineteenth-century] premise
that this history of literature exhibits the development of the 'national con-
science,' as Croce put it, provided a sense of purpose and wide social sig-
nificance for the work." 53 While Steiner, Perkins and Croce seem to see the
national as a pattern-shaping feature of the studies, Bernhard Giesen is
probably right in emphazising the inventiveness of historiography and its
sometimes decisive role in identity building: "In diesem Rahmen erschei-
nen Literatur und Geschichtsschreibung nicht mehr als kulturelle Selbst-
vergewisserung der schon vorgangig existierende Nation, sondern als Vor-
gange, in denen erst die Identität der Gesellschaft behauptet, beschrieben
und geschaffen wird." 54 At the same time, it is important to see that the na-
tion-foregrounding function of literary historiography is often accom-
52 George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays, 1958-1966 (Harmonsworth: Penguin,

1969), p. 75.
53 David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1992), p.
4.
54 "In this framework, literature and the writing of history did not appear as cultural
self-confirmation of an already existing nation, but as proceedings where the identity of
society was stated, described and created for the first time." (My trans.) "Einleitung" in
Bernhard Giesen (ed.), National und kulturelle Identität: Studien zur Entwicklung des
kollektiven Bewusstseins in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), p. 12.
54 Per Erik Ljung
plished in negotiation with international and intercultural contexts. In this

respect there is no difference between historiography and literature itself.
The mechanisms, and even "laws," in such negotiations are the subject of
two studies—the first one on early American and the second one on Jewish
literary history—to which I will soon return.
The conditions of such processes, of course, are of a material kind. The
wide social—and not exclusively national—significance suggested above
can be seen in the great number of literary histories produced or translated
for a large public in Western European countries around 1870-1930. In
just one small corner of Europe—Denmark—there was an astonishing
wealth of literary histories published for educational as well as public use.
In 1876 Johannes Scherr's Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur (1851)
was published in a Danish translation; 1881 the teacher Sigurd Μ tiller's
Omrids af Verdens litte raturens Historie (Delineation of the History of
World Literature) followed. A couple of years later, 1894, Anna Erslev
published her Lidt om Verdenslitteraturen (Fremmed Digtning) (Notes On
World Literature, Foreign Literature). Directly aimed at an adult and well
educated bourgeois public, Julius Clausen wrote Illustreret VerdensLitte-
raturhistorie (Illustrated History of World Literature) in three large vol-
umes (1898-1901), which dominated the market until Niels M0ller's im-
pressive one-man's-work Verdenslitteraturen (World Literature) I—III
(1928-29) took over. But even works dealing with the literatures of single
foreign nations were published. 1874-77 H. Yodskov presented his trans-
lation of Hippolyte Taine's Den engelske Litteraturs Historie (Histoire de
la litterature anglaise), followed in 1902 by Adolf Hansen's Den engelske
og den amerikanske Litteraturs Historie i Omrids (Outlines of the History
of English and American Literature). The industrious literary historian Ju-
lius Paludan made his debut in 1874 with Udsigt over den franske Natio-
nalliteraturs Historie (A View over the History of the National French Lit-
erature). A German history of French Literature by Herman Hettner was
translated by H. Schwanenflügel (1905) and C. W. Smith contributed with
Russisk Literaturhistorie fra Peter den Stores tid til Begyndelsen af detta
Aarhundrede (1882) (Russian Literary History from the time of Peter the
Great to the Beginning of this Century). Not bad for a little country like
Denmark in such a short span of time ! 55
55 Flemming Conrad, "Dansk er godt: Den danske lterde skoles litteraturhistorier ca. 1860—
1920" (Danish is Good. The Literary Histories of the Danish Grammar Schools 1860-
1920), in Per Dahl and Torill Steinfeld (eds.), Videnskab og national opdragelse II.
Moreover, some of the Danish books reached a large international audi-

ence; George Brandes epoch-making tour deforce of comparative literary
history, Hovedstr0mninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur (Main Cur-
rents in Nineteenth Century Literature) were published in six volumes
1872-1890 and translated in full into German, Russian and English, later
into Japanese and Spanish. The international scope is demonstrated in
books like Goethe und Dänemark (1881) and Ibsen in Deutschland (1891)
as well, but the big success besides Main Currents seems to have been Wil-
liam Shakespeare (1895-96), which was translated into German in 1896,
Russian inl897, English in 1898, and Chinese 1935. Brandes was a pion-
eer, but the more systematic study of litterature comparee and of littera-
ture generale following the French traditions of scholars like Ferdinand
Brunetiere and Fernand Baldensperger was later to be structured by the
Swede Henrik Schuck and the Dane Valdemar Vedel, whose Middelalder-
lige Kulturidealer (Types and Ideals of Medieval Culture) I-IV (1901-
1911) appeared in partial or full translations in German, Dutch, and Span-
ish. Brandes had travelled and lectured in Russia and Poland in 1885-1887
and in 1888 he published his Indtrykfra Russia (Impressions of Russia)—
translated into German, English, Polish and Japanese—including literary
portraits of Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy. 56
The national-pedagogical project which is so evident in the German lit-
erary histories during the nineteenth century coincides in the Scandinavian
context later on with a pedagogical one: there was simply a need for hand-
books on different levels of the educational system. And the authors of the
handbooks evidently wanted to relate to the tendency to have literary histo-
ry legitimized in scholarly terms, which was growing at the time. They
were based on actual research and they generated new reserach—once you
had these collections of information and sources you could get an idea of
where the blanks of the map were to be found. A lot of empirical evidence
was incorporated in the books, such as manuscripts, and documents of all
kinds. The literary naturalism of the time was transformed into scholarly
credibility. Scholarly and more general ideological commercial interests
seem to have walked happily hand in hand, for once.
A successful book like Henrik Jasgers Illustreret norsk litteraturhistorie
(Illustrated History of Norwegian Literature), 1896, gives a hint of the
56 Cf. Per Dahl and Svend Erik Larsen, "Comparative Literature in Scandinavia: Issues and
Methods," Comparative Literature Worldwide: Issues and Methods. La Litterature
Comparee dans le Monde: Questions et Methodes vol. II (Montevideo: Edition Lisa
Block de Behar, 2000), pp. 153-69.
56 Per Erik Ljung
complexity of the project. For Jasger, the scholarly dimension is not the
most important one. He was a critic and could allow himself a more
"loose" relation to the academic discipline; his mission could be a more in-
structive one—his aim might have been to show the public what a literary
treasure Norway had. The book is quite lavishly equipped, with a solid
skirting- binding, embellished letters in the title and golden decorations in
ornamental patterns from the early Middle Ages. There is a wealth of illus-
trations with illuminated initials and a lot of documents and other niceties.
The mere visual appearance of the book communicates a strong appeal
both to national feelings, to a bourgeois-esthetic Feinschmeckerei (gastron-
omy) and to a certain type of collector's desire, which actually is far from
central parts of Jaeger's own view of literature and culture. 57 The genre sit-
uates itself somewhere between academic research and literature itself,
with an unspecified broader bourgeois audience as its obvious target
group.
All over the continent, the publishing companies were proud of the mag-
nificence of their works. Histoire de la Litterature Frangaise Illustree.
Publiee sous la direction de Μ. Μ. Joseph Bedier, de l'Academie Fran-
caise, professeur au College de France, et Paul Hazard, professeur au
College de France, Paris 1923, promotes for instance "Dans la meme col-
lection," an illustrated Histoire de France in two volumes, equipped with
"2028 gravures, 43 planches en couleurs, 5 cartes en couleur, 96 cartes en
noir." Apparently this was a sales argument—the illustrations and the
names of the authors gave the proper academic legitimacy. This is also the
case regarding the, in all respects, grand portraits of, for example Chateau-
briand (II, p. 173) and Baudelaire (II, p. 261); a manuscript page from
Balzac gives ample evidence of the "novel machine" (II, p. 214). There is a
long tradition of such broadly garnished narration, informed by cultural
history, in the history of literary histories.
So, back to the negotiations between literary histories. How are new tradi-
tions invented? Marietta Messmer tries to expose a tradition in statu nas-
cendi in an investigation of the discursive formation of American literary
historiography, manifested in 30 literary histories published between 1824
57 Atle Kittang; Per Meldahl; and Hans Skei, Om litteraturhistorieskrivning: perspektiv p&
litteraturhistoriografins vilk&r og utvikling i europeisk og norsk sammanheng (On Writ-
ing Literary History: Perspektives on the Conditions and Development of the Histori-
ography of Literature in European and Norwegian Context), (Oslo: Cappelan, 1983), p.
85.
and 1917—guided by the idea "that the production of literature rarely stops
at national or political borders; and that in addition to actual, physical bor-
der-crossing of persons and materials, writers almost always engage with
texts produced outside the boundaries of their own nation." 58 A given point
of departure for authors as well as for scholars and critics in processes of
this kind, of course, is "the writers' textual engagement with the respective
European literatures written in the same language and, on the other hand,
by attempts at differentiating and hence dissociating their own literature
from that of Europe, and in particular from the literature of their former
European colonial master." Interestingly enough, this goes for both litera-
ture itself and for historiography. And it is easy to realize that the mecha-
nisms uncovered are translatable to other analogous historiographic situa-
tions, i. e. for instance post-colonial situations.
How, then, are conceptual models and elements of European literary his-
toriography actually appropriated by American literary historians? Which
strategies of dissociation are employed, not only to foreground the national
elements in American texts, but also to circumscribe or even erase their in-
ternational and in particular their British features? These are some of the
questions that Marietta Messmer formulates as she attempts for a contribu-
tion to the debate about America's literary nationalism and/or exceptional-
ism within this field.
The first attempts at literary historiography emerged—as was the case in
Britain 59 —when anthologies, such as James Rivington's A Collection of
Poems by the Favourites of The Muses in America (1773) were comple-
mented with extended frames around the texts. 60 Models for organization
and presentation of their materials were selected from great European
predecessors. Three influences seem to be evident in this process. (1) The
concept of historia litteraria—a very generous view of what should be
considered as literature—was adopted and adapted. (In retrospect we can
58 Marietta Messmer, "Reading National American Literary Historiography International-

ly," Comparative Literature 52:3, Summer (2000), pp. 193-213; I'll quote and para-
phrase extensively from the digital version available to me without references to specific
pages. Cf., for a dealing with old traditions, Sheldon Pollock's discussion of the "tradi-
tions of invention" in the introduction to Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions
from South Asia, Sheldon Pollock (ed.), (Berkely, Los Angeles, and London: California
UP, 2003), p. 20.
59 Cf Rene Wellek, The Rise of English Literary History (Chapel Hill: Univ. of N.C.P,
1941).
60 Thus illustrating the distinction between discourse of object or citation (discours cite)
and commentary discours (discours citant) in Michael Charles's useful introduction a
I'etude des textes (Paris: Seuil, 1995).
58 Per Erik Ljung
say that it was employed in order to accomodate the perceived scarcity of

pre-nineteenth-century American literature). (2) In his Lectures on
American Literature (1829), Samuel Knapp appropriated, Simonde de
Sismondi's De la litterature du midi de l'Europe (1813) as a model for
writing a literary history that moves beyond the discourse of the journal-
istic debate. And (3) Hippolyte Taine's concept of "environment'V'mi-
lieu" as developed in Histoire de la litterature anglaise (1863; trans.
1870) was useful for identifying distinct American qualities in American
literature.
The introduction of Taine gave a new scope, with his emphasis on the
decisive influence of the "milieu" upon the literary production of a given
country. Before Taine, most of the literary histories—also in Europe—had
related the development of an independent national literature exclusively
to the formation of a national language. The English language was the
given frame of reference, when Samuel Knapp stressed the importance of
"American" native "dialects," such as the Cherokee alphabet, or the Indian
oratory of the Winnebagoes or Tecumseh. English was seen as a valuable
"heritage." As Brander Matthews says in An Introduction to the Study of
American Literature (1896):
English literature is the record of the thoughts and feelings and the acts of
the great English-speaking race. [...] It is no matter where the authors live,
whether in N e w York or in Montreal, in London, in Melbourne or in Cal-
cutta, what they write in the English language belongs to English literature.
It is no matter what the nationality of the author may be, whether he is a
citizen of the United States or a subject of the British crown; if he uses the
English language he contributes to English literature.
The dilemma is obvious, as Marietta Messmer notes, and because it is so

easily translatable to other relations between nations and former rulers, I'll
quote her remarks at some length:
[...] since "American" does not designate a national language, a linguistic
and/or ethnic concept of nationhood firmly situates "Amercan" writers
within the "English" tradition, thus turning "American" literature into a
branch of the literatures written in English. A political (constitutional) con-
cept of nationhood, on the other hand, calls for a differentation between
English and "American" literature, thus enabling and foregrounding Ame-
rica's literary independence. In other words, since both language and/or
ethnic descent are exactly those features that link the otherwise fully inde-
pendent United States with its former ruler, a discussion of "American"
literary texts in relation to the literatures written in English undermines
American literary historiography's pronounced aim of defending and pro-
moting a distinctly "American" literature.
The importance of J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi's De la litterature du

midi de l'Europe (1813) in the early stages of American literary history is
seen in striking relief when comparing Samuel Knapp's Lectures on
American Literature (1829) to the work of his immediate predecessor,
John Neal, with his heated journalistic collection of essays on American
Writers in Blackwood Magazine 1824-1825. American Writers consisted
of alphabetically arranged evaluations of 135 American writers (including
Neal himself), written under a pseudonym from the assumed viewpoint of
an Englishman familiar with the United States. When Samuel Knapp four
years later published his lectures, it was obvious in the preface that he had
ambitions of another kind:
We have very good histories—narrative, political, military, and constitu-

tional; but I know none, as yet, that can be called literary — meaning by the
term, a history of our literature, and of our literary men; and probably it will
be a long time before we shall have such one as we ought to have. Our Sis-
mondis, D'Israelis, are yet to arise.
Howard Mumford Jones has shown, in The Theory of American Literature

(1948), how two seminal ideas from Sismondi—whose works attracted a
great deal of attention in the United States at the time—were picked up by
Knapp: "the first is his ardent republicanism; the second his doctrine that
isolation is necessary in the youth of a national literature if it is to become
rich and independent." But also Sismondi's insistence on the close links
between historical events and literary production and his illustration of the
manifold correlations between a (national) language and a (national) litera-
ture were inspiring for Knapp. Along with his insisting upon the country's
"own" literature and its "own" citizens being as "poetical" as any other,
Knapp also discusses a much broader range of discursive formations—in-
cluding physics, mathematics, botany, law, fine arts, oratory, naval war-
fare—which, as Messmer says, "situates him squarely within another tradi-
tion of European literary historiography," the tradition of more extensive
encyclopedias of general knowledge, which also included political, histori-
cal, scientific, medical, legal, rhetorical, and other writings in the wide
spectrum of historia litteraria.
This broader scope, with discussions of "American literature" extending
into discussions of the spheres of social and political life, was persistent up
to the 1870s and most pronounced towards the end of the century, when a
limitation of "literature" to "belles lettres" was advocated by many histo-
ries of American literature, now slowly turning from stressing the Ameri-
canness of American literary texts to the literariness - i. e. the esthetic val-
60 Per Erik Ljung
ues—of them. Both moves, sometimes seen as being in conflict with

each other, are, as Messmer says, "linked by their strategies of negotiat-
ing literary internationality, that is, by a shared desire to dissociate
American literature from the literatures of Europe in general, and of Brit-
ain in particular." And, as she adds in an interesting remark, which leads
our associations closer to the textual or rhetorical level of the historio-
graphical texts:
In other words, they are linked by a shared impulse to disengage themselves
from a reading community that embraces both sides of the Atlantic, and in a
second step, to erase any British references inscribed in American literary
texts. In this way, they both strive to establish what Edward Said has called
a "rhetorical separation of cultures."
Stressing the uniqueness of American literary works, however, could after

some time also turn into a vindication of their transnational, universal val-
ues, or—under the sign of a certain "anxiety of influence"—to identify
counterflows or even "reciprocal influences." Another important rhetorical
trope employed by the literary historians is the resort to familiar meta-
phors, constructing Britain as a "mother" country that exercises parental
control over its colonial "offspring"—making early America an "infant"
and dependent, while the postcolonial nation is operating maturely and to-
tally without "parental" guidance, rather "cosmopolitan" or influenced by
non-British literature than caught within the boundaries of the English lan-
guage, with all the spectrum of influence-flows reconceptualised: we are
now looking at American literature and American "thinkers" (like Emer-
son and Thoreau)—not American thought, which would be too difficult to
distinguish from European—exerting influence on British or World litera-
ture.
An important observation of Messmer is that the national is created by
what she calls renegotiations of international relations. Such renegotations
are executed—on a theoretical level—in some accentuated reflexions on
Hebrew literary history and its historiography by Ziva Ben-Porat in a book
in honor of the distinguished comparatist literary historian Anna Balakian,
Comparative Literary History as Discourse (1992). Ben-Porats contribu-
tion is called "Universals of Literary history"—a title which may seem sur-
prising, given the unique character of the Israeli situation she is dealing
with. The universals are crucial, above all, in the birth of a national identi-
ty, which is often possible to describe as a process in three distinct stages,
roughly "the development of a language, the emergence of a literature in
that language, and the crystalization of a national identity," a development,
which, Ben-Porat says, "is by now a commonplace which requires no fur-

ther proof in the European context." 01 Other elements are the starting
points of these processes, the claims of their uninterrupted evolution or
abrupt halt, and the final outcome. As Ben-Porat gravely remarks, histori-
ography always "reorganizes the past for the needs of the present" (p. 115).
And in the Hebrew case the mechanisms become evident (although they
are of course not undisputed). It is also a case where it is interesting to ex-
tend the discussion to governmental policies and school curricula, i. e., in-
stitutions which partake in historiographical processes (p. 116). Like the
"negotiation" mechanisms Messmer uncovers, this remark of Ben-Porat
seems to me an important reminder of the practices of literary history
which should not be forgotten.
In the span of the last two centuries there have been four instances of
major "crisis of Jewish-Hebraic identity:" The "Jewish" phase, associated
with the European Enlightment and the gaining of civil rights (1780-
1880); the "Hebrew" phase, with the emergence of a Hebrew (as opposed
to Jewish) identity, associated with the Zionist revolution and the settle-
ment period in Palestine (from around the turn of the century) which con-
tinued after the establishing of the state of Israel in 1948; the "Israeli"
phase, from around 1970 and onwards, with an emerging Israeli identity;
the "Neo-Jewish" phase, with the renewed problematics of a Jewish identi-
ty, in a certain conflict with the budding Israeli one.
The "universals" guiding literary history and historiography state that,
normally, when a vernacular becomes the medium for literary creativity,
the prestige of works in that language enables it to replace a previous liter-
ary language (e.g. Latin); a national identity is formed in relation to that
language and its literature; the period of the emergence of the vernacular is
understood as the beginning of the national literature. Works written in the
previous prestigious literary language are relegated as a whole to a second-
ary position, while the status of individual works in that category is strong-
ly dependent on the position of their authors in the newly defined literary
system. Earlier works in the vernacular, which hitherto were not con-
sidered literature because of their origins in oral composition, are eventual-
ly placed within the literary system.
61 Ziva Ben-Porat, "Universals of Literary History," in Mario J. Valdes, Daniel Javitch, and
A. Owen Aldridge (eds.), Comparative Literary History as Discourse (Bern; Berlin;
Frankfurt a. M.; New York; Paris; and Wien: Peter Lang, 1992), p. 115; page numbers in
the following paragraphs refer to this text.
62 Per Erik Ljung
Among these universale the linguistic is the most important factor in the
conceptualization of a national literature, Ben-Porat says (p. 118)—even
though it may have to compete with for instance territory or common an-
cestry. The linguistic element will govern the selection of texts (inclusion
as well as exclusion) and determine questions of central or peripheral posi-
tioning of groups of texts within the system. In this respect however, the
Hebrew literary history is, atypical. Unlike the case in most European
countries the modern national identity of the Jews was not connected to a
replacement of a written language by a vernacular. Hebrew, at the end of
the eighteenth century, was a canonized written language, but an unspoken
one, in which not very much belletristic activity was yet taking place. For
mundane affairs the Jews used a variety of other Jewish languages, the
most important ones being Yiddish and Ladino. Thus, when a modern na-
tional identity came about a hundred years later, there were actually two
national languages, the spoken Yiddish and the written Hebrew.
So, why did Hebrew "win" the race regarding which should be the main
literary language? Some insights can be gained by comparing the position
of Latin and Biblical Hebrew in their respective literary "systems." Nearly
everywhere Latin was historically a foreign language—while Hebrew has
always had the status of the national language of the Jews. Latin was a liv-
ing literary language—for a small part of the population—and "a dead reli-
gious language for the majority," while Hebrew never was a language for a
select elite in the same way (p. 119). It was learnt, to a certain extent, by all
Jewish males and remained—according to Ben-Porat—psychologically the
language of the people. In terms of cultural status, however, there is an im-
portant similarity: both Latin and Biblical Hebrew held prestigious and
dominant positions within their cultural systems. So, making Biblical He-
brew the language of modern literature had the same revolutionary effect,
in terms of the national consciousness, as the deposition of Latin had in the
European national states (for information about the state of Hebrew at the
end of the eighteenth century Ben-Porat refers to R. Alter's The Invention
of Hebrew Prose from 1988). When—in later phases—Hebrew once again
became a spoken language, the actual vernacular was preceded by the liter-
ary representation of a vernacular. "But it is through the combination of the
projected/potential vernacular and the historical canonical masterpiece that
Biblical Hebrew played a central role in the formation of a new national
identity and a new conception of the national literature" (p. 119). Crucial
here, as in many European manifestations of this "universal," is the first
step towards a literalization of the vernacular in the form of a translation of
the Bible, which could provide writers with a language as well as with lit-
erary models and a literary discourse. 62 The revival of Hebrew did not call
for a new translation of the Bible, but it promoted a lot of linguistic activi-
ty, such as writing grammars, and it coincided with a general interest in the
study of the Bible and post-Biblical texts. The result of these processes,
Ben-Porat means, were in part obstructive—modern layers of the language
had difficulties in becoming incorporated and included in the partially ob-
solete and archaic emerging literary discourse. "The national function of
the linguistic choice was stronger than the purely literary one" (p. 120).
When Hebrew became a spoken language in the third decade of the
twentieth century (an achievment credited to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda), the two
languages came into acute conflict with each other—the period is actually
called "the war of the languages" in Hebrew chronicles, and it is a war that
goes on. The center of Hebrew literary activities was moving to Palestine
and Hebrew was becoming a spoken language, but, as Ben-Porat puts it,
"Yiddish produced an impressive body of literature in the diaspora, with
more justified claims for inclusion in a national Jewish literature" (p.
120).63 There was no doubt as to the quality, the ethnic origins, the themes
of this literature; yet it was hard for the emerging identity to allow the liter-
ary system to incorporate it. Authors who chose to write some of their texts
in Yiddish—according to Ben-Porat—had to see this part of their work re-
garded as biographical background or even as illegitimate in literary histo-
ries or essays by historiographers working in Palestine or Israel.
For Ben-Porat this examplifies another important historiographical "uni-

versal:" "Once chosen, the new literary language becomes the most power-
ful criterion for determining the borders of the newly defined literature" (p.
121). The linguistic criterion will reign alone, as long as there are no real
disturbances to the national identity associated with its dominance. Thus
the minorities in Israel, not only the Arab, but also the Jewish minorities,
with authors writing in languages like Yiddish, Arabic, English, Russian,
Romanian, and Amhari tend to be marginalized. Their works are geograph-
ically and historically as well as thematically Israeli products and their
readers are mostly Israeli; yet they have problems being included in the Is-
raeli literary system (p. 121). That is: not only in anthologies or literary
62 For a discussion of the impact of such models and discourses on early German literature,
see Heinz Schlaffer, Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (München: Carl
Hanser Verlag, 2002).
63 Cf. on this point Ruth R. Wisse, The Jewish Canon: A Journey through Language and
Culture (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2000).
64 Per Erik Ljung
surveys, but also in the writers' associations there have been cases of ex-
clusion and strained situations, not least in connection with the editing of
collected works by authors who have been writing in other languages than
Hebrew at an earlier stage of their lives. Ben-Porat points to a heated de-
bate at a meeting of American Jewish and Israeli writers and men of letters
at Berkeley in October 1988. Anton Shamas, an Israeli Christian Arab
writing in Hebrew, said that his Hebrew is a non-Jewish language, while
the American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick was quoted saying that such a
use of the Hebrew language "turned Pegasus into a mule" (p. 131).
In three distinct stages of crisis the question of language has been crucial
in the history of modern Hebrew literature. The first stage, in connection
with the emergence of a modern national identity, involved the substitution
of a secular Hebrew, intended to be spoken, for the canonized written lan-
guage of the Bible. The second one, associated with the formation of a He-
brew identity, implies the militant confrontation of Hebrew vis-ä-vis Yid-
dish and the full endorsement of the new literary language which includes
more layers of Hebrew. The third stage is characterized by the develop-
ment of the necessary conditions for the succesful fulfilment of its nation-
al role, as well as by "the gradual divorce of the language from its Biblical
and historically Jewish associations" (p. 123).
The problems are seen in the way two classical problems, which the lin-
guistic shift poses to the literary historiographers, are treated. Where is the
starting point for the newly conceptualized literature—and how does it af-
fect the reorganization of the canon?
The historiographers tacitly agree that the Bible could not serve as the
first masterpiece for the new Hebrew literature, although it was of course
the actual fountainhead for modern literature. The newness called for a dis-
tinction between sacred and secular use of Hebrew, but this did not solve
the problems at hand. According to Ben-Porat, there is a well known con-
troversy over these matters, making up a paradigm for later literary histor-
ians, who generally side with one of the main actors here, or describe the
alternatives which legitimate both sides. On the one hand, the historiogra-
pher with a more historian accent, J. Klausner, in Historiyah shel ha-Sifrut
ha-Ivrit ha-Hadashah I-VI [1930], 1952-58, 64 emphasized the Enlighten-
ment figure of Moses Mendelssohn, a German man of letters (1728-1786)
64 A History of Modern Hebrew Literature 1785-1930 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood

Press, 1972) is a short version of it, in an authorized translation from the Hebrew by H.
Denby.
rather than a standardbearer of Hebrew literature, or the important Haska-

lah manifesto of Ν. H. Weisel, Divrey Shalom ve-Emet, 1782, as key fac-
tors, claiming that the explicit conceptualization of the new tendencies is
the decisive element. On the other hand, the more "literary" historiogra-
pher, F. Lachower, in Toldot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ha-Hadasha I-IY [1928],
1965, looks for an undisputed literary masterpiece to set out from. He
chooses the early eighteenth-century Italian Jew, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lu-
zatto, who, according to Lachower was the one to introduce secular themes
into his poetry, while at the same time applying European literary models
in his writings and going back to Biblical Hebrew. The choice was a bit
paradoxical—and Lachower was aware of it—Luzato's orthodoxy and
mysticism made him an odd figure as a herald of the new era (p. 124).
Later Israeli-phase historians tend to specialize even more. G. Shaked
situates his Hebrew Narrative Fiction (1977) in the time span 1880—
1980. H. Barzel in his A History of Hebrew Poetry (1987) makes the very
transition from the Jewish to the Hebrew phase his focus. The first vol-
ume has the subtitle Shirat Hibat Zion—Love of Zion Poetry. Both are,
even if they don't reorganize the canon, "minor revolutions," Ben-Porat
says. That is, at least they discuss the principles of selection and omis-
sions, thereby exhibiting influence of modern ideas concerning the liter-
ary system. "The inclusion of peripheral and even non-canonic genres
has definitely more to do with literary theory than with the evolving Is-
raeli identity" (p. 126).
But, as new, previously peripheral—or even folkloristic works in the
vernacular—are to be included in the canon and school curricula, where is
the replaced old tradition to be situated? The literary study of the Bible, as
not-new, had to take place within the new discipline of Judentumswissen-
schaft. "In a paradoxical manifestation of the historiographical universal,
the texts of the dethroned literary language are indeed exiled from the liter-
ary system but remain the center of cultural and scholarly intererest" (p.
127). And this is the destiny even for secular masterpieces of, for example,
Hebrew poetry in medieval Spain, whose authors did not see any dichoto-
my between sacred and secular uses of the language. This type of heritage,
which could not be housed in the canon-oriented literary historiographical
writings of the modern, secular Hebrew tradition, had to be taken care of in
other ways. They came to be looked upon as "early" or "prehistoric" mas-
terpieces and could serve as "substitutes for the non-existent pre-literary
stages which the system sought" (p. 127). "They fulfilled the role which
Yiddish (or Ladino, or any other Jewish vernacular folklore or uncanonical
66 Per Erik Ljung
literature) would have played if Hebrew had not driven it out of the new
national literary system" (p. 127).
Of course there are prominent counter-voices. From the famous lecture
given by D. Sadan in 1950 "About Our Literature," and onwards people in
prestigious academic positions have advocated a more multi-lingual ap-
proach to the question of Jewish literature, but it is by no means the
main-stream historiographic position. Even in anthologies with texts rec-
ommended for study in Israeli high schools there are signs of what Ben-Po-
rat calls the "neo-Jewish," with passages from the Bible, as well as poems
in Yiddish.—On the international scene there is an interesting exception to
the universal stages sketched out by Ben-Porat. I. Zinberg's A History of
Jewish Literature I—III (1972-78) starts neither with the Bible nor with any
modern author writing in Hebrew, but with the Arab-Spanish period. How-
ever Zinberg's work is unique in several respects. Its author is a chemical
engineer, who wrote his work in Leningrad, between 1915 and 1938, in
Yiddish, and the conceptualization of the national literature included
everything, belletristic and non- belletristic, which was written in Yiddish
or in any of the languages the writers used. It is an entirely different view
of the national literature—the "Jewish" of the title is significant—from that
of the mainstream of Hebrew historigraphy, and rather in accord with the
approaches of the Haskala Wissenschaft des Judentum. The study was
translated into Hebrew twice, but has never—according to Ben-Porat—
become as popular as the mainstream histories, mentioned above, by
Lachower and Klausner. Typically enough, though, it was translated into
English when most of the histories of Hebrew literature were not, except
the short version of Klausner's book (p. 132).
As we have seen, language and nation are constantly involved in these
processes which mediate between literature and the history of it. The solu-
tions, however, are differently articulated in the manifold negotiations be-
tween local and international traditions which take place, and between the
different demands which are directed towards the practises of literary his-
tory. A comparative and contrastive study of these practises thus remain a
challenging task. Some levels for such a study have been suggested above,
reaching from initial cultural observations, over paradigms, "laws" and ne-
gotiations, and to—I just mention it here—closer rhetorical and stylistic
analyses of singular works.
STEPHAN LARSEN
African Literature, or African Literatures?

Reflections on a Terminological Problem
The question may appear simple—should one speak of literature created

by African authors in the singular or in the plural? Is there one African lit-
erature, or several African literatures? In fact, however, the question is
anything but simple—it has been a bone of contention among students of
African literature for as long as works by African authors have been ana-
lysed and discussed. There is, perhaps, more than meets the eye in the fact
that two of the most important journals devoted to this field of study are
called African Literature Today and Research in African Literatures re-
spectively. The problems become even worse if we ask ourselves two more
seemingly simple questions, namely "what is Africa?" and "what is litera-
ture?" These two questions, however, will not be discussed in this essay—
by "Africa," I mean "Africa sub- Sahara,'" by "literature," I mean "written
and printed fiction, poetry, and drama." 2 Even with these terminological
limitations, I have little hope of finding a definitive answer to the question
asked by way of introduction. The purpose of the essay is rather to describe
a complex of problems and to discuss some possible modes of procedure.
In the first section, "African Literature," I shall deal with various attempts,
"emic" as well as "etic," 3 to arrive at a general definition of this term. In
the second section, "African Literatures," which will be divided into two
parts, I shall deal with various attempts to move away from generalizations
towards what may be regarded as specific and particular approaches.
1 This definition is used here merely for the sake of convenience. It is not part of the pur-
pose of this essay to address the difficult and much-debated question whether the litera-
ture of the Maghreb should be regarded as (chiefly) African or (chiefly) Arabic.
2 For a discussion of oral literature, cf. Leif Lorentzon's essay, "Let the House be Dead Si-
lent: A Discussion of Literariness in (East) African Oral Literature" in this series.
3 For a brief discussion of the meaning of these terms, cf. Anders Petterson "Introduction:
The Concept of Literature in a Transcultural Context," in this series.
68 Stephan Larsen
African Literature
The notion of one African literature, the artistic expression of one African
culture, could probably, to a large extent, be said to originate from Pan-
Africanism, a political movement among West Indians, Africans and Afro-
Americans, who, in the first half of the twentieth century began to act in
concert against European colonialism and racial discrimination. Pan-Afri-
canism is based on the notion that there is a natural bond, cultural and po-
litical, between people who trace their origin from Africa, irrespective of
whether they actually live in Africa or in the American diaspora, where
their ancestors were brought as slaves. This notion is also of great impor-
tance to nigritude, a movement that started among black students in Paris
in the 1930s; its name was coined by the poet- politician Aime Cesaire of
Martinique. Negritude, a mainly intellectual protest movement, may be
said to have started in earnest with the publication, by Cesaire's compatriot
Etienne Lero, of a magazine called Legitime defense. There never was
more than one issue of this magazine, but, nevertheless, it was of great im-
portance for the emergence of an African literature. Among the originators
of negritude one must mention, besides Cesaire and Lero, the poet
Leon-Gontran Damas of French Guyana, and a young African from Sene-
gal, Leopold Sedar Senghor, who was to become one of the most zealous
advocates and most important theoreticians of negritude, as well as the
most widely known of Africa's francophone poets, and the President of his
country.
Essentially, negritude may be defined as a striving to restore the dignity
of Black humanity, by giving expression to the lives and experiences of
Black peoples. It became a sort of password, expressive of a rejection of
the value system of the colonial power, and a search for an authentic iden-
tity. Senghor has defined the term in the following manner:
Nigritude is the awareness, defense and development of African cultural
values. Negritude is a myth, I agree. And I agree that there are false myths,
myths which breed division and hatred. Negritude as a true myth is the very
opposite of these. It is the awareness by a particular social group of people
of its own situation in the world, and the expression of it by means of the
concrete image. [...] However the struggle for nigritude must not be a
negation but affirmation. It must be the contribution from us, the peoples of
sub-Sahara Africa, to the growth of Africanity, and beyond that, to the
building of the Civilization of the Universal. Nigritude is part of Africanity,
and as such is part of human civilization. [...] More deeply, in works of art,
African Literature, or African Literatures? 69
which are a people's most authentic expression of itself, it is sense of image

and rhythm, sense of symbol and beauty. 4
Quite simply, nigritude is the sum total of the values of the civilization of
the African world. It is not racialism, it is culture. 5
It is this spirit of Negro-African civilization based on the earth and Negro

hearts, which is offered to the world—both beings and things—to unify it,
to understand and to show it.6
In literature, negritude manifested itself mainly in the form of poetry. The

birth of negritude literature may be said to coincide with the publication,
by Senghor, of an anthology of African poetry, Anthologie de la nouvelle
poesie negre et malgache de langue frangaise (Paris 1948). Here, for the
first time in literature, one could sense a break with colonial Africa. By de-
grees, the theme of revolt, for instance in Senghor and Cesaire, turns into a
glorification of a paradisiac Africa of the past, coupled with a contempt of
the cold, hard materialism of the western world. The negritude-poets write,
in rhythmically flowing verses, of Africa's original union with nature, of
the harmonious coexistence of all living things, of the beauty of the black
people, of the greatness of African traditions and African art, often in a
style that might seem surrealistic to a European, sometimes making use of
an ungrammatical syntax and a musical rhythm, with a suspicion of drum-
beats in the background.
There are those who feel that Senghor's cultural program is based on the
notion that the African, unlike the European, is an emotional child of nature.
This notion, moreover, could hardly be expressed with greater clarity than by
Senghor himself in these, frequently quoted, words from his essay "Ce que
l'homme noir apporte" (What the black man carries with him), first pub-
lished in 1939: "L"emotion est negre, comme la raison hellene ("Emotion is
negroid, as reason is Hellenic," my trans.)."7 This, however, according to
Senghor, is not the same as saying that the African lacks the means for the
acquisition of knowledge—but his means are different from those used by
the European. Most of all, it is a matter of what might be called "intuition."
Senghor puts it like this: "Knowledge then is not the superficial creation of
4 Leopold Sedar Senghor, Prose and Poetry, John Reed and Clive Wake (sei. and trans.),
(London: Oxford UP, [1965] 2nd ed. 1976), p. 97. Originally from Discours devant le
parlement de Ghana, unpubl., Feb. (1961).
5 Ibid., p. 99. From Pierre Teilhard Chardin et la Politique Africaine (Paris: Seuil, 1962).
6 Leopold Sedar Senghor, "Negritude and the Concept of Universal Civilization,"
Presence Africaine 18:46, Mar. (1963), p. 11.
7 Leopold Sedar Senghor, Liberie I: Nigritude et humanisme (Paris: Seuil, 1964), p. 24.
70 Stephan Larsen
discursive reason, cast over reality, but discovery through emotion: less dis-
covery than re-discovery. Knowledge coincides, here, with the being of the
object in its discontinuous and indeterminate reality." 8
The above would seem to show that, as Abiola Irele puts it in his study
The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (London 1981), "Sen-
ghor associates knowledge with the imaginative faculty." 9 Senghor appears
to be of the opinion that the African seeks, and attains, knowledge not
through abstract reasoning, but by means of images and symbols, which
means that "Senghor's theory of the African's method of knowledge and
his aesthetic theory" are "intimately related, and even coincide." 10 Senghor
himself has the following to say on the subject:
The African is moved not so much by the outward appearance of the object
as by its profound reality, less by the sign than by its sense. What moves
him in a dancing mask, through the medium of the image and the rhythm, is
a new vision of the "god." What moves him in water is not that it flows, is
liquid and blue, but that it washes and purifies. The physical appearance,
however intensely perceived in all its particulars by the neuro-sensory
organs, indeed, through the very intensity of such perception, is no more
than the sign of the object's significance."
According to Senghor's line of reasoning, another important instrument

used by the African in order to understand the world is rhythm:
Rhythm is the architecture of being, the internal dynamics which gives it
form, the system of waves which it sends out towards Others [...]. It
expresses itself through the most material, the most sensuous means: lines,
surfaces, colours, volumes in architecture, sculpture and painting; accents
in poetry and music, movements in dance. But in doing so, it guides all this
concrete reality towards the light of the spirit. For the Negro-African, it is in
the same measure that rhythm is embodied in the senses that it illuminates
the spirit. 12
As Abiola Irele puts it: "The essential idea in Senghor's aesthetic theory is
that the African arrives at a profound knowledge by feeling the material
world to the cosmic world of which it is an emanation, to the transcenden-
tal reality underlying it.'" 3 The way Senghor sees it, the European acquires
8 Senghor, Prose and Poetry, p. 35.

9 Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (London: HEB, 1981),
p. 75.
10 Ibid.
11 Senghor, Prose and Poetry, pp. 34—35.
12 Senghor, Liberie I, Abiola Irele (trans.), pp. 211-12.
13 Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, p. 76.
knowledge of life by making use of his logical intelligence, by observing,

abstracting, and drawing conclusions. The African acquires equivalent
knowledge by making use of his imagination, his intuition, his rich store of
emotions, his sense of rhythm—by living what he desires to understand,
rather than looking at it from a distance, the better to judge it objectively.
Senghor has expressed his views concerning this fundamental difference in
a couple of well-known, and much debated, statements:
"I think, therefore I am," wrote Descartes, the European par excellence. "I
feel, I dance the other" the Negro-African would say. He does not need, like
Descartes, a "tool-word" as my old master Ferdinand Brunot used to term
it, a conjunction, in order to realize his being, but an object complement. He
does not need to think but to live the other by dancing him. 14
Classical European reason is analytical and makes use of the object. African
reason is intuitive and participates in the object. 15
The notion that there is one African culture, and, consequently, one Afri-
can literature, also permeates two pioneering works by the German Afri-
canist Janheinz Jahn, Muntu1'' and Neo-African Literature. A History of
Black Writing.11 Muntu consists of eight chapters, four of which ("4.
NTU—African Philosophy;" "5. NOMMO—The Magic Power of the
Word;" "6. KUNTU—Immutability of Style;" and "7. HANTU—History
of Literature") deal with what Jahn regards as typically African culture.
In the chapter entitled "NTU," Jahn maintains that all of African phil-
osophy is based on the idea of harmony and unity, rather than the idea of a
compartmentalisation of life into clearly separated areas and levels.
In the chapter entitled "NOMMO," Jahn discusses the magical powers
of the spoken word, in African medicine as well as in African poetry.
Where African poetry is concerned, nommo, according to Jahn, means that
it is the spoken word that provides things and phenomena with a meaning,
and establishes relations between them. As nothing has a universally valid
meaning, given once and for all, the poet is always free to choose what
symbolic value to bestow on words such as "coal," "dagger," or "laugh-
14 Senghor, "L'Esthetique negro-africaine," Diogene 37, Oct. (1956), p. 7.

15 Senghor, Prose and Poetry, p. 34.
16 Janheinz Jahn, Muntu: Umrisse der neoafrikanischen Kultur (Köln: Eugen Diederichs
Verlag, 1958), Marjorie Grene (trans.), Muntu: An Outline of the New African Culture
(New York: Grove Press, 1961).
17 Janheinz Jahn, Geschichte der neoafrikanischen Literatur (Düsseldorf and Köln:
Diederichs, 1966), Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehrburger (trans.), Neo-African Litera-
ture: A History of Black Writing (New York: Grove Press, 1968).
72 Stephan Larsen
ter." One and the same phenomenon may be given vastly different mean-
ings, depending on the intentions of the poet. The poet creates meaning, he
neither uses nor challenges a generally accepted meaning, as no such thing
exists to the "African" mind.
Furthermore, Jahn emphasizes that the African poet, unlike his Euro-
pean colleague, never expresses his own emotions, thoughts, experiences
or wishes. He speaks to, and on behalf of, the group to which he belongs—
he has, and has always had, a socio-historical responsibility, which he real-
izes by means of nommo. "Poetry," says Jahn, "does not describe, but al-
ways arranges series of images which alter reality in the direction of the fu-
ture, which create, produce, invoke and bring about the future." 18 A couple
of pages earlier, he expresses himself even more clearly: "The word con-
jures up what it names. If this named and invoked object, which the word
has created, occurs not in the real, but in the more than real world, then it
has been named, conjured up and created in order to become a reality. To
write poetry means here: to create new reality.'" 9
It is worth noting that, in this chapter, Jahn describes the way in which
the word affects those who are touched by it, in turns of phrase clearly
reminiscent of Senghor's statements concerning the most important differ-
ence between a European and an African mentality: "The poem is meant to
convince not through logic but through fascination." 20
In the chapter entitled "KUNTU," there is a discussion of African aes-
thetics, the means by which the above-mentioned fascination is brought
about. In this context, Jahn, like Senghor, particularly mentions images,
symbols, and rhythm.
In the chapter entitled "HANTU," Jahn gives a very concentrated ac-
count of the history of African literature, and introduces the term "neo-Af-
rican literature," which has ever since been strongly associated with his
name. In the first chapter of the study under discussion, he defines the term
as follows: "Tradition that still survives unconsciously today is referred to
as 'residual-African;' tradition that consciously persists or is consciously
revived is called 'neo-African.' " 21 Of particular interest is the fact that
Jahn claims to have found both "residual-African literature" and "neo-
African literature" everywhere in the world where European and African
literature have met, i.e. both on the African continent and in the African
18 Jahn, Muntu, p. 149.

19 Ibid., p. 146.
20 Ibid., p. 149.
21 Ibid., p. 27.
diaspora, especially in America. It would appear, then, that in this respect,

too, Jahn's conclusions coincide with those of the negritudinists: there is a
cultural affinity among all those who originate from Africa, irrespective of
where, as a result of historical chance, they happen to live. This line of rea-
soning is further developed, and supported by several examples, in Neo-
African Literature, where Jahn also discusses, and attempts to refute, the
criticism levelled both at his own conclusions in Muntu and at negritude.
Many of the critics of nigritude have focussed on the image of the typi-
cal African as a creature of feeling, rather than thought, and expressed their
opinion that this point of view is really identical with one of the tenets of
colonial ideology—the idea of the "negro" as rich in emotion, but intellec-
tually inferior. In this context, Senghor has also been criticized for his ten-
dency to emphasize that the world view of the African is based on religion
rather than science. Furthermore, it has been maintained that new knowl-
edge on the subject of African societies clearly contradicts the notion of
one monolithic African culture, producing instead the image of a plethora
of different cultures and social systems; that, apart from overlooking local
differences, the notion of the essentially African also gives the impression
of something that no historical processes has ever affected, or could ever
affect; and that, consequently, negritude is essentially a conservative ideol-
ogy, out of step with the demands of a new era. 22
Even from a purely aesthetical, literary, point of view, the nigritude po-
ets and their writings have been sharply criticized, particularly by writers
and other intellectuals from anglophone Africa. In this context, it is hard to
avoid mentioning an oft-quoted statement, usually attributed to Wole
Soyinka: "I don't think a tiger has to go around proclaiming his tigri-
tude." 23 How this statement is to be interpreted, and whether or not Soyin-
ka has even been correctly quoted, are questions that have caused consider-
able controversy over the years. Soyinka himself, at a conference in Berlin
in 1964, made the following attempt at clarification and correction:
As Aime Cesaire said, it is quite common for things to be quoted out of

context and for portraits to be issued by foreign critics and even by African
interviewers which end up by a little bit of distorting the real image. The
point is that, to quote what I said fully, I said; "A tiger does not proclaim his
22 For a more detailed discussion of the ideologically motivated criticism of negritude, cf.
for instance, Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, pp. 83ff.
23 See for instance, Gerald Moore, Seven African Writers (London: Oxford UP, 1962), p.
xvi, or Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, Modern Poetry from Africa (Harmondsworth: Pen-
guin, 1963), p. 18.
74 Stephan Larsen
tigritude, he pounces." In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest
and say: "I am a tiger." When you pass where the tiger has walked before,
you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been
emanated there. In other words: the distinction which I was making at this
conference (in Kampala, Uganda, 1962) was a purely literary one: I was
trying to distinguish between propaganda and true poetic creativity. I was
saying in other words that what one expected from poetry was an intrinsic
poetic quality, not a mere name-dropping. 24
S o y i n k a , then, is really m a k i n g the s a m e d e m a n d as t h e n e g r i t u d i n i s t s — i f a

text is written by an A f r i c a n , this should b e o b v i o u s b o t h f r o m its f o r m and
f r o m its contents. H o w e v e r , S o y i n k a ' s statement, e v e n in t h e m o d i f i e d ver-
sion, is sharply critical of these particular poets in this particular respect,
f o r w h a t is b e i n g said, albeit indirectly, is that t h e s e poets, t h o u g h they d o
s p e a k of A f r i c a , d o not do so in an A f r i c a n m a n n e r .
W o l e S o y i n k a has criticized nigritude f r o m an ideological point of
v i e w , too, as w i t n e s s e d , f o r instance, by the f o l l o w i n g p a r a g r a p h f r o m his
collection of e s s a y s Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge
1976), w h e r e h e parodies, and delivers a riposte to, S e n g h o r ' s depiction of
t h e e n c o u n t e r b e t w e e n D e s c a r t e s a n d an A f r i c a n :
Let us respond, very simply, as I imagine our mythical brother innocent

would respond in his virginal village, pursuing his innocent sports, sud-
denly confronted by the figure of Descartes in his pith-helmet, engaged in
the mission of piercing the jungle of the black pre-logical mentality with his
intellectual canoe. As our Cartesian ghost introduces himself by scribbling
on our black brother's—naturally—tabula rasa the famous proposition. "I
think, therefore I am," we should not respond, as the Negritudinists did,
with "I feel, therefore I am," for that is to accept the arrogance of a philo-
sophical certitude that has no foundation in the provable, one which reduces
the cosmic logic of being to a functional particularism of being. I cannot
imagine that our "authentic black innocent" would ever have permitted
himself to be manipulated into the false position of countering one perni-
cious Manicheism with another. He would sooner, I suspect, reduce our
white explorer to syntactical proportions by responding: "You think, there-
fore you are a thinker. You are one-who-thinks, white-creature-in-pith-hel-
met-in-African-jungle-who-thinks and, finally, white-man-who-has-prob-
lems-believing-in-his-own-existence." And I cannot believe that he would
arrive at that observation solely by intuition. 25
24 Quote according to Jahn, Neo-African Literature, pp. 265-66, based on a tape recording
made by Jahn on the occasion in question.
25 Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1976), pp. 138-39.
The above example, like the statement on "tigritude," would appear to im-
ply that the debate concerning negritude and its validity is chiefly a debate
between francophone and anglophone African writers, and one certainly
might get the impression that the anglophone ones, particularly those hail-
ing from Nigeria, are more aware than their francophone colleagues of the
differences between various African traditions. It would, however, be sim-
plistic to say that the conflict between the negritudinists and their anglo-
phone colleagues is due merely to the fact that the latter are totally insus-
ceptible to the idea that African literature does have certain characteristics
not to be found in most of European literature. The quarrel, to a large ex-
tent, is about what characteristics should be considered most important.
Whereas the negritudinists have tended to emphasize a traditional African
content, presented in an unmistakably African form, their anglophone col-
leagues have been more inclined to emphasize the social functions of lit-
erature, and the social responsibility of writers. To many of them, as the
authors of the important study The Empire Writes Back (London and New
York 1989) put it, "the central issue of a literary work is the strategic value
of its content and the effectiveness of its intervention in the struggle to lib-
erate African societies from economic injustice, social backwardness, and
political reaction." 26 The advocates of this view of literature appear to be of
the opinion that the best way for modern African writers to live up to the
role always played by the poet, the story-teller, the custodian of the Word
in the cultures of Africa, is to be socially committed, to function both as
teachers and as mouthpieces for the peoples, to which they belong. Chinua
Achebe has expressed this opinion very clearly, e.g. in his essay "Africa
and her Writers," where he says:
I [...] insist that art is, and was always, in the service of man. Our ancestors
created their myths and legends and told their stories for a human purpose
(including, no doubt, the excitation of wonder and pure delight); they made
their sculptures in wood and terracotta, stone and bronze to serve the needs
of their times. Their artists lived and moved and had their being in society,
and created their works for the good of that society. 27
In this text, Achebe maintains that the most important difference between
African artists and their European counterparts, to his mind, is the fact that
the former regard art as a trade, the purpose of which is to serve the collec-
26 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 130.
27 Chinua Achebe, "Africa and Her Writers," Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays (Lon-
don: HEB, 1975), p. 19. Originally published in Massachusetts Review (1963).
76 Stephan Larsen
tive, rather than as a m e a n s f o r t h e artist to e x p r e s s his o w n p e r s o n a l

t h o u g h t s and e m o t i o n s . C o n c e r n i n g his o w n role in this context, A c h e b e , in
his e s s a y " T h e N o v e l i s t as T e a c h e r , " w h i c h h a s attracted a great deal of at-
tention, h a s the f o l l o w i n g to say:
The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and
regeneration that must be done. In fact he should march right in front. For
he is after all [...] the sensitive point of his community. [...] I for one would
not wish to be excused. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially
the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their
past—with all its imperfections—was not one long night of savagery from
which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them. Perhaps
what I write is applied art as distinct from pure. But who cares? Art is
important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don't see
that the two need be mutually exclusive. 28
S i m i l a r s e n t i m e n t s h a v e b e e n e x p r e s s e d by, a m o n g others, W o l e S o y i n k a ,
w h o , in his p a p e r " T h e writer in a m o d e r n A f r i c a n state," says that: " T h e
artist h a s a l w a y s f u n c t i o n e d in A f r i c a n society as t h e record of the m o r e s
and e x p e r i e n c e of his society a n d as the v o i c e of vision in his o w n time. It
is t i m e f o r h i m to r e s p o n d to this e s s e n c e of h i m s e l f . " 2 9
In all fairness, it should b e p o i n t e d out that S e n g h o r , too, has occasional-
ly e x p r e s s e d similar v i e w s , f o r instance in his e s s a y " L ' e s t h e t i q u e negro-
a f r i c a i n e " ( N e g r o - A f r i c a n Aesthetics), w h e r e h e writes as f o l l o w s :
Since they are functional and collective, the art and literature of negro
Africa are committed [...]. Because he is committed, the artisan-poet is not
concerned with creating works for eternity. The work of art is perishable...
This is to say that in black Africa there is no such thing as "art for art's
sake;" all art is social. The griot, who sings the noble into war, makes him
stronger, and participates in the victory. When he recites the exploits of
some legendary hero, it is the history of his people that he writes with his
tongue, at the same time restoring to this history the divine profundity of
myth. This is true even of the fables, which instruct us by means of laughter
and tears. In the guises of the Lion, the Elephant, the Hyena, the Crocodile,
the Hare and the Old Woman, we can read, with our ears, our social struc-
tures and our passions—the good as well as the bad. 30
If S e n g h o r and t h e other negritudinists are neither u n a w a r e of n o r un-

interested in t h e social aspects of A f r i c a n art and literature, their anglo-
28 Chinua Achebe, "The Novelist as Teacher," Morning Yet on Creation Day, p. 45. Origi-
nally published in New Statesman, 29 January (1965).
29 Wole Soyinka, "The Writer in a Modern African State," in Per Wästberg (ed.), The
Writer in Modern Africa (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1968), p. 21
30 Senghor, Liberie /, pp. 207-08 (my trans.).
phone colleagues are by no means devoid of an understanding of the im-

portance of the past to Africans of today. The differences of opinion on this
subject have to do with how the past should be treated in contemporary lit-
erature. It can hardly be denied that the negritudinists and their followers
do tend to idealize and glorify pre-colonial Africa, even though there are,
of course, dissonant voices in the chorus of celebration. 31 In this context,
too, Chinua Achebe was among the first to make a clear statement of the
standpoint of the anglophone writers, for instance in his essay "The Role of
the Writer in a New Nation," where he says:
A writer [...] cannot escape the conclusion that the past needs to be
recreated not only for the enlightenment of our detractors but even more for
our own education [...]. The question is how does a writer re-create this
past? Quite clearly there is a strong temptation to idealize it—to extol its
good points and pretend that the bad never existed [...]. This is where the
writer's integrity comes in. Will he be strong enough to overcome the temp-
tation to select only those facts which flatter him? If he succumbs he will
have branded himself as an untrustworthy witness. But it is not only his per-
sonal integrity as an artist which is involved. The credibility of the world he
is attempting to re-create will be called to question and he will defeat his
own purpose if he is suspected of glossing over inconvenient facts. We can-
not pretend that our past was one long, technicolour idyll. We have to admit
that like other people's pasts ours had its good as well as its bad sides. [...]
any serious African writer who wants to plead the cause of the past must not
only be God's advocate, he must also do duty for the devil [...]. Those who
want to resurrect an illustrious ancestor to grace their celebration may
sometimes receive a great shock when the illustrious ancestor actually
shows up. But, I think, it is still necessary that he should appear. 32
Clearly, this text, too, is expressive of the notion of the social responsibili-
ty of the African writer. He is never considered to speak only for himself,
but always on behalf of a collective, either as their representative or as
their teacher. His view of history is not his own business, but of vital im-
portance to all those, whose history he attempts to bring to life. Perhaps
collectivism is the thing to focus upon, if one wants to find the common
denominator of African literature.
Among other things, a "collectivist" angle of approach could probably
throw some light on the question why so much African literature describes
31 For instance the aggressively anti-negritudinist novel by Yambo Ouologuem of Mali, Le

devoir de violence (Paris: Seuil, 1968), Ralph Manheim (trans.), Bound to Violence
(London: Seeker and Warburg, 1971).
32 Chinua Achebe, "The Role of the Writer in a New Nation," in G. D. Killam (ed.), Afri-
can Writers on African Writing (London: HEB, 1973), pp. 9-10. Originally published in
Nigeria Magazine 81 (1964).
78 Stephan Larsen
different types of conflict—between African and European cultural factors,

between traditional beliefs and Christianity, between the past and the
present, between the older and the younger generation, between a static
and a dynamic society, between the countryside and the cities, between de-
mocracy and dictatorship, and, last but not least, between collectivism it-
self and individualism. The same angle of approach is also likely to show
that the relatively small number of African texts that probe the depths of
the human psyche is the result of conscious choices on the part of African
writers, not a sign of the inferiority of African literature as compared to
European, where works that emphasize the inner life of the individual are
more common.
Furthermore, it is easy to observe that most African literature is about
Africa. As Emmanuel Ngara puts it in Stylistic Criticism and the African
Novel·. "African literature springs from African social and historical condi-
tions. It reflects problems—thematic, linguistic, aesthetic—which are pe-
culiarly African." 33 The writers have not turned away from their back-
ground and their milieu in order to search for other sources of inspiration.
Those who have written some of their works outside of their countries of
origin—in exile, as students, or as diplomats—tend, nevertheless, to rely
on memories of their African childhood, or to depict their situation as
grown-ups from an African point of view. A very well-known example of
this phenomenon is Camara Laye's autobiographical novel L'enfant noir
(Paris 1953; trans. James Kirkup, The Dark Child, New York 1954/ The
African Child, Glasgow 1955), written when the author lived in poverty as
a student in Paris, and descriptive of his childhood in a paradisiac, magical
Africa, seemingly unaffected by the culture of the colonizer.
There are, of course, works by African writers that are set in other parts
of the world—e.g. Le docker noir (Paris 1956) by Sembene Ousmane, Un
negre ά Paris (Paris 1959), Patron de New York (Paris 1964), and La ville
ou nul ne meurt (Paris 1969) by Bernard Dadie, L'aventure ambigue (Paris
1961; trans. Katherine Woods, Ambiguous Adventure, London 1972) by
Cheikh Hamidou Kane, America, their America (London 1964) by John
Pepper Clark, A Few Nights and Days (London 1966) by Mbella Sonne Di-
poko, Second-Class Citizen (London 1974) by Buchi Emecheta, Our Sister
Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (New York 1977) by
Ama Ata Aidoo, and Chalys d'Harlem (Dakar 1978) by Lamine Diakhate.
33 Emmanuel Ngara, Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel (London: Heinemann, 1982),
p. 8.
However, what all of these texts have in common is that they describe cul-
tural encounters—or cultural clashes—where the African roots of the re-
spective protagonists are of vital importance both for their way of looking
at life in foreign countries, and for the way they are looked upon by Euro-
peans and Americans. Not even Wole Soyinka's drama The Bacchae of
Euripides (London 1973), an adaptation of a classical Greek tragedy, falls
outside the scope of Africa, for Soyinka has enriched ancient Greece with
African characters, African beliefs, and an African view of the nature of
tragedy. 34
In the beginning of this chapter, I inserted several quotes from Leopold
Sedar Senghor, one of the most eager and eloquent spokesmen of neg-
ritude. It seems proper, in order to give the reader some idea of how widely
disseminated the notion of one African culture—and one African litera-
ture—really is, to end the chapter by quoting from an anglophone, Marxist,
literary scholar from Zimbabwe, Emmanuel Ngara, who, in Stylistic Criti-
cism and the African Novel, writes as follows:
There is no other continent in the world where different nations have the
same sense of oneness as in Africa. Tribalism does exist, and certain forces,
including some of our own politicians, are very busy trying to tear us apart,
but the idea of one Africa is there in the minds of the people. This oneness
is expressed in the aspirations of the OAU and in such songs as Nkosi
Sikelela i Africa/I she komborera Africa, "God Bless Africa," which many
in southern Africa take as the national anthem of Africa. When I was
young, I learned about the existence of the African nation before I knew
that I belonged to a nation called "Rhodesia." Many of the songs we sang at
school were about Africa and Africans, not about the Shona or Ndebele, the
two main ethnic groups in the country. Despite the differences that distin-
guish one African nation from another, there is a common core of culture,
political aspirations, history and world-view which binds the African
people as one people. Many of our writers are conscious of these facts. 35
African Literatures
Literatures in English, French, and Portuguese

It is not unusual to group modern African literatures according to lan-
guage, on the basis of the languages of the former colonial powers. The
34 This drama is discussed in greater detail in my essay "Euro-African Dialogue" in this

volume.
35 Ngara, Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel, p. 8.
80 Stephan Larsen
fact, as Oyekan Owomoyela points out in his foreword to A History of

Twentieth-Century African Literatures (Lincoln and London 1993), is that
"Anyone with a passing acquaintance with discourses concerning African
literatures is aware that the mention of the subject automatically suggests
writings in European languages." 36 Remarkable though this might seem, it
is, perhaps, not really very surprising, considering the fact that, after all,
the modern African literatures are the results of the European presence on
the African continent, and the fact that most of Africa's writers do belong
to an assimilated elite, which means that, at least if they grew up in the co-
lonial era, determined attempts were made to teach them, at an early stage,
to regard the language of the colonialist as vastly superior in every way to
their own mother tongues. It might seem even more strange that younger
African writers appear to prefer English, French or Portuguese, but they,
too, with very few exceptions, belong to a well educated elite, and should
perhaps be regarded against the background of J.-L. Miege's contention, in
his essay "The Colonial Past in the Present," that the African universities,
even after Independence, are "the best examples of the colonial past." 37 In
the same essay, Miege maintains that whatever differences can be ob-
served between different groups of present-day Africans are not of an eth-
nic nature, but can be traced back to their colonial past. Consequently, an
anglophone Yoruba from Nigeria can be expected to live, think, and write
in a manner different from that of a francophone Yoruba from the neigh-
bouring country of Benin. 38
Many of these differences, like those discussed in the preceding chapter,
could probably be explained by reference to the policies of the former
"mother countries." The European colonization of Africa may be said to
have resulted in two main lines of development in modern African litera-
ture. The Latin countries, chiefly France, attempted to uphold their own
languages and value systems, and to assimilate the black elite into the Eu-
ropean cultures. For this reason, practically all literature produced in their
colonies was written in the colonial languages, and in accordance with the
aesthetic demands of the colonial powers. Great Britain and Germany were
quick to translate the Bible into African languages, thus encouraging a
36 Oyekan Owomoyela (ed.), A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures (Lincoln

and London: Nebraska UP, 1993), p. 3.
37 J. -L. Miege, "The Colonial Past in the Present," in W. H. Morris-Jones and Georges
Fischer (eds.), Decolonisation and After: The British and French Experience, Studies in
Commonwealth Politics and History vol. 7 (London: F. Cass, 1980), p. 45.
38 Ibid., pp. 3 5 ^ 9 .
written literature in the vernaculars and a continuity with regards to genres

and aesthetics, something which, in its turn, lay the foundations of a main-
ly anglophone literature with clearly observable "African" characteris-
tics.39 Furthermore, the British, unlike the French and the Portuguese, al-
lowed the vernaculars to be used for teaching purposes in primary schools.
True enough, they accepted nothing but English on the higher levels of the
educational system, so that, in the end, the vernaculars were regarded as
"second-rate" after all, but nevertheless, most Africans who had attended
British schools were in command both of their respective mother tongues
and English.
What, then, are the most conspicuous differences between African lit-
eratures in English, French and Portuguese? Where the treatment of the
language of the colonizer is concerned, the anglophone literature in partic-
ular can boast of several interesting examples of strategies used to "Afri-
canize" the imported tool. One of the most radical of these is probably that
which the authors of The Empire Writes Back refer to as "syntactic fu-
sion,"40 and which consists of the combination, by an African writer, of the
syntax of his mother tongue with an English vocabulary. This strategy may
be said to occur early in the history of the anglophone literature of Africa,
as it can be seen at work in one of the very first anglo-African texts to
achieve international fame, namely Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine
Drinkard (London 1952), which begins thus:
I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no
other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. In those days we did
not know other money, except COWRIES, so that everything was very
cheap, and my father was the richest man in town. My father got eight chil-
dren and I was the eldest among them, all the rest were hard workers, but I
myself was an expert palm-wine drinkard. I was drinking palm-wine from
morning till night and from night till morning. By that time I could not
drink ordinary water at all except palm-wine. But when my father noticed
that I could not do any more work than to drink, he engaged an expert
palm-wine tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine
every day. 41
39 Cf. Kacke Götrick, the section "Litteratur" (Literature), from the article "Afrika" (Afri-
ca), in Nationalencyklopedin (The National Encyclopedia) vol. 1 (Stockholm: Bok-
förlaget Bra böcker, 1989), p. 91. This reference to a Swedish encyclopedia is not made
solely for patriotic reasons. The fact of the matter is that neither the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica nor the Larousse, to mention the two most obvious alternatives, provided the clear,
concise comparisons that I needed.
40 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back, p. 68.
41 Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (London: Faber, 1952), p. 7.
82 Stephan Larsen
This Yoruba-English hybrid 42 has been the subject of much controversy

ever since it was first published. English and American critics were quick
to praise it to the skies, while most of Tutuola's fellow Nigerians were very
negative in their judgements, complaining that Tutuola was uneducated (he
is one of the very few African writers who has never studied at an aca-
demic level), that he wrote bad English, that he had plagiarized some tales
from the oral traditions of the Yoruba, that he gave Nigeria a bad name
etc., etc. In later years, Tutuola's reputation in his country of birth has im-
proved, mostly as a result of the fact that several leading personalities in
the field of Nigerian culture, such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka,
have come forward in his defense, but it has been a long and arduous jour-
ney. Nowadays, the view most commonly held is that Tutuola's text is not
"the mere linguistic aberration it has sometimes been dismissed as, but an
important and early example of a diglossic formation in post-colonial lit-
erature." 43
Strictly speaking, the mixture of languages in The Palm-Wine Drinkard
should probably not be referred to as a "strategy," as, in all likelihood, Tu-
tuola never intended to perform a linguistic experiment. Gabriel Okara's
novel The Voice (London 1964), however, is clearly a case of fully inten-
tional hybridization, systematically carried out. In this text, the writer com-
bines the syntax of his mother tongue, Ijaw, with an English vocabulary.
The result, as the following examples will hopefully show, is often aston-
ishing:
Listen. Asking the bottom of things in this town will take you no place. Hook
this up with your little finger. Put it in your inside's box and lock it up.
Your teaching words do not enter my inside. 44
I see in my inside that your spoken words are true and straight. But you see
it in your inside that we have no power to do anything. The spirit is power-
ful. So it is they who get the spirit that are powerful and the people believe
with their insides whatever they are told. The world is no longer straight
t-..]. So turn this over in your inside and do as we do so that you will have a
sweet inside like us.45
42 On the subject of hybridity, cf. the essays in volume 4 in this series, by Margareta Peter-
son, "Hybridity in Indian English literature;" Nelson Gonzlez-Ortega, "Amerindian and
European Narratives in Contact;" and Leif Lorentzon, "Something Very Light, Perhaps a
Little Educative: The Ghanaian Novel in English Between Nkrumah and Armah, and
Asare Konadu's in Particular."
44 Gabriel Okara, The Voice (London: Deutsch, 1964), p. 36.
45 Ibid., p. 49.
A stinking thing like a rottten corpse be, which had made us all, you and
me, breathe freely no more for the many years past. Now we are free people
be, free to breathe. 46
Such a radical mixture of languages, however, is not particularly common.

Something that does occur in quite a few anglophone texts, particularly
those depicting pre-colonial Africa, is the insertion, by the authors, of
words from their respective mother tongues, immediately followed by their
nearest equivalents in English. For example, in Chinua Achebe's first
novel, Things Fall Apart (London 1958), there are several constructions
such as "agadi-nwayi, or old woman," 47 "elders, or ndichie,"A8 "hut, or
obi,"49 "chi or personal god," 50 to mention but a few. The dangers of such a
mode of procedure are rather obvious—firstly, the English words seldom
mean exactly the same as the words, they are supposed to translate (ab-
stract terms are, of course, particularly difficult to "translate"); secondly,
the English words inevitably carry with them connotations foreign to an
African milieu; thirdly, readers, especially non-Africans, might, more or
less consciously, receive the impression that it is the English translation
which conveys the "real" meaning of the term.
The use of African words, accompanied by English translations, was
rather frequent among anglophone African writers twenty-thirty years ago.
In later years, it has become more common to leave indigenous words un-
translated in the English text, thus giving a clearer impression of the differ-
ences between cultures. As the authors of The Empire Writes Back put it,
"Such a device not only acts to signify the difference between cultures, but
also illustrates the importance of discourse in interpreting cultural con-
cepts." 51 An early example of the use of this device is to be found in the
following excerpt from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's novel A Grain of Wheat
(London 1967), where one of the male protagonists, Gikonyo, sings a song
to his wife to be, Mumbi:
"Haven't you heard the new song?"
"Which? Sing it."
"You know it too. I believe it is Kihika who introduced it here. I only
remember the words of the chorus:
46 Ibid., p. 72.
47 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1958), p. 9.
48 Ibid., p. 10.
49 Ibid., p. 11.
50 Ibid., p. 14.
84 Stephan Larsen
"Gikuyu na Mumbi
Gikuyu na Mumbi
Gikuyu na Mumbi
Nikihui ngwatiro" 52
Similar passsages occur, perhaps not surprisingly, in quite a few anglo-

phone African dramas, particularly those set in pre-colonial times, such as
the historical dramas of Ola Rotimi and Wale Ogunyemi. In anglo- African
poetry, too, the reader will occasionally come across untranslated words,
borrowed from some African language. An example of this is Wole Soyin-
ka's poem "Abiku," the title of which is never translated—the meaning of
the word becomes clear as one reads the entire poem, the rest of which is in
English, i.e. by contextualization. 53
All of the various types of "Africanization" mentioned so far can be said
to operate on a syntactic-lexical level. As examples of "Africanization" on
a more stylistic level, I would like to mention the abundant use of proverbs,
both in the narrative parts and in the dialogues, in Things Fall Apart and
other early novels by Chinua Achebe. 54 In this context, mention should
also be made of the use of a collective narrator—a "we-narrator"—for in-
stance in Ayi Kwei Armah's novel Two Thousand Seasons (Nairobi
1973).55
Few of Africa's francophone writers have performed linguistic ex-
periments of the kinds hitherto mentioned. As a rule, their way of holding
their own with the colonial power has not been to create "African" French,
but to prove, often very eloquently, that their command of this civilized
language is well equal to that of any cultivated Frenchman. This is true
even of those writers who, in striving to retrieve and preserve their national
identity, and in accordance with the programme of nigritude, have gone to
traditional African story-telling and poetry for inspiration. More often than
not, they have claimed to follow the oral story-tellers so closely as to be
merely translating what they have said, but in actual fact, they have recast
the material so as to make it palatable to the discerning French reader. An
52 Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat (London: HEB, 1967), p. 92.

53 Wole Soyinka, Idanre and Other Poems (London: Methuen, 1967), p. 29.
54 For a more detailed discussion of Achebe's use of proverbs, see Bernth Lindfors, "The
Palm-Oil with which Achebe's Words Are Eaten," in C. L. Innes and Bernth Lindfors
(eds.), Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (London: HEB, 1979), pp. 47-60.
55 For a more detailed discussion of the role and function of the we-narrator in Armah and
other African authors, see Leif Lorentzon, An African Focus: A Study of Ayi Kwei Ar-
mah's Narrative Africanization (diss.), (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International,
1998), pp. 123-134.
example of this is Birago Diop's collection of stories, Les contes d'Ama-

dou Koumba (Paris 1947, trans. Dorothy Blair, Tales of Amadou Koumba,
London 1966). Nigritude-poetry, too, although profoundly African in its
choice of subjects, is often indebted to several French poets as regards
form, something which Leopold Sedar Senghor, in his afterword to his col-
lection of poetry, Ethiopiques (Paris 1956), admits with disarming frank-
ness, and even a sort of pride. As Dorothy Blair puts it: "if his allegiance to
Africa is visceral, his attachment to France is certainly more than merely
cerebral." 56 In this context it should be mentioned that in several of his lyr-
ical poems, Senghor has inserted untranslated words from African lan-
guages, chiefly Wolof and Serer. However, in a volume of selected poetry,
Poemes (Paris 1964), he has added a short list of translations, as, in his
own words, he has never aimed at "exoticism for the sake of exoticism" or
"cheap hermetism." 57 It would seem, then—somewhat surprisingly, per-
haps—that he does not regard the use of untranslated African words as a
political act.
This, on the other hand, is probably precisely how one should regard the
language of Ahmadou Kourouma's novel Les soleils des independances
(Montreal 1968; trans. Adrian Adams, The Suns of Independence, London
1981), a linguistic experiment nearly unique in franco-African literature. In
this novel, Kourouma has attempted to re-create the linguistic habits of the
Malinke in French, partly through the frequent use of proverbs and images
deeply rooted in local traditions, partly, and chiefly, through the use of the
syntactic patterns, and, in some measure, the vocabulary of Malinke. In
some cases, Kourouma has even created new French words on the basis of
the Malinke patterns of word formation. Kourouma has emphatically dem-
onstrated that it actually is possible to create "African French," that it is the
attitude of the writers to the borrowed language, rather than any inherent
properties of the language itself, that determines whether such a thing is
possible. So far, however, few other francophone writers have followed in
his footsteps.
In the lusophone literature of Africa, it is much more common for the
striving for liberation from the "mother country" to find expression in the
use of language, even in works by white authors. As an example of this, I
would like to mention one of Angola's most important writers, Jose Luan-
56 Dorothy Blair, African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in French

from West and Equatorial Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976), p. 153.
57 Senghor, Poemes (Paris: Seuil, 1964), p. 249 (my trans.).
86 Stephan Larsen
dino Vieira, born as Jose Vieira Mateus de Gra<ja in the Portuguese coun-
tryside, but raised in Luanda from the age of about one. Concerning his
ways of mixing Portuguese and Kimbundu, Russell G. Hamilton has writ-
ten as follows:
Luandino, whose own sobriquet combines a Kimbundu root word with a
Portuguese suffix, experimented with language in such ways that lexical
items, syntax, and the cadences of musseque speech—which mainly Por-
tuguese settlers and even some members of the indigenous middle class
pejoratively labeled pretogues (literally, "blackieguese")—suggested a
creolized Kimbundu and lent legitimacy to an even more creolized Portu-
guese. His purpose has been to dignify the stigmatized black vernacular
by elevating it to the level of a literary language, not just in dialogue, but
also in the voice of a kind of urban and suburban griot. Luandino went
beyond most of his predecessors and many of his contemporaries who
Africanized acculturated writing in an ostensively European language by
sprinkling their narratives with indigenous words and phrases. Luandino
has bent Portuguese syntax to simulate Kimbundu word order and has
used whole sentences in Kimbundu without providing Portuguese transla-
tions. Tamara Bender, the American translator of Luuanda, writes that
"Vieira refused to provide a glossary for his book, because, as he
explained, he wrote his estorias for the very people whose language he
used, adding that ignorance of musseque speech was the problem of the
Portuguese colonizer, not his." 58
And Vieira is by no means the only luso-African writer whose attitude to

"correct" Portuguese is one of rebellion. Among others who have been
busy experimenting with luso-African hybrid forms, special mention
should be made of Uanhenga Xitu, "Pepetela" (pseudonym for Artur Car-
los Mauricio Pestana dos Santos), and Manuel Rui. 59
All of the examples that I have chosen to illustrate the differences be-
tween African literatures in European languages have focused on language
and style, something which has seemed natural to me, as the choice of lan-
guage has been a major problem for many African writers and critics ever
since the first African texts in European languages saw the light of day.
However, there are also considerable differences between anglo-, franco-
and lusophone literatures on the level of contents, for instance as regards
the frequency of direct attacks on the former colonial masters; the striving
to extol the virtues of Africans, at the expense of the Europeans; the ways
58 A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures, pp. 264-65.

59 For an extensive discussion of colonial and post-colonial modernities in luso-African lit-
erature, see Stefan Helgesson's essay in vol. 3:2 in this series, "Modernism under Portu-
guese Rule."
in which white characters are depicted; the approach to African traditions

and customs; the approach to African history, colonial as well as pre-colo-
nial; the willingness to criticize post-colonial African regimes; the ap-
proach to European political idelogies; the use of indigenous and western
myths and religious ideas; intertextual relations to European works and au-
thors etc., etc. It seems perfectly clear, then, that a division of modern Afri-
can literatures into linguistic units, on the basis of the languages of the
former colonial powers, is meaningful and likely to produce interesting re-
sults.
In conclusion, yet another result of the different cultural policies of the
European colonizers deserves to be mentioned. Many of those African
countries that used to belong to the British Empire can boast of rather ex-
tensive vernacular literatures, whereas the former French or Portuguese
colonies have hardly produced any books in African languages. 60
National literatures.61
Is it possible to speak of, for example, a Nigerian, a Kenyan, a Came-
roonian, a Senegalese, an Angolan, a South African, etc. national litera-
ture, endowed with certain particular characteristics to clearly distinguish
these literatures from other national literatures in the same language and
from the same part of the continent? On this point, to put it mildly, the
learned disagree, irrespective of whether they are Africanists or repre-
sentatives of the field of research usually referred to as "post-colonial
studies." As the very idea of "post-colonial studies" would seem to imply
a comparative way of looking at things, it is doubtful whether, in this
field of research, one has any use at all for terms such as "Nigerian litera-
ture." Even the term "African literature" might possibly seem too nar-
60 The reader in search of extensive and reliable information on literatures in the African
vernaculars is referred to Albert S. Gerard's African Language Literatures: An Introduc-
tion to the Literary History of Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington D. C.: Three Continents
Press, 1980), which describes and discusses literatures in more than 60 African lan-
guages. Mention should also be made of three Polish scholars, B. W. Andrzejewski, S.
Pilaszewicz, and W. Tyloch, who, in their study Literatures in African Languages:
Theoretical Issues and Sample Sun'eys (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), pay attention
not only to written literatures in African languages, but also to the oral traditions on
which these literatures are often based.
61 For a general discussion of literary and national history, see Per Erik Ljung's essay, "In-
venting Traditions: A Comparative Perspective on the Writing of Literary History," in
this volume.
88 Stephan Larsen
row, as one of the main purposes of studies of this kind is often to de-
scribe and discuss similarities between several different post-colonial lit-
eratures from several different parts of the world, rather than delving
deeply into national, or regional, peculiarities. A characteristic statement
to this effect is to be found in the study Among Worlds (Erin, Ontario
1975), by the Canadian literary scholar W. H. New, who, ά propos
post-colonial literatures, maintains that "the degree to which they overlap
provides [...] a guard against easy assertions about national distinctive-
ness in literature." 62 On the other hand, the authors of The Empire Writes
Back have the following to say:
The development of national literatures and criticism is fundamental to the

whole enterprise of post-colonial studies. Without such developments at the
national level, and without the comparative studies to which these lead, no
discourse of the post-colonial could have emerged. Nor is it simply a matter
of development from one stage to another, since all post-colonial studies
continue to depend upon national literatures and criticism. The study of
national traditions is the first and most vital stage of the process of rejecting
the claims of the centre to exclusivity. 63
The questions in connection with the study of African national literatures

are numerous, and often of a very fundamental nature. Is the term "nation"
at all applicable to African conditions? If not, how can we speak of African
national literatures? If, in spite of everything, we assume that African na-
tional literatures do exist, how, then, should the term "national literature,"
as applied to Africa, be defined?
As regards the term "nation," it is almost a commonplace that the Afri-
can nations in existence today are the results of colonialism, of geometri-
cal lines drawn on the map of Africa by the, exclusively European, par-
ticipants of the Berlin conference 1884-85, with no regard whatsoever
for the national borders that were already there—all of a sudden, ethnic
groups that had been at war with each other for decades became citizens
of one and the same nation, while groups with a common language and a
common culture were split by the new national borders. This may seem
complicated enough, but newer research has shown that this way of writ-
ing history is a gross simplification of the facts, and, even worse, a sim-
plification which rests upon the basically colonial image of a pre-colonial
Africa where everything had been the same from time immemorial. As
62 William H. New, Among Worlds: An Introduction to Modern Commonwealth and South

African Fiction (Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1975), pp. 2-3.
Kenneth W. Harrow puts it in his "Introduction" to Research in African

Literatures (2001), (a special issue on nationalism and national litera-
tures in Africa):
Of course, all this is predicated on the notion of a precolonial Africa in
which the geographical topography somehow corresponded to a "naturally"
distributed group of populations, as if conquest and movements of popula-
tions had not affected and shifted people about prior to colonial conquest—
as if no one had previously occupied the land settled through the move-
ments of the Bantu migrations; as if the mfecane had not redistributed the
realities of Southern Africa after shaking them up like a tornado; as if the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jihads of West Africa were plotted to
accomodate fixed ethnic or state lines. In fact, what recent scholarship has
taught us is that the San people did not occupy the Kalahari desert, living as
hunter-gatherers since time immemorial, but had had to abandon lands and
herds in the face of a greater force, and to survive moved into lands where
only hunting-gathering was possible. Cultural contacts, conquest, influ-
ences through borrowing, imitating, and expropriating marked peoples
everywhere in Africa. Cultural isolation or frozen ethnic boundaries never
existed. Where did the nation come into existence in all this? 64
A good question, to be sure, and one that one would like to follow up by
asking: "Where did national literatures come into existence in all this?" If
indeed, they did...
Let us return to the question how the term "national literature," as ap-
plied to Africa, should be defined. Linguistic definitions, common in our
part of the world, will not do, as a nation such as Nigeria can boast of lit-
erature in English, French, Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Ijaw etc.
Would a purely descriptive definition suffice—such as "the sum total of
the literary productivity of a nation?" The advantage of such a definition is
that whoever uses it will always be right, but, obviously, it is of little use as
a tool for analysis. Perhaps a more prescriptive definition would be prefer-
able—a definition based on a firm opinion of what should be considered to
belong to the national literature of a country? An example of this kind is
the definition put forward by Frantz Fanon in his epoch-making book Les
damnes de la terre (Paris 1961; trans. Constance Farrington, The Wretched
of the Earth, New York 1965). Fanon contends that literature in areas sub-
ject to colonization will, as a rule, go through three different stages of de-
velopment:
In the first, the colonized intellectual proves that he has assimilated the
occupier's culture. His works correspond point by point with those of his
64 Kenneth W. Harrow, "Introduction," Research in African Literatures 32:3 (2001), p. 33.

90 Stephan Larsen
metropolitan equivalents [...]. In a second period the colonized writer

becomes uncertain and decides to go back to his past [...]. But as he is not
integrated with his people, as his relations with them are from the outside,
he confines himself to remembering. Old episodes of childhood will be
brought up from deep down in his memory, old legends will be reinter-
preted according to the "borrowed" aesthetics and a conception of the world
discovered beneath different skies [...]. Finally, in the third period, called
the struggle, the colonized writer, after trying to lose himself in the people
and with the people, sets out, on the contrary, to shake them out of their
lethargy [...]. Here is protest literature, revolutionary literature, national lit-
erature [my italics]. 65
In other w o r d s , F a n o n is d e f i n i n g the t e r m "national l i t e r a t u r e " politically,

and r e s e r v i n g it f o r literature w h i c h actively participates in t h e e m e r g e n c e
of i n d e p e n d e n t nations in parts of t h e w o r l d f o r m e r l y u n d e r c o l o n i a l rule.
T h e p r o b l e m with his line of r e a s o n i n g is that a f t e r t h e r e v o l u t i o n a r y pe-
riod, t h e r e will f o l l o w a period w h e n t h e fruits of t h e revolution are to b e
harvested, w h e n the f o r m e r r e v o l u t i o n a r i e s are to a s s u m e p o w e r . O n c e the
n e w nations h a v e b e e n c o n s o l i d a t e d , w h o is to d e c i d e w h a t should be
c o u n t e d as b e l o n g i n g to national literature? This issue h a s b e e n d i s c u s s e d
by, a m o n g others, A l a i n R i c a r d , w h o , in his essay " M u s e u m , M a u s o l e u m ,
or M a r k e t : t h e C o n c e p t of N a t i o n a l L i t e r a t u r e , " p a i n t s t h e f o l l o w i n g de-
p r e s s i n g p i c t u r e of t h e c o n d i t i o n s of l i t e r a t u r e in f a r t o o m a n y of A f r i c a ' s
independent nations:
Once created, ministries of culture have a say in what national literature

ought to be. Through them the state not only collects—and chooses—it now
plans to promote texts that will agree with the official aims of administra-
tive action [...]. National literature becomes then the discourse of the state
as it attempts to exercise a monopoly of legitimate cultural discourse. It is
the official discourse on verbal arts [...]. In simple terms, national literature
could be presented as the attempt by the state to impose an official literature
in the name of national unity [...]. The success of the notion of national lit-
erature is thus a rather distressing phenomenon: it is indeed a recognition of
the past and a step toward an affirmation of identity, but unfortunately, it is
a revised past and a bureaucratic identity. 66
T h e a b o v e s h o u l d m a k e it a b u n d a n t l y c l e a r that p r e s c r i p t i v e d e f i n i t i o n s
s h o u l d b e a v o i d e d — a n d s h a r p l y c r i t i c i z e d ! — b y a n y o n e i n t e n d i n g to p u r -
65 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Constance Farrington (trans.), (New York:
Grove Press, 1965), pp. 166-67.
66 Alain Ricard, "Museum, Mausoleum, or Market: the Concept of National Literature,"
Research in African Literatures 18:3 (1987), pp. 296ff.
sue a serious study of the national literatures of Africa. What possible

definitions remain? So far, I have dwelt upon the production of litera-
ture—the arguments have been based on the assumption that the national
literature of a country is literature written by authors who belong to this
country, and who choose the people, the culture, and the living condi-
tions of this country as their subjects. But what about distribution and re-
ception? Should these factors be taken into consideration when the term
"national literature" is defined? For instance, is "Nigerian literature" not
only literature written by Nigerians and descriptive of life in Nigeria, but
also literature printed and distributed in Nigeria, and read by Nigerians?
Nigeria might not be the best of examples, as this particular country can
boast of several indigenous publishing houses, rather widely spread liter-
acy, and a large number of universities, all of which would seem to guar-
antee—potentially, at least—a considerable number of readers for locally
produced literature. In many other African countries, the situation is a
great deal gloomier—this is particularly true of the smallest and poorest
countries, where there are no publishing houses, where the distribution of
books is fraught with all kinds of difficulties, where only a small number
of people are able to read, where the country's authors are not taught in
its schools. Can national literatures exist in these countries, under the
present circumstances? I have no answer to this question, but I feel it
should be asked in the context discussed in this section.
More often than not, small, poor countries do not only have few readers,
but few writers as well, which brings me to my next question—should not
any idea of what is characteristic of a national literature be based on a ra-
ther extensive foundation? If we answer this question in the affirmative,
then what are we to make of countries where very few books are written?
In this context, one must also take into account that the smaller the country,
and the fewer its writers, the easier it will be for any government so in-
clined to control what is being written and read, to create a "national litera-
ture" by artificial means, to, as Alain Ricard would put it, solve the prob-
lems before they have been posed.67 Be that as it may, it is easy to establish
that most book-length studies of African national literatures are about
countries with a fairly large number of writers, such as Nigeria,68 South
67 Cf. ibid., p. 300.

68 E.g., Bruce King (ed.), Introduction to Nigerian Literature (London: Evans and Lagos
UP, 1971); Alain Ricard (ed.), Livre et Communication au Nigeria (Paris: Presence Afri-
caine, 1975); James Booth, Writers and Politics in Nigeria (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1981).
92 Stephan Larsen
Africa, 69 Senegal, 70 Cameroon, 71 Angola 72 and Cape Verde. 73 It is hardly a

coincidence that most of the essays in Research in African Literatures, vol.
32, no. 3 are about Nigeria and South Africa. It is hardly a coincidence that
Albert S. Gerard devotes an entire chapter of his study Comparative Lit-
erature and African Literatures (Goodwood n.d.) to "Prospects for a Na-
tional History of South African Literature." It is hardly a coincidence that
Richard Bjornson, in his essay "Nationalliteratur und nationale Identität in
Afrika" (National Literature and National Identity in Africa), (Komparati-
stische Hefle, vol. 11, 1985), uses Cameroon as an example. 74 It is hardly a
coincidence that Gerald M. Moser, in his essay "Creating a National Lit-
erature: The Case of Mozambique" (in Contemporary African Literature,
ed. Hal Wylie, Eileen Julien and Russell J. Linnemann, Washington D.C.
1983), uses this particular country as an example. 75 What, then, about such
countries as Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Malawi, Tchad, Ga-
bon, Niger, Rwanda, and many others? Do they have national literatures?
If so, what are their characteristics? Here we have a practically uninvesti-
gated field of research well worth exploring.
In all likelihood, more has been written about the literatures of Nigeria
and South Africa than about any other African literatures, and much of
what has been written brings to the fore yet another important problem in
connection with the study of most of the more extensive national literatures
of Africa. With reference to these very countries, Kenneth W. Harrow, in
his introduction to Research in African Literatures 32:3 (2001), says that
"When the question of nationalism is posed in the study of their literature,
one immediately encounters the heterogeneity of their populations. Indeed,
69 E.g., Christopher Heywood, Aspects of South African Literature (London: HEB, 1976);
J. Alvarez-Pereyre, The Poetry of Commitment in South Africa (London: Heinemann,
1984).
70 E.g., Ihechukwu Madubuike, The Senegalese Novel: A Sociological Study of the Impact
of the Politics of Assimilation (Washington D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1980).
71 E.g., Jacques Rial, Litterature camerounaise de langue frangaise (Lausanne: Payot et la
commission national Suisse pour l'UNESCO, 1972).
72 E.g., Fernando da Costa Andrade, Literatura Angolana (Opiniöes) (Lisbon: Edigöes 70,
1980).
73 E.g., Norman Araujo, A Study of Cape Verdean Literature (Boston: Boston College,
1966).
74 See Richard Bjornson, "Nationalliteratur und Nationale Identität in Afrika: Kamerun als
Beispiel," Komparatistische Hefte 11 (Bayreuth: Ellwanger, 1985), pp. 69-97.
75 See Gerald M. Moser, "Creating a National Literature: The Case of Mozambique," Hal
Wylie, Eileen Julien, and Russell J. Linnemann (eds.), Contemporary African Literature,
(Washington D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1983), pp. 97-110.
in both countries long-standing conflict, most violent in Nigerian (sic!),

most interminable seeming and intractable in South Africa." 76 Generaliza-
tions are just as dangerous in describing national literatures as they are in
describing African literature as a whole. The more thoroughly you study a
national literature, the more motley and complex it will seem. What, exact-
ly, is typical of a nation? To illustrate what problems this question carries
with it, I shall now spotlight what is, as far as literature is concerned, one
of the richest countries of the African continent, Nigeria. Once again, the
question that will be asked is seemingly simple—is there a Nigerian na-
tional literature, and, if so, what are its characteristics?
In 1975, a collection of essays was published, edited by Bernth Lindfors,
and entitled Critical Perspectives on Nigerian Literatures (London 1975).
The plural form is important, for the essays in this volume discuss both lit-
erature in the Nigerian vernaculars, e.g. Yoruba, Hausa and Ibo, and anglo-
phone literature, and can hardly be said to provide support for the notion
that there is one Nigerian literature, the characteristics of which are easily
observable; on the contrary, one gets the impression of immense multiplic-
ity. Perhaps the British literary scholar James Booth is right, when, in his
study Writers & Politics in Nigeria (London 1981), he says that "An ob-
server seeking hard evidence of the existence of a 'Nigerian' culture must
conclude that there is as yet no such thing: only Ibo culture, Yoruba cul-
ture, Hausa culture etc." 77
This, however, is by no means the final word on this subject. Clara A. B.
Joseph, in her essay "Nation Because of Differences," contends that "the
contradictions and differences that the nation attempts to remove are in fact
constitutive of the concept of the nation. The nation is constituted by the
very difference it seeks to overcome." 78 Joseph shows, by means of ex-
amples from works by such writers as Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, and
Buchi Emecheta, that "the division and unification of the nation" 79 is a
recurrent theme in works by Nigerian authors, and may be regarded as a
cornerstone of the national literature of Nigeria. She convincingly main-
tains that "the unifying entity of the nation does not essentially preclude
differences." 80
76 Harrow, Introduction, Research in African Literatures, p. 39.

77 James Booth, Writers and Politics in Nigeria, p. 29.
78 Clara A. B. Joseph, "Nation Because of Differences," Research in African Literatures
32:3 (2001), p. 57.
79 Ibid., p. 59.
80 Ibid., p. 68.
94 Stephan Larsen
A somewhat similar problem is discussed by Joanna Sullivan, in her es-

say "The Question of a National Literature for Nigeria." Her point of de-
parture is the following well-known statement by Chinua Achebe:
A national literature is one that takes the whole nation for its province and
has a realised or potential audience throughout its territory. In other words a
literature that is written in the national language. An ethnic literature is one
which is available only to one ethnic group within the nation. If you take
Nigeria as an example, the national literature, as I see it, is the literature
written in English; and the ethnic literatures are in Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba,
Efik, Edo, Ijaw, etc., etc. 81
In refutation of this, Sullivan asks the following questions: "Should a na-

tional literature be constrained by language? Are ethnic cultures 'ethnic'
through language or topic? Must Nigeria's national literature consist only
of works written originally in English?" 82 Her contention is that many
writers who express themselves in, for instance, Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa,
nevertheless see themselves as Nigerian, not merely regional, writers. In
order to put the justification of their claim to the test, she then proceeds to
analyse both Achebe's Things Fall Apart (London 1958), regarded by
many as the paradigmatic Nigerian novel, and the novel Turmin Danya
(Lagos 1982), by the Hausa-writer Sulaiman Ibrahim Katsina. She con-
cludes that, with a strict application of the rule of "taking the whole nation
for its province," Achebe's novel should be regarded as, rather than
anything else, an Ibo-novel written in English, wheras Katsina's novel,
parts of which even discuss Nigerian nationalism, should be regarded as
"an excellent example of a Hausa novel that deals with typical Nigerian
characters, themes, and sentiments." 83 Admittedly, the question of what
really is "typically Nigerian" still remains. Besides, as pointed out by
Sullivan herself just a few lines further down, "The story takes place in fic-
tional towns, but the people in the story are immediately identified as being
Hausa." 84 Nonetheless, her argumentation is interesting and convincing,
and it is easy to agree with her conclusion: "As Nigeria continues its search
for self-definition and nationhood, only the combined literatures of its
disparate citizens, taken as a whole, can ultimately reflect the national
81 Achebe, "The African Writer and the English Language," Morning Yet on Creation Day,
p. 56.
82 Joanna Sullivan, "The Question of a National Literature for Nigeria," Research in Afri-
can Literatures 32:3 (2001), p. 76.
83 Ibid., p. 79.
84 Ibid.
character."85 In this essay, as in that by Joseph, the idea is put forward that
a nation—and, consequently, a national literature—may well emerge and
develop not in spite of, but because of, regional and ethnic differences and
antagonisms.
What is true of Nigeria may conceivably apply to several of Africa's
more complex national literatures, perhaps even those of South Africa and
of the lusophone countries, where white authors, as well as black ones,
have contributed substantially to national self-knowledge. It seems ap-
propriate to end this section by quoting a statement by the white Angolan
writer Luandino Vieira on this delicate subject:
There are African countries in which part of the population is of European
origin. That population has a cultural background different from the tradi-
tional history and culture of black African people. But, for a long time they
have shared an historical coming together, either in opposition to one
another or in harmony, and this results in their national reactions being dis-
tinct because of diverse factors which include inevitably their cultural back-
grounds. A culture, like a literature, is never static; it is always being
remade in historically determined and determining space and time. For this
reason, today, I am an Angolan writer, therefore an African writer. 86
Perhaps the study of the national literatures of Africa will force us to revise
our opinions of what constitutes a national literature—and what constitutes
a nation}1
Concluding Remarks
The purpose of this essay, as was pointed out at an early stage, is not pre-
scriptive but descriptive. There are no clear-cut answers to the questions it
has attempted to ask. At best, it might give some idea of what modes of
procedure are more or less fruitful. In some contexts, it still seems legiti-
mate and productive to speak of "African literature" as one category with
certain distinctive features to tell it apart from the literatures of other conti-
nents. There appears to be a great deal of disagreement, often with an ideo-
85 Ibid., p. 83.
86 From the introduction to Donald Burness, Fire: Six Writers from Angola, Mozambique
and Cape Verde (Washington D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1977), p. xiii.
87 For an extensive and many-faceted discussion of this latter problem, see Benedict Ander-
son, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(London: Verso, rev. ed. 1991).
96 Stephan Larsen
logical basis, as to what these features are, but many writers, scholars and
critics—by no means only those of the nigritude persuasion—agree that
they exist. In some contexts, however, interesting results have also been
achieved through the rejection of a monolithic way of thinking in favour of
the notion of several "African literatures," different from each other in
many important respects. The thought model that would appear to have the
brightest future prospects is the division of "African literature" into nation-
al literatures, irrespective of how this term is interpreted. A large number
of scholarly works on the national literatures of Africa have been published
during the last few decades. At present, this field of research seems to be
growing rather than diminishing.
One question remains—is it really necessary to choose? Are we obliged,
once and for all, to decide on the singular or the plural form? Could not the
two approaches be combined in a profitable manner? A great deal of more
recent scholarship actually seems to imply that this is both possible and de-
sirable. As an example of this, I would like to mention Clara A. B.
Joseph's essay "Nation Because of Differences," where she makes the fol-
lowing statement:
Writers from the several nation-states also went beyond a nationalist ideol-
ogy toward a pan-African awareness, often through shared issues of femi-
nism, racism and capitalism. Emecheta's novels take their substance from
the cruelly patriarchal systems in her Igbo community and in the Yoruba
community in Lagos where she was brought up. The novels also evolve
from the experiences she encounters in the black diaspora in England,
where the situation is compounded by racism. Second-Class Citizen cap-
tures in graphic detail the private and institutionalized exploitation of the
character Adah both in Nigeria and England. Emecheta's later novels adopt
native Nigeria as the locale but examine issues of feminism that find a reso-
nance in the rest of Africa and its diaspora. 88
In other words, it would be meaningless—and diminishing—to ask

whether the writings of Buchi Emecheta belong to Ibo literature, Nigerian
literature, African literature, or black world literature. She belongs, like so
many of her colleagues from all the corners of Africa, to all of these cate-
gories, and cannot be fairly judged if she is considered as belonging to only
one of them. Perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with the title
of this essay? Perhaps, instead of "African Literature, or African Litera-
tures?" I should have called it "African Literature and African Litera-
tures!"
88 Joseph, "Nation Because of Differences," Research in African Literatures, p. 63.

KEIKO KOCKUM
The Role of Western Literature in the Formation of

the Modern Japanese Novel
Introduction
All cultures in the world today, a world characterised by increasing glo-

balisation, are more or less hybrid, containing autochthonous elements as
well as phenomena absent only a few decades previously. Japanese cul-
ture, more than many others, may well be described as having been, over
a very long period of time, an "import culture," i.e. a culture that readily
receives outside influences. While Japan was never invaded in historical
times and foreign culture was never forced upon it by alien conquerors,
nevertheless elements of foreign culture were voluntarily imported and
adopted. History has witnessed several waves of cultural importation
from the Nara period in the sixth century onwards. On each occasion the
introduction of a new cultural phenomenon was followed by a period of
adaptation leading to a total assimilation of the phenomenon into the ex-
isting fabric of society. Examples of such imports are Confucianism and
Buddhism, the use of Chinese characters as a basis for a writing system,
the art of printing and the use of the maritime compass, all of which
reached Japan from China.
The only foreign literature in Japan prior to the late-sixteenth century
was written in Chinese. This remained the situation until 1593 when the
first translation into Japanese of a work that was not of Chinese origin,
namely Aesop's Fables (as Isoho Monogatari), was printed in an alpha-
betical transcription of Japanese by a Christian convert. Unlike Buddhism
and Confucianism, Christianity was not imported voluntarily by the Japa-
nese, but was brought to Japanese soil by the Jesuit missionary Francis
Xavier in the mid-sixteenth century. The teachings of Christianity were not
widely welcomed at that time, and its writings were successively outlawed,
culminating in a total ban in 1638. Christianity was banned throughout the
98 Keiko Kockum
Edo-period (1603-1868) by the centralized feudal regime, with its seat of

government at Edo, the present-day Tokyo. This regime, made up of mem-
bers of the samurai or warrior class, administered the country on the basis
of a mixture of Confucian and Buddhist principles, ostensibly on behalf of
the reclusive emperor who resided in Kyoto, but in fact for its own ends. A
succession of samurai clans had governed the country ever since the
twelfth century, and during the Edo-period power lay in the hands of a gen-
eralissimo, or shogun, from the Tokugawa clan. One of the first acts of the
third Tokugawa Shogun was to enforce a strict policy of seclusion on Ja-
pan, known as sakoku, which came into full force in 1639. No one, not
even Japanese who happened to be outside Japan at the time of the com-
mencement of the seclusion policy, was allowed to return without the per-
mission of the regime, a permission that was almost impossible to obtain.
The isolation of Japan from the rest of the world was not a difficult task to
achieve at that time because of a very rough sea to the west between Japan
and China, and the immense Pacific Ocean to the east.
The regime, however, retained a small window opening out on the world
at Dejima, an artificial islet a little over thirteen square kilometers in area
which had been made inside the harbour of Nagasaki, on the southernmost
island of Japan. Here trading ships from China and from the Dutch East-
Indies Company, the only European merchant company permitted by the
Tokugawa regime to engage in trade, were allowed to dock and ply their
trade. The captains of these vessels, along with scholars from other Euro-
pean countries who travelled to Japan on the ships of the Dutch East-Indies
Company, were required by the regime to attend an audience at court in
Edo and deliver reports, through Japanese interpreters, concerning Europe
and other parts of the world. The rest of the seamen remained isolated on
Dejima together with their Japanese guards and interpreters.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century European books began to
reach Japan through Dejima. As a result of edicts issued by the regime, the
topics were limited to scientific, geographical and medical treatises in the
Dutch language; this gave rise to the phenomenon known as Dutch learn-
ing or Rangaku. In the 1770s foreign medical treatises were for the first
time published in translation in Japan. Over the following eighty years a
number of important western scientific and medical works were translated.
Translation work was hampered, however, by the lack of reliable diction-
aries. The first comprehensive Dutch-Japanese dictionary, prepared by
Inamura Mihaku (1759-1811) and entitled Haruma wage (Halma's Lexi-
con), appeared in 1796. This dictionary contains 64,035 words with the
The Role of Western Literature 99
Dutch vocabulary type-set and the Japanese equivalents entered by hand. 1

The first English-Japanese dictionary, entitled Ageria gorin taisei (Eng-
lish-Japanese dictionary) was published in handwritten form in 1814, and
the first printed Japanese-English dictionary, namely Hepburn's Wa-ei
gorin shüsei, was published in Shanghai as late as 1876.
Developments in western military technology did not receive particular
attention prior to the outbreak of the First Opium War in China in 1841.
However, the realisation at that time that traditional tactics for guarding the
lengthy Japanese coastline might prove insufficient against the formidable
weapons possessed by the western nations, led to a significant increase
during the 1840s in the translation of works on western artillery, military
strategy and fortification construction. Remarkably, when viewed in the
context of the present study, while the interpreters on Dejima had mastered
other languages than Dutch from the beginning of the nineteenth century
onwards—French in 1808, and Russian and English in 1809 no literary
works appear to have entered Japan. The result was that at the time of
Commodore Perry's arrival in the Edo Bay in 1853 the only western litera-
ture that existed in Japan was of a scientific nature, with the single excep-
tion of Aesop's Fables.
A friendship treaty was drawn up between Japan and America in 1854,
and similar treaties were concluded thereafter with England and Russia. As
a result of a self-imposed seclusion that had lasted almost two and half cen-
turies, Japan had not fully participated in the technological and sociologi-
cal advances that had taken place in Europe. By the mid-1850s the regime
had become painfully aware of Japan's peripheral and backward status.
With a remarkable display of decisiveness, the regime relinquished its pol-
icy of seclusion and from 1860 onwards dispatched in rapid succession at
least eight missions to study the political and social structure, as well as
military and other technologies, of nations such as England, France, Ger-
many, America, and Russia. Significantly, the majority of the members of
these delegations would later participate in the new government.
The twenty members of the last mission attended the World Exhibition
in Paris in 1867. The following year Japan officially fully abandoned its
policy of seclusion and a new era was inaugurated. The primacy of the em-
peror was restored, the nation was reformed from a centralised feudal state
1 Nagashima Daisuke, Ran—wa ei—wa jisho hattatsushi (History of the Development of

Dutch—Japanese and English—Japanese Dictionaries), (Tokyo: Ködansha, 1970), pp.
16-17.
100 Keiko Kockum
to a parliamentary monarchy, and the capital Edo was renamed Tokyo. The
Meiji Era (1868-1912) saw Japan adopt the infrastructure of a modern na-
tion in a matter of a few years, in many cases with the help of foreign ex-
perts employed by the Japanese government. So rapid and comprehensive
were the changes made that Japan was able to demonstrate within two dec-
ades that, albeit superficially, it had become a modern nation. Among the
remarkable new institutions that came into existence were a telegraph ser-
vice (1869), the first daily newspaper (1870), a new monetary system, and
Ministries of Justice, Education and Postal Services (1871). The following
year the first railway line was inaugurated, Tokyo National Museum was
opened, and the Gregorian calendar adopted. In 1873 all males became
subject to the military draft, a Ministry of Home Affairs was established,
private banking was introduced, the prohibition against Christianity was
lifted and Japan participated in the International Exhibition held in Vienna.
An elected legislature was introduced in 1874, but the first election of
members to the lower-house was held in 1890. During the sixteen years be-
fore the first election was held, so-called "political novels" appeared in
large numbers, with the aim of disseminating the new concept of the elec-
tion of politicians. At the same time as the administrative infrastructure of
the country underwent unprecedented reorganization, the Japanese reading
public began to have their first encounters with western literature, and
principally with the novel.
Encountering the Western Novel
There were five milestones in the emergence of the modern Japanese novel
during the Meiji Era. While Japanese literature underwent a remarkable
transformation during the Meiji Era (1868-1911), traditional forms of lit-
erature that had existed prior to it continued and thrived. The result was
that schisms appeared between certain groups of writers and their readers.
It should be noted that the size of the general reading public was substan-
tial at the beginning of the Meiji Era. Literacy was widespread since
school-attendance in Japan at that time was fifty-six percent for males and
fifteen percent for females, statistics that reveal that it was the highest in
the world in the mid-nineteenth century. 2 The problem of the complex rela-
2 Sha Seiki, Nihon kindai nihyakunen no közö (The Structure of Japan during the Last Two
Hundred Years), (Tokyo: Ködansha, 1976), pp. 94-105. Sha uses as a comparison
Britain and France.
tionship between writers, literary critics, publishers and readership will be

dealt with in the following pages, as will the underlying issue which was a
matter of the modernisation of the Japanese language. During the Meiji Era
Japanese prose literature successively abandoned a classical literary style
and began to use the vernacular language. As the language used for prose
literature became increasingly accessible to a wider readership, by way of
reaction one form of prose literature became increasingly inaccessible to
the general readership through the highly specific nature of its contents.
This literature known as the watakushi shdsetsu, best translated as "self-
referent" novel, reached back to the Japanese literature of the late tenth
century for its intellectual underpinning. To achieve a good understanding
of the origins and nature of this important genre of literature which first
emerged towards the end of the Meiji Era, reference to the history of Japa-
nese prose literature and its relation to the Japanese language over the pass-
ing centuries will be introduced when appropriate.
The above-mentioned five milestones were the translation of the expanded
edition of Samuel Smiles's Self-Help of 1866 into Japanese in 1871 by Na-
kamura Keiu (1832-91) as Success Stories of the West (Seikoku risshihen),
the translation by Niwa Jun'ichirö in 1879 of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's
The Last Days of Pompeii, the publication of Shdsetsu shinzui or The Es-
sence of the Novel by Tsubouchi Shöyö (1859-1935) in 1886, and the ap-
pearance of the novels Hototogisu or The Cuckoo by Tokutomi Roka (1868-
1927) in 1899, and Futon or The Quilt by Tayama Katai (1871-1930) in
1907. Other contenders for inclusion in a group of milestone works certainly
exist, based upon claims of popularity at the time of publication or later criti-
cal acclaim. Yet, each of the above-mentioned works constitutes a major de-
velopment in the modernisation of Japanese prose writing, in its emergence
as an autonomous art form, and each to a considerable degree resulted in the
cross-fertilization of western ideas in the Japanese intellectual environment.
Seikoku risshihen introduced to Japanese readers the concept that even
English politicians and leading figures wrote creative works in prose, the
sort of works that Japanese intellectuals had traditionally looked down on
as inconsequential at best, and more often than not merely frivolous and
worthless. In my opinion, this translation was crucial to the change in per-
ception in Japan during the late-nineteenth century of the nature and role of
the novelist. Niwa Jun'ichirö's adaptive technique in his translation of Lyt-
ton's historical romance was a seminal influence on mid-Meiji translation
of western novels. Shdsetsu shinzui is the central theoretical text in the his-
tory of the development of the modern Japanese novel. It too took as its
102 Keiko Kockum
principal point of departure English literature and particularly the Victor-

ian novel. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the work embodies a fascinating
tension between western literature and fiction written during the Edo-
period. Hototogisu, often commonly regarded as Japan's first domestic
novel, reveals itself to be, when more closely read, a masterpiece of under-
stated social criticism. Futon is the essential "self-referent" novel, or wa-
takushi shösetsu. This Japanese expression is often translated as "I-novel"
or "autobiographical novel," but these two translations are both flawed.
Firstly, the watakushi shösetsu does not always have the first person as the
central figure; furthermore there are many Japanese novels that have the
first person as the central figure in the work but are not viewed as wa-
takushi shösetsu. Secondly, watakushi shösetsu tend to be synchronic and
only span a relatively short period of time. The autobiographical novel in
general, in which an author strives towards self-discovery, tends to be dia-
chronic. As I have noted elsewhere, the importance of the genre of wa-
takushi shösetsu can be seen from the fact that from the mid-1920s on-
wards the self-referent novel came to be viewed and discussed more as a
native Japanese form of the novel than an import from the West. 3 The
self-referent novel established itself as junbungaku or "pure literature," and
became even purer when in 1935 the critic Kume Masao (1891-1952) in
Junbungaku yogisetsu (Pure Literature as a Pastime) stated, "pure literature
is a state of mind described, without being forced, by a person without ul-
terior motives." 4 This form of the novel retained its paramount place within
the bundan or literary establishment, despite repeated fierce critical debate,
until the mid-1950s, eclipsing popular novels (taishü shösetsu or tsüzoku
shösetsu) in intellectual circles. 5
Self-Help first appeared in 1859, the same year as John Stuart Mill's On
Liberty and Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. It has been said that
Self-Help was the second most widely sold book in England, after the
Bible, in the second-half of the nineteenth century. 6 When he undertook his
3 Keiko Kockum, ltd Sei: Self-Analysis and the Modem Japanese Novel, Stockholm East
Asian Monographs 7 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1994), p. xxiv.
4 Kume Masao, Junbungaku yogisetsu (orig. in the journal Bungei shunjü), reprint, in
Gendai nihon bungaku ronsöshi vol. 1 (History of Literary Debates in Modern Japan),
(Tokyo: Miraisha, 1956), p. 133.
5 Regarding the genre watakushi shösetsu, see also Noriko Thunman's article in vol. 2 of
this series.
6 Nils Karlson, Introduction to Människans egen kraft: Rätta vägen till rikedom och
framgdng (Humanity's Own Strength: The Right Way to Wealth and Success), trans, of
Samuel Smiles's Self-Help (Stockholm: City UP, 1998), pp. 9-12.
translation of Smiles's work Nakamura Keiu (1832-1891) could not have

foreseen the enormous influence it would have upon the development of
Japanese prose literature. However, a close examination of the works
translated into Japanese between the appearance of the book in 1871 and
Tsubouchi Shöyö's seminal piece of theoretical writing in 1886 shows that
the writers mentioned by Smiles predominate. Furthermore, popular and
important contemporary English writers who were not mentioned by
Smiles remained untranslated into Japanese, even if their books were to be
found in Japan. Smiles devotes considerable attention to contemporary
writers such as Sir Walter Scott and Benjamin Disraeli, and also pays trib-
ute to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Among the earlier writers Smiles singles
out for attention may be found Dr. Johnson, as well as Shakespeare and
Milton.
With the exception of Milton, numerous works by the above-mentioned
authors were translated. Bulwer-Lytton's Ernest Maltravers (1837) was
translated in 1878, followed by his The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) in
1879, Eugene Aram (1832) in 1881, and both Rienzi (1835) and Kenelm
Chillingly (1873) in 1885. The popularity of Bulwer-Lytton with Japanese
translators rests, in my opinion, with the glowing appreciation of his liter-
ary talent given by Smiles in the first chapter of his work. Similarly, Sir
Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) was translated in 1880,
The Lady of the Lake (1810) in 1884 and Ivanhoe (1819) in 1886. Smiles'
work is full of admiration for Scott, whose remarks Smiles repeats on sev-
eral occasions. Between 1884 and 1890 translations appeared of six of the
novels of Benjamin Disraeli, whom Smiles also singled out for praise in
the first chapter of his work, and in 1889 Dr. Johnson's Rasselas (1759),
his only novel, appeared in translation for the first of four times, the last
being in 1908. It is doubtful whether Johnson's episodic and aphoristic
gem, more forgotten than remembered in late-Victorian England, would
have attracted the attention of Japanese translators without Smiles' appro-
bation of the author. However, while he lauded certain authors, paradoxi-
cally, Smiles was not particularly in favour of the habit of reading novels.
He wrote,
The novel is the most favorite refuge of the frivolous and idle. [...] The
habitual novel reader indulges in fictitious feelings so much, that there is
great risk of sound and healthy feeling becoming perverted or destroyed. 7
7 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help [1867], Library of Famous Books by Famous Authors (New
York and Boston: Η. M. Caldwell Company, no publ. date), p. 263.
104 Keiko Kockum
It is perhaps for this reason that Smiles conspicuously omitted popular con-
temporary writers such as Charles Dickens, the typical self-made man par
excellence, and William Thackeray from his tract. Some other writers'
works were translated in Japan between 1871-1886, but they were re-
ceived in a somewhat different manner to the above-mentioned novels.
The very first work to be translated in the Meiji Era appeared in its first
year, 1868. It was Anno 2065: Een blik in de toekomst by the Dutch
scientific writer Peter Harting, who used the pseudonym Dioscorides. The
translator was the literary historian Kondö Yoshiki (1801-80), who ap-
pears to have made his translation from the original Dutch edition of the
work, since the only English translation appeared in 1871. Several of the
novels of Jules Verne, the contents of which have a certain popular scien-
tific nature, and Daniel Defoe's classic Robinson Crusoe (1719) were also
translated in this period, but were viewed, along with Frangois Fenelon's
Les Aventures de Telemaque (1717) which was translated in 1879, Jonath-
an Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) which appeared in the same year, as
being works of a didactic nature rather than serious literature. For example,
Saitö Ryöan, the translator of Robinson Crusoe, held the opinion that the
book had been written originally in order to teach children perseverance by
giving them the example of Crusoe who taught an obdurate island to fol-
low his example. 8 Saitö conceded that educated readers of his day might dis-
miss the book out of hand, but held that its study would prove inspirational—
an almost Smilesian point of view with regard to the value of hard work.
The bulk of the remainder of the works translated in this period were
Shakespeare's dramas, often not in their original form but derived from
Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare (1807), and a few works of
Alexandre Dumas the Younger. The reason that the works of important
nineteenth century novelists such as Charles Dickens, William Thackeray,
Anthony Trollope, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot were not translated
was, in my opinion, that they were not mentioned by Smiles. This is not to
say that copies of their books could not be found in Japan. Yanagida Izumi
relates that a student at Keiö Gijuku (later Keiö University) in 1876 called
Kadono Ikunoshin, who later became a famous businessman, obtained that
year a copy of Thackeray's Vanity Fair and tried to read it, but failed to
make much headway. 9
8 See Yanagida Izumi, Wakaki Tsubouchi Shöyö (The Young Tsubouchi Shöyo), (Tokyo:
Seibundö, rev. ed. 1960), p. 8.
9 See Yanagida Izumi, Seiyö bungaku no inyü (The Introduction of Western Literature),
(Tokyo: Shunjüsha, 1974), p. 75.
A factor which may well have influenced translators of the early Meiji
Era was the considerable reputation possessed by Nakamura Keiu. In addi-
tion to Self-Help, Nakamura translated Mill's On Liberty in 1872. Naka-
mura was together with Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) one of the two
preeminent figures in the Meiji Enlightenment process. Both Fukuzawa
and Nakamura participated in missions to Europe in the 1860s, and it was
when Nakamura was in England as the leader of a mission that he received
Self-Help from a certain Mr. Freeland as a farewell gift. 10 Nakamura start-
ed to read the book on the boat during his return journey to Japan in 1867,
and brought it into the country in his personal luggage. While his transla-
tion may not have achieved the enormous success of Fukuzawa's Encour-
agement to Learning (Gakumon no susume, 1872-76)—which appeared in
seventeen booklets each of which sold about two hundred thousand copies,
amounting to an astounding total of three and a half million booklets
sold 11 —his translation was one of the most popular works published in this
period. 12 Indeed, between 1871 and 1876, it was the only contemporary
work concerning Britain available in translation in Japan; the other works
available at the time were the above-mentioned Anno 2065, Robinson Cru-
soe, a new edition of Aesop's Fables, Hamlet and the Merchant of Venice
from Charles Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare, and Pilgrim's Progress. Seen
in this light, its dominant and influential position, at a crucial period in Ja-
pan's opening to the west, is easily understood.
Bringing Ancient Rome to Meiji Japan
The translation of literature is never an easy undertaking. Whereas today

precise translation that closely follows the original is the rule, translations
done in the early Meiji Era were, to a great extent, adaptations, exhibiting
both omissions and additional comment. What is striking is the originality
exhibited by the publishers in the way in which they linked these transla-
tions to the existing Japanese popular literature or gesaku, and the way in
which translators presented that which was conceptually alien in a compre-
10 Ibid., p. 42.
11 Katö Shüichi, Nihon bungakushi josetsu II (An Introduction to the History of Japanese
Literature), (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, 1980), p. 299.
12 Satö Köki, Nihon kindai bungaku to seiyö (Modern Japanese Literature and the West),
(Tokyo: Surugadai shuppan, 1984), p. 4.
106 Keiko Kockum
hensible form to their readers. In the case of Niwa Jun'ichirö's translation

of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii done in 1879, it
is interesting to note that it bears quite a different title from the original,
namely An Amazing Story from Europe: the Thoughts on a Love Romance
(Öshü kiwa: Kisö shuns hi).n Here the Japanese word "spring" {shun) con-
veys to the reader the image of the beginning of a bright and pleasant sea-
son, or future, to come, and serves as a metonymy for love. The addition of
an explanatory sub-title, placed before the title, had been common practice
in Edo fiction. It might appear amazing that this book, intended as it was to
introduce the English modern novel, did not simply translate the original
title. However, Tsubouchi Shöyö confided that when Niwa's translation of
Lytton's Earnest Maltravers had appeared in 1878, it carried the romantic
sub-title A Spring Story of Flowers and Willows. Since that work had
proved to be very popular, the publishers decided that the translation of
western novels must have an expression in the title such as "spring,"
"flower" or "love-romance." 14 What is quite remarkable is that as a result
of this precedent, sub-titles continued to be used more or less until the turn
of the century and proliferated considerably as we shall see below.
Objects do not always translate easily from one culture to another. When
in The Last Days of Pompeii Glaucus and Clodius encounter the blind
flower girl Nadia who is singing to the accompaniment of a three-stringed
instrument, Niwa translates this instrument as "an accordion." 15 While this
choice of word appears to have been a mistake, as well as being ana-
chronistic since the accordion was not invented until the mid-nineteenth
century, I consider that it was a deliberate choice. If Niwa had translated
the word as a "three-stringed instrument," the Japanese reader would have
associated it immediately with the Japanese three-stringed instrument
known as the shamisen and the image of a flower girl in ancient Rome
would have evaporated. Indeed, Niwa uses the translation "accordion"
again later in the book when Arbacis visits the temple of Isis and a priest
clad in white appears "with an accordion in his hand." 16
Poetry too often suffers in translation. Nadia's flower-selling poem
which begins, "Buy my flowers—Ο buy—I pray!" in Niwa's translation
13 Yanagida, Wakaki Tsubouchi Shöyö, p. 101.

14 Niwa Jun'ichirö, 'shit kiwa: Kisö shunshi [1879], trans, of The Last Days of Pompeii
(Microfiche of the National Diet Library, no. DBY-0201).
15 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, Everyman's Library vol. 80 (Lon-
don: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1834), p. 14; Niwa, 'shü kiwa, p. 5.
16 Niwa, 'shü kiwa, p. 18.
becomes, "The flowers, flowers, these are the best in the world." 17 The
original poem consists of five stanzas, a total of forty-four lines, covering
one entire page. Niwa chose instead to compose a new poem in eight lines
of seven characters each in Chinese, since it was the common practice for
an educated man of Niwa's generation to write longer poems in Chinese
rather than the shorter forms of Japanese verse such as waka or haiku. As
an early Meiji intellectual, it was the only literary form readily available to
him, and its use, in fact, was not entirely unreasonable, since it gave a cor-
rect impression of ancient times to the educated reader.
A third and remarkable example of Niwa's perceptive originality occurs
in a passage in which Glaucus and Clodius discuss love. Here Glaucus's
concept of the ideal woman reveals itself to be on a higher plane than that
of Clodius. It is difficult for Clodius, who counts a woman's beauty as her
best quality, to understand Glaucus's cold attitude towards Julia who does
not attempt to conceal her adoration for him, adding that,
I say again and again, she is both handsome and rich. She will bind the
door-posts of her husband with golden fillets.18
Niwa's translation reads,
That you would not take her as your wife is just like a fish which does not
seek water.19
A metaphor in one language can, in some cases, be translated word by word
into another language and the reader can still grasp its content, particularly if
the two languages belong to relatively proximate cultural regions. The Japa-
nese reader in Niwa's day would have thought of a "sliding-door" if they
saw the word "door," and a "door-post" would have been the pillars to and
from which the doors slide. This misunderstanding had to be avoided.
Niwa's choice of expression "just like a fish which does not seek water"
comes from the Japanese expression "happy as a fish that has found water."
While the expression, "just like a fish that does not seek water" does not ex-
ist in Japanese, its meaning is clear—nobody allows a chance to be happy
slip by. The reader would not pause to ponder what was meant, and Niwa's
image was sufficient for a reader to understand what Clodius meant. Glau-
cus's answer to Clodius is translated faithfully except that the word "freed-
man" is translated as "the descendant of a slave,"
17 Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, p. 14; Niwa, 'shü kiwa, p. 5.

18 Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, p. 18.
19 Niwa, 'shü kiwa, pp. 7 - 8 .
108 Keiko Kockum
No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed's daughter is handsome, I grant:

and at one time had she not been the grandchild of a freedman, I might
have—Yet no—she carries all her beauty in her face; her manners are not
maiden-like, and her mind knows no culture save that of pleasure. 20
The word slave or freedman, which had occurred several times previously
in the original, appeared here for the first time in the Japanese version.
Niwa may well have been afraid that the Japanese reader of the Meiji era
had no idea of what the word "slave" meant, and Niwa himself probably
had little knowledge of the Roman slaves who walked freely on the streets
of Pompeii. On the other hand, the unwillingness of the Athenian Glaucus,
proud inheritor of an ancient culture, to sell himself to the new citizen of
the younger Rome would be well understood by the Japanese reader of the
early Meiji Era, including the translator himself. In the year preceding the
publication of Pompeii, several laws, which had been promulgated to pro-
mote national modernisation, had deprived most of the former samurai
class of their privileges and pride.
In 1869, in the new system, the formerly strictly segregated four social
classes had become one, that of the common man. This had been followed
by changes that had caused severe economic hardships for the former
samurai. Feudal lords had lost their domains in 1871, a new monetary sys-
tem had been introduced successively from 1872, and the fiefs of samurai
were removed and replaced by cash or bonds in 1876. This led to the open-
ly increasing power of the new bourgeois class, and together with the new
freedom of marriage act of 1871, the social standing of the newly wealthy
had been elevated. The law, concerning all Japanese males being subject to
military service enacted in 1873, had further degraded the sons of the
former samurai class, leaving them only the feeling of humiliation at being
required to fight side by side with the sons of peasants, artisans and the
merchant classes. Even if the newly wealthy could provide abundant "wa-
ter," the pride of the "fish" would not allow it to obtain help. Furthermore,
daughters of the samurai class had a different upbringing from the off-
spring of a "freed man" or of a former member of the lower class, who pos-
sessed only a superficial beauty but lacked proper culture and manners.
The story thus seen would have appeared very similar to the situation of
the newly degraded commoner, the samurai.
Urged by Clodius, Glaucus speaks of the lady whom he had met in the
temple of Minerva. He says that he felt something divine and noble about
her, and she had been born in Naples but was of Athenian lineage. The two
20 Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, pp. 18-19; Niwa, 'shü kiwa, pp. 8 - 9 .
made offerings together to the same god, and left the temple together.
When Glaucus was about to ask her name and where she lived, a youth re-
sembling her lead her away. Glaucus's fifty-seven lines long story is re-
duced to about seventeen lines in the Japanese translation. While there are
some sentences that the translator neglected, this, together with the quota-
tion above, is the first longish section that can really be called a translation.
The untranslated or mistranslated parts are only four in number. One of
them in the original reads:
She had raised her veil also in prayer: and when our eyes met, methought a
celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my soul. 21
Whether Niwa did not believe in love at first sight, or did not know what a
celestial ray was, is unclear but his translation reads:
We looked at each other. She was so beautiful. Just like a heavenly maiden,
out of the water of the heavenly God of the Luo River coming down from
the heaven. 22
Niwa's choice of a Chinese god is interesting. This translation is written in

a Sino-Japanese style, which will be discussed in more detail below. The
transcription of Western proper nouns with katakana (a form of Japanese
phonetic orthography) had not yet become general practice at this time.
Niwa appears to avoid as often as possible mention of proper names from
Greek and Roman mythology, the names of temples and of philosophers.
Up to this point in the translation Niwa has only mentioned unavoidable
geographical names such as Pompeii, Rome, Naples and Greece; later in
the novel the number will only be increased by three: Egypt, Alexandria
and Thessaly. These seven names, for most of which there already existed
established counterparts, are written in Chinese characters or kanji with
double solid lines on their right-hand side, according to Chinese practice;
however out of consideration for the less literate reader, Niwa added ka-
takana on the left side. For personal names, another unavoidable quandry,
he used katakana marked with a single solid line on the right side. Niwa's
consciousness of having avoided the names of foreign gods may be the rea-
son for his sudden introduction of a Chinese god whose name both he and
his readers were more acquainted with.
In conclusion, we can say that Niwa's translation has many flaws and is
uneven. There are mistakes in his interpretations and translations, he omits
vast parts of the original and inserts sections absent in the original in a
manner that would not be acceptable today. Another way of viewing his
21 Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, p. 19.

22 Niwa, 'shü kiwa, pp. 8 - 9 (my trans.).
110 Keiko Kockum
treatment of the original is that the parts he omitted are distractions if one
only wishes to follow the development of the story. Lengthy descriptions
about how private houses were built, what meals consisted of and the
tableware used, or conversations of and about gladiators, for which the
Japanese reader lacked any points of reference to aid him to understand
them, would certainly have made the reader unwilling to continue. Niwa's
translation proceeds smoothly in the parts where the manner of behaviour
or the state of mind of the protagonists depicted in the original is clearly
graspable to him and, for that matter, to the reader. Here Niwa's translation
undoubtedly will have brought the Japanese readers closer to the characters
who lived so remotely from them both in distance and time. As a whole,
through the translation, the reader receives an impression that the conflict
of Athenian versus Roman was similar to samurai contra merchant class of
the pre-Meiji era, projected into the contemporary world.
Tsubouchi Shöyö and The Essence of the Novel
The discovery of an entirely new world of literature inspired literary

minded young Japanese of the late-nineteenth century to reconsider the
place and role of Japanese fiction writing, as well as set about producing
literary masterpieces themselves. The centre of this activity was the newly
established western-style Tokyo University. According to Takada Sanae's
(1860-1938) Hanpö mukashi banashi, reading western novels in the origi-
nal was a popular activity for students in the late 1870s. Senior students
read Dumas, Hugo, Dickens and Thackeray, while junior students pre-
ferred Scott and Lytton. 23 One of these students, a fellow student at the uni-
versity with Takada Sanae, was Tsubouchi Shöyö, henceforth Shöyö
(1859-1935). His seminal piece of writing on the novel, The Essence of the
Novel (Shösetsu shinzui) was published between August 1885 and April
1886. Modern critical evaluation of the place of The Essence of the Novel
in Japanese literary history is unanimous, holding that the work stands as
an enduring landmark when speaking of the start of the Japanese modern
novel and as the origin of twentieth century literary criticism. 24 At the end
23 Yanagida, Seiyö bungaku no inyü, p. 91.

24 See, for ex., Nakamura Mitsuo, Nihon no kindai shösetsu (The Modern Japanese Novel),
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1954] 1977), p. 33; Honma Hisao, Tsubouchi Shöyö (Tokyo:
Shögakusha, 1959), p. 66; Odagiri Hideo, Meiji—Taishö no sakkatachi (The Writers of
the Meiji and Taishö Periods), (Tokyo: Bunmeisha, 1978), p. 15.
of the 1990s Kamei Hideo stated categorically that, "No more comprehen-
sive piece on the novel has been written since [The Essence of the
Novel],"25 and most recently, J. Scott Miller has called the book "A
groundbreaking treatise on the poetics of the novel." 25
Shöyö begins his work with a brief history of Japanese fiction, stating
that the monogatari or tale,27 which first emerged in the ninth century, had
declined successively from the seventeenth century onwards into haishi or
worthless history. From the beginning of the 1800s onwards it had further
deteriorated, in the hands of the writers of popular fiction, into gesaku or
frivolous writing, reducing the genre into "mere fictional toys for women
and children." 28 Shöyö's avowed aim was, by elevating Japanese fiction to
"the level of an Art form" to bring it "to the same level of excellence as the
western novel." To this end his main advice to budding novelists was:
The novel alone appears to have a great future as an art form. There have
already been great novelists, such as Scott, Lytton, Dumas [1802-70] and
[George] Eliot [1819-80]; if we continue to make an effort to stand abreast
of them, it will not be difficult. [...] please refrain from imitating Bakin
[1767-1848] as your only model for a novelist, Shunsui [1790-1843] as
your model for a spellbinding writer, and Tanehiko [1783-1843] as a
respected teacher! Take decisive measures and extricate yourselves from
stereotyped practices! Reform the Japanese novel and write masterpieces
that can take their place in the realm of Art! 29
With regard to this passage, we should note that Shöyö formulated his
ideas on the novel as an art form independently of Walter Besant who, in a
lecture entitled The Art of Fiction delivered in 1884 at the Royal Academy,
declared fiction to be an art, and Henry James who in an article the same
year entitled The Art of Fiction criticised Besant. 30 Shöyö's literary founda-
25 Kamei Hideo, Shösetsuron: Shösetsu shinzui to kindai (On the Novel: The Essence of the
Novel and Modern Times), (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1999), p. 2.
26 J. Scott Miller, Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan (New York and Bas-
ingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 115.
27 Tsubouchi Shöyö, Shösetsu shinzui (The Essence of the Novel) vol. I (Tokyo: Shögetsu-
dö, 1886), pp. l l a - 1 2 a . The book which I have to hand is the copy of the original, con-
sisting of nine booklets I-IV, with pages folded into two—"a" and "b"—of the same
page number).
28 Ibid., preface, p. ii-b.
29 Tsubouchi, Shösetsu shinzui vol. II, pp. 19a-19b. English trans, by Keiko Kockum in
Japanese Achievement, Chinese Aspiration: A Study of the Japanese Influence on the
Modernisation of the Late Qing Novel, Orientaliska studiers skriftserie no. 24 (Stock-
holm University, 1990), p. 74.
30 Kamei, Shösetsuron, p. 155.
112 Keiko Kockum
tion thus had a dual source, the fictional writing of the Edo-period and
western literature. On one hand, he was strongly influenced by the gesaku
literature of Bakin, Shunsui and Tanehiko which he criticised in his trea-
tise. This influence never fully left him, and later in his life he declared that
one of the reasons why he decided to cease writing novels was that he felt
himself to be haunted by the ghost of Bakin. 31 However, it was almost cer-
tainly his failure to pass his final examination in English literature at
Tokyo University—in which he memorably criticized the character of Ger-
trude in Hamlet from a traditional Confucian moral standpoint—that im-
pelled him to search out the essence of western literature and read every-
thing available to him at the university library in order to learn how to ana-
lyse characters in English novels. We know that he read the commentaries
on Shakespeare by Rolfe and Clarendon, and the journals Forum, the Fort-
nightly Review and the Contemporary Review?1 He also translated between
1880 and 1885 Sir Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor and The Lady
of the Lake, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi, as well as Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar. With the hard-won insights he had gained, he formulated a
remarkable critique of contemporary literature. The thrust of his treatise is
that in order to renovate the novel fantastic themes had to be abandoned in
favour of realistic ones. In order to set Shöyö's exhortation in its context
and understand his obvious critical distaste for the leading writers of the
Edo-period, we must look back into the rich history of Japanese fictional
writing. While the western novel may have begun with Cervantes and Don
Quixote, the modern Japanese novel has its roots in tenth century Japanese
court literature.
The Japanese language had to solve a singular problem before any prose
writing could be set down. Chinese characters, or kanji in Japanese, were
first transmitted to Japan sometime in the fourth century. The use of the
Chinese language for writing official documents began to gain prominence
at the Japanese imperial court around the fifth century. While it was very
inconvenient for Japanese court-officials to write in a language that was
typologically so different from their own, they had no other writing system
to use at that time. By the beginning of the eighth century Japanese texts
had begun to be written according to Japanese syntax using Chinese char-
acters. In order to represent the agglutinating Japanese language with the
isolating Chinese language with its monosyllabic kanji, it was necessary to
31 Kockum, Japanese Achievement, p. 36.

32 Ibid., pp. 27-29.
produce a method to represent, for instance, the agglutinated parts in Japa-

nese. The first attempt was made in the mid-eighth century to use a kanji,
with a sound close in Chinese to a Japanese phoneme, regardless of its
meaning, to represent the minimum pronounceable unit or mora. The kanji
that were chosen to represent the forty-eight primary morae within the
Japanese phonemic system allowed, with other pronunciations such as
voiced cognate phonemes, the reproduction of the entire Japanese phon-
emic system. By the early ninth century the orthography of each of the
chosen kanji had been simplified, one entire kanji becoming a curvy lined
hiragana, and a part of a kanji becoming a katakana with straighter lines.
The creation of kana made it possible to write in Japanese, but since kanji
bear concepts they were retained in the Japanese vocabulary. Writing with
kana developed and spread among the people affiliated to the court in the
Heian period (784-1184). Kana quickly became accepted as the orthogra-
phy for writing down waka poetry. There emerged a sort of competition at
court in which male and female courtiers were judged for the quality of
their waka, and this phenomenon in its turn led to the development of a
court literary salon. While curved hiragana was used for waka, official
diaries and documents, histories and even local gazetteers continued to be
composed in the Chinese language or quasi-Chinese. Gradually, there de-
veloped the so-called Sino-Japanese style in which the main body of the
writing is in kanji but katakana is used for the inflected and other morpho-
logical parts of the Japanese glossary.
Education for the Heian aristocracy was based on learning Chinese
philosophical classics dating from the fourth century CE. Courtiers' pride
may well have hindered them from using a language close to the vernacu-
lar, and particularly from writing in the cursive, somewhat feminine, script
of hiragana. It is also true as modern-day literary historian Kato Shüichi
has noted that the intellectuals of the court thought of different matters
when they wrote in Chinese or in Japanese. 33 Around 935 the official Ki no
Tsurayuki (ca. 872-945) wrote a personal diary in Japanese known as the
Tosa nikki, which deals with his personal thoughts, feelings and observa-
tions during a journey of fifty-five days by ship when returning to his home
from Tosa. Being an official, when writing in kana he had to pretend that
he was a woman. For it was in the hands of court-ladies of the tenth centu-
ry that the use of hiragana developed in prose writing, principally in nikki.
The daughters of court officials, who were known for their literary gifts
33 Kato, Nihon bungakushi josetsu II, p. 155.

114 Keiko Kockum
through their waka, were selected to become members of the imperial liter-
ary salon. The number of the court-ladies waiting on the empress and prin-
cesses, each of whom had thirty or forty ladies-in-waiting at this time,
amounted to several hundreds and most of them were acquainted with one
another. 34 They were excluded from any form of official employment, and
lived a protected and isolated life with little contact with the world outside
the court. As a result they could occupy themselves observing the only
world they were allowed to know and committed it to paper. A court-
lady's nikki, however, was not a diary with dated entries, as Tosa nikki
was, but more a number of personal observations. There are two types of
nikki. One concerns itself uniquely with a central theme, for example
ill-fated love, as in Kagerö nikki or The Gossamer Diary. This work de-
scribes in diary form the unfortunate marriage between ca. 954-974 of a
woman called "the mother of Fujiwara Michitsuna" (?-995). The other
should more properly be called a collection of jottings, for example Maku-
ra no söshi or Pillow Book, from around 1001. These writings by court-
ladies circulated under their official court titles, not their personal names,
and were widely copied. This meant that the majority of the court-ladies in
Heian time were potentially authoresses, at the same time as they consti-
tuted a highly critical readership for each other's writings.
Shöyö maintained also in The Essence of the Novel that the origin of the
novel is found in history, and mentions the Iliad. It then developed into fic-
tion, blended with didactics and satire, fable and allegory as seen in Ed-
mund Spencer's The Faerie Queene and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress?5 If we seek the origin of Japanese prose fiction in history, in its
broadest sense, we find three such types of prose literature in the Heian pe-
riod, namely nikki, which we may view as private history, monogatari or
historical tales such as Eiga monogatari (ca. 1030), and battlefield stories
such as Shömonki (940). When military might became the prime consider-
ation, and the samurai came to be recognized as a specific social class, the
emperor appointed in 1192 Japan's first shogun. While the emperor and
the court remained in theory superior to the shogun, political power ac-
crued in the new regime's hands, and the country's warrior-lords became
the feudatory vassals of the shogun rather than the emperor. Literature, for-
merly monopolized by the court aristocrats, was transformed and court-
centred monogatari were superseded after 1220 by fictitious war chron-
34 Ibid., p. 174.
35 Tsubouchi, Shösetsu shinzui, pp. 7a-7b.
icles based upon battles and struggles between the samurai clans. Never-
theless they were portrayed as historical tales in narrative form. For ex-
ample, Heike monogatari tells of the rise and fall over two decades of the
Taira clan that was crushed in 1185 by the Minamoto clan, the family that
established the first shogunate regime. It describes the socio-political tran-
sition of the time—the spirit of the aristocracy was replaced by the warrior
spirit. While the identity of the work's author is uncertain there is cautious
agreement that someone linked to the court wrote the story, and that it
quickly entered the repertoire of blind Buddhist story-tellers who recited it
to the accompaniment of the biwa, a stringed instrument. The tale was ex-
panded upon and embroidered with retelling to the extent that by the
mid-thirteenth century the original six sections of Heike monogatari had
increased to twelve.
Study in the fourteenth century of classical monogatari such as Genji
monogatari36 composed around 1007 flourished, perhaps because of a
surge of national consciousness after the Mongolian army attempted to in-
vade Japan in 1274 and 1281, and failed on both occasions. Another reason
was that while Chinese and Sino-Japanese styles remained in use, the ka-
«α-literary style of Heian had become an accepted form of written Japa-
nese. The fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw Japan divided in
outbreaks of internecine conflict. The world of prose-literature saw the
genesis of new genres, among them anonymous stories centred on romanti-
cized historical fictions in the vernacular such as Taiheiki (ca. 1371) and
Yoshino shüi (ca. 1358), travelogues dressed up as personal histories such
as Kaidöki (A Diary on the Road, ca. 1454), and fantastic fairy tales based
upon local legends.
The Edo period (1603-1868) was a time of peace, yet also a very event-
ful period for the development of Japanese literature. Firstly, with the es-
tablishment of a new capital, the centre of culture moved from Kyoto to
Edo, i.e. present-day Tokyo. The prose literature produced ranged widely
from popular textbooks on Confucianism and Buddhism, love-stories,
travelogues and handbooks with comic anecdotes, ghost stories and the
gossip of women residing in the pleasure-quarters. During Japan's centu-
ries of seclusion, there were no external impulses in the world of fiction.
The only development that can be seen in the writers who wrote in Sino-
Japanese style for more educated readers was their adaptation of Chinese
36 Regarding the genre monogatari and especially Genji monogatari, see Gunilla Lind-
berg-Wada's article in vol. 2 of this series.
116 Keiko Kockum
vernacular works of fiction. Examples are the rewriting by Takebe Ayatari

of Shuihuzhuan (Tales of the Marshes) as Honchö suiko-den (A Japanese
Tale of the Marshes, 1773), and the adaptation by Ueda Akinari (1734—
1809) of Jiandeng xinhua (New Stories Written while Trimming the Wick,
1378) by Qu You (1347-1433) as Ugetsu monogatari (The Tale of the
Rain and the Moon, 1776).
Popular prose writing evolved, or degenerated depending upon how one
looks at it, into a number of genres: comedy, often presented in the format
of a travelogue, found in so-called kokkeibon or sharehon; love-stories
concerning commoners, retold in ninjöbon or books on human feelings;
reading books or yomihon, written predominantly in kana; and parodies of
Heian period monogatari and nikki. In his treatise Tsubouchi rejects out of
hand yomihon for their didactic and moralistic content, ninjöbon for what
he called their loathsome eroticism, and kokkeibon for the way in which
they ridiculed people in an unsophisticated manner with jokes. 37
In order to perpetuate a stable centralized feudal society, the regime en-
forced several regulations that came to influence, directly or indirectly, the
spread of fiction to a wider public. Indirect reasons were increasing litera-
cy and the growth of the wealth of the merchant class whose members
were excluded from participation in the government administration. The
principal direct reason was the development of technologies that permitted
the printing at economical costs of Japanese literature, whose con-
tents could be didactic, practical or entertaining. This led to the expansion
of the publishing trade and generated the occupation of professional fiction
writer to satisfy the demands of a growing readership.
The regime's belief in education as an instrument of social control led to
a greatly increased number of seats of learning for commoners, the
so-called "temple schools," and they must be viewed as the greatest indi-
rect influence. While children usually attended school only four years and
learned basic reading, writing and arithmetic, this education was sufficient
to allow them to read books written in simple Japanese. Prior to the
Edo-period the number of such private schools had increased very slowly
from seventeen in 1469 to thirty-eight in 1624. In the eighteenth century a
rapid increase began, and by the 1850s the number had reached four thou-
sand three hundred and two. The system of the alternate attendance of the
daimyo or clan lords in Edo and in their home domains, enforced from
1635 onwards, meant that about two hundred and fifty daimyo were ex-
37 Tsubouchi, Shösetsu shinzui, pp. ii-a and i-a.

pected to travel between Edo and their homes every other year while their
families resided permanently at their Edo residence with their servants. As
a result, by the beginning of the eighteenth century Edo was without doubt
the largest city in the world, with a population of over one million, half of
whom were affiliated to samurai families. 38 The daimyo processions, con-
sisting of over one hundred men and women, proceeding in palanquins or
on foot along the state highways and staying at wayside inns, while being
costly for the daimyo were lucrative affairs for the merchants and artisans
who attended to their needs, particularly those resident in Edo.
The Edo-regime, strict as it may have been, was well aware that people
needed amusement and leisure, including the opportunity to undertake pil-
grimages. Besides allowing the emergence of new theatre forms—kabuki
and bunraku—the regime established authorized pleasure-quarters sur-
rounded by tall and formidable walls in Edo, Kyoto and Osaka, within
which courtesans, of different grades, resided and ran brothels. This was
the only place in the land where all the visitors were treated as equals and
where as the monetary economy developed, merchants found themselves
in a more advantageous situation than samurai whose assets consisted of
land. The happenings within these quarters provided abundant material for
the composition of fictional stories, both comic and tragic.
The use of full-page block printing from the 1620s onwards changed
books from scarce commodities to common merchandise. In 1670, one
thousand and twenty-five kana-books were published, and only two dec-
ades later, in 1692, the number of such works had doubled to two thousand
four hundred and fifty-six. 39 While there is no reliable information on how
many copies of each work were printed or sold, we may note that at the
early stage of printing one kana-book, The Tale of Kiyomizu (1638), in
which Asayama Irin'an (1589-1664) expounded Confucian principles in a
dialogue form, sold over two thousand copies. 40 While this figure is not
large, it is reasonable to expect that the contents of books such as this
reached far more people than the figure seems to indicate. Not only was
reading aloud to family members and friends common practice, but there
also existed circulating libraries. 41 The mass production of works of
38 Sha, Nihon kindai nihyakunen no közö, p. 95. By way of comparison, at that time the
population of London and Paris were half a million each, while Vienna and Moscow
each had a quarter of a million inhabitants, according to Sha.
39 Katö, Nihon bungakushi josetsu II, p. 38.
40 Ibid.
41 Tsuji Tatsuya, Edo jidai ο kangaeru (Thinking about the Edo-period), (Tokyo: Chüö-
shinsho, 1988), p. 137.
118 Keiko Kockum
literature was the direct origin of the professional fiction-writers of

the merchant class.
Asai Ryöi (d. 1691), a samurai who became masterless and later entered
the Buddhist clergy, was the first professional fiction-writer of whom we
know. His Tökaidö meishoki (Noted Places along Tökaidö, ca. 1658) was
the first fictional travelogue, and his Otogi böko (Collection of Ghost
Stories, 1666) started the genre of the supernatural. Asai's Ukiyo monoga-
tari (Tales from the Floating World) published in the early-1660s contains
the elements that another professional and prolific writer about human
feelings, Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), perfected in the genre of Ukiyo zöshi.
The expression "floating world" originates in Buddhist terminology, refer-
ring to the uncertainty of human existence; in the Edo-period this grave
thought was turned on its head into a carpe diem imperative. While earlier
fcana-literature had included this remarkable turn-about, Asai was the first
to state it straightforwardly,
Everything, good or bad, living in this world, interests me, but the future is
quite unknown. [...] Absorb yourself in poetry, sing songs and drink wine!
Then you won't be depressed but will float along just like a gourd on a
stream! 42
While Asai and other contemporary professional writers were originally of

the samurai class, the first writer with his origins in the merchant class was
Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), and it is Saikaku who is considered the repre-
sentative premodern fiction writer, making his debut with the kana-book
Köshoku ichidai otoko (The Man Who Loved Love) in 1682. Of the Edo-
period gesaku works, Tsubouchi was especially critical of the highly popu-
lar Nansö satomi hakken-den (Biography of Eight Dogs, 1814-1842), by
the prolific writer Takizawa (or Kyokutei) Bakin (1768-1848), who au-
thored more than two hundred works. Hakken-den was Bakin's last work
and he spent twenty-eight years writing it. What Tsubouchi found objec-
tionable was the moralistic intention of the book:
The eight men in Bakin's masterpiece are personifications of the eight vir-
tues, and they can hardly be called human beings. The author's intention lay
in constructing a novel transforming the eight virtues into men, and the con-
duct of these men had to be absolutely fitting to empower the author's
didactic implication. 43
42 Asai Ryöi, Ukiyo Monogatari [1666], (Tales from the Floating World) Nihon koten bun-
gaku taikei vol. 90 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1965] 1969), p. 244.
43 Tsubouchi, Shösetsu shinzui vol. I, p. 21a.
Shoyo also rejected it on the grounds of implausibility,

The novel's main purpose is to portray the feelings and behaviour of real
people, and it must moreover be a story that could possibly happen in real
life. 44
Kanagaki (i.e. writing in kana) Robun (i.e. frivolous writing) was the pseu-
donym used by Miyazaki Bunzö (1829-94), the famous writer of comical
books who debuted at the end of the Edo period with Kokkei Fuji mode
(Pilgrimage to Mt. Fuji: A Comedy, 1860-61) continued in the same style
into the Meiji Era. An example is his parody of Jippensha Ikku's (1765—
1831) well-known Tökaidöchü hizakurige (Along the Tökaidö Highway on
Shank's Mare, 1802) as Bankoku kökai: Seiyö döchü hizakurige (Along the
Highways of Western Countries on Shank's Mare, 1870). Kanagaki ap-
plied Ikku's work to overseas travel. The main characters in his parody
bear the same names as in Ikku's work. They work as salesmen for foreign
articles in a shop in Yokohama and are asked to go to the London Exhibi-
tion in the company of a rich merchant. On their journey everything that
can go wrong does go wrong. In his foreword Kanagaki writes:
Sixty-nine years have passed since Juppensha Ikku's Döchü hizakurige was
first published in 1802. [...] I shall write something different now, utilizing
this age when everything Western is in fashion. [...] The books and transla-
tions by Fukuzawa and other Western learning specialists are bewildering. I
am a gesaku-writer, and I am careless by nature too. Even if I don't hit the
nail on the head, since I am used to making a fool of myself, I wouldn't take
it as a disgrace. Aren't I the hale and hearty one! 45
Nor did other writings of Fukuzawa escape his attention; he parodied

Fukuzawa's Kyüri zukai (Illustrated Explanation of Natural Philosophy,
1868) using the homophonic words kyüri, meaning cucumber, and zukai
meaning "make use o f ' in his title with the result meaning of "How to use
Cucumbers!" (Ushiya zatsudan: Agura-nabe) His choice of penname, Ri-
diculous Composition in Kana-Script, shows he was well aware of his po-
sition in the literary world as gesaku-writer, as a writer of, as Tsubouchi
Shöyö puts it, "tasteless humour." However, Robun pretended to an ironic
pride in his writings. In the forward to the third part of his Seiyö döchü
hizakurige he writes:
44 Ibid., vol. I, p. 7a.

45 Kanagaki Robun, Bankoku kökai: Seiyö döchü hizakurige [1870], (Along the Highways
of Western Countries on Shank's Mare), Meiji bungaku zenshü vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chikuma
shobö, 1966-67), p. 3.
120 Keiko Kockum
In the case of gesaku-writers and courtesans, lies are truth and sincerity is
falsehood. Writers who pretend to set down true history in their works, who
use Sino-Japanese vocabulary that they do not really understand them-
selves, and parrot-fashion repeat incomprehensible Tang-dynasty poetry are
just like courtesans who attempt to discuss serious topics with their custom-
ers. If a courtesan does not hold her customer's interest, he will become
bored. Recently, like a corpse coming back to life, we have received news
unexpectedly from Hell about those who were proud of their gesaku-writ-
ings. 46
After a parody of philological commentary in which he explains that, "the

character 'ge' in gesaku is a combination of 'falsehood' and 'halberd' which
demonstrates metaphorically speaking that 'falsehood' is 'truth,' " Robun
continues that the gesaku-writers Santo Kyöden, Takizawa Bakin and Jip-
pensha Ikku all deceived their readers with the pretence that their writings
served to enlighten ignorance. With regard to Shikitei Sanba, a gesaku-writer
whom Robun held in esteem, Robun concludes that no reader would take his
writing seriously because of the abundance of absurd expressions!
Around 1876 some gesaku-writers began to present news stories con-
cerning actual events in traditional gesaku-format. The first story of this
sort, Torioi O-Matsu kaijö shinwa (Miss Matsu the Itinerant Songstress: A
News Story from the High-Seas) by Kubota Hikosaku (1846-1898) started
serialization in December 1877. The event in question was the flight from
an attempted rape by a low-class prostitute called Matsu, who had been in-
volved previously as an accessory in several murders; she threw herself
into the sea and was rescued by a passenger vessel on its way from Tokyo
to Kobe. 47 This sensational material was made into the first modern
"she-devil story" and led to a series of similar stories focusing on prosti-
tutes and criminality serialized in daily newspapers.
In an attempt to put his own theory into practice, Shöyö composed a
novel titled The Characters of Students Today: Read Once and Sigh Thrice
CIchidoku santan: Tdsei shosei katagi, 1885-86) that he published in
parallel with his The Essence of the Novel. While this novel enjoyed con-
siderable popularity at the time of its publication, 48 and was certainly in-
novative, it is not considered as the first modern Japanese novel. For in-
stance, Shöyö's contemporary the literary theoretician Takada Hanpö
called it a "Thackerian Novel without a Hero,"
46 Ibid., p. 24.
47 See Takagi Takeo, Shinbun shösetsu shikö (A History of Newspaper Novels), (Tokyo:
Sanyüsha, 1964), p. 25.
48 Yanagida, Wakaki Tsubouchi Shöyö, pp. 158-59.
It is a so-called "social novel" and has the light tone of Dickens blended
with Thackery's precision. It is neither an Ivanhoe nor The Eight Dogs; it
has similarities with The Pickwick Papers and yet it is not too complicated.
It contains the coquettishness of Tatsumi no Sono (1770) yet it does not
stoop to lewdness. It includes the humour of Hizakurige (1802) and
Ukiyo-buro (1809) and yet does not possess their vulgarity. 49
In my opinion, the modern reader will be struck by the work's gesaku-

style and the repeated introduction of coincidence into the narrative, so that
the renders can predict the plot. In the opinion of one late-Meiji critic, the
novel that brought Tsubouchi's theory fully into practice and became Ja-
pan's first modern novel was Ukigumo or The Drifting Cloud (1887-89) by
Futabatei Shimei (1864-1928). 50 This point of view has become authorita-
tive, and according to Hasegawa Izumi,
It makes literary good sense to regard Ukigumo and Maihime as pioneering
works in modern Japanese literature. 51
Hasegawa's observation concerns the contents of the novels and how de-
scriptions are presented, elevating both works because they explored the
psychology of their characters in a way that had never been attempted be-
fore in Japanese fiction. Reading them today, however, there is a decisive
difference in their modernity, namely the degree of the modernity of the
language in which they are written. Ukigumo, which was composed under
the influence of Gontjarov's (1812-91) Obryv (1867), is written in modern
Japanese, while Maihime or The Dancer (1890) by Mori Ögai (1862—
1922) is in classical Japanese. Nevertheless it was the short story Maihime
which aroused the most contemporary acclaim as a modern work, mainly
because readers of the day were unaccustomed to reading literature com-
posed in the vernacular. 52
This issue, namely the language to be used when writing a novel, was
the point on which Shöyö was least clear in his advocacy of the new novel.
Tsubouchi recollected in 1931 that this time was "an epoch of struggle for
self-expression in writing" when the use of vernacular in prose-literature
had been established. 53 When Shöyö wrote The Essence of the Novel, there
49 See Takada Hanpö, Tösei shosei katagi no hihyö [1886], (A Critique of Tösei Shosei
Katagi), Meiji bungaku zenshu vol. 79 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, [1975] 1985), p. 129.
50 See, for ex., Nakamura, Nihun no kindai shösetsu, p. 44; Odagiri, Meiji—Taishö no
sakkatachi, p. 45.
51 Hasegawa Izumi "Mori 'gai" in Mori 'gai, Iwanami köza bungaku vol. 10 (Tokyo: Iwa-
nami shoten, 1976) p. 324.
52 Quoted in Kockum Japanese Achievement, pp. 35 and 184.
53 Ibid., p. 136.
122 Keiko Kockum
were three styles used in fiction-writing, all of which were in use: the Sino-
Japanese style; the quasi-classical style, also known as the rhetorical and
elegant (gabun) or colloquial-literary (gazokusetchü) style; and the frivo-
lous (gesaku) style or colloquial-vulgar (ga-zokubun) style. Each of them
appeared quite out of step with contemporary developments and remote
from the spoken Japanese in current use. Shöyö understood that a drastic
change had to take place if the true modern novels were to be written, but
he had no clear solution to the problem. 54 As a result, The Essence of the
Novel is written in a mixture of the quasi-classic style blended with a modi-
fied version of the Sino-Japanese style.
Political Novels and Detective Stories

Political novels, a genre of the novels that flared up during a brief yet in-
tense period in the early 1880s, should be seen against the background of
the struggle for participation in government by an educated population in-
creasingly aware of western democracy. In 1876 a movement for popular
rights began requesting that political representation be changed from tradi-
tionally inherited offices to popularly elected members. The same year the
government reacted by issuing the Press Law and Libel Law to control ex-
pression of anti-government sentiment. In 1880 regulations governing pub-
lic meetings were promulgated and in 1884 the Peer's Law was enacted.
The novel, often serialised in newspapers, became an important vehicle for
political debate.
Government officials continued to be sent to Europe even after the Meiji
Restoration. One of these was Itagaki Taisuke (1838-1919) who estab-
lished the Citizen's Patriotic Party in 1873. In 1881 he was the central fig-
ure of the Civil Rights (minken) movement as well as an important propo-
nent of parliamentary representation. During his visit to Europe, he met
Victor Hugo in 1882. Itagaki asked Hugo what measures could be taken to
spread the concept of "the people's rights" in a backward nation such as Ja-
pan. Hugo answered, "The best course is to have the people read suitable
novels." Itagaki, surprised by this totally unexpected suggestion, asked
"What sort of works?" Hugo's answer was, "Any of mine written during
the last twenty years!" 55
54 Ibid., pp. 83-89 and 136.

55 See Kimura Ki, Nihon hon'yakushi gaikan [1966], (An Overview of the History of
Translation in Japan), Meiji bungaku zenshü vol. 7 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, [1972]
1989), pp. 375-94 and 390.
During the early Meiji Era the growth in the number of newspapers and
magazines published was enormous. Initially there were only a very few
Oshinbun, in which the contents were political discussions written in the
Sino-Japanese style without any pronunciations given for the kanji in
which the articles were printed. Examples are the Yokohama nichinichi
shinbun which first appeared in December 1870 and the Kyoto shinpö
which appeared in May 1871. However very soon a new sort of newspaper
began to appear. The inaugural statement of the Tokyo kanagaki shinbun in
January 1873 began:
The country has now opened up and daily newspapers increase in number.
However, their content contains a great number of kanji that women, chil-
dren and unlearned people cannot read or understand. Therefore our news-
paper will use only kana except for those you are accustomed to see. But
[words written in] kana can easily mistaken for different words [because of
many homophones], we shall put a space after each word just as the West-
ern writing does, and after each sentence we shall insert a period.56
Similarly the Yomiuri shinbun announced in its inaugural edition in No-

vember 1874 that it intended to publish matters which were of use to wo-
men and children, 57 and in April 1875, the new Hiragana eiri shinbun be-
gan the practice of publishing serialized novels, a feature which was rapid-
ly taken up by its competitors. In 1875 the number of newspapers was
fifty-three, thereafter the number increased dramatically such that in 1877
the figure was 225.58 Almost all these newspapers serialized novels, and
used serialized novels as a prime attraction for their readers.
The first novel with overtly political content to be serialized was Minken
engi: Jökai haran (A Civil Rights Lecture: Disturbance in a Sea of Emo-
tions, 1880) by Toda Kindö (1850-90) who had been to the United States
and was an activist in the dissemination of civil rights. This was followed
by Keikoku bidan (1883-84) by Yano Ryükei (1850-1931), using a history
book about the independence movement in Greece, published in English
outside Japan, as his material. The story concerns Thebes which emerged
from under Sparta's dominion to become an autonomous city and the
leader of the Greek Confederation. The next work was Kajin no kigü
(1885) by Tökai Sanshi (1852-1922). The influence of English novels in
translation was considerable in the emergence of the political novel,
through the influence of the writings of Benjamin Disraeli and Sir Edward
56 See Takagi, Shinbun shösetsu shikö, p. 17.

57 Ibid., p. 16.
58 Ibid., p. 23.
124 Keiko Kockum
Bulwer-Lytton, and we may note that the expression "political novel" was
first used as explanatory sub-title for the translation of Sir Walter Scott's
Ivanhoe in 1886.
The political novel experienced its popularity peak in 1886 and there-
after declined rapidly, at the same time as the detective story began to
achieve prominence. The reason why readers of the political novel felt no
resistance to this change of genre, according to Takagi Takeo, was because
in anarchist stories, for example, there were already elements of the detec-
tive story, such as espionage and murder. 59 It was the journalist and transla-
tor Kuroiwa Ruikö (1862-1920) who almost single-handedly brought
about the detective story boom in newspapers over seventeen years be-
tween 1887 and 1904. Kuroiwa's detective stories were not wholly his own
creation. He selected works published in popular collections such as the
Sea-Side Library, and adapted them, publishing under both his own name
and his pseudonym Ruikö Shöshi. The authors he favoured were Emile
Gaboriau (1835-73), Fortune de Boisgobey (1824-91), Mary Elizabeth
Braddon (1835-1915), Marie Corelli (1855-1924) and William Harrison
Ainsworth (1805-88), all prolific writers of sensationalist best-sellers in
their day, but now forgotten and unread. Working with a group of assist-
ants, between 1887 and 1892 he produced thirty-two translations, and be-
tween 1893 and 1918 another thirty-one full-length translations. The genre
of detective story found a firm foothold in Japan, and the first Japanese de-
tective story appeared in 1888 when Sudö Nansui (1857-1920), known as
a writer of political novels, wrote Satsujinhan (The Murderer). Kuroiwa
was also aided to a small degree in the early 1890s by Uchida Roan (1868-
1929) who, when he translated Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in
1892, introduced it as a detective novel, 60 and who also translated Edgar
Allan Poe's The Black Cat in 1893. Even Tsubouchi Shöyö translated a de-
tective story, namely X.Y.Z. (1883) by the American authoress Anna
Katherina Green (1846-1935) under the title Nisegane tsukai (The Coun-
terfeit Money Spreader), adapting the novel for the Japanese market by
providing it with Japanese names and locations. 61 The translation appeared
under his pseudonym Harunoya Oboro in the popular newspaper Yomiuri
shinbun between 27 November and 23 December 1887.
59 Ibid., p. 69.
60 Senuma Shigeki, "Shirakabaha no jindöshugi" (The Humanism of Shirakaba), Kindai
bungaku kenkyü (1969), p. 117.
61 Keiko Kockum Japanese Achievement, p. 34.
The familiarity of Japanese readers with detective stories meant that

when Sherlock Holmes was introduced to Japanese readers in the first dec-
ade of the twentieth century, the publishers demanded that he too be adapt-
ed to suit Japanese tastes. Tenba Momota's Denshin-tei (Mansions of a Ru-
ral Gentlemen), an adaptation of The Reigate Squires from The Memoirs of
Sherlock Holmes (1894, as Jintsüriki, i.e. A Divine Power) was published
in 1907. Through Tenba's preface, we learn that the book was an abridged
translation of one of the most popular writers in English language,
I felt a little uncomfortable when the publishers requested me to replace all
the names of places and persons in the original work with Japanese equiva-
lents. As a result of the changes made in the proper names, I had to Japanize
the whole work. Consequently, I had to delete or replace some sections,
which provided long and tedious explanations peculiar to the western-style
writing or in which I judged the Japanese reader would have no interest,
with sections with a Japanese atmosphere. 62
Holmes therefore appears as the Japanese detective Horimi and Watson as

Wada, with a story set in Kobe, involving a Colonel Makita who had been
one of Wada's patients in Korea, rather than Colonel Hayter whom Watson
had treated in Afghanistan. Horimi, of course, solves the crime.
Literary Associations and their Magazines
While The Essence of the Novel occupies a unique place in the history of
modern Japanese literature, it was not the only publication arguing for a
new Japanese novel. A number of literary groups and their journals, many
short-lived, came into being at this time. Principal among them were the
Kenyüsha or Friends of the Ink-Stone Society, formed in February 1885
two months before The Essence of the Novel commenced publication, and
Minyüsha, or Friends of the Nation Society, formed in 1887. The Ken-
yüsha was a reaction against the posturing political novels that made up
much of the literary fare available. Its members proclaimed their distaste
for politics in the rules of their society dating from 1888:
We shall not, over our dead bodies, take part in drafting or writing petitions,
nor shall we help with political writings. 63
62 Tenba Momota, Jintsüriki (A Divine Power), trans, of The Reigate Squires from The
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Tokyo: Yübunsha, 1907), Preface.
63 See Hasegawa Izumi, Kinda nihon bungaku shichöshi (A History of Literary Trends in
Modern Japanese Literature), (Tokyo: Shibundö, 1961), p. 24.
126 Keiko Kockum
Indeed it is almost impossible to detect any social criticism or political

ideas in their works. They were committed to realistic portrayal rather than
didacticism, in line with the direction set forth in The Essence of the Novel.
While some critics find their writing style to be consistently that of
Edo-gesaku, 64 Ozaki Köyö (hereafter Köyö, 1868-1903), the leading light
of the Kenyüsha and one of the most important figures in Meiji literary his-
tory, was nevertheless profoundly influenced by western literature. He
gladly borrowed his plots from western works, such as the Arabian Nights,
the plays of Moliere and the novels of Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Bertha
M. Clay, adapting them, however, so as to render the original source al-
most unrecognizable. 65 Indeed, the plot of Köyö's most famous book, Kon-
jiki yasha (The Demon Gold, 1897-1902), was inspired by a western
novel. Köyö once confided to the novelist Iwaya Sazanami (1870-1933), a
member of the Kenyüsha, that he was reading a novel titled White Lily by
an American authoress. The plot dealt with a hero who loses the girl with
whom he is in love to a wealthy man and she marries him solely because of
his wealth. The hero then runs far away from his home on the day that they
are married so that he is not forced to hear the church bells pealing out.
Köyö stated that he was inspired to write a novel by the story, and that he
intended to serialize it in Yomiuri shinbun.66
The group known as the Minyüsha was at the opposite pole in literary
terms. This society was founded by Tokutomi Sohö (hereafter Sohö, 1863-
1954) after he had founded the Minyüsha or Nation's Friend Publishing
Company. It was established in order to publish a magazine Kokumin no
tomo, or Nation's Friend. Sohö was a political theorist of the "new" Japan,
based upon the idea of the equality of the four former social classes, and an
active journalist and publicist with literary aspirations. He took the name
for his journal from his favourite American publication The Nation. Koku-
min no tomo started publication in 1887 carrying articles on politics, so-
ciety, economy and literary theory. 67 It soon came to possess a distinctive
ideological thrust, and became very popular among youthful intellectuals.
In line with his idea that the common man was to be the bearer of capital-
64 Miyajima Shinzaburo, Meiji bungaku jünikö (Twelve Points regarding Meiji Literature),
(Tokyo: Shinshidansha, 1925), p. 99.
65 Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, Fiction (New
York: Henry Holt, 1984), p. 135.
66 Takagi, Shinbun shösetsu shikö, p. 133.
67 Odagiri Susumu (ed.), Kindai bungaku nenpyö (A Chronology of Modern Japanese Lit-
erature), (Tokyo: Shögakan, 1963), p. 19.
ism in the future, Sohö in addition commenced publication of the newspa-

per Kokumin shinbun in 1890, Katei zasshi or Home Magazine in 1892 and
Eibun kokumin no tomo, which was an English version of Kokumin no
tomo in 1896. In Sohö's magazine literature was not regarded as important
unless it was a work by a western author or a piece of critical writing in
translation.
The magazine's importance in the development of the modern Japanese
novel lies, for example, in its series of critical biographies of Twelve Mas-
ter Writers {Juni bungö) between 1893 and 1903; five more were later
added. The source for this series was English Men of Letters compiled by
John Morley, published by MacMillan, and Great Writers Series, pub-
lished by Scott. 68 Eleven of these seventeen writers were non-Japanese,
namely Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay, William Wordsworth, Goethe, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Samuel Johnson, Schiller, Byron
and Shelley. 69 The Japanese writers were the Confucian philosopher Ogyü
Sorai (1666-1728), the dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724),
the statesman Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725), the historian Rai Sanyo (1780—
1832), Takizawa Bakin, and the Heian period poet Kakinomoto no Hito-
maro. We may be surprised that the eleven westerners did not include
Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens or Sir Walter Scott. Similarly, the absence
of Japanese authors such as Ihara Saikaku, Ueda Akinari or even Murasaki
Shikibu may appear idiosyncratic. It is typical of Sohö to have included
Bakin, the author of The Eight Dogs, about whom Tsubouchi was most
negative, precisely because of his didacticism.
The Kenyüsha came to be a very powerful group and remained influen-
tial for almost two decades. Its members, approximately twenty-five in
number at its inception, started a hand-written bulletin Garakuta bunko or
Library of Odds and Ends, in May 1885 and circulated it among them-
selves. By the time that the fifteenth issue of Garakuta bunko appeared, the
society had expanded to seventy-four members. The informal journal now
became a printed literary magazine, available on the open market, and the
society's membership soon exceeded one hundred. At the beginning its
members wrote popular novels in a somewhat modernised language. How-
ever, the growing tide of militarism and nationalism that emerged at this
time as a result of Japan's military aspirations, also saw a revival of pre-
68 Hirabayashi Hajime et al. (eds.), Minyüsha bungaku no kenkyü (A Study of Minyusha

Literature), (Tokyo: Shübunkan shoten, rev. and enlarged ed. 1985), p. 30.
69 Ibid, p. 27.
128 Keiko Kockum
modern literature. Köyö and his society, with their style ά la Saikaku,
emerged as being politically correct. The new members of the Kenyüsha
brought into existence genres such as kannen shösetsu or novels of resigna-
tion, and shinkoku shösetsu or poignant novels. Representative works of
this trend, which had its origins in the writings of Zola, were Kawakami
Bizan's (1869-1908) Shokikan (The Secretary, 1895), Hirotsu Ryürö's
(1861-1928) Heme- den (Biography of a Cross-eyed Man, 1895), Izumi
Kyöka's (1873-1939) Yakö junsa (A Night Patrol Policeman, 1895) and
Gekashitsu (The Operation Room, 1895), and Oguri Füyö's (1875-1926)
Sewanyöbö (A Devoted Wife, 1896). In a broad sense, they are psycholog-
ical novels, focusing on tragic and even depressing themes, achieved by
setting samurai ideals against the pressures of contemporary life.
The ten years between Japan's involvement and victory in two major
wars in the Meiji-period—the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-5 and the
Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5—is generally regarded as a second ideo-
logical turning point in modern Japanese history. Victory in the Sino-
Japanese War had the effect of "awakening the people's consciousness and
their conviction as a newly-born nation." 70 In the immediate post-war pe-
riod, romanticism was brought to Japan by the new magazine, Bungakkai
(The Literary World) founded in 1893. The central figure behind this jour-
nal was the poet, critic and peace-advocate Kitamura Tökoku (1868-94),
who had embraced the Quaker faith. The literary debate between Kitamura
and the historian Yamaji Aizan (1864-1917), affiliated with the Kokumin
shinbun, saw Aizan utter the following battle-cry,
Writing is a jigyö. When a writer takes up his pen it is just like a hero wield-
ing his sword. He does not use it to attack nothing but because there is
something to be done. 71
Aizan used the jigyö with the meaning that it had in the samurai class dur-
ing the Edo-period of "task." It was dramatically misunderstood by Kita-
mura who took the word jigyö in its modern meaning of "business," and
railed against Aizan's pecuniary motives and his attempt to force literature
into the realm of materialism. Aizan, in fact, was following closely in the
footsteps of Tokutomi Sohö, who considered that the novel should be
something that shook up society, dealing with for example equal rights for
70 Iwaki Juntarö, Meiji bungakushi (A History of Meiji Literature), (Tokyo: Shubunkan

shoten, [1906] 1927), p. 204.
71 See Hasegawa (ed.), Kindai bungaku ronsö jiten (A Collection of Literary Debates about
Modern Literature), (Tokyo: Shibundö, 1962), p. 56.
the common man. However, it was neither Sohö, nor Aizan, nor Kitamura
who would be responsible for the next major advance in the modern Japa-
nese novel, but Tokutomi Roka (hereafter Roka, 1868-1927), who was
Sohö's younger brother. Roka joined Kokumin no tomosha in 1889, one
year before the inauguration of the newspaper, and began his literary
career as a proof-reader and writer of miscellaneous articles. Roka was par-
ticularly impressed by Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Tolstoy's writ-
ings, 72 and contributed the volume on Tolstoy in the Twelve Master Writers
series. However, his elder brother Sohö was singularly unimpressed with
Roka's talents, a point of view which would prove itself to be a serious
misjudgement.
Roka's first full-length novel Hototogisu was serialised sporadically in
Kokumin shinbun between November 1898 and May 1899, and appeared
in book form in 1900 from the Minyüsha Press. Its popularity was un-
precedented. Serialization in this case, however, did not play a key role. It
was when the book appeared in one volume that the sensation was a fact.
Not only was the first edition of two thousand copies sold out in 1900, but
also another nine thousand copies in eight reprints the same year. The fol-
lowing year it sold another ten thousand copies, in 1902 a further ten thou-
sand copies, and by 1909 it had reached its one hundredth reprint. 73 Hoto-
togisu was also the first modern Japanese novel to be translated into other
languages than Chinese, and achieve widespread critical and popular ac-
claim outside Japan. It first appeared with the title Nami-ko, a realistic
novel, translated into English by Shioya Sakae and E. F. Edgett, and pub-
lished by the Boston publishing house, Turner and Co in 1904, Nami-ko,
being the name of the heroine of the novel. The same year, two other pub-
lishing houses—G. P. Putnam's Sons of London and Boston, Grant Rich-
ards of London—published, editons of Nami-ko. These were rapidly fol-
lowed by translations into Spanish and Swedish the same year, and thereaf-
ter into German, Italian and French.
As we have seen, immediately following its publication Hototogisu in
book-form became a best-seller, at the same time as Ozaki Köyö's Konjiki
yasha (The Demon Gold), which was serialized in the popular Yomiuri
shinbun between January 1897 and May 1902.74 While The Demon Gold
holds an assured place as a classic in the development of the popular novel,
72 Hirabayashi Hajime et al. (eds.), Minyüsha bungaku no kenkyü, p. 45.

74 Odagiri (ed.), Nihon kindai bungaku nenpyö, p. 41.
130 Keiko Kockum
most modern literary historians do not accord Roka or his Hototogisu

much, if any, space in their writings. The principal reason for this is that
Roka was eclipsed first by Ozaki Köyö, and thereafter by literary luminar-
ies such as Mori Ögai and Natsume Söseki. One noticeable reason for this
eclipse was the simple mechanics of serialization. In Roka's case, Hototo-
gisu did not have a specific place in the newspaper, nor did it appear regu-
larly. 75 The reverse was true for The Demon Gold, in that it appeared regu-
larly in the same place in the newspaper. As a result when serialization
started, the sales of Yomiuri shinbun increased remarkably. 76 As a result of
the serialization's inordinate popularity, Köyö came to be treated as the
greatest author in the Meiji literary world. Furthermore, The Demon Gold
commenced serialization one year before Hototogisu, and had already at-
tracted steady readers by the time the latter started. Furthermore it con-
tinued regular serialization, day in day out, for four years after the latter
ended.
According to the novelist and literary critic Itö Sei, the story originally
planned for The Demon Gold was short and straightforward. After Hazama
Kan'ichi, a student, loses the girl he loves called Miya to a rich man, he
abandons his studies and becomes a cruel money-lender. When Miya is
abandoned by her rich lover, she dies of insanity regretting having left
Kan'ichi. Its uncomplicated plot, with the narrative parts in classical Japa-
nese and conversation in colloquial, was the reason for the work's popular-
ity. As a result of the serialization's inordinate popular, Köyö came to be
treated as the greatest author in the Meiji literary world. 77 At the request of
the newspaper, the story had to continue, and so it did, first as a "continua-
tion" (zoku ...) in 1898, next a "continued continuation" (zoku-zoku ...) in
1899 to 1900, and then as a continuation of the continued continuation of
The Demon Gold (zoku-zoku Konjiki yasha zokuhen), when it reappeared
in 1902!
Secondly, Köyö was in tune with the mood of the general reading public
which seems to have been tainted with a mild case of fin de siecle pessi-
mism. One year before the start of the work's serialization, the journalist
Murai Gensai (1863-1927) of Höchi shinbun wrote rather contemptuously
about the readers of novels in his own serialized novel Hinodejima, or The
Island where the Sun Rises,

76 Odagiri (ed.), Nihon kindai bungaku nenpyö, p. 39.
77 Itö Sei, Nihon bundanshi (A History of the Japanese Literary Establishment) vol. 5
(Tokyo: Ködansha, 1978), p. 170.
Readers like any work which stimulates their emotions. They prefer gloomy
and sad stories. They need neither principles nor ideals. 78
Additionally, Köyö's heroine in The Demon Gold reminds us of the

well-tried, melodramatic "she-devil" found in &ana-newspapers. Roka, on
the other hand, presents lofty ideals in his novel. 79 Hototogisu is a romantic
yet tragic love-story in the western sense of the term, which takes place in
the upper strata of Japanese society. There is a perspective of the individ-
ual locked in the declining feudalistic society, and the novel ends with the
death of the heroine, precluding any sequels. Life for the story's heroine
Namiko, the daughter of an army officer, was unhappy since the death of
her mother and her father's subsequent remarriage. Namiko is given in
marriage to Takeo, the son of a naval officer. While the marriage was ar-
ranged between the two families, her married life with Takeo was happi-
ness itself. The only negative element is "the mother-in-law mentality" of
Takeo's mother. The situation in which Namiko found herself was not at
all unusual, especially when the husband's mother is a widow. But Namiko
catches a cold which deteriorates into tuberculosis. Takeo's displays of
kindness to Namiko does not make matters better for her, and when Takeo
is absent from home, on a battleship taking part in a naval exercise, his
mother arranges and completes a divorce with Namiko's family.
Tuberculosis was for a long time down to the end of the Second World
War, the Japanese national disease. It was believed to be an air-born infec-
tion, and moreover death rate was the highest among diseases in Japan.
Namiko's mother-in-law's fear of her son becoming infected can well be
understood by the readers. The view that marriage, or for that matter di-
vorce, did not only concern the couple involved but was a family matter
was common in the Meiji Era. Similarly, that a married woman should help
her husband yet should not to be helped by him was also regarded as com-
mon sense at that time. In other words, the behaviour of Namiko's mother-
in-law towards her daughter-in-law would have been experienced, to a
greater or lesser degree, as natural by many women. Equally, the sense of
love and a shared fate, and the tragic end of Namiko's life must have called
forth many women's sympathy at that time.
There are two further aspects which make Hototogisu remarkable. First-
ly, Roka himself experienced difficulty with his wife's family in his own
marriage. In 1894, Sohö arranged for Roka to marry Aiko, a young woman

79 Iwaki, Meiji bungakushi, p. 403.
132 Keiko Kockum
six years his junior, who was a graduate of a prestigeous girls-school, that
later became Ochanomizu University. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japa-
nese war, Aiko's elder brother and Roka came into dispute with the result
that Aiko's brother suggested that the couple should divorce. Aiko and
Roka did not separate however. Secondly, In the same way that Tolstoy
based The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886) on an actual occurrence, Roka based
Hototogisu on a true story which he heard from a friend. Can we call Hoto-
gisu a roman ä clefl Perhaps we can. The book drew plot and theme direct-
ly from a real event, with only the names of the characters being changed.
The resulting scandal, while limited, was something of a cause celebre, and
it may well have convinced other writers that writing about strangers leads to
unwanted problems. Without wishing to overstate the case, the turbulence
caused by Roka's novel may have acted as an impetus to writers, when they
sought for lives to chronicle, to turn to themselves rather than others. This
may have been a contributory factor to the rise of the watakushi shösetsu or
self-referent novel which we will encounter in the next section.
The maturity of the Meiji novel
In 1907 Tayama Katai (hereafter Katai, 1871-1930) published the novel

Futon (The Quilt), that he had been commissioned to write by the literary
journal Shinshösetsu or The New Novel. The story was more complex than
Konjiki yasha and even Hotogisu. A girl, Yokoyama Yoshiko, who is nine-
teen years old, comes accompanied by her father to Tokyo to serve her ap-
prenticeship as a literary aspirant under the middle-aged writer Takenaka
Tokio. Tokio is known for his ornate style and often receives letters from
admirers, asking him to correct their writings or to take them on as dis-
ciples, requests that he had never previously acquiesced to. In Yoshiko's
case, however, it was different. In spite of repeated discouragement from
his side, she had not ceased her requests. With the approval of her parents
and with Tokio's consent, she becomes a lodger at the novelist's home, re-
siding there as his disciple. At the same time as she studies English at a pri-
vate school, she reads western literature under Tokio's guidance, and
learns that modern women should think for themselves and be responsible
for their actions. For Tokio, in the midst of a period of ennui, partly be-
cause his wife has time only for their three children, Yoshiko's youthful
voice and figure move his emotions to the extent that he realises that some-
thing has to be done.
He decides to move Yoshiko to the home of his wife's widowed sister.

He soon begins to learn, however, from his wife that male students visit
Yoshiko frequently, and that she goes out with them and returns to her
lodgings late in the evening. This behaviour is unbecoming for an unmar-
ried girl, yet Tokio takes her side. On her way back to Tokyo from her
home, where she has spent a vacation, Yoshiko spends two days in Kyoto
in the company of a Kyoto student, without informing either her parents or
Tokio. When Tokio learns of this breach of good upbringing, he decides to
move Yoshiko back to his own home so that he can better supervise her be-
haviour. Yoshiko maintains that these two days were spent in innocent pas-
times, but Tokio, who is responsible for Yoshiko's well-being, has to keep
her under his supervision. One month later, the Kyoto student appears in
Tokyo. Toshio does the only thing that he feels that he can do in such a
case—he requests Yoshiko's father to take his daughter home. In the
evening after Yoshiko, by now twenty-two years of age, and her father
have left Tokyo, Tokio goes into the room where she had stayed, her lug-
gage still awaiting dispatch to her home, "takes up her quilt and inhales her
fragrance. Carnal desire, grief and hopelessness assailed him." 8 0
Futon caused an extraordinary sensation, and critical opinion today sees
it as one of the two works, along with Shimazaki Töson's (1872-1943)
Hakai (The Broken Commandment) of 1906, that staked out the road
ahead for Japanese Naturalism. However, the originality of Hakai is not
undisputed. The novelist and literary critic Kimura Ki (1894-1972), who is
highly respected for his research on the Meiji novel, has pointed that it was
an imitation of Crime and Punishment:
Töson's Hakai (The Broken Commandment) is said to have turned Japa-
nese novels, after the Russo-Japanese War, in a modern sort of way, into the
path of naturalism. However, Hakai bears a striking resemblance to Crime
and Punishment. Indeed the resemblances of the plots, one to the other, is
so cruelly striking that I dare to contend that Hakai is not an adaption of
Crime and Punishment, but simply a copy. [...] After this insight my
esteem for Shimazaki Töson was reduced to dust.81
The shared feature of the two novels is that their heroes are brought
face-to-face with the truth of their situations. In Töson's novel, the hero—
an ordinary primary school teacher—discovers that he belongs to the
former outcast class in Edo society. This discovery provokes in him mixed
80 Tayama Katai, Futon (The Quilt), Shinshösetsu (1907), p. 58.

81 Kimura Ki, Nihon hon'yakushi gaikan, p. 405.
134 Keiko Kockum
feelings of shame and guilt, which find an outlet in a public apology for his
parentage to his students. In The Quilt, complex feelings of sexual attrac-
tion and social taboo, provoke a crisis for an otherwise outwardly happily
married writer towards his young protege. In neither case is a solution for
the hero's predicament given. In Töson's novel the school-teacher does not
fight against the prejudice of society but flees to Texas; in Katai's novel a
frustrating and monotonous life descends once again on the hero. Evalua-
tion of The Quilt varied. The young generation glorified and applauded it,
but the older generation regarded its self-exposure as wretched, shameless,
and immoral.
Eventually, however, time sided with The Quilt. Its author demolished the
already weakened fortress of existing literary ideas, which gradually disap-
peared. A new trend of describing the truth and portraying reality vividly
swept over the literary world, and self-exposure became the by-word. 82
Futon had both an immediate effect on Katai's contemporaries and a

far-reaching effect on Japanese literature, heralding the emergence of a
new form of novel, namely the watakushi shösetsu or "self-referent" novel.
[Futon] fixed the direction of Japanese naturalism and created the tradition
of the self-referent novel. Shimazaki Töson, who had written an excellent
objective novel Hakai immediately turned to writing autobiographical and
confessional works, producing pieces such as Haru (Spring, 1908), Ie
(House, 1911), Shinsei (Born Anew, 1919). In these works we can see the
strong influence of FutonP
Futon is generally regarded as a prime example of the author's confession

of his inner life, and it was for this reason that it caused a great sensation
both in the literary world and among the general readership. Before contin-
uing to discuss the watakushi shösetsu, there are certain important features
of Futon that demand attention, principally the nature of Japanese Natural-
ism and the literary influences that brought about Katai's masterpiece.
Many have believed that Japanese naturalism originates directly from
French Naturalism, especially Emile Zola (1840-1902). The literary his-
torian, critic and theoretician Katö Shüichi does not deny such an idea in
its entirety but notes fundamental differences between French and Japa-
nese naturalism. The three important points in Zola's novels, according to
Katö, are the biological method, a broad social field meaning that the au-
82 Maeda Akira, Tayama Katai ron (On Tayama Katai), Gendai nihon bungaku zenshu vol.
9 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, 1955), p. 409.
83 Hasegawa, Kindai bungaku ronsö jiten, p. 50.
thor is not the protagonist in the novel, and portrayal of society at large. All
of them are lacking in Japanese novels. Japanese novels at the turn of the
last century lack any consideration of science or scientific method, the
world they portray is extremely narrow, and the plots principally concern
miscellaneous happenings centred on their author-heroes. Novelists in Ja-
pan were ignorant of the emphasis in French Naturalism that novels should
be based on scientific knowledge, and that creative writers should be scien-
tifically objective and accurate, to the extent that physiological heredity
should underlie characterisation. Japanese Naturalism was rather a move-
ment to portray things as they are, without recourse to flights of imagna-
tion. As such Japanese Naturalism has little to do with French Natural-
ism. 84
It is noticeable in Futon that Takenaka Tokio is a writer known for his
ornate style, and thus bears more than a passing resemblance to Ozaki
Köyö, or at least writers of his style. In his book Katai was certainly react-
ing against Köyö's literature. Katai visited Köyö as early as 1891. On that
occasion Katai discussed Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray and Dumas with the
youthful Katai. Köyö then stood up and took a book from his shelf and
handed it to Katai. It was Abbe Mouret's Transgression by Zola. Köyö
then expressed the following opinion,
I have heard that he has a good reputation because he writes with such great
detail. He writes three or four pages about one occurrence. This is some-
thing that cannot be found in Japanese literature. So saying, he took up a fan
that was lying beside him, opened it and said, "Look here, the shadow and
light are well delineated." Köyö went on, "The plot is very simple. It
describes a monk, recovering from a period of illness, who falls in love with
a girl who lacks any feminine charm. But the psychology of the attraction
he experiences is very well portrayed in great detail. Japanese novels should
be like this."85
Zola would later exert a great influence on Katai, but he was not the first
foreign writer whom Katai discovered,
The first work of French literature that I read was by Daudet. At that time,
the English literary world was influenced by Daudet and Zola. Therefore in
Maruzen bookshop there was a large number of their works available. At
that time my favourite book was Jack by Daudet; the book had beautiful
illustrations. The Japanese literary world was witnessing at that time the
apex of the Kenyüsha's power with their backward-striving in the style of
84 Katö, Nihon bungakushi josetsu II, pp. 383-84.

85 Tayama, Tökyö no sanjünen (Thirty Years in Tokyo), (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, [1917]
1986), pp. 45^16.
136 Keiko Kockum
Edo taste. Daudet's works, which are said to have something in common
with Dickens, opened our eyes to a completely different point of view. I
also read Zola about the same time. [...] In France people say that these two
authors, Daudet and Zola, are like the two wheels of one conveyance. But,
compared to Daudet, Zola's writing has a poignant power to carry the
reader along with it. After that I read the Goncourts and Flaubert. Looking
back I now realise that Daudet, Zola and Maupassant are inferior to Flau-
bert. They have an impure attitude regarding self-advertisement. This is a
vice in Art. In France self-advertising works are loathed to the extent that
any work, however inferior it may be, that does not pretend to this task, is
considered superior. 86
A l p h o n s e D a u d e t ( 1 8 4 0 - 9 7 ) , w h o in his y o u t h t o o k D i c k e n s as his master,

w a s i n f l u e n c e d by the naturalist theories of t h e G o n c o u r t s and Zola. Jack
( 1 8 7 6 ) w a s his f o u r t h novel. It t o o k several y e a r s f o r K a t a i to c o m e to
grasp Zola,
I first read Zola about that time. The person from whom I was learning Eng-
lish showed me Zola's Conquest of Plassans, Nana and L'assommoir in
English translation. He said, "His works are very popular in France. But
they are terrible. They'll do you more harm than good. You can borrow
them when you are older." So saying, he put them aside. For this reason, I
could not read Zola's novels then. I still remember that I felt very sad. After
several years when I found the Conquest of Plassans in a second-hand
bookshop in Jimbocho, I squeezed money out of my mother and bought the
book. But I could not understand it very well, and wondered what was so
interesting about it.87
E m i l e Z o l a ' s La Conquete de Plassans (1874), is t h e f o u r t h in t h e t w e n t y

v o l u m e series of n o v e l s Les Rougon-Macquart ( 1 8 7 1 - 9 3 ) , of w h i c h t h e
seventh is L'Assomoir. L a t e r in his life Katai w o u l d q u e s t i o n t h e s e early
i n f l u e n c e s u p o n h i m and, as w e h a v e seen above, his p e r c e p t i o n w o u l d be-
c o m e finer. T h e c a s e of M a u p a s s a n t w a s d i f f e r e n t . Pierre et Jean w a s t h e
first w o r k by M a u p a s s a n t that K a t a i read. H e felt that M a u p a s s a n t w a s un-
like D a u d e t , and w h e n h e f o u n d a collection of M a u p a s s a n t ' s stories in an
i n e x p e n s i v e edition, h e i m m e d i a t e l y o r d e r e d a set. 8 8 T h e set w a s a transla-
tion into E n g l i s h in The After-Dinner Series. H e w a s exultant w h e n t h e
t w e l v e v o l u m e s r e a c h e d h i m in 1903.
Just before its arrival, I was reading Pierre Loti's Pecheur d'Islande. I
became painfully aware of the difference between this work and those of
86 Tayama, "Furansu bungaku no eikyo" (The Influence of French Literature), Chm5 bun-
gaku (1921), p. 148.
87 Tayama, Tökyö no sanjünen, p. 38.
88 Ibid, p. 171.
Maupassant, between descriptive and psychological, between authors who

can and cannot reach down to a certain depth [in human feelings], between
romanticism and realism. These differences steeped into my mind. Maupas-
sant touched something that was latent and unopened, yet existed quaking
and fermenting within me. I noted at that time, "Hitherto I have only pined
for the sky, and knew nothing about the earth. Nothing at all. Frivolous
idealist! From now on I shall be a child of the earth, and crawl on the earth
like a wild animal, rather than gazing at the stars in the sky." 89
T h e y e a r after his e n c o u n t e r with M a u p a s s a n t , h e r e m a i n e d r e s o l u t e with

regard to t h e literature of t h e Kenyüsha. In his s e m i n a l Rokotsunaru byö
sha, or Portrayal of S e l f - E x p o s u r e (1904), h e wrote:
There are those who are dominated by the so-called technique in the novel.
I am one of those who grieve over how much the Meiji literary world has
had to pay for this technique. In my opinion, the Japanese novel will not
develop unless we abandon this approach. Those who hold fast to tech-
nique, now that Kö-Ro-Shö-Ö are a spent force, call the writings of the new
generation incoherent and coarse. [...] But I want to ask them whether any
ideals can be found in writings at the time when only beautiful style was the
most important condition. [...] Look at literature in the West in the new
century. At the end of the nineteenth century voices were raised everywhere
on the continent demanding that writing should be undisguised, true and
natural. The gilded style of writing was destroyed and romanticism tram-
pled down. If a work was not about blood, it was about sweat. That was the
result. 90
In other w o r d s , the t i m e of K ö y ö , K ö d a R o h a n ( 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 4 9 ) , S h ö y ö a n d
M o r i Ö g a i w a s past, a n d their o v e r - e l a b o r a t e style, with its idealised pro-
tagonists a n d e x a g g e r a t e d plots, w a s relegated to oblivion. D r a w i n g on ex-
a m p l e s d e r i v e d f r o m F r e n c h , G e r m a n , R u s s i a n and Italian writers, K a t a i
c o n c l u d e d that, "If o n e dares to b e u n d i s g u i s e d , it is natural f o r o n e ' s writ-
ing to leave t e c h n i q u e . " H e criticized K ö y ö mercilessly,
In many of K ö y ö ' s works, the outer form is an imitation, and the content is
not well thought-out. The point on which he has expended effort is style.
But his writing lacks the tension of Saikaku's writing which shows us that
Saikaku was impelled to write. Therefore, K ö y ö ' s style and content are
unrelated, and there are many dead passages. His works are clothed in beau-
tiful brocade, but the content is just bleached paper flowers. 91
In Futon Katai can certainly b e seen as reacting against K ö y ö ' s literature.

H i s e n c o u n t e r with M a u p a s s a n t h a d given h i m the c o u r a g e to write his
89 Ibid, p. 173.
90 Tayama Katai, Rokotsunaru byösha [1904], (Portrayal of Self-Exposure), in Gendai ni-
hon nungaku zenshu vol 9 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobö, 1955) p. 391.
91 Tayama, Tokyo no sanjunen, p. 188.
138 Keiko Kockum
novel, yet when we consider the actual composition of the work, the influ-
ence of Gerhart Hauptmann was perhaps even greater. When he was asked
to write a retrospective piece for the literary journal Shinshösetsu, he re-
membered,
I was deeply impressed by Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen [1891] both in
my mind and my heart. I felt the hero's loneliness as my own. Furthermore,
I had to open a new road, by destroying the conventional form of my family
and my enterprise. Fortunately I had obtained a new trend from Europe,
albeit superficially, through a great deal of reading. I felt the agony of the
closing of the century in the thought of Tolstoy, Ibsen, Strindberg and
Nietzsche. I wanted to walk on the path of agony myself. At the same time
as I fought society, I wanted to fight bravely with myself. I decided to dis-
close matters that I had put aside and hidden, even matters which could
destroy my soul if I revealed them.®2
Katai championed the idea that the novel should take up thoughts and
ideas, and expose them truthfully and naturally. He took as his examples
Dostoevsky and Ibsen, holding that "their bold and exposing portrayals
that turn every stone are beyond the imagination of those in the thrall of
technique." Even if a Japanese novelist possessed a new idea, as a slave of
the styles of Köyö or Ögai he would be unable to express even a part of it.
Katai wrote that he was happy that the trend was towards the emancipation
of the novel from these shackles, in a new direction that would permit the
portrayal of even extravagant ideals. Katai was so much the embodiment
of naturalist writing that some critics have even suggested that Naturalism
rose and fell in Japan with Katai. 93
Conclusion:
Towards the division between
the "pure" and the "popular" novel
During the next two decades, the novel came to occupy centre stage in the
world of Japanese literature. The Japanese publishing industry, with its
penchant for categorizing works of literature, divided novels into several
sub-genres. Around 1910, the concept taishü shosetsu or mass novel, be-
gan to be applied to historical fiction and works in which imaginative writ-
ing play a key role. Shortly afterwards the shinkyö shösetsu or "state-of-
92 Ibid., pp. 206-07.

93 Maeda, Tayama Katai ron, p. 403.
mind novel" emerged as the counter part to the mass- novel. In the early
1920s, the shinkyö shösetsu along with other forms of novel that described
the psychology and thoughts of their characters were categorized in the
sub-genre of the novel known as jun-bungaku or pure literature, and the
mass-novel was relegated to the catch-all category of taishü-bungaku or
mass literature. In 1925 the expression shinkyö shösetsu was superseded by
"self-referent" novel. Throughout the Taishö and early Shöwa periods, the
"self-referent" novel, continued to win the favour of the Japanese literary
establishment (bundan), and it eventually dominated creative prose com-
position as its most refined vehicle.
The pure novel, the "self-referent" novel, became even purer, as men-
tioned before, when the literary critic and novelist, Kume Masao wrote in
1935, in his Pure Literature as a Pastime, that the writer of pure literature
should not take his task as an occupation—this is to say, he should not
think of fame or gain economical profit with his writing. In his eyes, Sho-
seikatagi was a university professor's pastime and even the proletarian
novel was a worker's pastime when it was viewed as pure literature. 94 Ac-
cording to the novelist Satö Haruo (1892-1964) the self-referent novel was
a direct successor to Naturalism; 95 and it is precisely here that a dilemma
lies deep within the core of the modern Japanese novel. The self-referent
novel won the favour of the literary establishment, and the literary estab-
lishment was a highly exclusive group, composed of writers, editors, crit-
ics and their publishers, along with a small group of highly-cultivated read-
ers residing, for the greater part, in the better districts of Tokyo. 95
This narrow circle of writers and their readers reminds us of the Heian
period's "literary salon," where almost everyone was acquainted with one
other. Talking about the Heian literary salon, in which women-writers
were so prominent, we may ask ourselves where in the Meiji-period
women-writers had disappeared to? The answer is that they were almost
entirely to be found within the realm of poetry in Japanese, i.e. waka poet-
ry. In the field of prose literature, no mention can be found in literary histo-
ries of any authoress prior to the Meiji, and it has been commonly accepted
that after the Heian-period the first woman novelist was Higuchi Ichiyö
(1872-96). Higuchi wrote her first novella in 1895, and in her short life she
wrote in 1895 and 1896 just seven short stories. However, it should also be
94 Kume, Junbungaku yogisetsu, p. 133.

95 Satö Haruo, Meiji bungaku sakkaron (Studies on Meiji Writers) vol. 1 (Tokyo: Shö-
gakkan, 1943), p. 12.
96 Kockum, Jtö Sei, p. xxv.
140 Keiko Kockum
noted that recent research shows that Rikeini no ki (The Record of the Nun
Rikei) published twice in the late Tokugawa-period in 1837 and 1845,
which is listed, along with the Heike monogatari, as a "war story" in the
List of Publications in Japan, was indeed written by a nun. 97 However this
book achieved little lasting popularity, something which was not the case
with the stories of Higuchi Ichiyö.
Following Katai's dictum, novelists, almost all of whom were male, fo-
cused uniquely on presenting things as they are and exposing their deepest
secrets, with the self-referent novel being idealized as a faithful record of
the author's private life. Literature became introverted and inward-looking
to the degree that to be able to read such a novel, one had to be already
well-acquainted with the persona of the author and context of his life. 98
This was unfortunate for Japanese literature, a tragedy one might say, be-
cause it meant that the Japanese novel, which had emerged into a vibrant
genre thanks to western influences, was not to become well-known outside
Japan for decades to come.
97 Kado Reiko, Edo joryü bungaku no hakken (The Discovery of Women Writers of the
Edo-period), (Tokyo: Fujiwarashoten, 1998), p. 22.
98 Kobayashi Hideo, Watakushishösetsuron (My Theory of the Novel), (Tokyo: Sakuhin-
sha, 1934), p. 121.
B O HOLMBERG
Transculturating the Epic:

The Arab Awakening and the Translation of the Iliad
"Arise, ye Arabs, and awake!" is the challenging call placed on the title
page of George Antonius's book The Arab Awakening. The story of the
Arab national movement, published in 1938. 1 In the late 1930s and in the
1940s, the political movement of Arab nationalism was fully developed
and in the words of Edward Said, "Antonius's The Arab Awakening re-
mains the classic and foundational book on Arab nationalism." 2 Though
purporting to be a historical survey of Arab nationalism up to its publica-
tion, the book is a strong ideologically biased appeal to join the movement
it portrays. The urgent request on the title page was not meant to add col-
our to an otherwise disengaged treatment of an historical period. The au-
thor makes the words his own and actually summarises his message with
them. In some later editions of the book, which continues to be re-issued
due to its wealth of information and its historical impact, the slogan has
been removed. 3 The watchword comes from the Lebanese scholar Ibrählm
al-Yäzijl (1847-1906) who used it in 1868 in addressing himself to the
Arabs in a qaslda (a classical ode): tanabbahü wa-stafiqü ayyuhä l-carab
("Arise, ye Arabs, and awake!"). 4 Though the Arabic word for "arise" and
"awake" here are derived from the roots N B H and FWQ, and not NHD, it
1 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Lon-
don: Hamish Hamilton, 1938).
2 Edward Said, The Times Literary Supplement, June 19 (1992), p. 19.
3 This is the case in, e.g., the 2001 edition from Simon Publ., Safety Harbor, Florida. A re-
cent treatment of Antonius's ideas may be found in William L. Cleveland, "The Arab
Nationalism of George Antonius Reconsidered," in James Jankowski and Israel Gersho-
ni (eds.), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia UP,
1997), pp. 65-86 (notes on pp. 302-03).
4 See Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology
of Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1993), p. 80; and Thomas Philipp,
Gurgl Zaidän: His Life and Thought, Beiruter Texte und Studien 3 (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1979), pp. 6 - 7 .
142 Bo Holmberg
is quite certain that what George Antonius had in mind, when using the
word "awakening" in the book title, was the Arabic word nahda ("awaken-
ing") derived from the latter root.
In the present article, the complex issue of modernisation in the Arab
Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will be ap-
proached through a case study of particularly the introduction to Sulaymän
al-Bustäni's (1856-1925) Arabic translation of the Iliad which was pub-
lished in Cairo in 1904. This translation, with its paratexts, is in itself an
encounter between interpretations of the Arab heritage and the reception of
European values and norms. The book that was published in 1904 is today
a palpable survival—a kind of relict—of the wider cultural phenomenon of
Arab awakening. In what follows, I will first remind the reader of the en-
counters between the Middle East and Europe since the late sixteenth cen-
tury, i.e. roughly two centuries before the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt.
The exchange of human resources and ideas paved the way for an extended
and modernised education system, a boom in journalism thanks to the in-
troduction of print technology, and the rise of national and political con-
sciousness. These factors affected the rise and composition of what Sabry
Hafez 5 calls a new reading public among whom the advocates of the Arab
awakening were to be found. Having set the scene for the 1904 Arabic
translation of the Iliad, I will proceed to a close reading of this particular
book, emphasising its materiality and its paratexts. Through this close
reading, the Arabic translation of the Iliad will reveal itself as a meeting-
place for interpretations of the European heritage and of Arab values and
norms. Since this is what the whole Nahda movement is about, i.e. the
meeting of the indigenous and the foreign, and the reinterpretation of both,
the study of a particular case, such as Sulaymän al-Bustäni's Arabic trans-
lation of the Iliad, sheds light on a more nebulous and less palpable phe-
nomenon—the Arab awakening.
In the 1930s, the phrase an-nahda al-carabiyya ("the Arab awakening")
had for several decades been used among the Arabs themselves to desig-
nate the cultural, literary, linguistic (and subsequently also political) activ-
ity of the Arabs in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From a
trivial meaning of "a single act of rising," but also "power," "ability,"
"strength," 6 the word acquired an abstract meaning of a social, cultural or
5 See Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse, pp. 63-104.

6 See Edward Lane, An Arabic—English Lexicon (London: H. Williams and Norgate,
1863-1893), p. 2860.
Transculturating the Epic 143
national awakening during the last two decades of the nineteenth century,
as may be seen from its use in journals from that time. 7 The term nahda in
its modern extended application is often translated as "renaissance" and the
movement in question is commonly called "the Arab renaissance." Though
the Arabs themselves came to apply the term nahda to the European
Renaissance, it seems to be advisable to stick to "awakening" or "rise" as
translations of the term even in its abstract use. This also conforms to what
the Arab intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century seem to have in-
tended in using the term nahda in its abstract sense: "a change from lethar-
gy to a dynamic situation of change and progress." 8 This does not imply a
return to or a repetition of an earlier stage.
Whatever designation is used, there were certain activities taking place
especially in the nineteenth century in the Middle East that are crucial for
an understanding of the development of the modern Arab world. These ac-
tivities are, to be sure, very complex and regionally varied. From an ana-
lytic point of view, they can be described as social, economic, political and
cultural. In reality, of course, all these aspects are intertwined. The regional
differences are immense and cannot be overlooked. Earlier studies of the
Arab awakening and the Arab nationalist movement have recently been
criticised for being narrow-minded and biased. An example of this critique,
though limited in its scope, is Israel Gershoni's article "Rethinking the
Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East, 1920-1945. Old and
New Narratives." 9 The old narrative is too idealistic, too text-oriented, too
preoccupied with language, history and religion, and emphasises European
influences too much. The new narrative represents a shift from the centre
to the periphery, from idea to society, and the methodology is mainly de-
rived from the social sciences. Gershoni's criticism is well-founded—and
has more nuance to it than my very condensed description of it might seem
to imply—and points out serious deficiencies in the old narrative as a de-
scription of the complex social, economic, and political development of
Arab nationalism (if ever the old narrative had such pretensions). My
present article is a contribution to a project on literature, and my particular
topic here is a literary product in Arabic seen as an ideological manifesta-
tion of the Arab awakening in its cultural and literary aspects. In this con-
7 See Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan, p. 7.

8 Ibid.
9 Israel Gershoni, "Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East,
1920-1945: Old and New Narratives," in Jankowski and Gershoni (eds.), Rethinking Na-
tionalism, pp. 3 - 2 5 (notes on pp. 289-91).
144 Bo Holmberg
text, I may perhaps be excused for dealing exactly with those categories that
characterise what according to Gershoni's discourse is the "old narrative."
As in the title of Albert Hourani's book Arabic Thought in the Liberal
Age 1798-1939,10 the Nahda is often conceived of as starting in the year
1798 when Napoleon landed in Egypt. Of course, this was an important
event as far as modern contacts between the Middle East and Europe are
concerned. But having this particular aspect in mind, i.e. the relations be-
tween Europe and the Middle East, one has to go further back in history
and also move to another part of the region. With Khalil Samir 11 one could
see the foundation in Rome of a college for the education of Maronite
priests in 1584 as an early and significant step towards an increasing ex-
change of human resources and ideas between the Levant and the Latin
West. The end of the sixteenth century was the time of the Counter-Refor-
mation, and several seminaries were founded in Rome with a view to
strengthening the Church. Among other such seminaries for priests found-
ed by Pope Gregory XIII one could mention the one for Greek Catholics in
1577. It should be kept in mind that the exchange of persons and ideas was
really bilateral, many of the first Arabic and Syriac scholars at the universi-
ties of Italy, Spain and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
being Maronites initially trained in the college in Rome.
The young Maronite seminarists in Rome had to learn European lan-
guages, such as Latin, Italian, Spanish and French, but they also studied
Arabic and Syriac as they were supposed to go back to the Middle East and
work there. For the beginners it was necessary to have the textbooks trans-
lated into Arabic. In this way, a corpus of mainly theological textbooks
translated into Arabic was used and spread during the seventeenth century.
In order to facilitate the circulation of these works, a printing press with
Arabic and Syriac printing types was installed in Dayr Quzhayyä in Leba-
non in 1610.12 This was the very first printing press in the Middle East, an-
tedating the one brought to Egypt in 1822 in the wake of the Napoleonic
expedition by more than two centuries. But it was not only books that were
disseminating European ideas in the Middle East. European missionary or-
ders, such as the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the Carmelites and the Domini-
cans, established themselves in various parts of the Middle East during the
10 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, [1962] 1983).
11 See Khalil Samir, "Role des Chretiens dans les renaissances arabes," Annales de Philoso-
phie 6 (Beyrouth, Liban: Universite Saint-Joseph, 1985), pp. 1 - 3 1 (particularly, pp. 1 2 -
13).
12 See Samir, "Role des Chretiens," p. 13.
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They engaged in religious, social and

educational work, founding schools for all levels, with the teaching of Ara-
bic as a prominent feature. On a higher level the schools were primarily re-
ligious during the eighteenth century. In 1820, American Protestants ar-
rived in the Middle East. By the year 1860, they had about thirty-three
schools in Lebanon. Around 1866, they founded the Syrian Protestant Col-
lege which was later to become the American University of Beirut, a pres-
tigious centre for learning even today. 13
In addition to the mainly religious activities of the Catholic missionary
orders and the Protestant missionary societies directed to various levels of
society, there were more elitist circles of erudition. In Aleppo during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several notable Christian and Mus-
lim scholars attracted disciples. Ya c qüb ad-Dibs! (d. 1692), a Maronite,
taught Arabic grammar and poetics and produced an elegant Arabic trans-
lation of the Gospels in 1691. More renowned than ad-Dibs! is his disciple
the Maronite bishop of Aleppo Germanos Farhät (1670-1732), who was a
prolific writer with a conscious ambition to use a high literary Arabic
(ial-fushä) purified from non-Arabic (mainly Turkish) influences. He wrote
a famous Arabic dictionary and textbooks in Arabic grammar, rhetoric,
stylistics and poetics.
In the mid-nineteenth century, several learned societies were founded
for the promotion of the humanities and sciences. One of these societies
was founded in 1847 by two important figures in the Nahda. The elder of
the two was Näsif al-Yäzijl (1800-1871), 14 the father of Ibrahim al-Yäzij!
already mentioned, who belonged to a family many members of which had
been secretaries in the service of the Turkish administration. Näsif al-
Yäzijl himself held high positions as secretary, first to the Melkite Patri-
arch in Beirut (1816—1818) and then to the ruler Bashir II ash-Shihabl for
fourteen years (1826-1840). After retiring from that position, he devoted
himself to teaching and writing. He is the author of an Arabic grammar,
numerous qasldas, and the remarkable Majmac al-Bahrayn (The Meet-
ing-point of the two Seas, 1856) written in rhymed prose (sajc) in the
maqäma-genre made famous by al-Hamadhäni (d. 398/1008) and al-Harlri
(d. 516/1122). Though a Christian, Näsif al-Yäziji knew not only the
Qur°än by heart, but also the entire dlwän, or collected poetry, of al-Mu-
tanabb! (d. 354/965).
13 For the situation in Egypt, see Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse, pp. 48
and 53.
14 See Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, 2 vols.
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), pp. 18-20.
146 Bo Holmberg
The other founder of the society of 1847 was Butrus al-Bustäni (1819—
1883), who was also a member of an even more distinguished family of ad-
ministrators and scholars with an important role in the Nahda of the nine-
teenth century. 15 Born a Maronite, Butrus al-Bustäni became a Protestant
in his twenties and was employed by the American missionaries as a lan-
guage teacher. Later the American Consulate employed him as an inter-
preter, a position he held from 1848 till 1862. Together with Eli Smith and
Cornelius van Dyck he translated the (Protestant) Bible into Arabic. In
1863 he founded a national school (al-madrasa al-wataniyya) which was
to give many future leaders and scholars their first education. He published
an Arabic dictionary in two volumes called Muhlt al-muhlt (The Ocean of
the Ocean, 1867-1870) and the first six volumes of the first Arabic En-
cyclopedia DäDirat al-macärif (The Circle of Knowledges, 1 - 6 , 1876—
1887). Subsequent volumes were edited by other members of the Bustänl
family. He translated a number of European works, notably John Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress and Daniel D e f o e ' s Robinson Crusoe. He founded
a periodical, al-Jinän (The Gardens, 1870), and two newspapers, al-Janna
(The Garden, 1870) and al-Junayna (The Little Garden, 1871).
Butrus al-Bustäni stands out as perhaps the major single figure of the
Nahda movement in the nineteenth century, but he was far from being the
only person who founded and edited journals and newspapers in this
period. Perhaps one should not over-emphasise the role of the press as a
means of diffusing opinions and views in the nineteenth-century Middle
East, since many journals were short-lived and were rather limited in circu-
lation. But the number of journals founded between the years 1852 and
1908 is telling and cannot be ignored. In his book The Syrians in Egypt
1725-1975, Thomas Philipp 16 gives the following figures for the number
of periodicals founded:
Beirut Cairo/Alexandria
1852-1882 26 41
1882-1908 43 601
The imbalance in the distribution of numbers between Beirut and Cairo/

Alexandria in the latter period is due to the significant emigration of Chris-
15 See J. Abdel-Nour, "al-Bustäni," in Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition Supplement 3 -

4 (Leiden: Brill, I960-), pp. 159-62.
16 See Thomas Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt 1725-1975, Berliner Islamstudien 3 (Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1985), p. 97. Cf. Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic
Narrative Discourse, p. 83.
tian intellectuals from Lebanon and Syria to Egypt in the second half of the
nineteenth century. The political instability in Syria and Lebanon, culmi-
nating in the massacres and the civil war of 1860, left many Christian intel-
lectuals with no other choice than to leave these countries. And since
Egypt offered a haven that was at a satisfactory distance from the troubled
home countries, yet not too far away, many emigrants ended up in either
Alexandria or Cairo. 17 One of these Lebanese immigrants to Egypt, Jurji
Zaydän (1861-1914), provides a good example of the way in which new
thoughts and literary experiments could be spread through the press. 18
Having founded the magazine al-Hiläl (The Crescent) 19 in 1892, he used
it as a channel for the publication of a series of historical novels often glo-
rifying the conditions during the c Abbäsid caliphate. These novels were
extremely popular and have remained in print ever since. Among other
journals and newspapers of real importance, one might mention the news-
paper al-Ahräm (The Pyramids), founded in 1875 in Cairo by the two
"Syrian Egyptian" brothers Salim Taqlä (1849-1892) and Bishära Taqlä
(1852-1901), and the periodical al-Muqtataf (The Selection), founded in
Beirut in 1876 by two former teachers at the Syrian Protestant College,
Ya c qüb Sarrüf and Färis Nimr, but transferred to Egypt in 1885. The cul-
tural periodical al-Muqtataf was epoch-making and played a seminal role
in spreading information about Western ways of thinking, science and
technology. The same goes for the monthly periodical al-Mashriq (The
East), founded in 1898 in Beirut—to remain there till it was closed down in
1970—by the Jesuit Louis Shaykhu/Cheikho (1859-1927).
In the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural movement an-
Nahda (the Arab awakening), a number of interrelated factors combined to
produce a novel situation. In the light of new information provided by an
increased mobility in human resources, the printing technique, the press,
translations and new genres of literary expression, among other things,
Arab intellectuals began to reassess the relationship between Europe and
the Arab world, ranging between European modernity, in all its varied
forms, and traditional Arab values of learning and culture, in all its varied
forms. The process of assimilating, or rejecting, modern European values
was in many ways painful, as can be gathered from the intense debate be-
17 See Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse, pp. 38-39 and 49.
18 See Roger Allen, "The Beginnings of the Arabic Novel," in Μ. M. Badawi (ed.), Modern
Arabic Literature, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1992), pp. 180-222 (here, p. 187); and in general Philipp, GurgiZaidän.
19 On this magazine, see Philipp, Gurgi Zaidän, pp. 229-34.
148 Bo Holraberg
tween modernists and traditionalists in the Arab world—a debate that is

still going on with unabated fervour.
In the following, I will concentrate on the Arabic translation of the Iliad
which appeared in 1904. It is my contention that this work is an expression
of the desire to reassess the relationship between Europe and the Arab
world in the context of the Nahda movement. But it is not only a reassess-
ment of this relationship, but also a revaluation of each tradition in the light
of the other. Traditionally, studies on translations have been mainly con-
cerned with the source text as a yardstick against which one measures and
evaluates the translation. During the last decades, emphasis has moved
from the original source and the equivalence between the target language
text and its source to an independent study of the translation as such. This new
shift in the study of translations has become a sub-discipline called "Transla-
tion Studies," a name initially proposed by James S. Holmes at a conference in
Copenhagen in 1972.20 It emphasises that a translation lives its own life and de-
serves to be studied in its own historical and cultural context.21
In the spirit of Translation Studies, I will focus on the Arabic translation
of Homer's Iliad as a literary manifestation of the Nahda movement. I do
not wish to compare the translator's Arabic with the original text in Greek.
My concern is the book that was printed in Cairo in 1904 as a physical ob-
ject with an ideological message to people living in that particular context.
How did the translator look at his own achievement? Why did he translate
this text in the first place? What does he say about these things in his intro-
duction? How was the translation received? And so on.
In his essay "Sulaiman al-Bustani and the Iliad," Albert Hourani 22 gives
us a vivid picture of the applause with which the publication of the Iliad
was received. In June 1904, a dinner was given at Shepheard's Hotel in
Cairo in honour of the translator. The most important intellectuals in Egypt
attended, or were at least invited to, this unique occasion. Two future
Prime Ministers were there, one of them Sa c d Zaghlül (1857-1927), free-
dom fighter against the British. Among those invited but not able to be
20 See James S. Holmes, "The Name and Nature of Translation Studies," in Translated! Pa-
pers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, Approaches to Translation Studies
7 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), pp. 66-80; and Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, [1980] rev. ed. 1991).
21 See Lawrence Venuti (ed.), Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology
(London: Routledge, 1992), p. 13.
22 Albert Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), pp.
174-87.
present, we find the great Muslim reformer Muhammad c Abduh (1849-

1905). His support of a venture that to all appearances aimed at opening
the minds of the Arabs to European culture is understandable, given his
modernist inclinations. But it is surprising that his disciple Rashid Ridä
(1865-1935), with a more fundamentalist approach to Islam, actually did
attend the dinner and even delivered a speech. This really gives a small
glimpse of the liberal contacts between people of different persuasions in
Cairo and, perhaps even more, the important and far from negligible role of
the Christian intellectuals at this time. Most of the guests were of course
Christian intellectuals, either native Egyptians or immigrants from Leba-
non and Syria. Some of them have already been mentioned above as lead-
ing figures of the Nahda movement: the two journalists and founders of
al-Muqtataf, Ya c qüb Sarrüf and Färis Nimr, the writer of historical novels
and founder of the periodical al-Hiläl, Jurjl Zaydän, and the scholar
Ibrählm al-Yäzijl. To these may be added the romantic poet Khalll Muträn
(1872-1949). 23 Other prominent poets of the time who attended the dinner
were the two pillars of neo-classical poetry in Egypt, Ahmad Shawql
(1868-1932) and Muhammad Häfiz Ibrählm (1871-1932), 24 The listing of
some of the dinner guests, as has been done here, clearly shows that the trans-
lation of the Iliad into Arabic was considered to be a cultural event which real-
ly did concern the intellectuals at the time. Even if they did not read every
word, it had a symbolic value for those who were able to appreciate it.
Not only was the translator celebrated for his intellectual and scholarly
achievement, the book itself as a physical object was a matter of admiration.
Never before had a book of this size and grandeur been published in Egypt. It
is a one-volume hard-cover book in quarto of massive weight covering 1260
pages with numerous illustrations and ornamentation. In what follows I will
carefully go through the title page, the page of dedication, and the preamble
to the introduction which in a condensed but clear way epitomises the con-
tent of the nearby 200 pages of introduction and other features of the publica-
tion, such as the commentary, the illustrations, and the indices.
This close reading of the paratext of the Arabic translation of the Iliad is
motivated by the importance accorded to the liminal devices and conven-
tions both within a book (peritext) and outside it (epitext) in recent scholar-
ship—most clearly expressed in Gerard Genette's Paratexts: Thresholds of
23 See R. C. Ostle, "The Romantic poets," in Badawi (ed.). Modern Arabic Literature, pp.
82-131 (esp., pp. 84-88).
24 See Sasson Somekh, "The Neo-classical Arabic Poets," in Badawi (ed.), Modern Arabic
Literature, pp. 36-81.
150 Bo Holmberg
interpretation. The paratext has an illocutionary force which may express,

not only sheer information, but also the author's and/or publisher's inten-
tion, interpretation, decision, commitment, advice etc. 25 The paratext re-
veals the translator's reflection on his own achievement. It is my conten-
tion that a close reading of the paratext of the Arabic translation of the Iliad
and an evaluation of its illocutionary force will support the interpretation
of Sulaymän al-Bustänl's book published in Cairo in 1904 as a tangible ex-
pression of the Arab awakening.
The title page contains the title in Arabic with a short description of the
main features of the edition, the name of the translator, a French translation
of the above, and details about the printing press and date of print in Ara-
bic. On the middle of the page, the translator's name is singled out by
means of ornamental lines. The whole text on the title page is centred. In
the following translation of the Arabic the breaking of the lines and the
sizes of the types have been roughly imitated:
Homer's Iliad
translated into Arabic
in versified form
and along with it there is a historical and literary commentary
and it is published with an introduction on Homer and his poetry
and the literatures of the Greeks and the Arabs
and it is provided at the end with a general index and lists
[ornamental line]
written by
Sulaymän al-Bustänl
[ornamental line]
L'lLIADE D'HOMERE
TRADUITE EN VERS ARABES
AVEC UNE INTRODUCTION HISTORIQUE ET LITTERAIRE
SUR L'AUTEUR ET SON CEUYRE EN REGARD DE LA LITTERATURE
ARABE ET DES USAGES DE LORIENT.
LE TEXTE ET ACCOMPAGNE DE NOTES
ET SUIVI D'UN VOCABULAIRE
PAR
Sula'iman al-Bustany
[line]
«Printed at the Hiläl Press in Cairo in the year 1904»
25 See Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Jane E. Lewin (trans.),

foreword by Richard Macksey, Literature, Culture, Theory 20 (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, [1987] 2001), pp. 10-11.
The words "translated into Arabic" render a single Arabic word, (mu°ar-
raba), which could also be translated as "arabised." There are several ways
of expressing the idea of translation in Arabic. The most neutral is the
word naqala, which implies a transfer from one language to another simi-
lar to the etymological meaning of "translate." The word tarjama may also
be used in a neutral sense, 26 but as the related word tarjumän ("inter-
preter") suggests, a certain degree of interpretation may be involved. 27 This
is even more true of the word sharaha which normally means "to comment
on." That Sulaymän al-Bustänl has here chosen the word mucarraba may
signify that he is not merely translating the Iliad, but that he arabises it in a
more radical way, as we will presently see.
When Sulaymän al-Bustänl says that he is translating the Iliad "in versi-
fied form," he uses the Arabic term nazm whose literal meaning is "the or-
dering of pearls on a string to form a necklace." 28 Used metaphorically, the
word has two meanings, "style" and "metrical speech" or "versification,"
of which only the second one concerns us here. When used in opposition to
nathr, "prose" (lit. "scattering of pearls"), it refers to any metrical text. But
in the way Sulaymän al-Bustänl uses the term, it is rather the opposite of
shicr, "poetry," which he usually only applies to mono-rhyme poetry, such
as the qaslda. In opposition to shicr, nazm tends to mean didactic versifica-
tion and thus serves the translator's purpose as a counterpart to the epic
genre of the Greek. But Sulaymän al-Bustänl has, as we shall see, other
words at his disposal for the epic genre, and, in contrast with those terms,
naz,m may have a more neutral meaning as simply "versification."
Sulaymän al-Bustänl then goes on to say that a commentary, shark, is at-
tached to his versified Arabic translation of the Iliad. In order to appreciate
the presence of a commentary here, one has to remember the importance of
writing commentaries in the Arabic literary tradition. The background to
the custom of writing commentaries is to be found in early Islam when
scholars collected the oral traditions of pre-Islamic poetry in order to un-
derstand the Qur°än. Since the poetry itself was rarely self-contained, it too
26 Cf. the Arabic expression harakat at-tarjama (The Movement of Translation) which re-
fers to the modern translation movement. See M. Peled, "Creative Translation: Towards
the Study of Arabic Translations of Western Literature Since the 19th Century," Journal
of Arabic Literature 10 (1979), pp. 128-50, as well as the one in early c Abbäsid times.
27 Cf. the Aramaic Targums in Jewish tradition which were not translations of the Hebrew
Bible in a narrow sense, but interpretations aiming at explanation and commentary.
28 See W. P. Heinrichs, "napn," in Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (eds.), Encyclope-
dia of Arabic Literature 1 - 2 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 585-86.
152 Bo Holmberg
had to be explained by experts. Even during the oral stage of poetry, the
poet was accompanied by at least one bard or transmitter (räwl) whose task
it was, not only to memorise and transmit the poems, but also to provide an
oral context and commentary to the obscure and often allusive character of
the poetry. 29 The written commentaries on collections of poetry from the
second/eighth century onwards are a continuation of this pre-literary prac-
tice. There was a simultaneous development of commentaries on the
Qur°än, though these were not called sharh, but tafslr or tajwll. The cus-
tom of writing commentaries later spread to other types of discourse, such
as scholarly and scientific works.
The commentary which Sulaymän al-Bustänl attaches to his translation
is qualified as "historical and literary" (ta°nkhl adabi). As for history, the
scholarly elite of Arab society has normally emphasised its importance,
and historiography in its various sub-genres has constituted one of the most
prolific branches of Arabic scholarly prose literature. In the nineteenth cen-
tury many things changed, or were at least challenged, but the importance
of history was never questioned by the advocates of the Nahda movement.
In some ways it was rather accentuated. One could point to the popularity
of Jurji Zaydän's historical novels and the appeal to a common Arab histo-
ry in the Arab nationalist propaganda. When Sulaymän al-Bustänl qualifies
his commentary as historical, this is no empty word, but a word which
evokes many connotations in the mind of the reader.
But the commentary is not only historical, it is also "literary" (adabi).
Today the word adab means belles-lettres or literature in its modern Euro-
pean narrow sense. But this is an extension (or perhaps one should say a re-
striction) of the use of the term in previous centuries. It was during the
Nahda period, and in dialogue with European thought, that the new mean-
ing began to be applied. In a text from Sulaymän al-Bustänl's time it is not
always easy to decide how one should translate the word. From its earliest
use in pre-Islamic times the concept of adab changed in meaning during
the course of time. Nevertheless, certain ideas were present from the outset
and remained important through the centuries. Adab always involved intel-
lectual nourishment, manners and education. It was something that could
be studied, taught, and learned. It was the business of a cultured literate
elite with connections with the bureaucracy and the court. The language
was the cultured written Arabic of al-carabiyya al-fushä. Its textual expres-
29 See Abdulla El Tayib, "Pre-Islamic Poetry," in A. F. L. Beeston et al. (eds.), Arabic Lit-
erature to the End of the Umayyad Period, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), pp. 27-113 (esp., p. 29).
sion was the written compilation of poetry and anecdotes in prose on a va-
riety of subjects. Its functions were both to instruct and to entertain.
The next thing we learn from the title page is that the translation is "pub-
lished with an introduction." Sulaymän al-Bustänfs introduction (muqad-
dima) covers almost 200 pages and is no doubt the part of the book that has
been read more frequently than the translation itself and the commentary.
It has been printed separately, but in the separate printing at my disposal
the preamble and the first twenty-eight pages or so have been left out. 30 It
was customary in medieval Arabic texts to have prefatory discourses indi-
cating the purpose of composing the book and an outline of its contents.
The term muqaddima, though, was rarely used as a designation of these
prefaces. Instead, it was a technical term in logic meaning "premise." The
historian Ibn Khaldün (732/1332-808/1406) joined these two meanings of
the term when he applied it to his famous al-Muqaddima (Prolegomena)
which is, on the one hand, a lengthy introduction in its own right to a multi-
volumed work of history and, on the other hand, a logical propaedeutic
which purports to set out the methodological rules of historiography as
premises from which deductions of plausibility are derived. 31 The Muqad-
dima is usually read separately as a book in its own right. It is easy to see a
certain similarity in function and use between Sulaymän al-Bustänfs mu-
qaddima and that of the great historian.
The introduction is said to deal with "Homer and his poetry and the lit-
eratures of the Greeks and the Arabs." The word for "poetry" here is shicr,
which Sulaymän al-Bustänl uses in a restricted sense when referring to
Arabic poetry. But when he applies it to the Greek tradition, he seems to
use it in a more general way as a translation of a European word. As for
"literatures," we again come across the word adab, here in its plural form
ädäb. It seems that our translator has had both the two major meanings of
adab in mind, i.e. both literature in a narrow sense and customs, manners.
We find an indication of this in the very free French rendering of these
words: "en regard de la litterature arabe et des usages de 1'Orient."
Before coming to the name of the translator, we learn that the translation
"is provided at the end with a general index and lists." It is not quite clear
what is intended by "a general index" (mu c jam cämm), because there are in
fact three indices called mucjam: one for linguistic terms, another for the
30 Sulaymän al-Bustänl, al-Ilyädha wa-sh-shi'r al-carabi (The Iliad and Arabic Poetry),
(Susa, Tunisia: Dar al-ma c ärif li-Hibä c a wa-n-nashr, n.d.).
31 See A. al-Azmeh, "muqaddima," in Meisami and Starkey (eds.), Encyclopedia, pp. 5 5 1 -
52.
154 Bo Holmberg
poetical contents and the commentary, and a third for names. The lists
(fihris, pi. fahäris) are three: for illustrations, for rhymes, and for the con-
tents of the book.
We now turn to the translator whose name we have already come across,
Sulaymän al-Bustänl (1856-1925), 32 a member of the important al-Bustänl
family and thus a relative of Butrus al-Bustäni. He was born in Bkashtln, a
small village in southern Lebanon, the firstborn son of a farmer. At the age
of seven, he was sent to Beirut to attend the National School (al-madrasa
al-wataniyya), which his relative Butrus al-Bustänl had just founded. He
spent eight years (1863-1871) in this school, which in a decisive way
formed his mind. The atmosphere of the school was imbued with the polit-
ical and social ideals of its founder and his friend Näslf al-Yäziji, who was
one of Sulaymän's teachers. The children were taught to appreciate a
peaceful co-existence of Muslims and Christians in a reformed Ottoman
empire and an Arabic culture open to the modern world. Butrus al-Bustänl
studied English and French along with Arabic and Turkish. His study of
English literature included reading (and memorising parts of) John Mil-
ton's Paradise Lost and Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. His ac-
quaintance with these epics and their narrative poetry sowed the seeds of
his later interest in the Iliad and questions concerning epics in the Arabic
literary tradition.
Having left school in 1871, he spent a few years working for the period-
ical al-Jinän and the two newspapers al-Janna and al-Junayna and writing
articles for the encyclopedia Dä'irat al-Ma'ärif as well as interpreting at
the consulate of the United States. From 1876 till 1885 he lived in Iraq and
travelled extensively in the Arabian peninsula. He worked for a trading
company in Baghdad dealing with dates and held posts in the local Otto-
man government. His employment in the company exporting dates gave
him the opportunity to travel to Najd, Hadramawt and Yemen to study the
milieu of pre-Islamic poetry and to take part in the living oral traditions of
poetry. His observations on nomadic life were published as articles in
al-Muqtataf in 1887 and 1888.
Back in Beirut in 1885, he again contributed to the Dä'irat al-Macärif
for a few years. But already in 1888 he went via India to Iran where he
spent two years which considerably improved his knowledge of Persian lit-
32 See Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur: Zweite den Supple-
mentbänden angepaßte Auflage, dritter Supplementband (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1937-
1949), pp. 348-53.
erature. After another two years in Baghdad, he proceeded to Istanbul

where he spent most of the next seven years (1891-1898). In 1893, he
visited the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago as an Ottoman com-
missioner. Most of the ten years from 1898 to 1908 he spent in Cairo. It
was during this period, in 1904, that his translation of the Iliad was pub-
lished.
The Ottoman constitutional revolution in 1908, which ended the auto-
cratic rule of Abdülhamid II and restored the constitution, meant a radical
change for Sulaymän al-Bustäni. He was an opponent of the autocracy and
presumably had contacts with the constitutionalist opposition. He immedi-
ately published an extended political pamphlet cIbra wa-dhikrä aw ad-
dawla al-cuthmäniyya qabl ad-dustür wa-bacdahu (A Lesson and a Memo-
ry. Or The Ottoman State Before the Constitution and After It, Cairo
1908). With the first elections to the Ottoman Parliament he became one of
the two deputies for Beirut. Later, in 1910, he was chosen to be second
Chairman of the Parliament, and subsequently he was appointed as a mem-
ber of the Senate. In late 1913 he became Minister for Commerce, Agricul-
ture, Forests and Mines. As a supporter of strict neutrality, he was against
Turkey joining the war, and when this happened he resigned and went to
Switzerland where he spent the years of the war. He suffered from bad
health and had to stay in a sanatorium several months. After the end of the
war he went to Egypt and from there to the United States in 1924, on an in-
vitation from his Lebanese friends in New York, MIkhä°Il Nu c ayma
(1889-1988), Jibrän Khalil Jibrän (1883-1931), and Ilyä Abü Mädl (1889-
1957). His health deteriorated and he died in America in 1925.
On the title page of the translation of the Iliad, the title in Arabic is fol-
lowed by a French translation of the title. Two questions suggest them-
selves here. Why is the translation into French? Why is there a translation
at all? In the nineteenth century, French was the first foreign European lan-
guage in the schools and in the educated class in general. This continued to
be the case in the Levant, but in Egypt the use of English increased in the
1890s as a result of the British occupation. Nonetheless, the balance in the
field of translations continued to favour French literature. By 1930 there
were more than 150 French writers available in Arabic translation as com-
pared to a mere 15 English ones. 33 For our translator, with his background
in the Levant and his concern with the field of translations, the choice of
French is not surprising. One may speculate about the reason for this trans-
33 See Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse, pp. 90-91.

156 Bo Holmberg
lating of the title at all, especially since the translation is rather inexact. A
practical motive could be to assist the cataloguing of the book in libraries
in Europe. But the fact that the printer and the date of publication is not
translated tells against this hypothesis. Maybe one should rather view the
insertion of the French along with the Arabic as a symbolic manifestation
of the whole idea of the book as a bringing together of Europe and the Arab
world.
The last line on the title page is in Arabic and gives us the name of the
printing press, the Hiläl Press in Cairo, and the date of print, 1904. Suffice
it to observe that this printing press was associated to the magazine
al-Hiläl, and that both were founded by Jurjl Zaydän.
Next we find a page of dedication with a picture of Sulaymän al-
Bustänl's father. Above the picture the words "Dedication of the Book"
(,ihdä0 al-kitäb) are printed, and under the picture we find the name of the
father and the years of his life: Khattär Salüm Nädir al-Bustänl (1830—
1886). The written dedication covers four lines at the end of the page:
To you, my Father, I dedicate this book of mine, for you are the most
worthy of it of all living and dead. It is but a tiny bit in comparison to your
graciousness and a fraction when compared to your care for your children
and your self-sacrifice in the service of your relatives and your countrymen.
Though I was unable to perform the duty of compensation during your life-
time, the least I can do is to call upon the general public as a witness to my
gratitude towards you when you are in the world of the spirits.
This dedication seems to have a function similar to the one often met with
in Arabic prefaces to books and epistles from medieval times. In these
prefaces it was customary to stress the unworthiness of the author and to
make an excuse for writing at all. Sulaymän al-Bustänl does not conform
to the specific genre of these prefaces, but he does the same thing in an-
other fashion. He had a loving and caring father, but could not give any-
thing back while he lived. By publishing the translation of the Iliad, he
shows his gratitude towards his father before the general public.
After the page of dedication there follows a three-pages-long preamble, in
Arabic called dlbäja,1'"' which actually is a kind of table of contents in con-
nected prose. It epitomises the introduction and the commentary, and it re-
veals the aspirations of the translator. In what follows, I will present a rather
literal translation of parts of the preamble, adding comments on the way.
34 Lane, Arabic—English Lexicon, p. 843: "A proem, an introduction, or a preface, to a

poem or a book; and especially one that is embellished, or composed in an ornate style."
Preamble of the book

This Iliad of Homer I present to the readers of Arabic in Arabic poetry. I
have done my utmost in versifying it and in rendering it as an epic in the
hope that the accurate translation into Arabic proves to be unimpaired by
the defects of ungrammaticality and lack of clarity.
"I present to the readers of Arabic" explicitly identifies the translator's au-
dience. It is those who read Arabic. This is of course a natural statement by
a writer who offers an Arabic translation of the Greek Iliad. But the seem-
ing obviousness of this assertion is qualified by the translator's aspiration
to use an Arabic which is "unimpaired by the defects of ungrammaticality
and lack of clarity." This desire to write in faultless Arabic has to be under-
stood in the context of the diglossic situation prevailing in the Arab world.
An educated Arab is actually (at least) bilingual. On the one hand, he
speaks his mother tongue, which we would call an Arabic dialect (varying
according to his place of origin in the Arab world). On the other hand, in
school he has been taught to read, write and speak (with varying degrees of
success) the written language of al-carabiyya al-fushä (lit. "the language
that is more correct"). The two languages are in fact typologically quite
distinct, but this is often overlooked by non-specialists due partly to the
ideologically motivated tendency to designate both languages as Arabic,
partly to the present development of bridging the gap between the two by
simplifying the written language and using various mixed forms of speech.
In view of the typological differences between the two languages, it has
been suggested that one should drop the designation "Arabic" for the dia-
lects and rather call them "Agamic." 35 The designation "Agamic" is de-
rived from the Arabic word acjaml (from a root meaning "crooked"),
which is used in the Qur°än probably in reference to the spoken languages
of Arabia other than the carabiyya of the Qur°an itself. The Arabic lexi-
cographers explained the word as "one who cannot speak in the manner of
c
arabiyya," and through the close connections between Arabs and Per-
sians, the word later came to designate Persian. In fact, our translator em-
ploys a word from the same root ( c ujma, in my translation "lack of clari-
ty") in describing what he intends to avoid in the Arabic language he
adopts.
When Sulaymän al-Bustänl in this passage professes himself an adher-
ent of an Arabic unimpaired by the defects of ungrammaticality and lack of
clarity, he takes sides with the literary elite of classical Arabic literature of
35 See Jan Retsö, "Vad är arabiska?" (What is Arabic?), Dragomanen 5 (2001), pp. 15-35.
158 Bo Holmberg
prestige for whom al-carabiyya al-fushä was the natural medium of dis-
course. But he also implicitly vindicates the linguistic ideal of the Nahda
movement, i.e. the promotion of high Arabic language cultivated and de-
fended by purists such as Sulaymän's elder relative Butrus al-Bustänl.
Next we read:
I have published it with an introduction in which I elaborate on the life of
the author of the Iliad and point to his poetical works and his position
among the ancients and later authors' view of him and the sayings of the
Arabs about his poetry.
Sulaymän al-Bustänl's introduction to his translation of the Iliad covers al-

most 200 pages and is divided into five parts. In this passage from the pre-
amble, he refers to the first part which is devoted to (1) Homer, pp. 9 - 3 1 .
The other four parts deal with (2) The Iliad, pp. 32-67; (3) The Arabic
translation, pp. 68-106; (4) The Iliad and Arabic poetry, pp. 107-188; and
(5) Conclusion, pp. 189-200.
Our translator's view of Homer reflects the general knowledge of the
Homeric scholarship of the century, including that of the "Homeric ques-
tion" as posed by F. A. Wolf in the late nineteenth century. His stance on
the various issues is on the whole conservative. The unity and consistency
of the Iliad point towards a single poetic genius. Writing long before the
work of Parry and Lord, he has no problem in accepting the theory of an
oral transmission of the Iliad. He had himself witnessed the power of
memory in the Arabian peninsula during his ethnological field-work
among the Bedouin and their poets.
Sulaymän al-Bustänl not only rehearses Western scholarship on Homer,
he also enumerates the instances where Homer and his works are men-
tioned in Arabic sources, such as al-Birunl (d. c. 442/1050), ash-Shah-
rastäni (d. 548/1153), Ibn Abl Usaybi c a (d. 668/1270), Ibn al- c Ibri (or Bar-
hebraeus; d. 685/1286), and Ibn Khaldün (d. 808/1406). Although the in-
formation these authors supply is very meagre, it is a natural thing for our
translator to make use of the Arabic indigenous tradition as well as West-
ern scholarship. He is after all creating a meeting-place for the two.
Then I examine the Iliad and its contents and the ways in which it was
transmitted before being put into writing. I further examine how it was col-
lected and written down; its uncorrupted state and its few foreign, missing,
repetitive and obscure passages. I thoroughly analyse it and comment on it
and I expound what is profitable in it with regard to literature and history,
and the other sciences, disciplines and crafts. I also put forward some of the
explanations proposed by early Islam as to why the Arabs neglected to
translate it into their language.
Here Sulaymän al-Bustänl epitomises the content of the second part of his
introduction, the one on the Iliad proper. Of special interest to us is his de-
scription of the transmission of the Greek text and his theories about why
the Arabs during the Middle Ages did not translate the Iliad.
In describing the transmission of the Greek text, he employs four sig-
nificant concepts: oral transmission (tanäqul)\ literacy {kitäba)\ collection
(jamcy, and corruption (tahrif). In the context of Arabic literary criticism,
these concepts are of central importance. They are primarily applied to the
twin foundations of Arab-Islamic culture, i.e. the pre-Islamic poetry and
the Qur 3 än. By applying these same conceptual tools to the textual history
of the Greek Iliad, our translator draws the two traditions closer to one an-
other and facilitates an understanding of the foreign tradition from an
Arab-Islamic point of view.
In view of the vital translation movement under c Abbasid patronage dur-
ing the eighth-nineth centuries, 36 one may wonder why the Iliad was not
translated in that period. After all, as we have seen, Homer and the Iliad
were known to the Arabs of the Middle Ages. As for the question why the
Iliad had not been translated earlier, Sulaymän al-Bustänl reasons along
three lines. First, the protagonists of the translation movement during the
°Abbäsid caliphate were for the most part not Arabs, but Syrian Christians
or Persians, and supposedly lacked sufficient knowledge of Arabic to
translate poetry. Second, the c Abbäsid caliphs did not provide the incentive
and patronage necessary for a translation of such a work as the Iliad", they
were mainly interested in works of medicine and philosophy. Third, the
strangeness of the Homeric world with its multiplicity of gods was a stum-
bling-block for Muslims and Christians. The first line of thought is a rather
weak one, since much evidence contradicts the presumption that the Chris-
tians in the Islamic Empire were negligent with regard to the use of
al-carabiyya al-fushä. On the contrary, they had to show even more lin-
guistic proficiency than many Muslims and distinguished themselves in the
scribal profession where perfect knowledge of the carabiyya was essen-
tial.37 The second reason offered by our translator may be followed up to a
36 See e.g. Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation
Movement in Baghdad and Early cAbbäsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries) (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 1998).
37 See Bo Holmberg, "Christian Scribes in the Arabic Empire," in Heikki Palva and Knut S.
Vik0r (eds.). The Middle East—Unity and Diversity: Papers from the Second Nordic
Conference on Middle Eastern Studies, Copenhagen, October 1992 (Copenhagen:
NIAS, 1993), pp. 103-14.
160 Bo Holmberg
certain point. It is true that the c Abbäsid caliphs favoured translations of

medicine and philosophy. But it is also true that they were patrons of
poetry, since many an Arabic poet earned his living in the courts of cal-
iphs and princes of c Abbäsid times. Rather, it was the contents of the Ili-
ad with its daring descriptions of the Greek gods that must have made the
°Abbäsid translators hesitant. In this respect, Sulaymän al-Bustänl proves
to be an innovator in presenting the strange world of the Iliad to an Arab
audience.
I have gone to extremes in translating into Arabic, so I tell the story of the
translator in producing the present book. I also mention the methods of the
Arabs in translating foreign books and what procedures one should rely on
that are suitable for great translators. This brings me to my opinion about
translation of poetry into Arabic and then to verse in general and the metres
and rhymes of poetry and the meaning of each of these concepts; and both
the approved and the disapproved poetic licences and other things which
count as characteristics of this craft.
In the third part of his introduction, which Sulaymän al-Bustänl epito-

mises here, he gives an autobiographical account of the pains he went
through in preparing his translation. To prepare himself for the task he
had to pursue a twofold track of investigations. On the one hand, he had
to study the Iliad. He began by trying to translate it from English and
French, but due to the inconsistencies he found in these translations, he
realised that he had to penetrate the original Greek text. His first knowl-
edge of Greek he received from a French Jesuit in Cairo. When he later
lived in Istanbul, he continued his study of the language and the text of
the Iliad with the help of Greek scholars in that city. On the other hand,
he had to undertake serious study of the Arabic poetic and epic traditions,
in order to Arabise the Homeric work in a proper way that would appeal
to the Arabs. For this purpose he familiarised himself with the Arabic lit-
erary heritage and undertook field-work among Bedouin poets in the
Arabian peninsula. Through this dual line of research, Sulaymän
al-Bustänl in himself personified a meeting-place between Western and
Arabic literary traditions.
In translating the Iliad into Arabic, Sulaymän al-Bustänl was indeed a
pioneer. As for the possibility of translating poetry at all, the attitude of
Arabic litterateurs of medieval times was generally pessimistic. The posi-
tion taken by al-Jähiz (d. 255/868 or 869) is illustrative:
"Only the Arabs and people who speak Arabic have a correct under-
standing of poetry. Poems do not lend themselves to translation and ought
not to be translated. When they are translated, their structure is rent; the
metre is no longer correct; poetic beauty disappears and nothing worthy of

admiration remains in the poems." 38
Sulaymän al-Bustänl challenged this pessimistic view and even man-
aged to translate a lengthy epic narrative of which the prestigious Arabic
literary heritage stood in need. He did this by dividing the narrative into
separate poems, choosing for each of them the Arabic metre and form
which he considered appropriate for it. In doing this he had recourse, not
only to the prestigious Arabic ode (qaslda), but also to later forms of
strophic poetry associated with Andalusian tradition as well as popular nar-
rative poetry of the kind not recognised by the elitist literary critics. The
role of the popular poetry for our translator is not mentioned in the pre-
amble, but it is duly considered in the introduction (pp. 101-106). Here,
Sulaymän al-Bustänl actually anticipates the reappraisal of Arabic popular
literature in the Middle East of today. 39
I then move on to a comparison of the Iliad, to Arabic poetry. I prepare for
this by expounding the ancient [Arabic] poetry in its origin and the reason
for its obliteration, the poetry festivals at the market of c Ukäz with the
importance of the language of Quraysh, and the significance of the Qur'än
for the collection of the scattered fragments of the language and its unifica-
tion and the role of its eloquence in consolidating poetry and prose. I then
make a comparison between the MudarT language of Quraysh and the Greek
language of the Iliad.
This passage, which together with the following three quotations from the
preamble summarises the fourth part of the introduction dealing with the
comparison between the Iliad and Arabic poetry, speaks for itself in show-
ing the importance of Sulaymän al-Bustänl's research into the roots of
Arabic poetry as a prerequisite for translating the Iliad. It should be noted
that, in emphasising the importance of the poetical fairs at the market of
c
Ukäz and the language of Quraysh (i.e. real carabiyya), he unites the two
tendencies of the popular role of poetry and the prestigious tradition. In do-
ing this he also implicitly prepares the ground for a reinterpretation of the
Arabic literary heritage.
I classify the stages of Arabic poetry by distinguishing between the classes

of poets from the time of the ignorant to our day. I affirm the merits of each
class as well as defining its duration and the names of its masters, and I
38 Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in islam, Emile and Jenny Marmorstein
(trans.), (London and New York: Routledge, [1965] 1975), p. 18.
39 See Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of its Genres and Criticism
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), pp. 278-94 and 405-06.
162 Bo Holmberg
quote from their precious poetry as far as space allows. I then point out the
weak spots of Arabic poetry and the methods of the crossbreeds in the fields
of poetry, its disciplines and its styles, and the sciences of Arabic culture
and their history. I end with the conditions of weakness and decline in the
poetry of the moderns and the tendency of the poetic geniuses of that time
to prevent harm and straighten out the line of action.
Here our translator reproduces the essence of a rather lengthy exposition

(pp. 115-162) of the history and character of Arabic poetry. He uses the
traditional division of the poets into classes (tabaqät) interpreted as chron-
ological stages in the development of Arabic poetry. When talking about
"the weak spots of Arabic poetry" and "the conditions of weakness and de-
cline in the poetry of the moderns," Sulaymän al-Bustäni adopts the com-
mon view found in traditional Arabic literary criticism that there is a con-
tinuous decline in the quality of the poets. In a way, this prejudice inherent
in the ideals and norms of the received literary critique can be seen as pop-
ping up in the ideology of the Arab awakening where the preceding period
is characterised as marked by decline.
When Sulaymän al-Bustänl speaks of "the poetry of the moderns," one
is reminded of the relativity of the concept of modernity. The moderns here
are not poets of the nineteenth century, but the Arabic poets of the eighth
and nineth centuries, the distinction between ancients (qudamä J ) and mod-
erns (muhdathün) being a convention in Arabic literary criticism. 40 The
moderns represented a new poetic style which can be seen as an outcome
of the shift in cultural orientation brought about by the °Abbäsid revolu-
tion. The truly Arab poet with a tribal background was gradually replaced
from the middle of the eighth century by non-Arab or racially mixed poets
with Persian or Greek ancestry. The racially mixed poets were called
"crossbreeds" (muwalladün), a term originally taken from the terminology
of husbandry. In reference to poetry, the terms muwalladün and
muhdathün are used synonymously.
I have devoted a section to epics or compositions of epic poetry which
resemble the Iliad. Here I point out the genres of poetry among the Euro-
peans and compare the epics of non-Arabs to the Arabic epics of Jähiii
poetry and the great mass of Arabic poetries. From these I go on to set forth
an opinion about the two periods of ignorance, the Jähiliyya of the Arabs
and the Jähiliyya of the Greeks, and then I go on to the epics of the cross-
breeds.
40 W. P. Heinrichs, "ancients and moderns," in Meisami and Starkey (eds.), Encyclopedia,

pp. 90-91.
Sulaymän al-Bustäni is considered a pioneer in his view that epic poetry,

which is usually thought to be missing in the tradition of Arabic prestigious
literature, really is represented by the classical qaslda which mirrors
Bedouin heroism and tribal life. 41 He also introduced the term malähim (sg.
malhama\ original meaning: "bloody fight," "battlefield") as a designation
of epic poetry as a genre. This word he uses instead of, or as a synonym
for, the more accepted term shicr qasasl ("narrative poetry"). 42
It is a remarkable feature of Sulaymän al-Bustänf s exposition that he
applies the concept of jähiliyya ("period of ignorance," i.e. the pre-Islamic
period of the Arabs) to the Greeks. This is an instance of Arabisation, not
only of the text of the Iliad, but of the early history of the Greeks. This en-
deavour to radically Arabise the entire context of the Iliad is characteristic
of our translator. It is no wonder that a literary critic such as Salma Jayyusi
is of the opinion that Sulaymän al-Bustäni in his translation project is "too
much under the influence of the Arabic poetic spirit." 43
After this I return to the literal and the figurative, and to simile, metonymy,
metaphor and truism, which adhere to poetic meanings, and to translation,
plagiarism and imagination, which befall [these poetic meanings], and the
change that may come upon them due to settledness. I also allude to the
ways of the non-Arabs in this respect by demonstrating the superiority of
Arabic over their languages in some cases. At the end of the introduction I
have provided an epilogue on poetry and language in which I contrast Ara-
bic and Greek and examine the vastness and ancient riches of Arabic, its
numerous synonyms and the multiple meanings given to a single word. I
also explain the benefit and disadvantage of this and cite examples of weak-
ness when modern meanings are invented. I point to how the Arabs deal
with the expansion of language and usage. I close with a short summary of
what I think about the malady and the remedy, the recent awakening and the
future of language and poetry.
In this passage, Sulaymän al-Bustäni turns to the fifth and final part of his
introduction which is actually an epilogue (khätima). In the spirit of the
Arabic literary tradition and the strong restatement of this in the Nahda
movement, he extols the richness of Arabic, by which he of course means
the prestigious €arabiyya. The richness of Arabic is evidenced by the high
incidence of synonyms and homonyms.
41 G. Canova, "epic poetry," ibid., pp. 209-10.

42 Canova, "malähim," ibid., p. 498.
43 Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, 2 vols., vol. 1
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), p. 66.
164 Bo Holmberg
At the end of this passage we find the only occurrence of the word
nahda ("awakening") in the preamble. It is also found in the introduction
on p. 116 where our translator talks about the nahda of the jähiliyya period.
In the preamble, though, it is clear that it is the nineteenth century awaken-
ing which he has in mind. It should be noted that Sulaymän al-Bustänl
closely relates the concept of nahda to the question of Arabic language.
T o the book I have attached a commentary in which I aim at both utility and
amusement. I have adorned it with about a thousand verses of what the
Arabs have said that is similar to the meanings and events of the Iliad. In it
I have included every suitable item of knowledge about the morals of the
Arab nation "in its ignorance, its desert-life and its settledness; in its famous
legends and religions; in its traditional manners and customs and the ways
of its poets and litterateurs and the opinions of its kings, princes, politicians
and leaders" (p. 72) and other things which you may find in what I have
made clear in the chapter about the story of the translator.
Here Sulaymän al-Bustänl no longer summarises the introduction, but

turns to an explanation of the commentary which is printed as notes at the
bottom of the pages of the translation. These notes are rather bulky and
contain a variety of different types of material. They are intended for both
"utility (fä'ida) and amusement (tafkih)." They include "every suitable
item of knowledge" and contain numerous quotations from Arabic poetry.
It is striking that in the commentary Sulaymän al-Bustänl turns out to be an
authentic adib, or litterateur, of the good old vintage. Like the udabä1 of
old, he collects quotations, anecdotes and odd information in a didactic as
well as entertaining manner. The guiding principle is the theme of the Iliad.
Again we see that Sulaymän al-Bustäni, though translating a European work
does not relinquish his own identity and his own literary heritage.
I have represented the poetical content in a complete fashion, and in the
commentary I have put down many illustrations of gods and other things
that render the reading of it pleasant. I have added an index to these illustra-
tions and another to the rhymes, and a list of linguistic expressions, and two
other lists for all the topics of the book such as personal names, history,
science, craft, morality, custom, and so on. "If I have done well and exerted
myself to the extreme, that is to be attributed to the merits of exertion; but if
not, it is enough for me that I open a door by which those that God grants
success may enter in order to pursue the right path."
In these final words of the preamble, Sulaymän al-Bustänl returns to the

humble attitude already revealed in the dedication of the book, yet again
proving to be a true follower of the tradition of Arabic literature.
* * *
Studies of the Nahda movement and the rise of an Arab nationalism have
been criticised for laying too much stress on the influence of Western
ideas. This criticism is, of course, justified in many ways. But for numer-
ous advocates of the Nahda, like our translator Sulaymän al-Bustäni, the
contact with European ideas and modes of expression became an impetus
to dig deep into the soil of the indigenous Arab tradition. In the case of Su-
laymän al-Bustäni, his acquaintance with the epic poetry of Milton and
Scott as a school boy and the Homeric epics as an adult, made a deep im-
pression on him and guided him to seek the roots of his own tradition. His
extensive studies of pre-Islamic and later Arabic poetry as well as his eth-
nological field-work among the Bedouin in various parts of the Arabian
peninsula bear witness to this.
In Μ. M. Badawi's words, the Nahda was in fact "a fruitful meeting of
two forces: the indigenous tradition, and the imported western forms" and
it would be "wrong to be blind to the continuities of Arabic literature, Clas-
sical and Modern." 44 This dual nature of the Nahda is evident in Sulaymän
al-Bustäni's translation of the Iliad. As Andras Hamori puts it, Sulaymän
al-Bustäni's translation is "a mirror of the Arabic tradition opening up to
foreign works, although not yet relinquishing its own conventions." 45 I
have tried to demonstrate both the continuity of Arabic literature as mani-
fested in the title page, the dedication, the preamble, the introduction, and
the commentary, and the digestion of the European input as revealed in Su-
laymän al-Bustänf s interest in the Iliad in general and the epic narrative
specifically (a genre often dismissed as popular by the elitist literary critics
of the Arabic tradition) and his overall appreciation of non-Arab (not least
Western) literatures. The bringing together of the indigenous tradition and
the impact of Western modes of thought reveals Sulaymän al-Bustäni's
translation of the Iliad to be a telling example of the Nahda movement's
importance.
44 Badawi (ed.), Modern Arabic Literature, p. 1.

45 Andras Hamori, "Reality and Convention in Book Six of Bustani's Iliad," Journal of Se-
mitic Studies 23 (1978), pp. 95-101.
STEPHAN LARSEN
Euro-African Dialogue
Some Examples of African Hypertexts of European
Hypotexts
That the cultures of the former colonial powers have left indelible marks
on the former colonies is indisputable and inevitable. This is true of practi-
cally all areas of life—e.g. language, political institutions, philosophy, reli-
gion, architecture, art, music, naming customs, cooking and, last but not
least, literature. However, it is also true of all these areas that the peoples
exposed to colonialism have never been content with just receiving and
imitating. For one thing, even at an early stage of forced contacts with
foreign cultures, they have adopted what has seemed useful in a local con-
text, and rejected the rest. For another, they have modified and recast what
they have adopted, thus creating more or less local hybrid forms. In what
follows, I shall present a few examples of how twentieth-century African
writers have used European texts as means of what is sometimes referred
to as the decolonization of the mind. To begin with, I shall discuss the ter-
minology, borrowed from Gerard Genette's study Palimpsestes. La litira-
ture au second degre (Paris 1982; English translation by Channa Newman
and Claude Doubinsky, Palimpsests. Literature in the Second Degree, Lin-
coln and London 1997), which I intend to use. The rest of the essay will be
devoted to a closer study of four African texts, namely Wole Soyinka's
drama The Bacchae of Euripides (London 1973), Ola Rotimi's drama The
Gods Are Not to Blame (London 1971), Bernard Dadie's travelogue Un ne-
gre a Paris (Paris 1959) and Camara Laye's novel Le regard du roi (Paris
1954). The reasons why these particular texts have been chosen, and why
they will be discussed in this particular order, will hopefully emerge as I
develop my arguments.
African Hypertexts of European Hypotexts 167
Terminology and Method
This essay could probably be said to deal with intertextuality—a well-

known and frequently used term in modern literary scholarship. However,
this term entails a few problems. Firstly, there is a considerable deal of dis-
agreement about how it should be defined. Secondly, and more important-
ly, the definition that has come to dominate the discussion, namely the one
suggested by Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes and, in their footsteps,
Michael Riffaterre, seems to me too comprehensive to be of use for my
purposes. Riffaterre defines intertextuality as "the perception, by the read-
er, of the relationship between a work and others that have either preceded
or followed it," and argues that this is "the mechanism specific to literary
reading. It alone, in fact, produces significance, while linear reading, com-
mon to literary and nonliterary texts, produces only meaning." 1 The idea
behind this line of reasoning appears to be that virtually every literary work
is involved, consciously or unconsciously, in a dialogue with other texts. It
would seem, then, that if you want to show that a writer has consciously
and deliberately made use of the works of another writer, the term "inter-
textuality," according to the Kristeva/Barthes/Riffaterre definition, will
provide too blunt an instrument.
A term that I have found more useful for my purposes is "hypertextuali-
ty," introduced by Gerard Genette in Palimpsests. This term is defined by
Genette as "any relationship uniting a text Β (which I shall call the hyper-
text) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which
it is grafted in a manner that is not that of a commentary." 2 Genette also
makes a distinction between two different kinds of hypertext, namely "any
text derived from a previous text either through simple transformation,
which I shall simply call from now on transformation, or through indirect
transformation, which I shall label imitation,"3 To show what he means by
"transformation" and "imitation" respectively, Genette mentions Virgil's
Aeneid and James Joyce's Ulysses, both of which he regards as hypertexts
1 Michael Riffaterre, "La trace de l'intertexte," La Pense, October (1980); and "La
syllepse intertextuelle," Poetique 40, November (1979). Cf. Riffaterre, La production du
texte (Paris: Seuil, 1979), English translation by Terese Lyons, Text Production (N.Y.:
Columbia UP, 1983); and Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP,
1978). Cf. Julia Kristeva, La texte du roman (Paris: The Hague, 1970); and Roland Bar-
thes, "De l'oeuvre au texte," Revue d'estetique 24 (1971).
2 Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (Lincoln and London: Ne-
braska UP, 1997), p. 5.
3 Ibid., p. 7.
168 Stephan Larsen
of one and the same hypotext, namely Homer's Odyssey. The process lead-
ing from the Odyssey to Ulysses is, according to Genette, basically rather
uncomplicated—the plot of the Odyssey is transposed to early twentieth-
century Dublin, and adapted to that time and milieu. This is what Genette
would like to call "transformation." The process leading from the Odyssey
to the Aeneid, he regards as more complicated and indirect; here, he says, it
is a matter of telling a story completely different from that of Odysseus,
but using the means of expression characteristic of Homer. This, he would
like to call "imitation." To put it very simply, transformation is "saying the
same thing differently," 4 whereas imitation is "saying another thing simi-
larly." 5
A few pages later, Genette presents an interesting argument concerning
the applicability of the term hypertextuality. He writes as follows:
What of hypertextuality? It too is obviously to some degree a universal fea-
ture of literarity: there is no literary work that does not evoke (to some
extent and according to how it is read) some other literary work, and in that
sense all works are hypertextual. [...] The less massive and explicit the
hypertextuality of a given work, the more does its analysis depend on con-
stitutive judgement: that is, on the reader's interpretive decision. [...] I can
[...] trace in just about any work the local, fugitive, and partial echoes of
any other work, be it anterior or ulterior. The effect of such an attitude
would be to subsume the whole of universal literature under the field of
hypertextuality, which would make the study of it somewhat unmanage-
able; but above all, this attitude would invest the hermeneutic activity of the
reader—or archireader—with an authority and a significance that I cannot
sanction. [...] I view the relationship between the text and the reader as one
that is more socialized, more openly contractual, and pertaining to a con-
scious and organized pragmatics. With some exceptions, I will therefore
deal here with the sunnier side of hypertextuality: that in which the shift
from hypotext to hypertext is both massive (an entire text Β deriving from
an entire text A) and more or less officially stated. 6
As for myself, I am somewhat in two minds concerning the above. One of

the texts I intend to discuss, that by Soyinka, undoubtedly belongs to what
Genette calls "the sunnier side of hypertextuality." In this case, the shift
from hypotext to hypertext is both massive (all of Euripides's Bacchae
functions as point of departure for all of Soyinka's drama) and officially
stated (Soyinka has actually chosen to call his text The Bacchae of Euripi-
des). So far, so good.
4 Ibid., p. 6.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 9.
However, even Rotimi's tragedy The Gods Are Not to Blame poses more
of a problem, at least if you are aiming for as strict an application as poss-
ible of Genette's way of reasoning. Here, too, the shift from hypotext to
hypertext is massive (even the most hasty and superficial comparison of
Rotimi's text to Sophocles's Oedipus Rex should be enough to clear away
any doubt that the African drama, in its entirety, is a hypertext of the Greek
one), but not, strictly speaking, officially stated (Rotimi has not chosen to
call his drama "Oedipus Africanus," provide it with a subheading such as
"Freely adapted from Sophocles," or in any other way disclose where his
inspiration comes from). Should we, then, refrain from referring to The
Gods Are Not to Blame as a hypertext of Oedipus Rexl Must both of the
criteria stipulated by Genette be fulfilled in order for there to be hyper-
textuality? I would like to answer both of these questions in the negative,
and I am of the opinion that one of Genette's own examples proves me
right, namely the Aeneid. Genette does not hesitate for one moment to call
the Aeneid a hypertext of the Odyssey, nor, most likely, would any reader
familiar with these two works. Nevertheless, Virgil has in no way explicit-
ly stated his dependency on his Greek predecessor. When Genette still
maintains that there is a dependency, this can hardly be anything but "the
reader's interpretive decision:" an interpretation which can easily be de-
fended, as the shift from hypotext to hypertext in the case under discussion
is very massive indeed, but an interpretation nonetheless. I feel there is at
least as much justification for calling The Gods Are Not to Blame a hyper-
text of Oedipus Rex, perhaps even more so, as the Aeneid, according to
Genette, is an imitation of the Odyssey, whereas Rotimi's drama must in all
fairness be regarded as a transformation of that by Sophocles; the plot of
the Greek drama has been transposed to an African milieu.
Considerably more problematic from the point-of-view of hypertextual-
ity is Dadie's Un negre a Paris, which I intend to treat as a hypertext of
Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. It is debatable whether these two texts
even belong to one and the same genre. Montesquieu's text is a novel, with
a plot, albeit somewhat thin, that provides a frame for his satirical observa-
tions. Dadie's text, although it is often referred to as a novel, 7 has all the
immediacy of first-hand experience, lacks a plot, and appears to consist of
travel memories ordered at random. True enough, both texts are written in
7 Cf. for instance Hans M. Zell, Carol Bundy, and Virginia Coulon (eds.), A New Reader's
Guide to African Literature (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 249; and A. C. Brench, The
Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa (London: Oxford UP, 1967), p. 90-91 et passim.
170 Stephan Larsen
the form of letters, albeit more consistently carried through in Mon-

tesquieu; both texts use the satirical method of allowing a stranger to com-
ment on French customs, social and political institutions etc., all the while
comparing these to their equivalents in the narrator's country of origin; and
both texts are permeated by a mildly indulgent sense of humour rather than
caustic and bitter derision. However, is all of this enough for there to be
talk of hypertextuality? Very doubtful, if we insist that the shift from hypo-
text to hypertext be "both massive and officially stated." On the other
hand, if we assume that Genette's terminology could—and should—be
used as an analytical tool, rather than just as a means of putting neat labels
on what is obvious to most readers at first glance, 8 we might arrive at an
entirely different conclusion. Be that as it may, it should also be pointed
out that it is difficult to determine what kind of hypertext Un negre a Paris
should be regarded as. Is it a matter of imitation (Dadie is telling a different
story from Montesquieu, but in the manner of this author) or transforma-
tion (Dadie is transposing Montesquieu's story to his own time)? There
will be reason to return to this question later.
Le regard du roi by Camara Laye of Guinea presents other kinds of
problems. Several previous critics have maintained that Laye's text is re-
plete with echoes from Franz Kafka's novels Das Schloß, Der Prozeß, and
Amerika-, one critic in particular has presented elaborate arguments to sup-
port this line of interpretation, namely Patricia Anne Deduck, in her unpub-
lished M.A. thesis "Franz Kafka's Influence on Camara Laye's Le regard
du roi" (Indiana University, May 1970). This study confronts the hyper-
textually inclined reader with several difficult questions. Is it possible for a
hypertext to have more than one hypotext? Genette's demand that the shift
from hypotext to hypertext be "massive" would seem to force us to answer
this question in the negative. In any case, it would seem that no hypertext
could be a transformation of more than one hypotext. What, then, of imita-
tion? If we assume that Laye is telling another story than any of those told
in Kafka's three novels, but in the manner of Kafka, then, surely, it would
not be entirely unreasonable to speak of more than one hypotext? On the
other hand, Genette's demand for massiveness is obviously intended to be
applicable even to imitations—he emphatically warns us not to draw too
far-reaching conclusions based on "local, fugitive and partial echoes" in
any literary study devoted to finding signs of hypertextuality. Furthermore,
8 Similar treatment is given to another Genettean term, paratext, in Bo Holmberg's essay,

"Transculturating the Epic: the Arab Awakening and the Translation of the Iliad" in this
volume.
Deduck firmly maintains that the influence of Kafka on Laye is by no

means of a purely technical nature, but that Laye's text bears marks of "a
very strong thematic influence" 9 from all of Kafka's three novels. This,
then, appears to be a case not only of imitation, but also of transformation
of no less than three hypotexts in one and the same hypertext.
Now, what I would like to do is to complicate matters even more, by
maintaining that besides Das Schloß, Der Prozeß, and Amerika, there is
one more novel that should be regarded as a hypotext of Le regard du roi,
namely Voltaire's Candide. In this case, provided that my hypothesis is at
all justifiable, we are dealing with a more complex form of hypertextuality
than in any of the cases previously touched upon. It is by no means a mat-
ter of imitation—it would be wrong to say that Laye is telling another story
than Voltaire, but in the manner of Voltaire. Is it, then, a case of transform-
ation? Not with the strictest application possible of Genette's demand for
massiveness—it would be wrong to say that Le regard du roi, in its entire-
ty, is derived from Candide, in its entirety. What I have found, when com-
paring the two texts in question, could perhaps most accurately be de-
scribed as transpositions, to an African milieu and a relatively contempo-
rary point in time, of certain themes and motifs from Candide. Is this, then,
enough for there to be talk of hypertextuality?
By this time, it is hopefully clear to the reader why I have chosen to
present the works about to be discussed in an order that just happens to be
the reverse of a strict chronological one. My intention has been to construct
a kind of "step-ladder-model," beginning with a work about the hyper-
textuality of which there can be no doubt, and eventually arriving, step by
step, at a work where the evidence in favour of my assumptions is very dis-
putable indeed. Furthermore, I hope that the examples chosen might throw
some light upon different methods used by African writers to carry on a
dialogue with European literature, while at the same time liberating them-
selves from European values and habits of thought.
The Bacchae of Euripides by Wole Soyinka
In this case, as has already been stated, there can be no doubt whatsoever
that Soyinka's drama really is a hypertext of that of Euripides. To put it
9 Patricia Anne Deduck, "Franz Kafka's Influence on Camara Laye's Le regard du roi,"
unpubl. M.A. thesis (Indiana University, May 1970), p. 2.
172 Stephan Larsen
more precisely, we are dealing here with an unusually cautious and unob-
trusive transformation of the Greek hypotext. Soyinka has not transposed
the story to the present times or to an African milieu. His drama, like that
of Euripides, is set in ancient Greece, more precisely Thebes. The plot as
well as the dramatis personae are mostly the same in Soyinka as in Euripi-
des; the most notable differences in this respect are the fact that Soyinka's
version ends on a more positive note than the original one, and the pres-
ence of a chorus of male (in some cases, African) slaves.
The most important difference between Soyinka's drama and that of
Euripides is probably in the attitude to the two main characters, Dionysos,
god of nature and fertility, and Pentheus, the young king of Thebes, who
wants to forbid the cult of Dionysos. In Soyinka's version, Dionysos
comes out as more, Pentheus as less, sympathetic than in the original. In
Euripides, Dionysos is an obdurate and implacable god, who, even in his
first monologue, speaks at length about his desire to avenge himself on the
people of Thebes for denying his divine birth, and of his demands for sub-
mission and worship. There certainly are similar statements in Soyinka's
version, too, but not nearly as many. Instead, Soyinka has chosen to em-
phasize the god's will and ability to give renewed vitality to everything
that is dead and petrified. 10
If Soyinka's Dionysos represents life, his Pentheus must be said to rep-
resent death, spiritually as well as physically. Soyinka begins his version of
the drama with the following stage direction: "To one side, a road dips
steeply into lower background, lined by the bodies of crucified slaves most-
ly in the skeletal stage."1' This horrifying picture of how the rebellious are
dealt with in the state where Pentheus rules has no counterpart in the origi-
nal version. In this manner, Soyinka lets us know, even before Pentheus
himself appears on stage, that this king is a brutal tyrant.
True enough, Euripides's Pentheus, too, has tyrannical traits of charac-
ter—even his first monologue clearly shows that this is a king who takes
his role as the guardian of order very seriously. However, these traits are
more strongly emphasized in Soyinka than in the ancient text. In Euripides,
Pentheus never actually uses the word "order" in his monologue, in Soyin-
ka it occurs five times. 12 As a matter of fact, the first words uttered by Pen-
theus, as he comes rushing onto stage in a fit of anger, are: "I shall have or-
10 Wole Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripides (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 2.

11 Ibid., p. 1.
12 Ibid., p. 27.
der!'" 3 Thus speaks a typical dictator, always anxious to uphold, at any

cost, what he means by "law and order."
Soyinka's Pentheus is obdurate, implacable, and violent. He demands
respect from everybody, but shows none for anybody, not even for his
mother Agave, his grandfather and predecessor Kadmos, or Tiresias the
soothsayer, all of whom have decided to follow Dionysos. He issues an or-
der to level Tiresias's home to the ground, 14 and knocks down an old slave
for daring to ask whether this order was really intended to be taken serious-
ly.15 Not even after Dionysos has clouded his mind does Pentheus's tyran-
nical nature weaken, for even in his dazed condition, the king declares that
Tiresias and Kadmos can expect no forgiveness from him, and that he
might even kill Agave, his own mother, if that is what it takes to preserve
the honour and glory of the royal family. 16
In Soyinka's version, the conflict between Dionysos and Pentheus is
caused, above all, by the latter's lack of self-knowledge. "Dionysos grants
self-knowledge,'" 7 says Tiresias. A bit earlier, in a conversation with Kad-
mos, he says the following of Pentheus:
Pentheus doesn't know his own flesh. And when he does he'll think he's
duty-bound to cut it out of himself. If you held out the mirror of longing to
him, he will utterly fail to recognise his own image or else he'll smash the
mirror in anger. 18
These words are proven true later on, as Dionysos, unlike what happens in
the Euripidean version, tries to help Pentheus achieve self-knowledge:
(He [Dionysos] holds out his hand before PENTHEUS' eyes, like a mirror.)
Look well in the mirror Pentheus. What beast is it? Do you recognise it?
Have you ever seen the like? In all your wanderings have your eyes ever
been affronted by a creature so gross, so unnatural, so obscene?
With a superhuman effort PENTHEUS shakes off his hypnotic state, tries to
snatch the "mirror" but clutches at nothing. He backs o f f , his face livid}9
Pentheus is beyond help. When he is faced with the truth of himself, his re-
action is one of hysterical violence. His persecution of Dionysos and those
who follow the god may be regarded as testimony of his unwillingness to
accept the truth.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 35.
15 Ibid., p. 36.
16 Ibid., pp. 74-75.
17 Ibid., p. 33.
18 Ibid., p. 24.
19 Ibid., p. 66.
174 Stephan Larsen
Pentheus strives for order and control, and he is convinced that these
goals can be achieved only by force. Against this notion, Tiresias main-
tains that true control can only be achieved through self-discipline, "the
greatest/Guarantee of human will and freedom," 2 0 the prerequisite of
which is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, in its turn, must be based on
freedom, and freedom is in wine, Dionysos's gift to mankind. On Pen-
theus, however, the wine that he drinks from a cup offered to him by
Dionysos has no liberating effect; his psychological barriers are too
strong. Even after he has emptied the cup, he is as determined as ever to
punish severely, preferably exterminate, all followers of Dionysos, in-
cluding Kadmos and Agave.
No power in heaven or on earth can loosen the chains that bind Pen-
theus's soul—he must be got rid of, in order for his people to be able to
live in freedom and happiness. In Soyinka, as in Euripides, Dionysos man-
ages to persuade the king, now under the influence of wine, to dress up in
w o m e n ' s clothes and go to mount Kithairon to spy on his mother and the
other bacchantes, who will discover him and tear him limb from limb, a
fact of which Dionysos is well aware. In Euripides, it is in this scene, when
Pentheus, dazed and confused, is lured to his death by a triumphant god,
that the young king grows into a fully tragic figure. The audience is sup-
posed to forget that he looks ridiculous in his feminine attire, and that he is
but a common spy—the intention is to arouse pity. Soyinka, on the other
hand, strongly emphasizes the ridiculous in Pentheus's appearance as he
leaves the stage for the last time. This is how he describes the young king,
once so frightening and warlike:
PENTHEUS (lets off a loud yodel).
Death to the Bacchae!
One-Two-Back! One-Two-Back! One-Two-Back!
His voice dies off in the distance, punctuated to the last by fierce yodels.
DIONYSOS stands and speaks with more than a suspicion of weariness
from this now concluding conflict. It is not entirely a noble victoiy.
DIONYSOS.
At last he comes, my Bacchantes
Prepare, you sisters, daughters of Kadmos
Agave, open your mothering arms—
Take him. Mother him. Smother him with joy.21
20 Ibid., p. 33.
21 Ibid., p. 79.
Having spoken these lines, almost completely without the triumphant

tone of voice of the Greek hypotext, Soyinka's Dionysos leaves the stage
never to return again. The god is tired, and the stage directions imply that
his victory is hardly a source of pride or joy to him. The trick of which
Pentheus is the victim is the god's last resort, after he has tried all con-
ceivable ways of saving him by guiding him to self-knowledge. Pen-
theus's death is necessary, but to Soyinka's Dionysos it is not a glorious
triumph.
In Euripides, the chorus bursts into tremendous exclamations of joy as
the news of the terrible death of Pentheus is announced. This does not hap-
pen in Soyinka's version. Here, instead, an old slave expresses his opinion
that the god has avenged himself on Pentheus far too cruelly, and his com-
passion for Agave, who, without realizing it, has killed her son. The leader
of the slaves, who, according to Soyinka's directions, should be "fully
negroid," 22 answers him:
Who pities us? When the mine prop falls and pulps
Our bones with mud, who pities us? When harvest
Fails, who goes without? And you, if you had
Died at the feast of Eleusis, 23 would Thebes
Have remembered you with pity? 24
In this version, as opposed to the original one, Pentheus's cruel death is

regarded in the light of his own brutal and heartless treatment of the
slaves.
After the dialogue between the old slave and the slave leader, the
bacchantes enter, led by Agave carrying the head of Pentheus, which she
believes to be the head of a mountain lion, impaled on her thyrsus. Having
triumphantly placed the thyrsus on the palace wall, she encounters Kadmos
who, as is also the case in Euripides, finally makes her realize what she has
done. As Agave climbs back onto the wall in order to retrieve her son's
head, a red liquid suddenly spurts forth from all its orifices, a liquid that
looks like blood, but, when tasted by Tiresias, turns out to be wine. Every-
body moves closer to this "fountain," catches the wine in their cupped
22 Ibid. Production Note, p. xiii. This African, incidentally, is the first of the dramatis per-
sonae who reacts with genuine joy to the news of the arrival of the new god, and the first
who dares to welcome him in a loud voice. Cf. Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripides, p. 7.
23 This old slave was originally chosen to be publicly flogged during a religious ritual, act-
ing as scapegoat for the city of Thebes, but was spared when Tiresias offered to perform
in his place. Cf. Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripides, pp. 2 - 3 ; 5; and 10.
24 Ibid., p. 87.
176 Stephan Larsen
hands, and drinks. Before curtain, all lights on stage are put out, with the
exception of "a final glow around the heads of PENTHEUS and
AGAVE." 2 5
This ending differs a great deal from that of the hypotext. In Euripides,
Pentheus dies because he has denied the divine status of Dionysos. In
Soyinka, Pentheus's death is given another, more positive, meaning—it
may be regarded as a kind of sacrifice, not only or exclusively as an act of
revenge on the part of the god. As long as Thebes was governed by Pen-
theus, the life force of the earth itself was stifled, but as the tyrant, led on
by Dionysos, sacrifices his life, the earth, moistened by his blood, becomes
fertile once again. 26 Finally, the blood of Pentheus is turned into wine, and
as the people of Thebes drink from it, their spirits, too, are revitalized, lib-
erated from all kinds of oppression. Through the blood of Pentheus, trans-
formed into wine, they partake of the indestructible life force of Dionysos
himself. As we come to the end of Soyinka's drama, we can understand
why he has chosen to call it "A Communion Rite," 27 for what we have wit-
nessed is actually a kind of communion, human beings communicating
with their god by means of wine that once was blood.
In Euripides, Dionysos, pleased with his revenge, returns in the final
scene. With sadistic relish, he predicts the dark future of Agave and Kad-
mos, and when the hard-hearted god has spoken his piece, the two unfortu-
nate people go into exile. In Soyinka, Dionysos does not show himself in
the final scene—he is present only in the Dionysian music accompanying
the "communion scene." This Dionysos is, above all, a life-giver, not a
cruel, callous avenger. The glow around the heads of Pentheus and Agave
is the visible sign of the god's forgiveness. Soyinka's Dionysos does not
damn the defeated Pentheus and his poor mother—he blesses them.
Soyinka's Dionysos has several characteristics in common with the
Yoruba god Ogun—for instance, both of them feel most at home in moun-
tainous regions, both of them have a positive attitude to wine and its ef-
fects, and both of them have the power to destroy as well as to bestow life.
The notion that Dionysos and Ogun are brothers, or perhaps even one and
the same, is further emphasized by Soyinka in that he lets the black slaves
pray to Dionysos in verses strongly reminiscent both of some lines from
his own collection of poetry, Idanre and Other Poems (London 1967), the
25 Ibid., p. 97.
26 This is clear from what Tiresias says on p. 96 of Soyinka, ibid.
27 Ibid., p. i.
main section of which is devoted to Ogun, and of prayers to Ogun still used
in rituals existing today. 28
It is a recurring feature of the writings of Soyinka that he creates strong
characters by providing them with the creative/destructive duality charac-
teristic of Ogun, god of war and creativity. 29 Furthermore, they can all be
said to bridge the abyss between two different stages in the development of
our universe, following the example of Ogun in his role as the first sacri-
fice/hero of the tragic rites of the Yoruba. A knowledge of these rites is
probably of great importance to us, when looking for an answer to the
question why Soyinka may have transformed Euripides's drama in precise-
ly the manner that he has chosen, for Soyinka's hypertext can be said to ex-
press a view of the tragic entirely different from that of the Greek hypotext.
Aristotle was of the opinion that the most important characteristic of the
destiny of the tragic hero is the fact that he moves from happiness and
prosperity to disaster in a manner designed to arouse fear and pity. To
Soyinka, the tragic occurs when the hero stands before the abyss separating
the known from the unknown, when he bridges it, when he battles the
powers guarding it, and when he returns, bearing with him new knowledge
to revitalize the group to which he belongs. Pentheus dies, albeit not of his
own free will, in order for Thebes to live on. In the drama of Soyinka, then,
the essence of tragedy consists in the ordeals of an individual on behalf of
the collective, a notion that has been described as "peculiarly African." 30
Support for this opinion is to be found in Soyinka's book of essays
Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge 1976), where the au-
thor emphatically argues that the most important differences between Eu-
ropean and African theatre have nothing to do with style or form, but rather
with the fact that African drama is expressive of "a cohesive understanding
of irreducible truths," 31 whereas in European culture, "creative impulses
are directed by period dialectics." 32 It should be pointed out, however, that
28 For a more detailed discussion of the sibling relationship between Dionysos and Ogun,
cf. Stephan Larsen, A Writer and His Gods: A Study of the Importance of Yoruba Myths
and Religious Ideas to the Writing of Wole Soyinka (diss.), (Stockholm: University of
Stockholm, 1983), pp. 83^89.
29 Ibid., pp 183-88 et passim. On the importance of Ogun to Soyinka, cf. James Gibbs,
Wole Soyinka (London: Macmillan Education, 1986), pp. 18ff.
30 Cf., for instance, Osita Okagbue, in his article on Soyinka in K. A. Berney (ed.), Contem-
porary Dramatists (London; Washington D. C. and Detroit: St. James Press, 5th ed.
1993), p. 625.
31 Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1976), p. 38.
32 Ibid.
178 Stephan Larsen
although Soyinka speaks of African drama and the African world, many of
his conclusions are based on his knowledge of Yoruba culture in particular,
as witnessed by the following example which seems to me highly pertinent
to a full understanding of the role which Pentheus must play in The Bac-
chae of Euripides. On the subject of the actor in ritual drama, Soyinka
says: "He prepares mentally and physically for his disintegration and re-as-
sembly within the universal womb of origin, experiences the transitional
yet inchoate matrix of death and being. Such an actor in the role of the pro-
tagonist becomes the unresisting mouthpiece of the god, uttering sounds
which he barely comprehends but which are reflections of the awesome
glimpse of that transitional gulf, the seething cauldron of the dark world-
will and psyche. Tragic feeling in Yoruba [my italics] drama stems from
sympathetic knowledge of the protagonist's foray into this psychic abyss
of the re-creative energies." 33 Elsewhere in the same text, it is stated that
whereas "the world of the ancestor, the living and the unborn" 34 is "recog-
nised in most African metaphysics," 35 there is less understanding or explo-
ration of "the fourth space, the dark continuum of transition where occurs
the inter-transmutation of essence-ideal and materiality." 36 All things con-
sidered, it seems more prudent to describe the essence of tragedy in the
drama of Soyinka as "peculiarly Yoruba" rather than "peculiarly African."
Be that as it may, when we experience The Bacchae of Euripides, as audi-
ence or as readers, we are clearly in the presence of a hypertext conveying
a view of life radically different from that of its hypotext.
The Gods Are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi
Here, we stand before a kind of transformation of more frequent occur-

rence than in the case of Soyinka, as neither the milieu nor the historical
period of the hypotext has been preserved in the hypertext. Rotimi has
transferred the plot of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex from ancient Greece to a
more unspecified, though undoubtedly pre-colonial, past in the part of
West Africa dominated by the Yoruba. The most important difference be-
tween Rotimi's drama and its Greek hypotext may be deduced even from
the title of the former, The Gods Are Not to Blame. In Rotimi, then, it
33 Ibid., pp. 30-31.

34 Ibid., p. 26.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
would seem that it is not the gods who are responsible for the tragic fall of
the protagonist, king Odewale. Instead, if that is how you choose to inter-
pret Rotimi's text, what happens can be explained by reference to negative
qualities in the character of Odewale himself, mainly his stubbornness, his
too easily provoked anger, and, last but not least, his ethnically based sus-
picion of the people around him (after all, he is—or is believed to be—the
king of a country where he does not really belong). There is much to indi-
cate that Rotimi has intended to use the old Greek myth for the purpose of
throwing light upon contemporary political problems in his own country.
In an interview with Bernth Lindfors, he has made the following statement
concerning his intentions in writing this drama:
Foremost, I should say, was the prevailing situation in Nigeria at that time—
namely, the civil war. The title really has more to it than meets the eye. "The
Gods Are Not to Blame" does not refer to the mythological gods or mystic
deities of the African pantheon. Rather it alludes to national, political powers
such as America, Russia, France, England etc.—countries that dictate the
pace of world politics. The title implies that these political "gods" shouldn't
be blamed or held responsible for our own national failings. 37
Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides could, of course, also be regarded as a

commentary on the political situation of Nigeria in the early 1970s, but by
preserving the milieu and the characters of the original myth, Soyinka has
managed, in addition to this, to tell the story of an eternal problem—that of
tyranny. Rotimi's text has obviously been written with the primary inten-
tion of making a statement on the Biafran war and what caused it, which
gives us the right to ask, among others, the following questions: if you
want to speak of the present, and apparently only of the present, what, then,
is the point of making a "detour" involving an ancient myth? Is there not a
great risk that such a device, rather than facilitating an understanding of the
message, might render it more difficult? And has Rotimi really been suc-
cessful in replanting the Greek material in the soil of Nigeria?
To all of these questions, critics, both in and outside of Nigeria, have
provided widely divergent answers. Among those who are of the opinion
that Rotimi has done a good job of "Africanizing" the alien subject-matter,
special mention should perhaps be made of Teresa U. Njoku, who treats
the subject thoroughly in her article "Influence of Sophocles' Oedepus
(sic!) Rex on Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame," Nigeria Magazine,
37 Bernth Lindfors, Dem-Say: Interviews with Eight Nigerian Writers (Austin, Texas:
Texas UP, 1974), p. 61.
180 Stephan Larsen
nr. 151, 1984. Njoku points out, among other things, the following: 38 Oedi-
pus has one wife, Iocasta, whereas Odewale has two, queen Ojuola and his
concubine, Abero, as, in many traditional African societies, a man's social
position and reputation are directly dependent on the number of wives and
children he is able to support; in Oedipus Rex, Iocasta's brother, Creon, is
nearest to the throne after Oedipus, but as, in many patrilineal African so-
cieties, it would be completely unthinkable for the brother-in-law of a king
to succeed him, Rotimi has introduced an heir to the throne more accept-
able to an African audience in the person of Aderopo, Ojuola's son by the
late king Adetusa, and, consequently, Odewale's stepson; in Oedipus Rex,
there is a chorus that functions as a connecting link between the audience
and the dramatis personae, whereas, in Rotimi's drama, there is a narrator
to comment upon, and summarize, the plot, a device more in tune with Af-
rican oral traditions; Oedipus Rex begins in medias res, with the plague of
Thebes, while everything that has gone before is revealed step by step in
the dialogue, whereas, in Rotimi's drama, the birth, childhood, and youth
of Odewale is performed in pantomime during the prologue, a fact that
may be regarded as expressive of the notion that "in Africa, the heroic ca-
reer starts right from infancy;" 39 finally, Njoku says that whereas Oedipus
Rex is a lofty, tragic drama from the first scene to the last, Rotimi's drama
contains both purely comic scenes (unfortunately, Njoku gives no ex-
amples) and elements of singing, dancing and music, which makes it, in
Njoku's opinion, "typical of the African conception that life is a mixture of
the pleasant and the unpleasant, the sublime and the ridiculous." 40
A considerably more critical view of whether it is meaningful to trans-
pose a classical European drama to an African context has been expressed
by two of Rotimi's fellow Nigerian dramatists, Zulu Sofola in her essay
"The Theater in the Search for African Authenticity," and Akanji Nasiru in
his essay "Ola Rotimi's Search for a Technique."
Sofola says, among other things, the following: 4 1 according to the
view of life of ancient Greece, the individual is powerless to influence
38 For a more detailed account, cf. Teresa U. Njoku, "Influence of Sophocles' Oedepus (sic!)
Rex on Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame," Nigeria Magazine 151 (1984), pp. 90-91.
39 Isidore Okpewho, The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetic of the Oral Performance (New
York: Columbia UP, 1979), p. 89.
40 Njoku, "Influence of Sophocles' Oedepus," p. 91. It seems to me disputable whether this
view of life is really exclusively African.
41 For a more detailed account, cf. Zulu Sofola, "The Theater in the Search for African Au-
thenticity," in Kofi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres (eds.), African Theology En Route:
Papers from the Pan- African Conference of Third World Theologians, December 17-23,
1977 (New York: Orbis Books, 1979), pp. 134-35.
the destiny decided for him by the gods, whereas most Africans are ex-
pected to participate actively in, and bear a personal responsibility for,
this kind of decision (according to the Yoruba view of life, each indi-
vidual chooses his destiny before coming into the world), which means
that the very idea that the gods could be blamed is foreign to Yoruba
culture; 42 in a Yoruba community, it would be unthinkable to choose a
complete stranger to be king, as one of the king's most important func-
tions is to be a connecting link between the ancestors, the living, and
the unborn—if the king does not know the ancestors, and if they do not
know him, he will not be able to reach them; in a Yoruba community,
nobody will be proclaimed a king until his fitness for this office has
been tested by consultation of the Ifa oracle—and what the oracle, if
consulted, would have had to say about Odewale would most likely
have resulted in an execution rather than a coronation; if, by some pe-
culiar chance, Odewale had, after all, become a king, married his own
mother, and become the father of several of her children, as soon as the
truth had been discovered, both he and the children would have been
killed immediately, in order for the community to live on without being
stained by the evil emanating from them.
Nasiru is of the same opinion as Sofola concerning the fundamental dif-
ference between the Greek and the Yoruba notions of fate, and he also
points out that the Yoruba view of the relationship between gods and hu-
mans differs greatly from that of the ancient Greeks. "Instead of the awe-
some beings who pursue vengeance from generation to generation, and
against whose judgement there is often no appeal, the Yoruba deities are
benign beings who are willing to come to man's aid in times of trouble pro-
vided he is humble enough to call on them and follow their prescrip-
tions." 43
Let us now return to the question of whether or not Rotimi's choice of a
Greek hypotext facilitates the understanding of his message, a message
summed up in the form of a proverb in the last few lines of the drama, spo-
ken by Odewale:
42 Cf. Akanji Nasiru, "Folk-Lore in Nigerian Drama: an Examination of the Works of

Three Nigerian Dramatists," The Literary Half-Yearly 19:1 (1978), pp. 54-55.
43 Akanji Nasiru, "Ola Rotimi's Search for a Technique," in Kolawole Ogungbesan (ed.),
New West African Literature (London: HEB, 1979), p. 24.
182 Stephan Larsen
When
The wood-insect
Gathers sticks,
On its own head it
Carries
Them. 44
Each individual must bear the responsibility for his actions, it will not do to
throw the blame on somebody else. This message is expressed even more
clearly a bit earlier in the same scene, as Odewale replies to the lines spo-
ken by his stepson, Aderopo, "It is the way the gods meant it to happen," 45
by saying:
No, no! Do not blame the Gods. Let no one blame the powers. My people,
learn from my fall. The powers would have failed if I did not let them use
me. They knew my weakness: the weakness of a man easily moved to the
defence of his tribe against others. I once slew a man on my farm in Ede. I
could have spared him. But he spat on my tribe. He spat on the tribe I
thought was my own tribe. The man laughed, and laughing, he called me a
"man from the bush tribe of Ijekun." And I lost my reason. Now I find out
that that very man was my ... own father, the King who ruled this land
before me. It was my run from the blood I spilled to calm the hurt of my
tribe, that brought me to this land to do more horrors. Pray, my people—
Baba Ogunsomo— 46
A clear statement, to be sure, but is it in accordance with the rest of the dra-
ma? Is it not rather the case that the entire text, up to its last few pages, ex-
presses the very opposite of this message? The gods are most certainly to
blame, every bit as much as those of Oedipus Rex\ But for the sinister
prophecy, Odewale would never have committed the crimes that turn his
life into such a harrowing tragedy. He would never have had the opportuni-
ty to commit them, for he would have grown up with his true family, fully
aware of the identities of his parents. Even without the prophecy, he might,
of course, have had a fiery temper, and been quick to resort to violence
upon hearing somebody insult his tribe, 47 but the idea that these qualities,
44 Ola Rotimi, The Gods Are Not to Blame (London: Oxford UP, 1971), p. 72.
45 Ibid., p. 70.
46 Ibid., p. 71.
47 It should perhaps be pointed out that some critics, for instance V. U. Ola and Chris Dun-
ton, have expressed the opinion that Rotimi has not succeeded in presenting Odewale's
ethnic hypersensitivity or his violent temper in a psychologically convincing manner.
Ola says that "the idea of ethnic distrust simply hangs in the play and is not succesfully
woven into the fabric of the work." V. U. Ola, "The Concept of Tragedy in Ola Rotimi's:
The Gods Are Not to Blame," Okike 22, September (1982), p. 28. Dunton maintains that
in and of themselves, are enough to drive a man to parricide and incest

seems absurd. Odewale is neither a criminal nor a psychopath. On the con-
trary, he is depicted as an honourable, energetic, and compassionate per-
son, a man endowed with high morals and impressive qualities of leader-
ship. Having first urged the people of Kutuje to go to war against their
arch-enemy, Ikolu, and led them to a decisive military victory, he has ruled
Kutuje for eleven years of peace and prosperity, all the time sharing the
sorrows as well as the joys of his subjects. When, at the beginning of the
play, Kutuje is stricken by a devastating epidemic, and the people gather
outside Odewale's palace to complain and ask for help, he pulls them out
of their passivity by asking them "what have you done about it," 48 and by
giving them sound, practical advice on how to fight the disease. Odewale's
compassion is shown to the best advantage in a moving scene where he
meets a recently widowed woman, Iya Aburo, who has lost her mind as a
result of grief, and is no longer fit to take care of her child. Odewale im-
mediately decides to adopt the child temporarily, hands it over to Ojuola,
and gives the following order to one of his bodyguards:
Quickly take that woman to the home of Alaba the eurer of sick-heads.
Whatever he charges for the cure of her head, tell Alaba that I shall pay. 49
This happens near the end of Act One, Scene One. The first sign that Ode-
wale is an impatient man occurs in Act One, Scene Two, as Aderopo
proves reluctant to disclose in public what the Ifa oracle has said concern-
ing the misfortunes of Kutuje. 50 In this case, however, there would appear
to be just cause for Odewale's impatience, for there is little time, and the
matter in question is very much the concern of the entire tribe. But, as
Chris Dunton puts it: "No more than twenty minutes of stage time later,
and Odewale has changed almost out of recognition from his early model
of self-control and initiative. By the end of Act Two he appears pathologi-
cal." 51 It is easy to agree with Dunton that "whatever the relationship be-
tween Greek and Yoruba concepts of tragedy, in the context of our scrutiny
of Odewale's increasing failure as a ruler, cause and effect are neither suf-
if the idea that Odewale is sensitive about his ethnic origin is introduced to abruptly
[...], so is the idea that he is crippled by his bad temper. Chris Dunton, Make Man Talk
True: Nigerian Drama in English Since 1970 (London: Zell, 1992), p. 16.
Both Ola and Dunton support their statements by quoting from the text in question.
48 Rotimi, The Gods Are Not to Blame, p. 12.
49 Ibid., p. 16.
50 Ibid., pp. 18-19.
51 Dunton, Make Man Talk True, p. 16.
184 Stephan Larsen
ficiently distinguished nor consistently foregrounded in a way that would

make the motive force behind Odewale's actions clear." 52
Where the relationship between Greek and Yoruba concepts of tragedy
is concerned, one might well say that the most important difference con-
sists in the Greek view of man as completely at the mercy of the gods, and
the consequent notion that the most appropriate attitude to life is one of
resignation. However, it should perhaps be pointed out that even though
the Greek gods appear, at times, to treat human beings cruelly, their actions
are hardly ever completely gratuitous. In the case of Oedipus, the reason
for his misfortunes is the fact that he belongs to a royal family, the Lab-
dacides, the ancestor of which, Kadmos, once brought upon himself the
wrath of Zeus—Greek mythology, as we know, is replete with examples of
families punished by the gods from generation to generation until they are
either completely wiped out, or manage to find a way to placate the gods.
In Rotimi's drama, there is no explanation whatsoever for the prophecy
that ruins Odewale's life; it seems to come from nowhere and strike entire-
ly at random. If this is indeed the case, it means that Rotimi's drama is
even farther from the Yoruba way of looking at things than his Greek hy-
potext. Michael Etherton, in The Development of African Drama (London
1982) has given the following summary of what seems to be the matter
with Rotimi's Africanization of Oedipus Rex:
if the gods, or "fate," are to blame and not Odewale, then the Yoruba milieu
of the play disintegrates. If, on the other hand, Odewale's hot temper and,
as he says, tribalism, is to blame and not the Gods, then the story of the
prophecy has no rationale.53
The author's difficulties in uniting a Greek myth with a Yoruba view of
life have been so great as to make it possible even for a non-African critic,
such as Sandra L. Richards, to maintain that "the choice of material identi-
fies Rotimi with the period in modern African literatures when writers
were eager to validate their cultures in terms which the former colonial
masters could appreciate." 54 Perhaps it is more than a coincidence that, in
52 Ibid.
53 Michael Etherton, The Development of African Drama (London: Hutchinson Education,
1982), p. 127.
54 Sandra L. Richards, from the article on Rotimi in Contemporary Dramatists, cf. note 44.
For an idea of how Rotimi has answered his critics, I recommend the interview in
Dem-Say (cf. note 45), particularly, pp. 63-64. In this interview, Rotimi gives several ex-
amples, from the mythology and history of both Europe and Africa, of great heroes who
have become kings of countries where they do not really have any roots. However, Roti-
mi's examples are not entirely convincing, as all of them are concerned with conquerors,
the historical dramas written after the publication of The Gods Are Not to
B l a m e d Rotimi did not return to Greek mythology, but fetched his ma-
terial from the pre-colonial history of Africa.
Un negre ä Paris by Bernard Dadie
So far, I have dealt with indisputable cases of hypertextuality. It has to be

admitted that Dadie's travelogue is not such a case, even though, as Doro-
thy Blair puts it in African Literature in French, it "has become a common-
place to compare Un Negre a Paris to Montesquieu's Lettres persanes."56
The most obvious, perhaps also the most important, similarity between the
two texts is probably, as has been mentioned, the basic motif itself—a
stranger from another part of the world comes to stay in Paris, and makes
notes, in letter-form, of his impressions of the bewildering encounter with
a culture unknown to him. In both cases, this device provides an opportuni-
ty for the author to make observations, mostly satirical, on Parisian, and
French, peculiarities which he compares to what he is accustomed to from
his own country. Is this, then, enough for there to be talk of hypertextuali-
ty? Are there any further similarities between the two books, that might
lend support to such an assumption? Let us see...
In all honesty, it should be pointed out that when I speak of the device of
letting a traveller from another part of the world describe a European real-
ity, I am already guilty of an oversight, namely as regards the number of
travellers. To be sure, Dadie's book is about one traveller, but in Mon-
tesquieu, they are two in number. One of them, probably the elder, is called
Usbek, and gives the impression of being a very serious person, of a specu-
lative frame of mind. He is hardly ever content to just write down his im-
whereas Odewale is elected by the people of Kutuje, after he has helped them defeat
Ikolu. He says it himself:
In their joy,
the people made me
KING,
me, of Ijekun tribe.
They broke tradition and made me,
unasked,
King of Kutuje (Rotimi, The Gods Are Not to Blame , p. 7. My italics).
55 Cf. Rotimi, Kurunmi: An Historical Tragedy (London: Oxford UP, Nigeria, 1971), and
Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (Ibadan: Oxford UP, Nigeria, 1974).
56 Dorothy S. Blair, African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in French
from West and Equatorial Africa (London and New York: Cambridge UP, 1976), p. 321.
186 Stephan Larsen
mediate impressions of Paris and its inhabitants; most often he will also
make lengthy reflections about what he has observed. His fellow traveller,
Rika, appears to be much more lively and open-minded, besides which he
seems to take great pleasure in just simply observing. Consequently, they
complement each other splendidly, and offer the reader a varying perspec-
tive. In Dadie, we have one perspective—we are invited to follow in the
footsteps of one traveller, who appears to have traits of character in common
with both Usbek and Rika. Mostly with Rika, perhaps—like him, Dadie's
young African student seems to be blessed with sharp powers of observation,
an extrovert temperament, a nimble intellect, and spontaneous joy at every
new experience. Like Rika, but unlike Usbek, he also seems to have a mainly
positive attitude to France in general and Paris in particular, even though he
is critical of some things. He is more like Usbek in those parts of the book
where he philosophizes about different aspects of the foreign culture, often
using his own African norm system as his point of departure.
Does Un negre ä Paris even belong to the same genre as Lettres per-
sanesl Montesquieu's book could hardly be described as anything but a
novel, even though the plot—a slightly obscene story of erotic goings-on
in Usbek's harem while the master is away—which he uses as a frame-
work for the satirical letters, may seem more than a little on the meagre
side to modern readers. About what genre Dadie's book belongs to, opin-
ions differ. On the one hand, the word "roman" is actually printed on the
title- page. On the other hand, Dadie himself, in an interview with C.
Quillateau, has firmly maintained, about all his prose books from
Climbie, 1956, to La ville ou nul ne meurt, 1969, that "they are not nov-
els. For that reason, I do not see myself as a novelist. In none of these
works is there a fictive character, whom we can follow through the in-
trigues and turning-points of his life. On the contrary, there is a real per-
son, always myself, who observes and examines the customs, the habits,
the culture of a people (the French, the Italian, the American), and passes
judgement on them by comparing them to the customs, the habits, the
culture of my own people, thus to discern both differences and common
denominators from the perspective of universal humanism" (my transla-
tion). 57 Nonetheless, we may note that the narrator of Un negre a Paris
does not call himself "Bernard Dadie," but "Tanhoe Bertin," 58 a fact
57 C. Quillateau, Bernard Binlin Dadie, l'Homme et l'CEuvre (Paris: Presence Africaine,

1967), p. 152.
58 Bernard B. Dadie, Un negre ä Paris (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1959), p. 217.
which seems to indicate that Dadie has wanted to distance himself from
his protagonist, after all. The book, then, cannot be regarded as a piece of
autobiography, but possibly as an autobiographical novel. Be that as it
may, the distance between author and narrator is, of course, considerably
less in Dadie than in Montesquieu.
Dadie's book, like Montesquieu's, is written in letter-form, but that is as
far as the resemblance goes. Montesquieu's text consists of 161 letters, dif-
ferent in length, and addressed to different people. Dadie's text consists of
one single letter of 211 pages, addressed to one single person whose name
is never revealed to us. Montesquieu's text also contains the replies from
the Persian addressees to the letters they receive from Usbek and Rika,
whereas, in Dadie's text, only one "voice" is heard. Most of the letters in
Montesquieu are devoted to clearly defined subjects, more often than not
one for each letter. In Dadie, there is no such structure to be found, in spite
of the fact that the long letter is actually divided into chapters. However, of
each of these chapters one might, with justice, say what A. C. Brench, in
his study The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa (1967), says of the
book as a whole: "One idea leads to another or perhaps a single word sud-
denly suggests a new thought, only tenuously related to the last. Some-
times Dadie stops, only to jump or wander off on another tangent. Several
times he arrives at a point he had left long before and inspects it from a
new angle." 59
There is an even more fundamental difference between the two works.
Montesquieu puts a distance between himself and his countrymen by im-
agining how two Persian travellers might react to early eighteenth-century
France, and from this point of departure, he gives expression both to his
own sharp criticism of the social institutions of his country and to much
deeper and more serious thoughts concerning, above all, politics and reli-
gion. On many occasions, it is difficult for him to hide the fact that Usbek
and Rika are mere masks, hiding the face of a typical representative of the
French Enlightenment. This appears to be particularly true in the case of
Usbek. Sometimes, he comes out as an incarnation of every Western preju-
dice about depraved, barbaric "Orientals"—a hard-hearted tyrant of the
harem, ordering his wives and his eunuchs to be severely punished on the
vaguest of suspicions. Sometimes, he comes out as a philosopher in the
eighteenth-century sense, a social critic, a raisonneur, skilled at drawing
59 A. C. Brench, The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa: Writers from Senegal to

Cameroon, p. 88.
188 Stephan Larsen
satirical "portraits," in the manner of La Bruyere, 60 of different types of

people. Dadie, on the other hand, has no need to imagine anything. In the
words of Dorothy Blair: "Dadie never lets us forget that he is himself the
Negro, the man of different complexion and different cultural heritage,
seeing for the first time the external manifestations of Western history in
which his reading has steeped him, as well as a myriad idiosyncrasies of
daily existence, for which no reading had prepared him, and to which fa-
miliarity has blinded Western eyes." 61 In this context, it should perhaps be
pointed out that Blair is one of those critics who do not regard Un negre a
Paris as a novel, but as a piece of autobiography. 62 Irrespective of what
one's position on this matter may be, it does seem reasonable to assume
that Dadie's book, to a large extent, really is based partly on his own obser-
vations of life in Paris, partly on a first-hand knowledge of African culture.
The latter makes it possible for Dadie to delve deeper in his comparisons of
two cultures than Montesquieu could ever do. To Montesquieu, it was a
question of making certain French peculiarities seem even more peculiar
by pretending to look at them with the eyes of "the Other." The purpose of
Dadie's comparisons between French phenomena and attitudes on the one
hand, and his own African norms on the other, appears to be to reassess
Western culture by suggesting, in a low voice but in all seriousness, that
France may actually have a great deal to learn from Africa. As a conse-
quence of this purpose, the comparisons become something other and more
than just literary constructions in the service of satire.
Dadie, to some extent at least, treats the same subjects as Mon-
tesquieu—e.g. the traffic of Paris, Western religion and the ways in which
it manifests itself, the attitude to strangers from other parts of the world,
political controversies, newspapers, French women, jealousy etc.—but of-
ten in a different tone of voice, and it seems to me that not all the differ-
ences can be explained by reference to the fact that there are 238 years be-
tween the two books. Let us see what each writer has to say on the delicate
subject of jealousy. Thus writes Montesquieu:
Frenchmen hardly ever talk about their wives: they are afraid to do so in
front of people who may know them better than they.
Among them are some extremely unhappy men with whom nobody sym-
pathizes: husbands who are jealous. There are men whom everybody
60 Cf. Jean de La Bruyre, Les caracteres de Theophraste traduits du grec, avec les carac-
teres ou les moeurs de ce sicle (1688).
61 Blair, African Literature in French, p. 321.
62 Ibid., note 25, p. 320; note 27, p. 322.
d e t e s t s : j e a l o u s h u s b a n d s . T h e r e are t h o s e w h o m e v e r y m a n d e s p i s e s : a g a i n ,
jealous husbands.
C o n s e q u e n t l y , in n o c o u n t r y are t h e y as f e w in n u m b e r as in F r a n c e . T h e
F r e n c h m a n ' s e q u a n i m i t y is n o t b a s e d o n t h e c o n f i d e n c e h e h a s in h i s w i f e ,
but, on the c o n t r a r y , o n t h e b a d o p i n i o n h e h a s of her. T h e p r u d e n t m e a s u r e s
t a k e n to p r o t e c t w o m e n in A s i a — v e i l s to c o v e r t h e m u p , p r i s o n s t o k e e p
t h e m in, t h e w a t c h f u l n e s s of t h e e u n u c h s — a l l s e e m t o h i m m o r e likely t o
sharpen the sex's evils than to defeat them. Married m e n here resign them-
s e l v e s w i t h a g o o d g r a c e , a n d c o n s i d e r their w i v e s ' i n f i d e l i t i e s t o b e inevit-
ably d e s t i n e d by t h e stars. A h u s b a n d w h o w a n t e d t o h a v e his w i f e all to
h i m s e l f w o u l d b e l o o k e d u p o n as a d i s t u r b e r of t h e p u b l i c p l e a s u r e , or as a
m a d m a n w h o w a n t e d to e n j o y t h e s u n s h i n e t o t h e e x c l u s i o n of o t h e r m e n . 6 3
Thus writes Dadie:

J e a l o u s y has g o t to b e t h e m o s t v i r u l e n t d i s e a s e in this c o u n t r y . B u t this
isn't surprising. With such gorgeous w o m e n around, you have no choice
b u t to k e e p y o u r e y e s o p e n , r e a l l y o p e n . A n d P a r i s i a n m e n o p e n t h e i r s so
w i d e that o n e d a y t h e y w o n ' t b e a b l e t o c l o s e t h e m a g a i n . A c c o r d i n g t o their
o w n statistics, six t h o u s a n d a t t e m p t e d m u r d e r s o c c u r e v e r y y e a r ; of t h e s e ,
o n e t h o u s a n d a c t u a l l y d o t a k e p l a c e . A n d t h e r e are t w o t h o u s a n d s u i c i d e s .
A p p a r e n t l y j e a l o u s y is to b l a m e f o r m a n y of t h e s e . Y o u c a n see t h e h o r r i b l e
e f f e c t is h a s o n f a m i l i e s . T h e d i s e a s e is m o s t r a m p a n t in O c t o b e r , r i g h t a f t e r
t h e v a c a t i o n , w h e n e v e r y o n e is b u s y h a r v e s t i n g their c r o p s . I t ' s at this t i m e
of the y e a r t h a t p e o p l e w o r r y t h e m o s t a b o u t m o n e y . 6 4
63 Montesquieu, Persian Letters, C. J. Betts (trans.), (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 118. The
original reads: "Les Frangois ne parlent presque jamais de leurs femmes; c'est qu'ils ont
peur d'en parier devant des gens qui les conoissent raieux qu'eux.
11 y a parmis eux des hommes tres-malheureux que personne ne console, ce sont les
maris jaloux; il y en a que tout le monde hait, ce sont les maris jaloux; il y en a que tous
les hommes meprisent, ce sont encore les maris jaloux.
Aussi n'y a-t-il point de pays ou ils soient en si petit nombre que chez les Frangois.
Leur tranquillite n'est pas fondee sur la confiance qu'ils ont en leurs femmes; c'est au
contrairer sur la mauvaise opinion qu'ils en ont. Toutes les sages precautions des Asia-
tiques, les voiles qui les couvrent, les prisons ou elles sont detenues, la vigilance des
eunuques, leur paroissent des moyens plus propres ä exercer l'industrie de ce sexe, qu'ä
la lasser. Ici, les maris prennent leur parti de bonne grace, et regardent les infidelites
comme des coups d'une etoile inevitable. Un mari, qui voudroit seul posseder sa femme,
seroit regarde comme un perturbateur de la joie publique, et comme un insense qui vou-
droit jouir de la lumiere du soleil, ä l'exclusion des autres hommes."
From Montesquieu, Lettres persanes. Critical edition with notes by Antoine Adam
(Geneve and Lille: Droz, 1954), pp. 142-43.
64 Bernard Dadie, An African in Paris, Karen C. Hatch (trans.), (Urbana and Chicago: Uni-
versity of Illiois, 1994), p. 72. The original reads: "La jalousie serait la maladie le plus
active dans ce pays. II n'y a rien d'etonnant, avec d'aussi charmantes femmes, il faut
ouvrir l'ceil et le bon. Et des Parisiens l'ouvriraient tellement qu'ils ne le fermeraient
plus. D'apres leurs propres declarations, il y a six mille tentatives de meurtres par an,
dont mille reussissent et deux mille suicides. Elle desunit des milliers de menages. Cette
pernicieuse maladie ne sevirait qu'ä une certaine periode de l'annee, en octobre, apres
les vacances, c'est-a-dire au moment ou nous recoltons nos produits, je veux dire ä
l'epoque de nos plus grands soucis quant aux prix." Un negre a Paris, p. 107.
190 Stephan Larsen
These two pieces of text may seem rather similar as regards tone and style.
But if we take a closer look at the contents, at what is actually said in each
of them, we may get a different impression. Montesquieu's text seems, in-
directly, to suggest that a society which makes fun of jealous husbands is a
society which takes neither love nor marriage seriously. This society's
contempt of jealousy is a measure of its general morals. Furthermore, even
in this short piece of text, there are several tell-tale formulations to reveal
to us that the writer is not really a Persian—all Asians are judged alike;
"Asian" women are said to be kept in prison, hardly the opinion of a real-
life owner of a harem, etc.
In Dadie's text, on the other hand, we appear to be in the presence of a
writer who is quite serious about regarding jealousy as an emotion both
dangerous and ridiculous. His examples of what jealousy might lead to
give a clear impression of effects out of all proportion to their causes. Fur-
thermore, jealousy is indirectly described as a problem typical of the
well-fed peoples of the world—at the time of year when the French are
consumed by jealousy, the people of Tanhoe Bertin's native country are
busy doing things that are necessary for their survival.
Much of what has been said above may seem to contradict my assump-
tion that Un negre ά Paris is a hypertext of Lettres persanes. Nevertheless,
it is my contention that Dadie's text may be regarded as an imitation, in the
"Genettean" sense, of that of Montesquieu—or, in other words, that Dadie
is telling a different story from that told by Montesquieu, but in Mon-
tesquieu's manner. The satirical method, as has already been stated, is the
same in both texts, and so is the good- humoured irony, used both to con-
ceal the seriousness of what is being said, and to give an enjoyable form to
it. The ideal of combining the useful with the pleasurable, so typical of the
Age of Enlightenment, appears to be something that these two writers,
from different continents and epochs, have very much in common. Further-
more, it seems to me entirely possible to regard Dadie's text as a riposte to
Montesquieu's, a riposte intended, among other things, to show how Mon-
tesquieu might have written, had he really had his cultural roots outside of
Europe.
A quick survey of Dadie's writings—including two more travelogues,
Patron de New York (Paris 1964) and La ville ou nul ne meurt (Paris 1969),
both of which also tend to remind the reader of Lettres persanes, several
plays clearly inspired by French neo-classical drama, and a collection of
aphorisms, Opinions d'un negre (Dakar 1980), which bears a more than
passing formal resemblance to La Rochefoucauld's Maximes—leads one
to believe that he has consciously, and consistently, attempted to make use

of the French cultural heritage forced upon him by colonial cultural politics
to make important statements about Africa—its past and its present—and
about the relationships between Europe and Africa. Such a text as Un
negre a Paris should be viewed against the background of this "dialogue"
with the classics of French literature.
Le regard du roi by Camara Laye
This symbolical novel of a white man, Clarence, who goes on a journey

full of hardships through an Africa difficult of access in more ways than
one, in the hope of eventually finding the King so as to offer his services to
him, has given rise to many different interpretations. It has been said to "be
about" man's search for God, the individual's search for an identity, the in-
nermost secrets of the human soul, African wisdom as opposed to Euro-
pean naivete, etc., etc.
Quite a few interpreters seem to agree that Laye, unlike almost all other
French-African writers who have looked to European literature for points
of departure, has found his inspiration not in the works of any French au-
thor, but in those of Franz Kafka, particularly in his novel Das Schloß.
This, however, is not necessarily a sign of a repudiation of French culture
on grounds of principle, for, as Adele King has pointed out in her study
The Writings of Camara Laye (London 1980): "In using Kafka, Laye was
in tune with the prevailing mode of French fiction after the Second World
War." 65 A similar opinion is expressed in Ben Obumselu's essay "The
French and Moslem Backgrounds of The Radiance of the King": "Any ac-
count of Laye's French background, no matter how brief, must include
some reference to the debt he owes to Franz Kafka, although that debt is
fairly well known. Kafka is, of course, a Czechoslovakian Jew who wrote
in German; but, at about the time when Laye was writing, Maja Goth said
of Kafka that 'the French meditate on him as one of themselves.' " 66
65 Adele King, The Writings of Camara Laye (London: HEB, 1980), p. 59.
66 Ben Obumselu, "The French and Moslem Backgrounds of The Radiance of the King,"
Research in African Literatures 11:1, Spring (1980), p. 13. Obumselu lends support to
his statements by reference, in notes, to Deduck, "Franz Kafka's Influence on Camara
Laye's Le regard du roi," S. O. Anozie, Sociologie du roman africain (Paris: Aubier,
1970), pp. 181 ff; and Maja Goth, Franz Kafka et les lettres frangaises, 1928-1955
(Paris: Librairie Jos Corti, 1956), p. 253.
192 Stephan Larsen
As has earlier been mentioned, Laye's novel faces us with the question
whether a hypertext can have more than one hypotext, and if we accept the
arguments presented by Patricia Anne Deduck, we must answer this ques-
tion in the affirmative. Deduck, of course, did not have access to Genette's
terminology, but nevertheless, she convincingly shows that Le regard du
roi, to a great extent, could, and should, be regarded as a transformation of
Das Schloß.61 Furthermore, parts of Laye's novel may be regarded as trans-
formations of parts of Kafka's Der Prozeß—this is particularly true of the
nightmarish courtroom scenes that occur in both texts, but there are also
striking similarities between the depictions of floggings in chapter five of
Der Prozeß and the chapter entitled "Le maltre des ceremonies" in Le re-
gard du roi. There are similarities between Kafka's Amerika and Laye's
novel, too, but these similarities are imitations rather than transformations.
What, then, about Laye's relations to French literature in the proper
sense? In answer to this question, Ben Obumselu, in his aforementioned
essay, has convincingly shown that Laye's novel reverberates with echoes
partly from Sartre's L'etre et le neant,68 partly, and chiefly, from Julien
Green's Le voyageur sur la terre.69 Consequently, there seems to be no rea-
son to assume that Laye was so negatively disposed towards the culture of
the former "mother country" as to consistently refrain from looking to it
for impressions and raw material, even though Kafka's novels remain the
most indisputable hypotexts of Le regard du roi.
There is, however, one important difference between Das Schloß and
Der Prozeß on the one hand, and Le regard du roi on the other. Kafka's
nightmarish worlds may seem fundamentally absurd—there are no rational
explanations for the sufferings and the humiliating failures of the protag-
onists—whereas both Clarence and those who read the novel of which he
is the protagonist will eventually understand both the reasons for his initial
failures and what it would take for him to succeed. In other words, there is
a didactic purpose here which makes it possible for us, in spite of the
generally "late-modern" nature of the novel, to view Le regard du roi as a
latter-day imitation of those novels of the French Enlightenment that de-
scribe the road from naivete to insight, novels such as Lesage's Gil Bias,
and, not least, Voltaire's Candide.
67 Cf. Deduck, "Franz Kafka's Influence on Camara Laye's Le regard du roi." For a briefer
discussion of similarities—and differences—between Das Schloß and Le regard du roi,
cf. King, The Writings of Camara Laye, pp. 58-59.
68 Obumselu, "The French and Moslem Backgrounds of The Radiance of the King," p. 9.
69 Ibid., pp. 11-12.
Among the similarities between Candide and Le regard du roi, the fol-
lowing seem particularly worthy of mention: in both novels, the protag-
onists have names that provide some information on their characters
("Candide," as is well known, means "naive," "innocent"—"Clarence"
does not have the same kind of exactly identifiable lexical meaning, but it
nevertheless reminds one of words such as "clarte," meaning "clarity,"
"light," and the like); in both novels, the protagonists have experiences,
and learn lessons, that make their names less appropriate towards the end
of the story than they are in the beginning (Candide loses his naivete,
Clarence realizes that in Africa the light does not emanate from him, but
from the King); in both novels, the protagonists are fundamentally passive,
people to whom things are done, rather than people who do things; in both
novels, the protagonists, by means of a series of trials and tribulations, are
forced to realize that their original views of life have been based on false
premises, and will have to be reconsidered (in Candide's case, this is true
of optimism, whereas in Clarence's case, it applies both to individualism
and to the notion that Africa has a lot to learn from Europe); in both novels,
the protagonists are brought to new insights during, and as a result of, long,
arduous journeys (Candide comes to know the world, Clarence comes to
know Africa); both novels can be divided into "stages," two in Candide,
three in Le regard du roi (in the first half of Candide, the optimist philoso-
phy of Leibniz is incessantly contradicted by cruel facts, whereas the sec-
ond half seems to imply that one can hope for a reasonably tolerable life af-
ter all, if one does not expect too much of it, and if one can only learn to be
useful, to mind one's business, and to refrain from asking too many ques-
tions; in the first "stage" of Le regard du roi, both individualism and the
notion of the superiority of the white race are incessantly contradicted by
cruel facts, whereas the second "stage" seems to imply that one can hope
for a reasonably tolerable life after all, if one can only adapt oneself to
one's surroundings; in the third "stage," admittedly without counterpart in
Voltaire, Clarence, now a fundamentally changed person, finally meets the
King, a meeting which, to the lost European, has all the characteristics of a
religious experience, a vision—finally, he has come home). In both novels,
too, the protagonists travel with companions who represent different views
of life—some to be condemned, some worth embracing (mostly the latter
in the case of Clarence)—and who bring them, directly and indirectly, ever
closer to the insight that will change their lives; in both novels, a quiet life
away from the strivings of the world is depicted as something to be de-
sired; in both novels, comic effects are extracted from situations that are, in
194 Stephan Larsen
and of themselves, shocking and outrageous, and in both novels, what

makes the reader laugh is the protagonists' completely inadequate reac-
tions to these situations. Dare we, then, assume that there really are con-
necting links between Voltaire's Candide and Laye's Le regard du roil
Before attempting to answer this question, I would like, in the name of fair
play, to say a few things concerning the differences between the alleged
hypertext and the alleged hypotext.
The plot of Candide has a chronological structure, and the novel be-
gins with a brief presentation of the protagonist and a few words on his
early years. Le regard du roi begins in medias res, with the sentence:
"When Clarence reached the esplanade he found his way blocked by such
a vast, dense crowd that at first he felt it would be impossible to get
through." 70
As the story progresses, flashbacks provide us with some information,
neatly summarized by Adele King as follows: "The end of his journey by
ship was difficult; he remembers fighting waves to cross the reef into the
unnamed country. After his arrival he stays in Adrame, a city of the North,
where he loses all his money gambling. Sent in disgrace from a European
hotel, which keeps his luggage because he cannot pay the bill, he goes to a
cheap African inn where he is again in difficulty because he has no
money." 71 Concerning the age of Clarence, his life prior to his arrival in
Africa, and the reasons for his journey, we are given no information what-
soever. In spite of these differences between the two works here discussed,
there are similarities to be noted as well. The tribulations of both Candide
and Clarence begin when they are driven, in disgrace, from a safe and com-
fortable life—Candide from a castle in Westphalia, Clarence from a Euro-
pean hotel in Africa—to a dangerous and precarious one, where, without
any material assets and without friends, they are forced to fend for them-
selves as best they can. In both cases, they are driven away because they
have done things that they have never done before—Candide has cuddled
and kissed Miss Cunegonde, Clarence has gambled. However, Candide ap-
pears to act without due reflection—the innocent youth is simply seduced
by the fair Cunegonde. Clarence, on the other hand, appears to resort to
gambling in the hope of improving his economy at the expense of others,
70 Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King, James Kirkup (trans.), (Glasgow: Collins,
1965), p. 7. The original reads: "Lorsque Clarence atteignit l'esplanade, il se heurta ä une
foule si nombreuse et si compacte qu'il desespera d'abord de s'y frayer un passage." Le
regard du roi (Paris: Plön, [1954] 1975), p. 11.
71 King, The Writings of Camara Laye, p. 38.
hardly the act of an innocent. This is what we are told about him: "He
didn't like cards! He never used to touch cards! But it was like this: all the
white men who went to that hotel were gamblers and they had more money
than they knew what to do with!" 72
Candide has a clear, dialectical structure; in each half of the novel, we
meet with a supporter of a philosophy which is to be refuted, an optimist
and a pessimist respectively. In Le regard du roi, there is nothing like such
dialectics; Clarence's travelling companions, an old beggar and two mis-
chievous boys whom he has met in the crowd mentioned earlier, are all
representatives of one and the same outlook on life, but they never indulge
in any hair-splitting philosophical arguments about it, nor is it to be re-
futed, on the contrary, it will prove to be the only outlook that makes any
sense in the given milieu.
Candide is a novel which appeals to the reader's intellect, and describes
the maturation and development of that of its protagonist. At the beginning
of the novel, Candide is like a blank page, a being who understands noth-
ing, who is not a fully developed individual, who allows himself to be
driven wherever life and his fellow human beings take him, offering no re-
sistance and not really questioning anything. In the end, he has become a
rational being, who knows how to draw the correct conclusions from what
he experiences, and who has a purpose in life.
Of Clarence, the opposite, strictly speaking, is true. In the beginning of
Le regard du roi, he sees himself as a rational being, living in a compre-
hensible world that is governed by laws of cause and effect—laws, by the
way, often referred to in Candide as well. As the story progresses,
Clarence comes to realize that nothing is predictable, that his senses are
not to be trusted, that his European notions of time and space mean noth-
ing on the African continent, that reality and dream can be practically im-
possible to tell apart. He also realizes that he is, in fact, anything but a ra-
tional being, that he is driven by obscure instincts beyond the reach of
reason, that he is unable to grasp the significance of what happens to him.
At the end of the novel, as the king opens his arms to him, he seems, at
last, to understand how he can become part of that African reality which
has hitherto been unattainable to him—but this is a purely intuitive form
of understanding, something that, literally, comes to him as a gift from
72 Laye, The Radiance of the King, p. 11. The original reads: "II n'aimait pas les cartes! II
ne touchait jamais une carte! Seulement voilä: tous les blancs qui venaient dans cet hotel
jouaient et ils avaient de l'argent ä ne savoir qu'en faire [...]," p. 15.
196 Stephan Larsen
above, not as the end product of an intellectual process. In the words of

A. C. Brench: "This suspension of objective reason, a complete rejection
of preconceptions, the attempt to feel rather than to understand, is, per-
haps, the only way for a European to penetrate into Africa." 7 3 Against
this it may be said that the word "penetrate" is still far too aggressive—
Clarence does not penetrate into Africa, he allows himself to be envel-
oped by it. Candide is changed from a passive character to an active one,
from being governed by his emotions to being governed by reason.
Clarence develops in the opposite direction, which might give us a rea-
son to regard Laye's novel as a riposte to Voltaire's, an African riposte to
a European address, just as Un negre ά Paris could be seen as a riposte to
Lettres persanes.
Furthermore, there are other, perhaps more fundamental, similarities be-
tween the two novels than those that have already been discussed. Both
Candide and Le regard du roi end on a positive note, with the image of a
simple, yet immensely rich, life, a life full of harmony and confidence—far
from the relentless, desperate anguish with which Kafka's novels usually
end. The worlds of Voltaire and Laye have one thing in common which is
lacking in that of Kafka, namely a meaning and a goal, even though those
of Laye's world are the exact opposite to what is regarded as desirable by
Voltaire.
Neither in Candide nor in Le regard du roi are we told exactly how
much time has elapsed between the first page and the last. In both cases,
the passage of time seems to be of secondary importance—the main thing
is the maturation of the protagonist, the deconstruction of a view of life out
of tune with reality in favour of a more viable one.
At times, one might even ask oneself whether the outlook on life recom-
mended by Voltaire really is so completely different from that expressed
by Laye. For instance, the two writers would appear to agree that there is a
little too much talking and philosophizing in this world. This is how Vol-
taire describes a meeting between Candide, his incurably optimistic teacher
Pangloss, and a person who might be said to represent the highest degree
of wisdom attainable to man:
There lived in the neighbourhood a very famous dervish, who was generally
considered the best philosopher in Turkey. One day they went to consult
him. Pangloss, as their spokesman, said to the dervish: "Master, we come to
entreat you to tell us, why so strange an animal as man was created?"
73 Brench, The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa, p. 127.

"Why do you meddle with the matter?" said the dervish. "Is it any busi-
ness of yours?"
"But, Reverend Father," said Candide, "there is a horrible deal of evil on
earth."
"What signifies it whether there is evil or good? When the Sultan sends a
ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the rats in the hold are at
ease or not?"
"What, then, should one do?"
"One should be silent."
"I offered myself the flattering prospect," said Candide [sic!], "of debat-
ing with you a little concerning causes and effects, the best of possible
worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, the pre-established har-
mony, and similar matters."
At these words the dervish shut the door in their faces. 74
This is how Laye describes the meeting between Clarence and the king:
When he had come before the king, when he stood in the great radiance of
the king, still ravaged by the tongue of fire, but alive still, and living only
through the touch of that fire, Clarence fell upon his knees, for it seemed to
him that he was finally at the end of his seeking, and at the end of his seek-
ings.
But presumably he had still not come quite near enough; probably he was
still too timid, for the king opened his arms to him. And as he opened his
arms his mantle fell away from him, and revealed his slender adolescent
torso. On this torso, in the midnight of this slender body there appeared—at
the centre, but not quite at the centre ... a little to the right—there appeared
a faint beating that was making his flesh tremble. It was this beating, this
faintly-beating pulse which was calling! It was this fire that sent its tongue
of flame into his limbs, and this radiance that blazed upon him. It was this
love that enveloped him.
"Did you not know that I was waiting for you?" asked the king.
74 Voltaire, Candide, Norman Cameron (trans.), (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 101-102.
The original reads: "II y avait dans le voisinage un derviche tres fameux qui passait pour
le meilleur philosophe de la Turquie; ils allerem le consulter; Pangloss porta la parole et
lui dit:
Maitre, nous venons vous prier de nous dire pourquoi un aussi etrange animal que
l'homme a ete forme.
- De quoi te meles-tu? dit le derviche; est-ce la ton affaire? - Mais, mon reverend
pere, dit Candide, il y a horriblement de mal sur la terre. - Qu'importe, dit le derviche,
qu'il y ait du mal ou du bien? Quand Sa Hautesse envoie un vaisseau en Egypte, s'em-
barasse-t-elle si les souris qui sont dans le vaisseau sont ä leur aise ou non? - Que faut-il
done faire? dit Pangloss - Te taire, dit le derviche. - Je me flattais, dit Pangloss, de rai-
sonner un peu avec vous des effets et des causes, du meilleur des mondes possibles, de
l'origine du mal, de la nature de l'äme et de l'harmonie preetablie. Le derviche, ä ces
mots, leur ferma la porte au nez." Voltaire, Romans et contes, critical ed. with introduc-
tion and notes by Henri Benac (Paris: Gamier, 1953), pp. 219-20.
198 Stephan Larsen
And Clarence placed his lips upon the faint and yet tremendous beating
of that heart. Then the king slowly closed his arms around him, and his
great mantle swept about him, and enveloped him for ever. 75
Candide and his friends want to understand, to reason, to theorize - and are
brusquely turned away. Clarence says nothing, but silently allows the light
and the warmth to possess him - and is embraced by the arms of love for-
ever. The goals may differ—in the case of Candide a quiet life at peace
with the world, in the case of Clarence a mystic, ecstatic union with some-
thing much greater than this world—but in both cases, the goal can be at-
tained only through humility, through the abandonment of every attempt to
understand life intellectually.
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that, whatever the differences be-

tween the four works discussed may be, they do have one thing in com-
mon, which applies to most African hypertexts of European hypo texts—
there is among them no case of simple "influence" in the traditional sense.
In each case, an African author has formulated an active response to a Eu-
ropean text, developed and recast what he has borrowed, thus infusing a
new meaning into it, more often than not a meaning diametrically opposed
to the original one. Used in this manner, even hypertextuality might form
an essential part of the decolonization of the mind.
75 Laye, The Radiance of the King, pp. 283-84. The original reads: "Quand il fut dans le
grand rayonnement du roi, et tout meurtri encore par le trait de feu, mais tout vivant et
seulement vivant de ce feu, Clarence tomba ä genoux, car il lui semblait qu'il etait enfin
au bout de sa course et au terme de toute course.
Mai sans doute ne s'etait-il pas assez approche encore, sans doute etait-il trop timide
encore, car le roi lui ouvrit les bras. Et dans le temps qu'il lui ouvrit les bras, son man-
teau s'entrouvrit, son mince torse d'adolescent se decouvrit. Sur ce torse, dans la nuit de
ce torse, il y avait - au centre, mais pas tout ä fait au centre, un peu sur la droite - un
leger battement qui faisait fremir la peau. C'etait ce battement, ce leger battement!
C'etait ce feu qui brülait et cette lumiere qui rayonnait. C'etait cet amour qui devorait.
Ne savais-tu pas que j e t'attendais? dit le roi.
Et Clarence posa doucement les levres sur le loeger, sur l'immense battement. Alors le
roi referma lentement les bras, et son grand manteau enveloppa Clarence pour toujours,"
p. 252.
Bo Holmberg is Professor of Semitic Languages at Lund University, Swe-

den. His main area of research is Christian Arabic literature. He is the
author of A Treatise on the Unity and Trinity of God by Israel of Kashkar
(d. 872): Introduction, Edition and Wordindex (1989) and numerous
articles and reviews on Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew studies.
Keiko Kockumf (1936-2005), was Professor of Japanese literature at

Lund University, Sweden. Her research interests covered both Chinese and
Japanese literature, with special emphasis on the modern Japanese novel.
In addition to a thesis on the Japanese influence on the modernisation of the
Chinese novel (1990), she published ltd Sei: Self-Analysis and the Modern
Japanese Novel (1994), and articles in the journal Kokubungaku and the
Kodansha bungei bunko edition of Nihon bundanshi.
Stephan Larsen, Assistant Professor of literature at Stockholm University,

Sweden. Specialty: Post-colonial literature in general, and African in par-
ticular. PhD at Stockholm University in 1983. Title of doctoral dissertation:
A Writer and His Gods: A Study of the Importance of Yoruba Myths and
Religious Ideas to the Writing ofWole Soyinka (1983).
Per Erik Ljung is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative

Literature, University of Lund, Sweden. Research interests in literary
theory, historiography, modern poetry. He has contributed to Thomas A.
Seboek and Jean Umiker-Seboek, The semiotic Sphere (1986), Lars
Lönnroth and Sven Delblanc (eds.), Den svenska litteraturen (1989) and
Per Dahl and Torill Steinfeld (eds.), Videnskab og national opdragelse:
Studier i nordisk litteraturhistorieskrivning / - / / (2002).
Margareta Petersson is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Uni-

versity of Växjö, Sweden. Research interests are cultural encounters, his-
toriography and Indian English literature. She is the author of Indien i

svenska reseskildringar (diss., 1988), Unending Metamorphoses: Myth,
Satire and Religion in Salman Rushdie's Novels (1996), and articles on
Indian English literature.
Index
Aarseth, Asbj0rn 50 Ben-Porat, Ziva 60-66
Abdel-Nour, J. 146 Berney, Κ. A. 177
Abu Mädi, Ilyä 155 Bhabha, Homi 18,20,21
c
Abduh, Muhammad 149 al-Birüni 158
Achebe, Chinua 75-77, 82-84, 93, 94 Biti, Vladimir 32
Adam, Antoine 189 Bjornson, Richard 92
Adler, Mortimer, J. 32 Blair, Dorothy 85, 185, 188
Ahmadzadeh, Hashem 36, 37, 39 Boehmer, Elleke 6
Aldridge, A. Owen 61 Booth, James 91, 93
Allen, Roger 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 147, Brandes, George 34, 35, 55
161 Brench, A.C. 169, 187, 196
Alter, Robert 44, 62 Brennan, Timothy 21
Alvarez-Pereyre, J. 92 Brockelmann, Carl 154
Anderson, Benedict 39, 41, 46, 95 Brown, Marshall 49
Andrade, Fernando da Costa 92 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 101, 103, 106-
Andrzejewski, B. W. 87 112, 124
Anozie, S. O. 191 Bundy, Carol 169
Antonius, George 141, 142 Bunyan, John 105, 114, 146
Appadurai, Arjun 5 Burness, Donald 95
Appiah-Kubi, Kofi 180 Burnham, Michelle 21
Arac, Jonathan 15 al-Bustänl, Butrus 146, 154, 158
al-Bustänl, Khattär Salüm Nadir 156
Araujo, Norman 92
al-Bustänl, Sulaymän 23, 150, 153
Armah, Ayi Kwei 24, 82, 84
Asai, Ryöi 118
Canova, G. 163
Ashcroft, Bill 75, 81, 82, 83, 88 Cesaire, Aime 20, 68, 69, 73
Auerbach, Erich 35, 51 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 12, 46-48
Azim, Firdous 21 Charles, Michael 57
al-Azmeh, A. 153 Cleveland, William L. 141
Conrad, Flemming 54
Bachmann-Medick, Doris 27 Coulon, Virginia 169
Badawi, Μ. M. 147, 149, 165 Culler, Jonathan 32
Bakhtin, Μ. M. 21 Curtius, Ernst Robert 42
Barthes, Roland 167
Bassnett, Susan 12, 18, 20, 148 Dadie, Bernard B. 78, 166, 169, 170,
Beeston, A. F. L.152 185-191
Behl, Aditya 18 Dahl, Per 41, 43, 50, 51,54, 55
Beier, Ulli 73 Damrosch, David 35
Benac, Henri 197 Das, Sisir Kumar 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17,
Benjamin, Walter 37 18
202 Index
Deduck, Patricia Anne 170, 171, 191, Hafez, Sabry 141, 142, 145, 146, 147,
192 155
Defoe, Daniel 21, 48, 104, 105, 146 Häfiz Ibrahim, Muhammad 149
Devy, G. N. 5, 11 Haft,'Lloyd 41
diaspora 36, 39, 73 al-Hamadhänl 145
ad-DibsI, Ja c aqüb 145 Hamilton, Rüssel G. 86
Disraeli, Benjamin 103, 123 Hamori, Andras 165
Dunton, Chris 182, 183 al-Hariri 145
Dyck, Cornelius van 146 Harrow, Kenneth W. 88f., 92, 93
Hasegawa, Izumi 121, 125, 128, 134
Edfelt, Johannes 36 Haxen, Ulf 44
Emecheta, Buchi 78, 93, 96 Heinrichs, Wolfhart P. 6, 151, 162
Emmerich, Wolfgang 43 Helgesson, Stefan 24, 25, 26, 35, 86
Etherton, Michael 184 Herrlitz, Hans Georg 42
Euripides 79, 166, 168, 172-178 Hertel, Hans 4, 5
Heywood, Christopher 92
Fanon, Frantz 7, 89, 90 Hirabayashi, Hajime 127, 129
Farhät, Germanos 145 Hollier, Denis 30
Fehrman, Carl 34, 35 Holmberg, Bo 13, 18, 23, 141, 159, 170
Fischer, Georges 80 Holmes, James S. 148
Foucault, Michel 44 Hölter, Achim 40, 50
Fricke, Harald 30 Homer 38, 39, 48, 50, 114, 142-165,
Fuhrman, Martin 42 168
Fujii, James A. 19 Honma, Hisao 110
Fukuzawa, Yukichi 105, 119 Hourani, Albert 144, 148
Futabatei, Shimei 121 Hugo, Victor 48, 110, 122, 127, 129,
135
Gamer, Jörg 44 Hutcheon, Linda 34, 39, 40
Genette, Gerard 1 7 , 1 4 9 , 1 5 0 , 1 6 6 - 1 7 1 , hybrid/hybridity 20, 24, 26, 27, 82, 86,
190, 192 97, 166
Gerard, Albert S. 87, 92
Gershoni, Israel 141, 143, 144 Ibn Abi Usaybi c a 158
Gervinus, George Gottfried 34, 50, 52 Ibn al- c Ibri 158
Gibbs, James 177 Ibn Khaldün 153, 158
Giesen, Bernhard 53 Idema, Wilt 41
Gikandi, Simon 16 Ihara, Saikaku 118, 127, 128, 137
globalisation 2, 3, 5, 20, 25, 26, 32, 97 Innes, C. L. 84
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 7, 3 2 - Irele, Abiola 70, 73
3 5 , 4 4 , 5 5 , 127 Itö, Sei 102, 130, 139
Gonzälez-Ortega, Nelson 24, 82 Iwaki, Juntarö 128, 131
Goth, Maja 191
Götrick, Kacke 81 Jahn, Janheinz 71-74
Grabes, Herbert 27 Jameson, Fredric 2
Greenblatt, Stephen 3 9 , 4 0 Jankowski, James 141, 143
Griffiths, Gareth 75, 81, 82, 83, 88 Javitch, Daniel 61
Grimminger, Rolf 43 Jayyusi, Salma Khadra 145, 163
Guillory, John 40 Jibrän, Jibrän Khalll 155
Gutas, Dimitri 159 Jones, Howard Mumford 59
Index 203
Joseph, Clara Α. B. 93, 95, 96 Luthersson, Peter 45

Joshi, Priya 16 Lynch, Deidre 19, 21
Julien, Eileen 92, 102 Madsen, Peter 35
Madubuike, Ihechukwu 92
Kadare, Ismail 39 Maeda, Akira 134, 138
Kado, Reiko 140 Magic realism 24
Kafka, Franz 170, 171, 191, 192, 196 Mandal, Somdatta 1
Kaikkonen, Marja 9, 13, 16, 25 Mandelkow, Karl Robert 43
Kamei, Hideo 111 Marx, Karl 32, 33, 50
Kanagaki, Robun 119, 120 Matthews, Brander 58
Karlsson, Nils 102 McLellan, David 50
Katö, Shüichi 105, 113, 117, 134, 135 Meisami, Julie Scott 151, 153, 162
Kaviraj, Sudipta 16 Meldahl, Per 56
Keene, Donald 126 Messmer, Marietta 56-61
Killam, G. D. 77 Micallef, Roberta 25, 26
Kimura, Ki 122, 133 Miege, J.-L. 80
King, Adele 191, 192, 194 Miller, J. Scott 111
King, Bruce 91 Milton, John 103, 127, 154, 165
Kittang, Atle 56 mimicry 7, 20
Klausner, J. 64, 66 Miner, Earl 40
Knapas, Rainar 43 Mittig, Η. E. 44
Knapp, Samuel 58, 59 Miyajima, Shinzaburö 126
Miyoshi, Masao 2
Kobayashi, Hideo 140
modernisation 3, 9, 10, 11, 23, 25, 26,
Kochan, Detlef C. 42
43, 101, 108, 142
Kockum, Keiko 13, 18, 22, 23, 97, 102,
modernity 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18,
111, 112, 121, 124, 139
19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 47, 121, 147, 162
Kourouma, Ahmadou 85
Moerbeck, Jozien 41
Kristeva, Julia 167 Montesquieu, Michel de, 169, 170,
Kubota, Hikosaku 120 185-191
Kume, Masao 102, 139 Moore, Gerald 73
Kuroiwa, Ruikö 124 Moretti, Franco 14, 15, 16, 21, 33
Mori, Ögai 121, 130, 137, 138
La Bruyere, Jean de 188 Morris-Jones, W. H. 80
Lane, Edward 142, 156 Moser, Gerald, M. 92
Larsen, Stephan 18, 22, 23, 67, 166, Mukerjee, Madhusudan 1
177 Mukherjee, Meenakshi 2, 5, 15, 17, 18
Larsen, Svend Erik 55 Mund, Subhendu Kumar 13
Laye, Camara78, 166, 170, 171, 191- Murasaki, Shikibu 127
198 al-Mutanabbi 145
Liang, Qichao 13 Muträn, Khalll 149
Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla 16, 115
Lindfors, Bernth 84, 93, 179 Nagashima, Daisuke 99
Linnemann, Russell J. 92 Nair, Rukmini Bhaya 18
Ljung, Per Erik 11,15, 22, 30, 87 Nakamura, Keiu 101, 103, 105
Lord, Albert 37, 158 Nakamura, Mitsuo 110, 121
Lorentzon, Leif 24, 25, 67, 82, 84 Nasiru, Akanji 180, 181
204 Index
Natsume, Söseki 19, 130 Ramsay, Gail 18, 25, 26

negritude 7, 28, 68, 69, 73-77, 79, 84, reception 2, 19, 20, 23, 25, 28, 43, 91,
85,96 142
New, William H. 88 Retsö, Jan 157
Ngara, Emmanuel 78, 79 Rial, Jacques 92
Ngugi wa Thiong'o 83, 84 Ricard, Alain 90, 91
Nichols, G. Jr 31 Richards, Sandra L. 184
Nimr, Färis 147, 149 Ridä, Rashid 149
Niwa, Jun'ichirö 101, 106-110 Rieger, Stefan 33
Njoku, Teresa U. 179, 180 Riffaterre, Michael 167
Nu c ayma, Mikhä'Il 155 Rosenthal, Franz 161
Nygren, Christina 8, 13, 25 Rotimi, Ola 84, 166, 169, 178-185
Roy, Arundhati 1, 6
Obumselu, Ben 191, 192
Odagiri, Hideo 110, 121 Said, Edward 11,60, 141
Odagiri, Susumu 126, 129, 130 Saintsbury, George 34
Ogungbesan, Kolawole 181 Samir, Khalil 144
Okagbue, Osita 177 Sanctis, Francesco de 30, 34, 45
Okara, Gabriel 82 SarrüfYa c qüb 147, 149
Okpewho, Isidore 180 Sartre, Jean Paul 39, 192
Ola, V.U. 182, 183 Sato, Haruo 139
Ostle, R. C. 149 Satö, Köki 105
Otten, Kurt 21 Schlaffer, Heinz 63
Ouologuem, Yambo 77 Schlegel, Friedrich 50,51
Owomoyela, Oyekan 80 Schmitt, Hans-Jürgen 43
Ozaki, Köyö 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, Schönert, Jörg 30
135, 137, 138 Schopenhauer, Arthur 44
Schwarz, Henry 14
Palva, Heikki 159 Scott, Walter 103, 110, 111, 112, 121,
Pechlivanos, Miltos 33 124, 127, 154, 165
Peled, M. 151 See, Klaus von 4, 5
Perkins, David 49-53 Senghor, Leopold Sedar 68-74, 76, 79,
Petersson, Margareta 24, 82 85
Pettersson, Anders 10, 67 Senuma, Shigeki 124
Philipp, Thomas 141, 143, 146, 147 Sha, Seiki 100, 117
Pilaszewics, S. 87 ash-Shahrastänl 158
Pizer, John 32, 35 Shakely, Ferhad 36
Plagemann, V. 44 Shakespeare, William 20, 34, 48, 50,
Plumpe, Gerhard 52 55, 103, 104, 105, 112, 127
Pollock, Sheldon 2, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, Shawqi, Ahmad 149
17,27,57 Shaykhü/Cheikho Louis 147
popular culture/ literature 3, 25, 41, Shils, Edward 1 5 , 4 6 ^ 9
138f. Shimazaki, Töson 133, 134
Posnett, Hutcheson Macaulay 35 Sismondi, Simonde de 58, 59
Pratt, Mary Louise 20 Skei, Hans 56
Prendergast, Christopher 35 Smiles, Samuel 101-105
Smith, Eli 146
Quillateau, C. 186 Sofola, Zulu 180, 181
Index 205
Somekh, Sasson 149 Trivedi, Harish 12, 15, 17, 18, 20

Sophocles 169, 178-185 Tsubouchi, Shöyö 13, 101, 103, 104,
Soyinka, Wole 73, 74, 76, 79, 82, 84, 106, 110-122, 124-127, 137
166, 168, 171-178, 179 Tsuji, Tatsuya 117
Spivak, Gayatri 18 Tutuola, Amos 81, 82
Starkey, Paul 151, 153, 162 Tyloch, W. 87
Steiner, George 53
Steinfeld, Torill 42, 43, 50, 51, 54 Utas, Bo 14
Strich, Fritz 32 Uzun, Mehmed 36-40
Struck, Wolfgang 33
Sullivan, Joanna 94 Valdes, Mario J. 34, 61
Svanberg, Ingvar 43 Venuti, Lawrence 148
Vieira, Jose Luandino 86, 95
Tagore, Rabindranath 17, 28, 47, 48 Vik0r, Knut S. 159
Takada, Hanpö 120, 121 Viswanathan, Gauri 47
Takada, Sanae 110 Voltaire, Frangois Marie Arouet de 171,
Takagi, Takeo 120, 123, 124, 126, 129, 192-198
130, 131
Takizawa, Bakin 111, 112, 118, 120, Warner, William 19,21
127 Wästberg, Per 76
Taqlä, Bishära 147 Weitz, Michael 33
Taqlä, Salim 147 Wellek, Rene 31, 45, 51, 57
Tayama, Katai 101, 132-138, 140 Wisse, Ruth R. 63
Tayib, AbdullaEl 152 world literature 6, 32, 33, 35, 60
Tenba, Momota 125 Wylie, Hal 92
Thunman, Noriko 102
Tieghem, Paul Van 31 Yanagida, Izumi 104, 106, 110, 120
Tiffin, Helen 75, 81, 82, 83, 88 al-Yäziji, Ibrahim 141, 149
Tokutomi, Roka 101, 129, 130, 131, al-Yäzijl, Näsif 145, 154
132 Young, Robert J. C. 5, 10
Tokutomi, Sohö 126, 127, 128, 129,
131 Zaghlül, Sa c d 148
Torell, Örjan 41 Zaydän, Jurji 147, 149, 152, 156
Torres, Sergio 180 Zell, Hans Μ. 169
Touraine, Alain 3 Zola, Emile 126, 128, 134, 135, 136
Volume 4
W
Literary History:
Edited by
Editorial Board
Margareta Petersson · Anders Pettersson · Bo Utas
Volume 4
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · N e w York

Literary Interactions
in the Modern World 2
Edited by
Stefan Helgesson

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Contents
VOLUME 4 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE MODERN W O R L D 2
Leif Lorentzon
Nelson Gonzdlez-Ortega
Margareta Petersson
Stefan Helgesson
Marja Kaikkonen
Communist Party 157
Christina Nygren
Gail Ramsay
Roberta Micallef
Stefan Helgesson
Index 324
VI Contents
VOLUME 1: NOTIONS OF LITERATURE ACROSS TIMES AND CULTURES

Anders Pettersson
Literary History 1
Marja Kaikkonen
"Literature" 70
Gunilla Gren-Eklund
Bo Holmberg
Leif Lorentzon
Tord Olsson
Index 293
Contents VII
Noriko Thunman
Lena Rydholm
Christina Nygren
Kerstin Eksell
Bo Utas
Lennart Ryden t
Anders Pettersson
of Genre 279
Index 309
VIII Contents
Margareta Petersson
Per Erik Ljung

Stephan Larsen
Keiko Kockum f
Bo Holmberg
Stephan Larsen
Index 201
L E I F LORENTZON
Something Very Light, Perhaps a Little Educative

Negotiations of Cultural Hierarchies in the Ghanaian Novel
in English between Nkrumah and Armah
1. Introduction
"Not a single novel appeared in the course of the fourteen years that
Kwame Nkrumah was in power," one critic wrote in 1972.1 Other critics
have largely agreed. In 1968 Ayi Kwei Armah published his first novel,
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, and Ghanaian literature had, accord-
ing to Janheinz Jahn "gained a major place not only in modern African lit-
erature, but indeed in world literature." 2
This article is primarily interested in the seven novels in English that ap-
peared immediately after Nkrumah's downfall in February 1966, and be-
fore the emergence of Armah's first novel in 1968. They form a neat body
of texts for an investigation such as this. After the literary silence during
Nkrumah they appeared on the market rather quickly, and precede the in-
ternationally more successful prose by Armah, Kofi Awoonor and Ama
Ata Aidoo, writers who have received much critical attention, whereas the
seven novels have barely been studied at all. The first actually appeared in
1965 and the last in the year of Armah's debut. I have chosen these as they
represent all the "serious" novel writing in Ghana at the time. Next to these
novels there was, however, a rather significant output of popular novels by
some very productive writers and entrepreneurs for the local market. This
literature I will first touch upon, while the latter part of the essay will bring
it more into focus.
1 Janheinz Jahn, "Ghana's Written Literature," in A. W. Kayper-Mensah and Horst Wolff

(eds.), Ghanaian Writing (Tübingen: Horst Erdmann Verlag, 1972), p. 236.
2 Ibid., p. 240.
2 Leif Lorentzon
Initially I will discuss the Ghanaian setting against which these novels ap-
peared in the late 1960s: the political, social and cultural contexts. Here I
shall also record some biographical information available on my five writers.
The bulk of the essay will deal with the seven novels. While these
novels are specific to Ghana at the time, I believe that they also are repre-
sentative of a certain type of literary production found at various times and
places in Africa at the dawn of modern post-Second World War African
literature. The latter part of the essay will look at Asare Konadu's novels in
the sixties. He was a prolific writer and publisher, who had two novels
published in the UK and several more locally in Ghana. The purpose is to
investigate whether the literary encounter is different in the local novels
compared with the UK novels and whether Konadu's treatment of certain
themes is different when he writes for a foreign Western audience com-
pared with when writing for local readers. I believe this is so.
The objective of this essay is through a discussion of some lesser-
known novels, to point to local deviations, to a homegrown hybridity in the
earlier Ghanaian novel in English between Nkrumah and Armah. It should
not surprise any reader that the arena of this literary encounter, or the "con-
tact zone" as Mary Louise Pratt has labeled the space of the colonial en-
counter, is the novel. 3 It is perhaps the first truly global genre, a genre that
emerged during colonial expansion and is today used by the former colo-
nies for local purposes, as will be illustrated below. 4
2. The Ghanaian Textworld in Brief
During Kwame Nkrumah's reign, from 1952, when he became Prime Min-
ister in the not yet independent Gold Coast (independence was gained on 6
March 1957) to the coup d'etat on 24 February 1966, not much literature
was published in Ghana. There are several reasons for this literary silence.
However, before I discuss this, I will elaborate on the literary scene in
Ghana before the second half of the twentieth century, in order to give a
background against which the emergence of the earlier Ghanaian novel in
English may be understood.
Ghana is dominated by the Akan people, who speak dialects of Twi,
which is one of the vehicular languages of West Africa. The dialects vary,
3 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes (London: Routledge, 1976), p. 53.

4 Cf. Stefan Helgesson's discussion of this in the Afterword of the present volume.
Something Very Light, Perhaps a Little Educative 3
but do not obstruct mutual communication. Its literature is predominantly

oral, consisting of poetry, drama and prose, but there are no clear distinc-
tions between them. It is the poetry which is the richest genre and the fu-
neral dirges are particularly famous and have been studied extensively. 5 In
Akan society there are also hunters' guilds with their own rituals and poet-
ry which is declaimed during ceremonies. The Akan also has warrior asso-
ciations with their own oral and drum poetry. 6
The Methodist church had an important impact on oral poetry, which de-
veloped new forms patterned on traditional Fanti lyrics. This Methodist
poetry represents a living tradition which was "also beginning to find its
way into occupational associations and even has an influence on the poetry
broadcast by Ghana radio." 7
In oral prose it is legend and myth that dominate among the longer nar-
ratives, while the proverb is the most common shorter prose form. 8 In her
survey of Akan oral literature Nina Pawlak ends by mentioning the differ-
ent styles of speech acknowledged by the Akan. There is the royal style,
the polite style, the feminine style and the most highly valued style
"mpanin kasa," used by elders and in public by the spokesmen of the rulers
of Akan. 9 All these point to the highly developed political and social sys-
tem of the Akan.
The earliest written literature consisted of translations of religious texts.
As in so many other West African communities, it was missionaries, not-
ably Swiss and German Evangelists in Eastern Ghana who first standard-
ised vernacular languages and gave them a written Latin alphabet. In 1746
the Lord's Prayer, the catechism and the Ten Commandments, were trans-
5 See J. Η. K. Nketia's celebrated studies Funeral Dirges of the Akan Peoples (Achimota:
Ghana UP, 1955), and Drumming in Akan Communities of Ghana (Edinburgh: Thomas
Nelson, 1963).
6 See Tord Olsson's article "Experiences of West African Orature," in Volume 1, for an
enlightening account of hunter's orature among the Mande people in Mali.
7 Nina Pawlak, "Akan Folk Literature and the Beginnings of writing in Twi," in B. W.
Andrzejewski, S. Pilaszewicz and W. Tyloch (eds.), Literatures in African Languages
(Warsawa: Wieda Powszechna, 1985), p. 138. Cf. Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Af-
rica (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970), pp. 185-187.
8 Lawrence Boadi has in a study shown how "in Akan society the primary function of
proverbs is aesthetic or poetic and not didactic," while the reverse is often the case in Af-
rica. L. A. Boadi, "The Language of the Proverb in Akan," in Richard M. Dorson (ed.),
African Folklore (New York: Anchor Books, 1979), p. 183. Cf. Kwesi Yankah, "Proverb
Speaking as a Creative Process: The Akan of Ghana," Proverbium, 3, pp. 195-230.
9 Pawlak, p. 147. She refers in turn to J. Η. K. Nketia, "The Linguistic Aspect of Style in
African Languages," in Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 7 (The Hague & Paris: Mou-
ton, 1971), pp. 733-35.
4 Leif Lorentzon
lated into Fanti. In Twi the whole Bible appeared in 1871, translated by J.
G. Christaller, a missionary at the Swiss missionary station outside Accra,
who also wrote the first Twi grammar in 1875, and the first standard
Twi-English dictionary, as well as twenty- eight books in Twi himself. 10
Most literature in Twi was devotional, highly didactic and also influenced
by oral literature. There is also poetry in Fanti and Ewe, both coastal Akan
dialects. This written literature in Akan dialects is dominated by poetry,
with some drama, but "Ghana could boast no vernacular novelist of its own
until the 1960s." 11 There are however, some secular translations into Akan,
in addition to the religious texts, and they are the expected ones, notably
some Shakespeare, such as The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar, and
Gulliver's Travels.12
Although vernacular prose existed, many prose writers came to use Eng-
lish. 13 English was introduced by the mission schools, the first of which
was set up at the fort of Cape Coast in 1766. Here the Wesleyan education-
al system with a heavy emphasis on English in its curriculum was intro-
duced by the Methodist missionaries in 1835. But as most commentators
note, there was little imaginative writing in English before the 1940s. In-
stead the bulk of English writing in the Gold Coast until the Second World
War was devotional and didactic. In the middle of the 1940s, however, an
adventure and romance pulp literature emerged. Discussing the Onitsha lit-
erature in neighbouring Nigeria, Emmanuel Obiechina provides the fol-
lowing reasons for the rise of a national, local popular pamphlet literature:
"the post-war growth of the number of literate people, the growth of the ur-
ban population, the spread of locally owned operated printing presses, and
10 O. R. Dathorne, African Literature in the Twentieth Century (London: Heinemann,

1976), p. 15, and Henry Swanzy, "A Note of History," Voices of Ghana (Accra: Ministry
of Information and Broadcasting, 1958), p. 11.
11 Stephanie Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana (Bloomington & Indianapolis: In-
diana UP, 2002), p. 65.
12 Compare with Keiko Kockum's article in Volume 3:1, particularly her second chapter,
where she discusses the translated literature in Japan in the nineteenth century; see also
in that volume Bo Holmberg's article on Arabic encounters with Western literature, and
the translation of the Iliad into Arabic.
13 Even if they had little or no effect on later prose in Ghana, two works in English from the
Gold Coast must be mentioned: E. Casely-Hayford's Ethiopia Unbound (1911) and R. E.
Obeng's Eighteenpence (1943). They are often cited as the first West African novels, al-
though having very little to do with the later emergence of the modern African novel,
even in Ghana. Recently, however, Stephanie Newell has unearthed a narrative, Marita:
or the Folly of Love, a novel by A. Native (Leiden: Brill, 2002), which was serialised in
the Gold Coast newspaper, Western Echo, in 1886-1888, and is now considered the first
West African novel in English.
the diversion of much post-war energy and wealth into commercial, indus-
trial and technological development." 14 These factors apply equally well to
Ghana, where the pamphlet literature appeared in the early 1940s, while
the more famous and copious Onitsha literature began in the late 1940s. 15
The fact that this happened earlier in Ghana had to do with "the intensive
economic development of that country during the first half of the century.
[...] Financial prosperity fostered the growth of local educational institu-
tions like the Methodist school at Mfantsipim or the Government College
founded in 1927 at Achimota." 16
In her most recent book Stephanie Newell has shown what a solid read-
ing culture Ghana possessed, when she examines some private book col-
lections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This, to-
gether with the rapid growth of the press, indicates that there was no lack
of reading matter in the Gold Coast during colonial times. The first news-
papers appeared in the early nineteenth century, and later that century the
first literary and reading clubs emerged, the first in 1873. This was begun
by the politically active elite. Soon the "semi-educated," dismissed so far
by the elite, also started their own clubs. The English language was of
paramount importance for this development. It was indeed absolutely es-
sential to master English in order to advance; English literacy was a sign of
social status and even "the prerequisite for full membership of many Prot-
estant churches." 17
The groundwork had thus been done when the pamphlet literature, an
urban phenomenon, appeared with Benibengor Blay, whom Richard Priebe
has called "the father of popular writing in Ghana." 18 In 1940 Blay pub-
lished his first book, and twenty-seven more would follow, chiefly from
his own publishing house. This was a one-man operation (writer, publisher
and distributor), a process other writers later would follow, notably Asare
Konadu. Priebe has found that there was little attempt here at creating any
14 Emmanuel Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge UP, 1975), p. 12.
15 Onitsha was the largest market town in West Africa where in the latel940s and 1950s a
large, cheaply written and printed pamphlet literature arose. For a study of this popular
literature see Emmanuel Obiechina, An African Popular Literature (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1973).
16 George Lang, "Ghana and Nigeria," in Albert S. Gerard (ed.), European-Language Writ-
ing in Sub-SaharanAfrica, Vol 1 (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986), p. 111.
17 Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, p. 83. For her discussion of the literary
clubs see the first chapter, pp. 27-52.
18 Richard Priebe, "The Novel," in European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa,
Vol 2, p. 833.
6 Leif Lorentzon
suspense, instead lessons are to be learnt from events, in the shape of a

Victorian-style romance. 19 This didactic vein in Ghanaian prose derives
from the early fiction that was produced at the mission presses in the early
twentieth century. Everything they published was utilitarian. Readers in
the whole of West Africa "learned to expect to acquire moral and spiritual
knowledge from printed texts." 20
There is however a difference from English Victorian fiction where it is
most often the man who represents danger and corruption. In Ghanaian
popular fiction, as well as in Onitsha, it is the woman, the good-time girl,
"the sexually self-determined woman who moves freely around the city." 21
She is almost always the cause of the disaster at the end of the story, while
the man is "the powerless victim of her extravagance, greed, duplicity or
unfaithfulness. Invariably, too, it is the man's wealth or status that attracts
her into any relationship." 22 A telling title is Ε. K. Mickson's Woman is
Poison from as late as 1968, which shows that this popular literature sur-
vived at least until Armah's debut. Mickson's novel ends with this telling
statement: "Truly, woman is poison. And the moment you begin to move
with a woman, you must know you are moving with poison." 23 This re-
flects the masculinity of the reading culture in colonial Ghana. The literary
clubs were chiefly male-dominated, as was the Christian literacy that the
mission schools provided. So Blay and Mickson and other pamphlet writ-
ers reflect "the ongoing, active construction of a masculine gender ideolo-
gy by the country's literary classes." 24 We shall find some of this mascu-
line ideology when we look at Asare Konadu's popular fiction below.
Apart from this popular literature, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation
had begun operating and after Nkrumah became Prime Minister in 1952,
the radio began promoting broadcasts of literary works. This resulted in an
English language anthology in 1958, Voices of Ghana. Much of the mate-
rial was first composed in Akan dialects, and simply translated into Eng-
lish. Even if at least one commentator finds it "an indifferent collection," it
19 Richard Priebe, "Popular Writing in Ghana," Research in African Literatures 9:3 (1978),
pp. 397, 403.
20 Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, p. 85, cf. also pp. 90-91.
21 Stephanie Newell, "Introduction," in Readings in African Popular Fiction, ed., Stepha-
nie Newell (London: International African Institute, Oxford: James Currey and Bloom-
ington: Indiana UP, 2002), p. 6.
22 Ime Ikiddeh, "The Character of Popular Fiction in Ghana," in Christopher Heywood
(ed.), Perspectives on African Literature (London: Heinemann, 1971), p. 109.
23 Ibid.
24 Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, p. 61.
is an important literary document. 25 Two of the five novelists this essay

will study at some length, Cameron Duodu and Amu Djoleto, are also rep-
resented in the anthology. 26
In 1959 Ghana's first literary journal, Okyeame (spokesman of the
King), mouthpiece for the Ghana Society of Writers was launched. There
was also a Writers' Workshop where members received criticism of their
writings. This was chiefly the project of Efua Sutherland, who also started
the Ghana Drama Studio in 1961. Several plays, by Sutherland herself and
others, were first produced here by the studio's players before they were
published. 27 In Okyeame many young writers were first published, for in-
stance Ayi Kwei Armah. Some of the poetic material of this journal later
found its way into the second important Ghanaian literary anthology, Mes-
sages: Poems from Ghana in 1971.
However, as already has been indicated, a picture of the literary scene of
the Gold Coast and Ghana would be incomplete without mentioning jour-
nalism. There is a long, well established history of serious journalism in
colonial Ghana: the first newspaper is said to have appeared in the Gold
Coast on 2 April 1822: The Royal Gold Coast Gazette and Commercial In-
telligencer. It was not an official publication of the colonial administration,
rather the opposite in fact. This is apparently true of all the newspapers up
until the 1930s: "They all had this striking feature—they were political in
outlook, and critical of the colonial government." 28 This indicates that
there existed an indigenous intelligentsia in the Gold Coast at least since
the middle of the nineteenth century, as Newell has also shown. Here the
local newspapers played a central role in the political and literary culture of
the Gold Coast: "For the African elite, the newspaper became the primary
vehicle for the expression of political and personal dismay." 29 They were
however rarely interested in producing imaginative literature. Okyeame un-
successfully launched a competition for a novel in 1961, according to one
critic.30 This is rather surprising, considering the pamphlet literature that
25 Κ. E. Senanu, "Creative Writing in Ghana," in Kayper-Mensah and Wolff, p. 14.

26 Henry Swanzy (ed.), Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcast-
ing System, 1955-1957, (Accra: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1958), pp.
136, 200.
27 Stephanie Newell has shown how there was a significant production of vernacular drama
in the early twentieth century, many years before vernacular prose appeared. Nothing of
this was however published. Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, pp. 75-76.
28 Charles Angmor, Contemporary Literature in Ghana 1911-1978 (Accra: Woeli Publish-
ing Services, 1996), p. 15.
29 Newell, "Introduction," in Marita, p. 22.
30 Jahn, p. 235.
8 Leif Lorentzon
had flourished since the 1940s. But as Obiechina writes: "In the 1940s,
while popular authors were producing the pamphlet literature, the new elite
was almost wholly absorbed in nationalist politics."31 Quite often this was
done in the field of journalism, and many journalists went on to become
prominent political figures, involved in "the massive literacy and adult
education program initiated by Nkrumah." 32
With independence both journalism and literature were disadvantaged in
Ghana. Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party (CPP) were not keen
on criticism and political dissent, and critical journalism and serious litera-
ture were therefore not encouraged. In 1960 Nkrumah shut down the local
edition of Drum magazine—the Ghanaian edition of the famous South Af-
rican periodical.33 In 1961 he also "introduced a law under which anyone
found guilty of insulting Nkrumah faced a three-year prison term."34 The
Ghana Publishing Corporation was forced by financial and political cir-
cumstances to publish mainly government material.
Several industrious one-man publishing and printing businesses existed,
after the example of Benibengor Blay, or would soon appear. The margins
were too small for any writer-publisher to publish anything but his own
writing—this way at least the manuscript was free. 35 Several such writer-
publishers in Ghana at the time were extremely successful in printing their
editions of up to 10 000 copies of different books. Asare Konadu, for one,
became a millionaire.
Critics have all commented upon the belated development of "elite" lit-
erature in Ghana compared to Nigeria, while the picture is different if local
literature also is considered, as we have discussed. Yet there were also
relatively few local titles published during the Nkrumah era. Instead
"Nkrumah's fall created political and economic conditions in which the
novel could develop."36 The period in between Nkrumah's fall in 1966 and
an economic inflation in 1971 is described by Richard Priebe as something
31 Obiechina, Culture, Tradition, and Society, p. 14.

32 Priebe, "The Novel," p. 828.
33 A legendary South African monthly magazine founded in 1951, aimed at the black urban
population. It featured short stories, and writers such as Bloke Modisane, and Lewis
Nkosi were first published here; Ezekiel Mphahlele worked as fiction editor and Peter
Abrahams' novels Wild Conquest and Tell Freedom were serialised in Drum in the
1950s. For information regarding the closing of the Ghanaian Drum, see ibid., p. 828.
34 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New
York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), p. 1441.
35 See Priebe for an explication of the publishing situation in Ghana in the late 1960s.
Priebe, "Popular Writing in Ghana," pp. 401ff.
of a "literary renaissance": 37 a period when the seven novels soon to be

considered were published in, as well as the popular ones by Asare Kona-
du.
Before going further a few words on the term "popular." When I use the
term "popular literature" it is here synonymous with local literature written
for a domestic readership. It is popular in that it is in demand by local read-
ers, and distinguished by an urge to comply with prevalent values, and the
utilitarian expectations of West African readers. This is therefore not a dis-
tinction between high and low literature, or between good and bad litera-
ture. As I will show in the last part of this article, popular literature in
Ghana is often more exciting reading than the "elite" literature written for
foreign readers. 38
3. Five Novelists in English between Nkrumah and Armah
In 1965 the first of the seven novels I shall consider here appeared: Joseph
Abruquah's The Catechist. In 1966 came Asare Konadu's Come Back
Dora (later Ordained by the Oracle) and Francis Selormey's The Narrow
Path. The following year Konadu's A Woman in her Prime, Cameron Duo-
du's The Gab Boys and Amu Djoleto's The Strange Man were published,
and in 1968 Abruquah's The Torrent. With Armah's first novels that same
year, Ama Ata Aidoo's short stories and Kofi Awoonor's novel This Earth,
My Brother from 1971, Ghanaian literature entered the arena of world lit-
erature, to paraphrase Janheinz Jahn. 39 This took place more than ten years
after Nigerian writers Amos Tutuola (The Palm-Wine Drinkard in 1952),
and Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart in 1958), had had their first novels
published. The dawn of modern African literature in the French colonies
had occurred already in the 1940s; Ghana's modern literature was slow in
developing, compared to other parts of West Africa.
As none of the writers of these seven novels are very distinguished as
authors, with some of their novels often even forgotten and long out of
print, little is written of them and it is difficult to find information. One is
37 Priebe, "Popular Writing in Ghana", p. 408.

38 That things are different elsewhere in other cultures is apparent in Marja Kaikkonen's ar-
ticle in this volume, "The Detective in the Service of the Emperor, the Republic and the
Communist Party." Here a language barrier chiefly distinguished between serious and
popular literature.
39 See note 2 above.
10 Leif Lorentzon
chiefly referred to bibliographies, general works of reference on African

literature, and the back covers of the novels themselves. 40 1 shall briefly re-
count what little information I have found.
Joseph Abruquah was born in 1921 and educated at Wesley College in
Kumasi, Ghana, before going to Britain where he received his BA and
Teachers' Certificate in London. He then returned to Ghana in 1949 and
became a teacher and headmaster at Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast. In
1970 he was refused further employment by the new military government
under Dr Busia and travelled to the US, where he lectured on African lit-
erature in Iowa. This is the last my sources have heard of him.
Much more is known of Asare Konadu (1932-94), as he is the most
prominent public figure of the six authors I consider, largely due to his pro-
lific publishing. When in 1966, after Nkrumah's fall, he set up his own
publishing house, Anowuo Educational Service, he had already had two
minor popular novelettes published. Now he became a prosperous busi-
nessman, as well as a writer. According to Richard Priebe, this was largely
thanks to a government contract "to print 534,000 copies of a booklet that
was distributed to every Ghanaian schoolboy." 41 But his novels have also
had tremendous success, some selling more than 50,000 copies each. From
the early 1970s he was also involved in other businesses such as textiles,
real estate, distribution of foreign books and he apparently also had a saw-
mill and a dance band. He is a self-taught businessman, since he trained as
a journalist. After local school in central Ghana, he attended Abuakwa
State College, before joining the Ghana Information Service as a reporter
in 1951. Five years later he studied journalism in London and Strasbourg
on a fellowship. Back home he joined the Ghana News Agency, then
worked for British Petroleum until 1966, when he returned to writing and
publishing.
Francis Selormey has had a different professional life. Born in 1927 and
educated in his hometown, Keta, he then went on to a Catholic primary
school and later St Augustine's College in Cape Coast. He studied physical
education at the University of Ghana, as well as in Germany. He has taught
40 The bibliographies I have used are: Donald E. Herdeck (ed.), African Authors, Vol 1,
1300-1972 (Washington, D. C.: Black Orpheus Press, 1973), and Janheinz Jahn, Ulla
Schild and Almut Nordmann (eds.), Who's Who in African Literature (Tübingen: Horst
Erdmann, 1972). There are others, but the writers I consider here do not figure in them.
41 Priebe, "Popular Writing in Ghana", p. 406. And it continues: "The booklet was
Courtesy for Boys and Girls, a booklet Konadu had adapted for use in Ghana from one
written in Ireland by a priest."
at several schools in Ghana and was Senior Sports Organizer for the Cen-
tral Region of Ghana from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 he resigned to become a
scriptwriter for the Ghana Film Industry Corporation. Two scripts are men-
tioned in the handbooks. 42 But he apparently left the film industry and was
appointed by the government as Director of Sports for the Sports Council
of Ghana. The back cover of his only novel mentions that "he is married
with six children." 43 And the later edition of 1990 also reveals that "Francis
Selormey died in 1983 having spent the last years of his life in farming." 44
Of the five writers I consider, Cameron Duodo (born in 1937) is the
most self-taught. After elementary school in Kibi he continued his educa-
tion privately. At nineteen he went to Accra and joined the Ghana Broad-
casting Corporation as a news editor, and from 1960 he was the editor of
Drum magazine. 45 Five years later he lost his fervour for Nkrumah and
went to London in exile, where he began his novel. In 1970 he was back in
Ghana again and became chief editor for the largest daily newspaper, The
Daily Graphic. But this also ended in exile, after he wrote an editorial criti-
cising the then president, Dr Busia. Since then, and with a new govern-
ment, he has returned to Ghana and worked as a freelance journalist for
London-based newspapers, such as The Observer and The Financial
Times. Mostly interested in financial journalism, he has however, also
written radio plays, short stories and poetry, apart from his one novel.
Amo Djoleto was born in a small village in 1929. Djoleto, part Ga, part
Ewe, grew up in a Christian environment, as his father was a Presbyterian
minister and teacher, and his mother a daughter to a Christian chief. So his
first steps were taken on a school compound. He later became involved
with education as an adult. After the Accra Academy and St Augustine
College, he read English at the University of Ghana, and then went to the
University of London for a course on textbook production. Back in Ghana
in 1967 he became the editor for The Ghana Teachers' Journal. The same
year he apparently also moved into politics, with responsibility for the
42 "Towards a United Africa" and "The Great Lake," D. Killam and R. Rowe (eds.), The
Companion to African Literatures (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), p. 260.
43 Francis Selormey, The Narrow Path (Oxford: Heinemann: 1967 [1966]), the back cover.
44 Ibid. (1990), p. i. Another source claims he died in 1988: The Companion to African Lit-
eratures, p. 260.
45 This contradicts my statement above that Nkrumah shut down Drum in 1960, a notion
that I have from Richard Priebe, "The Novel," p. 828; and "Popular Writing in Ghana":
409. According to Priebe, however, Nkrumah objected to Drum's then editor, Henry
Ofori, a Ghanaian journalist who had published some material Nkrumah resented. Since
Duodo is mentioned as the editor from 1960 to 1965 by both my bibliographies and the
back cover of the novel, perhaps Nkrumah only changed editor in 1960?
12 Leif Lorentzon
Ministry of Education's developing publishing programme. When my

sources last heard of him, he was the Principal Education Officer in charge
of the Information, Public Relations and Publications Schedule of the same
Ministry. He has also published one more novel, Money Galore (1975),
which is a bitter satire on corrupt political life in Ghana, co-edited a prose
anthology, West African Prose, and published a collection of poetry.
From these sparse biographical details it is still possible to draw some
conclusions. The five authors are all male. Even if this is quite apparent, it
needs to be emphasised, as it has a bearing on their texts; the female writ-
ers in Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, made their debut much later—at least
as novelists. However Efua Sutherland was already a prominent literary
figure in the late 1950s. Her first published plays are from the early 1960s.
And Ama Ata Aidoo had published her first drama in 1965 (The Dilemma
of a Ghost), while her first prose appeared in 1970, and her first novel in
1977 (Our Sister Killjoy). So there were women writers in Ghana at the
time—at least two. Yet there were so many more male writers, particularly
in the pamphlet industry, as a consequence of the masculine literary ideol-
ogy mentioned above.
The seven novels are all written in English. With one exception, they
were all published in Britain; only Come Back Dora was first printed local-
ly by Konadu's own newly-established publishing house. It is of course the
only novel that found a large domestic audience, thanks to a price that
made it affordable to a mass market. Few Ghanaians could afford an inter-
nationally published novel—and still cannot.
Unlike the next generation of Ghanaian writers, these five were generally
not so educated. Duodo evidently had no formal education at all. Djoleto
took one course in London, and of Selormey we know he studied in Germa-
ny. Both went to the University of Ghana, at Legon. Only Konadu and Abru-
quah studied extensively abroad. Apart from Abruqah, perhaps, none of
these writers would really be judged academics or scholars, as Ayi Kwei Ar-
mah, Ama Ata Aidoo and Kofi Awoonor certainly are, all three having stu-
died and taught at universities in many countries in both the West and Africa.
Two professions that are quite academically related nevertheless pre-
dominate among the six authors: journalism and teaching/education. Abru-
quah is however the only teacher amongst them, although Djoleto did work
in education, if primarily in publishing and as a politician, and Selormey
taught physical education before becoming responsible for sport on a na-
tional scale. Doudo was a journalist and Konadu too, apart from his other
enterprises.
None of them could make a living from their writing. Indeed the only
one who may be considered an author is Konadu, due to his larger produc-
tion. The others have only one or two works to their names. As profession-
als they are teachers, journalists, publishers, and government officials, be-
fore they are authors.
4. Seven Novels in English between Nkrumah and Armah
The novel is today, at least in quantity, the dominant literary genre al-
most everywhere. This dominance is partly due to the novel's hetero-
glossic character, according to Bakhtin. He writes that "the novel as a
whole is a phenomenon multiform in style and variform in speech and
voice. [...] The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech
types." 46 Such a heteroglossic, many-voiced genre is able to adapt to var-
ious cultures, which is a fundamental reason why it has been so success-
ful all over the world. 47
In Africa it is "the only literary art form that has been totally imported,"
as one African critic once wrote. 48 When African writers use this imported
genre and turn it into an African novel, we have a hybrid form almost in
the early biological understanding of the term hybrid, particularly if it is
written in English. Later we shall discuss the nature of this hybridity in the
seven novels, but for now it is sufficient to acknowledge the double ances-
try of the modern African novel.
There has however long been a discussion about the nature of this ances-
try. Some critics point to the longer oral narrative in Africa, but also to the
ancient Egyptian texts such as "The Story of Sinuhe," thus claiming that
there was a novel tradition in Africa before the colonial educational system
introduced the European novel. 49 However, as the modern novel came to
develop in Africa, there has, until recently, 50 been little evidence of this an-
46 Μ. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist
(Austin & London: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 261-262.
47 Cf. Margareta Petersson's Introduction to Volume 3:1, and Keiko Kockum's article on
the formation of the novel in Japan, also in volume 3:1.
48 Dathorne, p. 53.
49 See Harold Scheub, "Review of African Oral Traditions and Literature," The African
Studies Review, 28: 2/3 (1985), pp. 1-72, for the inclusion of Ancient Egyptian texts in
the corpus of the novel.
50 I am here thinking of Ayi Kwei Armah's two most recent "Egyptian" novels: Osiris Ris-
ing (1995) and KMT: The House of Life (2002).
14 Leif Lorentzon
cient Egyptian tradition, while quite a lot points to the bourgeois novel of
Europe. The oral tradition in Africa is on the other hand present in many
novels. Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian writer and critic, claims that the Eng-
lish novel in Africa is made up of three main units: "the form of oral narra-
tives, the conventional form of the European novel, and the language and
literary tradition of the foreign language in use." 51
We see here that it is the orality in a novel that represents Africanness,
something many critics have alluded to. It has become an exegetic quest
for continuity of an African origin, a quest for African authenticity, and as
such a rather risky business. In the two introductory chapters of her study
of the African novel, Eileen Julien perceptively addresses this question.
She takes Mohamadou Kane's prominent studies as a starting point. Kane
argues that even if the novel is a European import, this is not enough;
critics must also appreciate the other artistic lineage, the oral tradition: "the
originality of the African novel must be found more specifically in its rela-
tionship to forms of oral literature." 52 Julien is critical of Kane's perspec-
tive of viewing the oral tradition through the lens of the novel. She instead
wants to juxtapose the oral tale to the written novel, while she appears to
agree with most that "the novel as discourse was imported to Africa, while
the story of course has been present for thousands of years," as I have com-
mented elsewhere using narratology's cardinal dichotomy. 53 Before com-
mencing her analyses of African novels, Julien concludes:
Oral elements may well be a vestige of oral narrative traditions and will
therefore be experienced as aesthetically African, but a work that does not
contain, or that transforms, such elements is not necessarily less African. To
fail to make use of oral traditions is not to forgo Africanness. [...] refer-
ences to oral speech, oral genres, and oral performance in African novels,
whether they be explicit or implicit, are neither necessary nor generic, but
are rather arbitrary and specific. 54
51 Kole Omotoso, The Form of the African Novel (Lagos: McQuick Publishers, 1986), p. vi.
Even Chinweizu, otherwise reluctant to own up to anything Western, agrees that "the Af-
rican novel is a hybrid out of the African oral tradition and the imported literary forms of
Europe." Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Ihechukwu Madubuike, Toward the De-
colonization of African Literature (Washington, D. C.: Howard UP, 1983), p. 8.
52 Mohamadou Kane, "Sur les formes traditionnelles du roman africain," Revue de litera-
ture comparee, 48 (1974), p. 537. Translated by and quoted from Eileen Julien, African
Novels and the Question of Orality (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP), p. 5.
53 Leif Lorentzon, "Story and Narrative in the Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah," African Litera-
ture Today, 19 (1994), p. 54.
54 Julien, pp. 40-41.
Julien's discussion is important for at least two reasons: while acknowl-

edging the double ancestry of the modern African novel, it also reminds us
that Africanness does not necessarily mean orality. This should be borne in
mind in the following analyses of the seven novels, where there is com-
paratively little orality.
There is however also the matter of language. Omotoso stresses that of
the three main units of the African novel, one is the language. Ever since
the dawn of modern African literature in the colonial languages the lan-
guage question has been the most controversial issue among African critics
and authors. While Omotoso claims "that these European languages are to-
day the nation-building languages of the nations-states on the continent
[and that] English is owned by whoever speaks her," and therefore African
literature can be written in English, others disagree. 55 It is today the Ken-
yan novelist NgügT wa Thiong'o in particular who most fervently refuses
to view African literature written in English as African: "African literature
can only be written in African languages, that is, the languages of the Afri-
can peasantry and working class." 56 Here NgügT is caught in that binary
paradigm that has dominated research into African literatures: it was either
traditional, oral literature, or elite, modern literature that was studied. 57
When NgügT claims that African literature can only be written in the
vernacular, he forgets the popular literature that reaches the majority of
people in contemporary Africa, a literature that most often is in Western
languages, but certainly considered African by its writers and readers.
When discussing language in West African novels in English, Obiechina

points to the fact that Ghana, together with Sierra Leone, was more west-
ernised than the rest of the region. Its writers belonged to a middle class he
calls Black Victorians. 58 It is not surprising if we find fewer traces in their
novels of indigenous languages and pidgin English. The latter is usually
found in West African novels with an urban setting, while the former is
predominantly found in rural ones.
Of the seven novels considered here it is only Cameron Duodu's The
Gab Boys that is set in an urban environment. The narrator, Kwasi, finds
55 Omotoso, pp. 16, 19.

56 Ngügi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind (London: James Currey, 1986), p. 27.
57 See Karin Barber's discussion of this in the introduction to Karin Barber (ed.), Readings
in African Popular Culture (London: International African Institute, Oxford: James Cur-
rey and Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997), pp. 1-12.
58 Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society, pp. 190-191, cf. Newell, Literary Culture in
Colonial Ghana, Chapters 1-4.
16 Leif Lorentzon
himself in court as the novel opens. He is one of the Gab Boys—so called
as they all wear gabardine trousers—in a small town. The Gab Boys is a
gang of young men in their late teens who have discovered that their school
training is of no use, and they have no money for the higher education that
would help them. So they become a rather obnoxious group, making life
difficult for the rest of the town. Finally the old men have had enough and
manage to catch Kwasi and hand him a prison sentence. He escapes and
runs away to Accra and his girlfriend, B. She has rich friends and manages
to help Kwasi with a job and evening classes. At the end Kwasi returns to
his hometown, when one of the Gab Boys dies.
This is a novel where we would expect pidgin, and there is some, but not
really in the urban setting. Instead Duodu uses it to ridicule the police who
catch Kwasi at the beginning of the novel:
They simply said: "Master say, me plus you, come. You go go, or you no go
go?" With that, if you tried to make them see reason, God help you. They
would brandish their truncheons and sock you at the slightest opportunity.
If you laughed at their English, then, well...!
"Issah! Braimah!" the OBK told them when they got to where we were
standing, "dis boy here, ino pay lampoll. Make you take am for office. "59
This means of characterisation is not unexpected since pidgin is associated

with semi-literate people, and the narrator here is out to belittle the police.
Apart from this there is not much pidgin in the novel, which is surprising.
Among the people Kwasi meets in Accra there are quite a few one would
expect pidgin from. There is some taxi drivers' jargon when Kwasi stays
with cab-driving friends but the narrator explains the lingo. This is usually
done in parenthetic "reading interludes": 60 "takwa machine ('talking ma-
chine')." 61 Vernacular words, too, are sometimes handled this way: "kaba
(blouse)." 62
In chapter seven, Kwasi stays with some rich friends of his girlfriend.
He listens when they talk politics. Here there is no trace of Africa in the
language:
"I wonder what they dream about," he added.
"Oh, I suppose it's always about blue five pound notes stuck end to end
59 Cameron Duodu, The Gab Boys (London: Andre Deutsch, 1967), p. 12.
60 "Reading interludes" is Gerald Prince's term for when a text reads itself, see Gerald
Prince, "Notes on the Text as Reader," in S. Suleiman and I. Crosman, (eds.), The
Reader in the Text (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980), pp. 230-240.
61 Doudo, p. 114
62 Ibid., p. 117.
streching from Accra to Tamale," Mr Younge ventured. [...] "What tribe

was this guy from?," asked Mr Younge.
"They say he was a Ga," Mr Appeah replied.
"No wonder!" said Mr Younge.63
Later the two "Black Victorians" discuss the use of English, and express
their gratitude for their own knowledge of it, since it allows them to com-
municate with other tribes. They even praise the French for being more se-
vere in their teaching of French in Africa. 6 4 It is difficult to read this as
ironic; they are never really drawn ironically, in spite of being rich and cor-
rupt. Indeed when they discuss politics, one gets the feeling that they artic-
ulate the author's opinions, particularly as this in part corresponds with
Kwasi's and his girlfriend's notions that end the novel. 65
The Gab Boys is a novel written in British English, with some pidgin
and indigenous expressions, chiefly in the dialogues, which often are trans-
lated in reading interludes. In view of what writers such as Tutuola and
Achebe had already done linguistically in their novels in Nigeria, and what
later would also appear in Ghana, there is comparatively little deviation
from RP English in The Gab Boys. Its language is basically the English of
any English novel, spiced with some vernacular and pidgin.
Of the other six novels, the two by Asare Konadu are set in predomi-
nantly rural settings. A Woman in her Prime is about a barren woman
struggling for recognition and a child in a traditional village in precolonial
Ghana. Ordained by the Oracle is about a westernised and prosperous Af-
rican who has lost his wife and returns to his own town to bury her accord-
ing to tradition. Both novels have been called "anthropological narra-
tives." 66 Linguistically they are however not very different from Duodu's
novel.
Ordained by the Oracle is closest to D u o d o ' s language in its more urban
setting. However it abounds with proverbs, some in Akan translated into
English: "Nana, wada worom. A hen's feet step only on the chick, they
don't kill it." 67 Proverbs are of course found not only in African novels, but
rarely are they as abundant as in novels by African authors. Achebe's
novel Arrow of God, for instance, is famous also as a collection of prov-
63 Ibid., p. 131.
64 Ibid., p. 133.
65 Ibid.. pp. 146-152, 206-208.
66 Angmor, p. 43.
67 Asare Konadu, Ordained by the Oracle (London: Heinemann, 1969 [1966 as Come
Back, Dora]), p. 2.
18 Leif Lorentzon
erbs. Obiechina, who has studied this phenomenon more than most, writes
that "in no aspect of its form is the African novel more 'oral' and 'tradi-
tional' than in its use of proverbs." 68 He even goes so far as to claim that
through the use of narrative proverbs "the African novel is not the sole
product of an individual consciousness (even though the novelist is a con-
scious individual artist), but is mediated by communal consciousness and
impulses arising from group sensibility." 69 Admittedly Obiechina is talking
here about "narrative proverbs"—embedded, autonomous stories in a
larger narrative—but he calls these stories proverbs since they function the
way proverbs do. "The use of proverbs, instead of individuating, both com-
munalizes and traditionalizes a speaker." 70
When Boateng, the grieving husband of Ordained by the Oracle, uses
proverbs he communalises the situation. He also refers to the world from
which these proverbs originate. In this way Konadu traditionalises, Afri-
canises the novel. Here there is a cultural encounter, if perhaps not primari-
ly on a linguistic level (if the proverbs are not presented in an African lan-
guage). There are also a few Akan phrases and words in the novel, often
explained in reading interludes: "Okwan mu, okwan mu, he shouted, asking
the people to keep away from his path," or more conspicuously: " Y e n nyi-
na behyiam bio (We shall meet again)." 71
The narrator's language, however, seldom appears to be influenced by
the vernacular. There are instances where one wonders whether Konadu in-
deed had Akan in mind or perhaps simply made a mistake: "On this occa-
sion he had dreamt of Dora handing over his keys to him and telling him
she would marry him no more." 72 This could be informed by indigenous
language or pidgin, but it is the omniscient narrator who says this. And
since none of the characters of the novel uses anything but Oxbridge, not
even in the rural village of the burial, it would be odd for the narrator to
suddenly break out in pidgin.
Konadu's other novel to be considered here is slightly different. Set in
precolonial Ghana the narrative's English seems inspired by its traditional
setting. A Woman in her Prime begins: "Today was Friday and the day of
sacrifice for the great god Tano. Pokuwaa returned home from her last trip
68 Emmanuel Obiechina, "Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel," Oral Tradition 7:2
(1992), p. 199.
69 Ibid., p. 201.
70 Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society, p. 156.
71 Konadu, pp. 94, 110.
72 Ibid., p. 26.
to the river and went quickly into the kitchen to place the water there ready
for use. Daybreak was near and her excitement was mounting." 73 "A lyrical
description of a simple people untouched by Europe," as one of very few
critics who has mentioned A Woman in her Prime writes. 74 It is also evi-
dent in the dialogue: "They both laughed heartily at this, for it was so.
'You are a good dancer,' said Koramoa. 'That is true. You were even good
at ten years old.' / 'Ah,' said Pokuwaa, 'I'm not so young now.' / But the
topic was too sweet to drop." 75 This lyrical quality I believe is informed by
Konadu's mother tongue, or at least by an intention to linguistically Afri-
canise a novel in English set in traditional Africa.
A Woman in her Prime also has a glossary at the end of the book with
some Ghanaian words and phrases explained. There are only nine, but the
phenomenon is not uncommon in African novels; it is, for example, found
in Achebe's Things Fall Apart from 1958, and Search Sweet Country from
1986 by the Ghanaian writer B. Kojo Laing.
On the whole though none of these novels show anything of the kind of
linguistic Africanisation that is evident in for example the two novels by
Achebe and Laing just referred to. The same is true of the other four novels
not yet considered. They are all about young men growing up; in two we
follow them to their deaths, in two only to adulthood. Schools play an im-
portant part in all the novels and there are even Latin phrases in one of
them rather than an African language: "the court was adjourned sine die,"76
This is from Djoleto's The Strange Man, which stylistically is quite a
strange novel. One example of its extravagant style will suffice: "During
that lesson pupils were busy, having engaged in clandestine negotia-
tions." 77 There is quite a lot of this in The Strange Man, evidence of the
bombastic style that was popular among the Gold Coast literati in the
early 1900s.78 On the other hand there is little, if any, trace of a vernacular
or pidgin influence on the English of this novel, except the sporadic
African expression in italics, always explained. This is basically true also
of the other three novels: in the English there is no trace of an African lan-
guage.
73 Asare Konadu, A Woman in her Prime (London: Heinemann, 1967), p. 1.

74 Robert E. McDowell, "Four Ghanaian Novels," Journal of the New African Literature
and the Arts, 4 (1967), p. 25.
75 Konadu, A Woman in her Prime, p. 51.
76 Amu Djoleto, The Strange Man (Oxford: Heinemann, 1967), p. 246.
77 Ibid., p. 102.
78 See the Conclusion in Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, pp. 203-215.
20 Leif Lorentzon
Viewed together these seven early Ghanaian novels in English do not

present linguistic divergence; they do not linguistically "write back." Their
language is not informed by an urge to change the language into "a new
English, still in communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its
new African surroundings," as Achebe insisted as early as 1964.79 Except
perhaps for Come Back, Dora, there is little or no linguistic departure from
the Queen's English in these seven novels compared with what Achebe
had done.
If we look at the protagonists and the characterisation a slightly different

picture emerges. In the little criticism these novels have attracted, the
critics claim that the characterisation is poor. When discussing Konadu's
Ordained by the Oracle, Angmor is very disparaging: "It has little charac-
terization, Boateng, the hero [...] exists only for the ritual [...] As for the
other characters, they have no identity; they are puppet figures." 80 Priebe
for his part does not discuss the characterisation as such, but is very disap-
pointed with the story, the development of situations and the failure to turn
biographical events into art. This harsh criticism also applies to the charac-
terisation, as for instance when he discusses The Strange Man: "It is not
entirely clear what, if anything, serves to hold the novel together," that is,
probably not even characters. 81 It was common for critics to be dissatisfied
with characterisation in these "lesser" African novels, particularly during
the early years of modern African literature in the 1960s and 1970s. 82 Dis-
cussions of puppet-like shallow characters and poor imitation of the West-
ern novel abound; when scholars, better informed and better readers, later
looked more closely they usually found a different picture.
One of the first, and still the finest, discussions of characters in early
African novels is found in Obiechina's book from 1975. In a chapter deal-
ing with characterisation he distinguishes between that found in novels set
in rural Africa and that in urban Africa. In the former, the group has priori-
ty over the individual; the protagonist is defined by his position in the
group before he is individually portrayed, if at all. "A character is no
sooner mentioned than his or her position in the network of social relation-
79 Chinua Achebe, "The African Writer and the English Language," (1964), in his Morning
Yet on Creation Day (New York: Anchor Books, 1976), p. 84.
80 Angmor, pp. 55-56.
82 Cf. The debate on Europe's criticism of African literature initiated by Ayi Kwei Armah
in "Larsonry or Fiction as Criticism of Fiction," Positive Review 1 (1979), pp. 11-14;
first published in Asemka 4 (1976), pp. 1-14.
ships or his professional role is immediately established." 83 We see this in

Things Fall Apart, as well as in the two novels by Konadu considered here.
It is quite often the individual's conflict with the group, the clan, and the
village that comprises the plot, as in A Woman in her Prime. Here the
woman who cannot give her husband children is at centre of events. It is
her failure to live up to what her husband and her people expect of her that
creates the suspense in the novel. The little drama there is in Ordained by
the Oracle is found in Boateng's reluctance to comply with what his villag-
ers, traditional Africa, demand of him when burying his wife according to
tradition.
In the urban novel Obiechina instead finds characters in extreme isola-
tion, and they are more types than characters, urban types representing cor-
ruption, greed and shameless superficiality, or struggling against it.
Obiechina therefore distinguishes between two types of character: the tra-
ditional character whose life is socialised and whose actions derive from
the collective, and the urban type, an individual whose life is largely de-
rived from personal responses to social and economic factors of city life. 84
In view of this there is perhaps a need to reconsider the harsh criticism of
characterisation in these seven novels. Pokuwaa in A Woman in her Prime
is perceived by the narrative through the collective, and therefore she does
not come across as a "round" character in the manner of Madame Bovary,
for instance.
The characterisation in the urban novels, those five apart from Konadu's
two here, equally corresponds to Obiechina's distinctions. The experiences
of "gab boy" Kwasi in the city are decided by his lack of money and
knowledge of city life. The catechist of Abruquah's novel of the same
name is sent all over the country to improve failing schools, and there is
nothing he can do, except grow bitter. In these urban novels we ought to
view the characters, according to Obiechina, as types illustrating the socio-
economic reality of the fictive world they live in.
My point here is that there are reasons for a more cautious treatment of
"poor" characterisation in African novels. It may not be the result of bad
imitation of the Western novel, but rather spring from the African context
and traditions. In Konadu's rural novels I believe this is so. This also il-
lustrates Julien's thesis that "Africanness" is found not only in the orality
of Africa's novels. When Angmor criticises Konadu for his weak charac-
83 Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society, p. 90.

84 Ibid., p. 117.
22 Leif Lorentzon
terisation, while also declaring that these novels are written primarily to
convey African traditions, perhaps he ought to have considered his own
arguments more fully. In an anthropological novel, characterisation is
secondary. I do not believe we can view these two novels without recal-
ling Obiechina's caution about the rural African novel and its characteri-
sation. There is something else going on here, different from what we are
used to in the Western novel. Already in these early Ghanaian novels, I
believe there are traces of a different characterisation, one that is found
more fully elaborated in later Ghanaian novels by Armah, Awoonor and
Laing.
However in the five urban novels, almost all of which could be understood
as fictional biographies, it is different. Here we witness the individualisa-
tion that has occurred with the colonialisation of African literature. From a
historical literary perspective it is possible to say that the first-person nar-
rative chiefly emerged in Africa with the novel, where the narrative "con-
centrates more on the narrator's personality and its growth than on the
group to which he or she belongs." 85 As we have seen with Obiechina, the
latter is the case in rural novels, and certainly in oral literature of Africa.
The oral raconteur may tell the story in the first person, but "the use of the
I is of little importance: the spectacular function of the performance makes
this pronoun ambiguous enough that its referential value is diluted in the
consciousness of the audience." 86
In four of the seven novels considered here we have biographical fiction;
I am thinking of Abruquah's The Catechist and The Torrent, Selormey's
The Narrow Path, and Djoleto's The Strange Man. It is here that I feel
there is some justification for criticism of poor imitative characterisation.
Since these novels appear to intend to tell the story of an individual whose
growth and development are the forms of the story in these novels, the
characterisation ought to be convincing, and it is not always so.
Two of the four novels of biographical fiction just mentioned can, together
with The Gab Boys, be read as Bildungsromane, in a genre discussion of
how that European genre fared when encountering Africa in Ghana in the
85 Mineke Schipper, Beyond the Boundaries: African Literature and Literary Theory (Lon-
don: Allison & Busby, 1989), p. 101. There are however, traces of autobiographical nar-
rating in the griot's introductions, as well as in hunters' songs.
86 Paul Zumthor, Oral Poetry: An Introduction, trans. Kathryn Murphy-Judy (Minneapolis:
Univ. of Minneapolis Press, 1990 [1983]), p. 185.
late 1960s.87 According to Franco Moretti the Bildungsroman introduces a

new hero, the young man, and it became a symbolic form of modernity in
nineteenth century Europe, which was rushed into modernity without a
corresponding culture through which to process these new times and
events. In colonial Africa there was a society where most citizens lived a
rural traditional life and found themselves thrown into modernity by out-
side forces. Francis Ngwaba has compared the Victorian novel during the
nineteenth century with the early novel in West Africa: "Both are the result
of a feeling of disenchantment with the values of their immediate past. Al-
so, they are attempts to confront reality in a time of change." 88 His state-
ment compares quite well with Moretti's about the Bildungsroman:
I think, at the turn of the eighteenth century much more than just rethinking
of youth was at stake. Virtually without notice, in the dreams and night-
mares of the so called "double revolution," Europe plunges into modernity,
but without possessing a culture of modernity. If youth, therefore, achieves
its symbolic centrality, and the "great narrative" of the Bildungsroman
comes into being, this is because Europe has to attach a meaning, not so
much to youth, as to modernity. The Bildungsroman as the "symbolic form"
of modernity. 89
The fictional, symbolic figure to confront this new society, both in colonial
twentieth century Africa and twentieth century Europe, was the young
man, possessing mobility and restlessness. I believe it is fair to say that tra-
ditional oral narratives in Africa do not have any young men, or women for
that matter, as protagonists. There is nothing compared to the Bildungsro-
man in Africa's orature. There, the hero's birth and his growth into man-
hood are quickly rendered. It is after he has become a man, often after cir-
cumcision, that the real story develops, or "the heroic career starts from in-
fancy." 90
The Bildungsroman appeared first in modern Africa with Camara
Laye's L'Enfant noir in 1953, a nostalgic fictional recollection of the au-
thor's childhood in Guinea, which ends with his scholarship to Paris. As in
87 "It is not without significance that all the four novels: The Narrow Path, The Torrent,
The Strange Man, and The Gab Boys, deal with formative experience of the growing-up
process of the educated Ghanaian." Senanu, p. 16.
88 Francis E. Ngwaba, "The English Novel and the Novel in English: Points of Contact and
Departures," S. O. Asein and A. O. Ashalou (eds.), Studies in The African Novel (Ibadan:
Ibadan U.P., 1986), p. 21.
89 Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, trans.
Albert Sbragia (London: Verso, [1987] 2000), p. 5.
90 Isidore Okpewho, The Epic in Africa (New York: Columbia UP, 1979), p. 89.
24 Leif Lorentzon
Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, we find here in
post-war West Africa a "novel of human emergence," as Bakhtin calls the
Bildungsroman, where the "changes in the hero himself acquire plot sig-
nificance, [...] time is introduced into man." 91 It is striking how well his
discussion of the Bildungsroman fits its emergence in Africa. Discussing
how the Enlightenment paved the way for the depiction of historical time,
he writes: "Until the last third of the [eighteenth] century, cyclical kinds of
time prevailed, but they, too, despite their limited nature, loosened the soil
of the immobile world of preceding epochs with the plow of time. And on
this soil, loosened by cyclical time, one begins to see signs of historical
time." 92 The biographical novels between Nkrumah and Armah narrate his-
torical time. It is evident, for instance, in The Torrent, where we see Kojo,
or Josiah as he later wishes to call himself when studying in grammar
school in order to become a "white" African, almost growing into man-
hood. The novel ends with losiah still in school, where he narrowly es-
capes being expelled for a crime he did not commit. It is nevertheless his
adolescence that is the story: he has acquired plot significance, to use
Bakhtin's term.
Moretti reads the Bildungsroman as an attempt at solving the conflict
between self-determination and socialisation. There is no grand drama in
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, which Moretti, along with Georg Lukäcs,
claims is the archetypal BildungsromanP It is the individual's socialisa-
tion that is narrated. The Bildungsroman and fictional biographies of this
period in Ghana are not very private, not of the confessional kind, but ra-
ther public. It is about the construction of a life in the public sphere of the
coloniser, both for the writer who becomes a public figure as a writer in
English, and the novel's protagonist who reaches a kind of socialisation. 94
This narration of socialisation, of the construction of the modern subject
in Ghana, is particularly present in The Narrow Path. The reader follows
91 Μ. M. Bakhtin, "The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism (To-
ward a Historical Typology of the Novel), trans. Vera W. McGee, in Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist (eds.), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1986), p. 21.
92 Ibid., p. 26.
93 Moretti: V; cf. Georg Lukäcs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (London:
Merlin Press, 1978 [1920]), chapter II: 3, pp. 132-143.
94 See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), pp. 34-37, and chapter 5, for a discussion of
the private and the public on Indian colonial soil, where he also notes a "sudden flourish-
ing in this period [nineteenth century] of the four basic genres that help express the mod-
ern self: the novel, the biography, the autobiography, and history", p. 34.
Kofi from his birth until his socialisation has reached one of its intended
ends: he acquires a profession and becomes a teacher. He and the author
become public subjects in the system of the coloniser, rather than in a tra-
ditionally African system.
Among the other novels Duodu's The Gab Boys may also be character-
ised as a Bildungsroman. Admittedly its hero is already a teenager, out of
school, a gab boy making a nuisance of himself when the novel begins, but
it is really his socialisation that we witness. When he returns to the village
it is as a mature man about to marry, the very symbol of socialisation in the
classical Bildungsroman, according to Moretti. 95 Even if The Strange Man
is more a fictional biography than a Bildungsroman, as we follow the
strange man from his earliest days to his death, more than half the book be-
longs to a Bildungsroman story: the protagonist marries in the thirteenth of
the novel's nineteen chapters. Abruquah's The Catechist, however, is more
a fictional biography of the author's father, and only the second chapter
deals with adolescence.
If we were to adopt Chakrabarty's critique of the public/private dyad in
modernity, these two biographical novels could be seen as part of a mod-
ernisation, and, even if Moretti would not view them as Bildungsromane,
they still deal with another aspect typical of the Bildungsroman: the home.
It is the home, or rather the homes, of the catechist that form the milieu of
The Catechist. In The Narrow Path it is largely Mensa's parents' home and
later his own that we encounter. One of the Bildungsroman's tasks is "to
show how pleasing life can be in what Goethe called 'the small world.'
[...] In Meister the 'harmonious objects' par excellence, those that make
the world an inviting 'homeland,' are precisely homes." 96 The Catechist,
The Torrent, The Narrow Path, and The Strange Man all take place in
everyday life, "the small world." There is no grand drama here, compar-
able with Things Fall Apart, only the individual struggling to achieve man-
hood, and enter modernity: the colonial public sphere. The individual's life
has in these African narratives become the plot.
In the novels that Moretti discusses, from Wilhelm Meister to George
Eliot's Middlemarch, the characterisation is convincing. In the Bildungs-
roman and the biographical fiction from Ghana at the end of the 1960s, the
characterisation is not of the same quality, and perhaps it ought to have
been. These novels narrate the adolescence or life of a single individual;
95 Moretti, p. 22.
96 Ibid., pp. 36, 37.
26 Leif Lorentzon
the life of one character is the sole story, and therefore that character must
be portrayed convincingly. If it is not, the story itself, the narrative, fails. It
is difficult to understand the unconvincing characterisation here as a kind
of "African" characterisation, as discussed with Obiechina above. These
Bildungsromane and biographical novels are different: they narrate one
life, and that life ought to convince the reader. As a genre they are bor-
rowed from Europe, and perhaps one here has grounds for criticism of poor
imitations of that genre. However, as symbolic vehicles of modernisation
they function well, for both author and protagonist entering the colonial
public sphere. 97
I have previously mentioned the didactic nature of the popular novels; this
is evident in these seven novels as well, even if not as obtrusive. Its pres-
ence is not surprising, as we now know, thanks to Stephanie Newell, that
printed texts in the whole of West Africa were connected with education. 98
At the end of The Gab Boys, when Kwasi returns to his hometown with his
dead friend, Duodo thematically finishes his novel vindicating traditional
ideas. He has the girl Β defending traditional chiefdom, as opposed to
Nkrumah's Westernised democracy, whereas she earlier had expressed ap-
proval of England. 99 At the end of his novel Duodo also draws upon tradi-
tional Africa in reciting drum poetry: "as the drum proverb says; the path
was cut to meet the stream, the stream is from long, long ago.'" 00 In the
previous pages Kwasi and Β are discussing drum poetry while driving, and
the narrator recites both in English and Akan.
Duodo has been criticised for this rather obvious didacticism. William
New finds that the novel "turns sour towards the end when it becomes too
exclusively political about the Ghanaian scene." 10i Gakwandi writes that it
"concludes with an escape into a facile didacticism about the tribal past
[and] the novel suffers from an overdose of political didacticism [...]
97 That this also happened in other parts of the world is evident both in Chakrabarty and in
several articles in volumes 3:1 and 3:2; cf. Margareta Petersson's Introduction to volume
3:1 and her article on hybridity in Indian English literature, Keiko Kockum's article on
the modern Japanese novel, and Stefan Helgesson's on modernism in former Portuguese
Africa.
98 Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, p. 85, cf. also, pp. 90-91.
99 Duodo, pp. 82, 206-208.
100 Ibid., p. 207.
101 William H. New, Among Worlds: An Introduction to Modern Commonwealth and South
African Fiction (Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1975), p. 88.
which tends to bore the reader." 102 Once again however I wonder if the
critics are not too harsh, too Eurocentric in their views. Returning to
Ngwaba's discussion of a correspondence between the Victorian novel and
the early African novel, we can now appreciate the need the writers felt for
moralising, for ideology in their novels. There is however little of this in
the seven novels considered here compared to that in the local, popular
novels in Ghana, where the moral of the story is stated already in the para-
texts. 103 As discussed above, many of the intellectuals in Ghana at the time
were busy nation-building, and in many ways they also did this in their
writing, heeding Ac hebe's call for the writer to also be a teacher. 104
Apart from the political and social reality there is yet another reason for
African writers to teach, one which we find in the following words from
Ayi Kwei Armah: "As far back as our written and unwritten records go, it
has been the prime destiny of the serious African artist to combine the craft
of creativity with the search for regenerative values.'" 05 So when the Afri-
can writer, whether locally or internationally, is manifestly didactic, s/he is
perhaps only doing what African oral raconteurs have been doing for cen-
turies, and what African readers expect.
If The Gab Boys is in part an ideological novel, it is rather unobtrusively
so compared to Armah's later novels, or the novels in Gikuyu by the Ken-
yan writer NgügT wa Thiong'o. Both writers began writing and publishing
in the West, while their later writing is explicitly for domestic readers.
Next to Duodo's novel there is however very little of a manifest ideology
among the seven novels. The anthropological two by Konadu—certainly
Ordained by the Oracle—can of course be understood as championing a
traditional way of life. While Boateng is unhappy with all the rituals he has
to undergo in order to bury his wife according to tradition, this tradition is
never questioned. When the Christian catechist tries to persuade him to
bury her in a Christian fashion, no one pays him any attention. A Woman in
her Prime, however, does not promote the old ways, rather the opposite. It
is when the heroine refuses to follow everyone's advice for yet another pu-
102 Shatto Arthur Gakwandi, The Novel and Contemporary Experience in Africa (London:
Heinemann, 1977): 99, 101. For the same bias see also Senanu, p. 17.
103 Genette's term for "the means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself
as such to its readers." Gerard Genette, "Introduction to the Paratext," trans. Marie Ma-
clean, New Literary History 22 (1999), p. 261.
104 Chinua Achebe, "The Novelist as Teacher," (1965) in his Morning Yet on Creation Day,
pp. 55-60.
105 Ayi Kwei Armah, "Masks and Marx," Presence A fricaine 131:3 (1984), p. 35.
28 Leif Lorentzon
rification rite in order to become pregnant that she does become pregnant;
her rebellion against traditions is rewarded.
In the Bildungsroman and biographical novels it is either a severe and
rigid father, or the school system during colonial times in the twentieth
century, which is castigated. The Torrent begins with the twelve year old
Kojo being beaten by his father, and Kofi of The Narrow Path is repeated-
ly beaten by his father, almost to death at one point. In both these novels,
as in The Narrow Path, the cane has a prominent place in the school curri-
culum, a constant threat to the boys if they make the slightest mistake.
There is a tacit criticism of the Christian schools in these novels, as in The
Catechist.
A dormant anti-colonial theme is also apparent in The Strange Man. The
portrait of Mensa is a protracted defense of difference and that which is
different from Western colonial ideals, as the narrator understands them.
Even before entering school, Mensa is said to be "unconventional. He does
not talk like a mission-school-trained child." 106 When he speaks up against
injustice, he is caned. Later in life Mensa withdraws his daughter from a
mission school after a row with the headmistress who had caned his daugh-
ter. Then he puts her in a secular school, and his son in another without ex-
patriate teachers. "The implication here is that lying and dishonesty are
built into the Western [educational] system and that they are essentials for
the survival of organized society." 107 This theme is further enhanced when
Mensa works for the Supreme Court and acquires many enemies due to his
honesty. In chapter fifteen Mensa himself is taken to court and despises it.
He ends his defense thus:
And who was that lay magistrate? It is the same man sitting right in front of
me now whom you rogues, deceivers of men, wreckers of human happiness
and devils-let-loose have chosen as chief judge over me in this case! I,
Mensa, condemn him! I spit on him! And I invoke the wrath of God, if ever
God does hear man, upon him!"108
After this assault the chief judge faints, and even if Mensa is slightly out of
line here, there is no doubt the narrative is on his side.
As can perhaps be gathered from this, Djoleto has little good to say of
the missionaries in the Gold Coast at the time. "Djoleto associates Christi -
106 Djoleto, p. 84.

107 Sibusiso Mandlenkosi Emmanuel Bengu, African Cultural Identity and International Re-
lations: Analysis of Ghanaian and Nigerian Sources 1958-1974, Diss. (Natal, South Af-
rica: Shuter & Shooter, 1976), p. 65.
108 Djoleto, p. 246.
anity with negative human attributes," as Emmanuel Bengu has it.' 09 The
local pastor in the novel becomes a symbol of the negative images, and all
Christian characters are hypocrites. The Strange Man is, together with The
Gab Boys, the most ideological novel of the seven. In both novels we may
view this as a domestic, an African deviation from the Western novel.
There are of course ideological novels in Western literature as well, but
while an interesting phenomenon, particularly in twentieth century litera-
ture, 110 it is not a prominent novelistic development, as in West Africa.
Compared to what later would appear in Ghana, and had already ap-
peared in Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon, there is however little departure
from the European novel in these seven novels in English between Nkru-
mah and Armah. There is more imitation, particularly in the biographical
ones, with some deviations as discussed above: mimic novels, in the dic-
tionary's definition of mimicry as "an act of copying or imitating closely."
The adverb closely points to Homi Bhabha's notion of colonial mimicry
with potential for subversion. Of these novels The Gab Boys is nearest to
that notion of mimicry. Bhabha writes that "colonial mimicry is the desire
for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost
the same but not quite. [...] the sign of a double articulation [which] is at
once resemblance and menace.'" 11 When Bhabha in another essay in the
same book views "colonial mimicry as the affect of hybridity," 112 I, to-
gether with Monika Fludernik, understand "mimicry as a function of hy-
bridity." 113 And it is in this light I wish to use it below. It is a hybrid object
which "retains the actual semblance of the authoritative symbol but re-
values its presence by resisting it as the signifier of Enstellung—after the
intervention of difference.'" 14
There is however not much of Bhabha's hybrid quality in these seven
novels, compared to what Armah, Aidoo and Awoonor would soon pro-
duce in Ghana. In most respects these novels adhere to the mainstream of
European nineteenth century biographical fiction. Konadu's anthropologi-
109 Bengu, p. 123.

110 Cf. Susan Suleiman's book on the roman a these·. Susan R. Suleiman, Authoritarian Fic-
tions, The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983).
111 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 86.
112 Ibid., p. 120.
113 Monika Fludernik, "The Constitution of Hybridity: Postcolonial Interventions," in
Hybridity and Postcolonialism, ed. Monika Fludernik (Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag,
1998), p. 28.
114 Bhabha, p. 115. Cf. Margareta Petersson's discussion of hybridity in the Introduction to
Volume 3:1.
30 Leif Lorentzon
cal novels may be seen as less mimicking, but it is really only in the "fail-
ure" of characterisation that we found a cultural encounter in the texts that
may be understood as, if not subversion, still an African deviation from the
Western novel. We shall in the following discussion of Asare Konadu's
novels find that there was truly subversive prose in Ghana at the time, and
also prior to the period considered here.
5. Asare Konadu's Two Levels of Narrative Strategy
Asare Konadu is for many reasons unique on the literary scene in Ghana
and yet representative of a certain kind of writer/entrepreneur in Africa.
Immediately after Nkrumah's fall in 1966 he launched his own publishing
house, Anowuo Educational Service, where he published more than twenty
titles, mostly fiction but also textbooks for schools on government con-
tract, which was quite lucrative.
Charles Angmor distinguishes between "two stylistic features evident in
Ghanaian prose fiction: one is the simple plot with simple character por-
trayal, and the other is the intricate plot and character." 115 The former fea-
ture is what is found in the seven novels considered here, all published
abroad in the late 1960s; the latter is that found in the prose of Armah,
Aidoo and Awoonor. To this we can add a third, that of the local pamphlet
literature of authors such as J. B. Blay, Ε. K. Mickson and Asare Konadu.
Using Angmor's terminology we can describe the third stylistic feature as
very simple plot and very simple characterisation with a didactic, moral
twist.
In Konadu's prose alone we find two of these literary levels. But also a
third is discernible: in addition to his two novels published in the UK and
his locally published ones under his own name, the third category com-
prises the two local novels under the pseudonym of K. A. Bediako. Ang-
mor considers only Konadu's two Heinemann novels, even if he does men-
tion some of the local titles. Had he discussed Konadu's local novels as
well, his picture of Konadu and the Ghanaian literary production before
1970 would perhaps have been altered. Even if Konadu's own triadic dif-
ferentiation does not stand up to scrutiny, I believe it is illuminating to
study, as it can shed light on different cultural encounters in the Ghanaian
novel of this period.
115 Angmor, p. 57.

In 1974 Richard Priebe interviewed Asare Konadu, and it is here that

one finds his triadic differentiation. Discussing his two novels under the
name of Bediako, he says that these were "the light-hearted ones." He
claims that they were written for the local market, for "the ordinary worker
in Ghana [...] around day-to-day problems of the Ghanaian man or worker
[...] something very light, perhaps a little educative." 116 Here he himself
makes a distinction between his two Bediako novels and the ones he pub-
lished under his real name. It is however difficult to distinguish any stylis-
tic differences between these Bediako-novels and the other ones he pub-
lished in Ghana. For this reason I shall look only at his oeuvre as contain-
ing two stylistic literary levels: one of the locally published novels and one
of the two published in Britain.
Konadu claims to have had different ambitions with his novels which
are apparent in the intended reader. To Priebe's direct question on what au-
dience he had in mind with his earlier novels Konadu replied: "Mainly I
had the youth, because in my own writing as a journalist I realized that the
people who in fact buy Ghana newspapers are the young men: 18, 17, and
35. [...] Beyond 35, he is thinking of his family problems and other things
and will perhaps spend very little on literature." 117 The pseudonym he
claimed to have used as he was afraid to compromise, or as he says, "risk
my propriety as a writer," with a local book appearing alongside those pub-
lished in the UK.
Discussing his two novels in Heinemann's African Writers Series,
Konadu points to his efforts to present traditional Africa, both in story and
language. In the interview Konadu calls his effort to work stylistically
from his Twi language into English "transliteration," and compares it with
what Chinua Achebe has done in his novels from his mother tongue Igbo.
In Come Back Dora (but not in Ordained by the Oracle) it says: "This is a
study in transliteration of some of the funeral rites of communities in Gha-
na. Author." (my emphasis) 118 In the light of the interview and of what we
know of the local readership's expectations to learn something while read-
ing a novel, it is possible to understand this paratext for the local readers as
116 Asare Konadu, interview with Richard Priebe 29th of May, 1974.1 am grateful to Pr. Ri-
chard Priebe of Virginia Commonwealth University for allowing me, while visiting in
March 2001, access to his fine collection of Ghanaian popular fiction, and to listen to,
and copy the printouts of, his numerous interviews with Ghanaian novelists in the early
1970s.
117 Ibid.
118 Asare Konadu, Come Back Dora (Accra: Anowuo Educational Publications, 1966), p. iv.
32 Leif Lorentzon
an effort to give the novel "educative" status. When the British editors
changed the title of the novel, "perhaps to sideline the popular and local
appeal of its title," as Stephanie Newell suggests, 119 their reason for omit-
ting the introductory note, together with the subtitle, "A husband's confes-
sion and ritual," was perhaps also to sideline the didactic appeal of this
paratext.
The result of this transliteration, Konadu however admits, is
not necessarily a very good literature book, but it has its own place as a style
of writing.
Priebe: It's a different audience. These two books are not popular. They're
more for university and a higher secondary level.
Konadu: And these have been taken seriously as books for criticism. 120
Apparently Konadu does not consider his other novels, only locally pub-
lished to be "books for criticism," while they on the other hand are "good
literature books."
All this points to different intentions and strategies with his novels. It
seems to me that the two levels of ambition apparent in Konadu's
novelistic publishing may indicate two different levels of cultural encoun-
ters. This is most visible in his choice of subject matter, motif, and theme.
The local novels are, as Konadu himself explained to Priebe "around
day-to-day problems of the Ghanaian man or worker." The theme of mak-
ing ends meet abounds. The problem of marriage, particularly if poly-
gamist, is perhaps the most common theme, found in Don't Leave Me Mer-
cy, A Husband for Esi Ellua, and The Lawyer who Bungled It. The hazards
of fast money, good-time girls and success in modern city-life relate to an-
other theme found in The Lawyer who Bungled It, and Shadow of Wealth.
These subjects, particularly the latter, were extremely common among
popular fiction in Ghana, as well as in Nigeria's Onitsha market literature.
The same motifs and themes are rarely present in novels for European
readers, for instance in Heinemann's African Writer's Series; and if they
are, for instance in Cyprian Ekwensi's novels, they lack the obvious moral
didactic twist of the last paragraph of The Lawyer who Bungled It: "This is
the story of David Abayaa. It reads like a transcript of a protracted, implac-
able dream, a nightmare of heartbreak and frustration." 121 Nor are any Afri-
can Writer's Series novels accompanied by the kind of paratext found on
119 Stephanie Newell, Ghanaian Popular Fiction (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), p. 28.
120 Ibid.
121 Asare Konadu, The Lawyer who Bungled It (Accra: Waterville Publishing House, 1965),
p. 81.
the back cover of Don't Leave Me Mercy, where it states that this "is one of
the most starkly moving parables ever written of the forces that shape or
mar many marriages today. [A story where the readers will learn about] pa-
tience, determination, thoughtfulness, quarrels, nagging, relations with in-
laws, etc."122
By contrast, in Konadu's Heinemann novels he has almost scholarly am-
bitions. The stories focus on traditional Ghana: Ordained by the Oracle is
set in colonial times but depicts forty days of traditional funeral rites. A
Woman in her Prime is set in a traditional environment around a barren
woman. Following Charles Angmor we have categorised these novels as
"anthropological" novels: written for foreign audiences keen on reading
about traditional pre-colonial Africa. There were lots of novels of that kind
in the 1960s and 1970s. It is true that Ordained by the Oracle was first
published locally under another title. But it is quite clear, from both the text
and Priebe's interview with Konadu, that the author had his eyes set on a
different, foreign audience with Come Back Dora, even if it sold very well
locally. Instead of "good literature" he calls it "a book for criticism" when
talking to Priebe.
In Ordained by the Oracle the anthropological ambition is already evi-
dent on the second page. We find two proverbs: "if you hate duiker, you
mustn't fail to admire its swiftness [...] there are bad nuts in every palm-
fruit." 123 There are also two Akan words for clothes in italics: kaba and
ntama. The same page also has a paragraph where the narrator, in a reading
interlude, explains why Boateng, the protagonist, must remain with his dy-
ing wife since "in the normal community life of the Akans, the people of
Elmina believed a mishap to one of them was a mishap to the whole com-
munity.'" 24 All this indicates that the narratee, the inscribed reader, 125 of
this novel is not an Akan reader, but a foreigner. The novel continues in
this way and the sixth chapter, for instance, reads almost like a textbook on
traditional funeral rites. This is typical of the African "anthropological"
novel, even if Ordained by the Oracle is richer than most in this respect.
But it is not surprising since the author, at least in the local edition, pro-
122 K. A. Bediako (Asare Konadu), Don't Leave Me Mercy (Accra: Anowuo Educational
Publication, 1966) the back cover.
123 Konadu, Ordained by the Oracle, p. 2.
124 Ibid.
125 Gerald Prince coined the term in 1971 in "Notes Toward a Categorization of Fictional
'Narratees,'" Genre 4:1 (1971), p. 100. In his A Dictionary of Narratology (Aldershot:
Scholar Press, 1988), p. 57 he defines the narratee as "the one who is narrated to, as in-
scribed in the text."
34 Leif Lorentzon
claimed that "this is a study"—rather than a novel—of the funeral rites of

communities of Ghana. Yet there is nothing of the anthropological in his
local novels, even if they are certainly informed with a didactic intention.
This difference between the local novels and Ordained by the Oracle I
mean is a result of Konadu's two narrative strategies.
Before leaving Ordained by the Oracle I would like to point to the way
Christianity and traditional beliefs are depicted in the novel. I believe this
highlights a difference between the literary levels of Konadu's Heinemann
novels compared with his local ones. Both Boateng and Dora are Christian,
yet she has to be buried according to ancient traditional beliefs with all the
77 gods of Asamang, sacrifices, dances, songs, rites, and the oracle. Boa-
teng is not happy with this, but keeps quiet. There is a conflict between the
two beliefs, and since this is an "anthropological" novel, tradition, rather
than Christianity, prevails. When the local catechist intervenes, he comes
across as a rather ridiculous figure, and loses the battle over Dora's
burial.126
Christianity and traditional beliefs coexist in Africa, and also in the
modern African novel, whether harmoniously or not. Among Konadu's
novels it is only in Ordained by the Oracle where there is a conflict be-
tween the two. A Husband for Esi Ellua, for instance, begins with prayers
and sacrifices to the old local oracle, and in the fourth chapter the same
people go to church, without the slightest hint, either from the narrator or
the characters, of a conflict between the two realms. 127 In The Lawyer who
Bungled It the protagonist first attends a Catholic school before he decides
to become a lawyer, while his two wives later in the novel use a jujuman in
their struggle over their husband's love. The narrative never suggests any
friction between Catholicism and the use of a jujuman. In Wizard of Asa-
mang we find the matter-of-fact co-existence of the two religious realms
that appears to dominate popular fiction of Ghana. The boy Kwabena is
thought to be a wizard and travels to an oracle to be purified. Afterwards
he says to his mother that he will pray to Jesus.
My mother looked up at the mention of the name of Jesus and said, "Where
does Jesus come in in this?" She asked in a tone of one who knew all about
Christianity and fetishism, "You have forgotten that by allowing yourself to
be cleaned by Mununkum you have forfeited your church membership."
"No, mother. I am still a member of the Kingdom Come Church." / "That
126 Konadu, Ordained by the Oracle, chapter 10.

127 K. A. Bediako (Asare Konadu), A Husband for Esi Ellua (Accra: Anowuo Educational
Publ., 1967), pp. 5 - 1 3 , 35-39.
is if you do not let them know of your visit to this place," my mother cut
in.128
The mother here expresses the pragmatic practice where the two religious
worlds coexist, found in much of the popular fiction of Ghana.
In his novels for European readers Konadu depicts a conflict between
Christianity and traditional beliefs. In his local novels they pragmatically
coexist. This is a result of different strategies and different intended read-
ers. It also suggests, I believe, that there are different cultural encounters
on the different literary levels in Konadu's prose. In his UK novels, his
"books for criticism," he, like so many other African writers publishing in
Europe, portrays the colonial conflict Western readers supposedly expect.
Local readers wanted other stories (although Come Back Dora sold well in
Ghana), they were used to other stories with other themes, and Konadu
gave them what they expected in his local novels.
This difference in strategies is also evident in his portrayal of women in
his fiction. Stephanie Newell writes, from a gender perspective, that "the
stories of good-time girls and their sugar-daddies proliferate in popular fic-
tion across the continent." 129 These girls are rarely found in African litera-
ture for Western readers, or in Konadu's UK novels.
The women in Konadu's local novels are, by comparison, not depicted
so unflatteringly, yet there is an obvious difference compared with Poku-
woa of A Woman in Her Prime. She is a strong independent woman, mar-
ried for the third time, who finally rejects traditions and is rewarded. The
reader is surely meant to view her in a positive light; she is a positive ex-
ample to follow. It is quite extraordinary to find this portrait of a strong ru-
ral woman written by a man at the time in West Africa. The theme of bar-
ren women had, at least in novels published in the West, by then been seen
only in Flora Nwapa's Efuru, from 1966. Here the theme is not as domi-
nant as in Konadu's novel, while it would be so in Nwapa's next novel Idu
from 1969. But Konadu is something of a forerunner here, particularly as
Pokuwoa is rewarded for her perseverance.
The urban women in his popular novels are not "poison," yet they are
never positive examples. One reason the lawyer bungles his life in that
novel is that his two wives drain his finances. Alice of Shadow of Wealth
first comes across as a strong independent woman. After a divorce she
128 Asare Konadu, Wizard of Asamang (Accra: Waterville Publishing House, 1964), pp. 7 8 -
79.
129 Newell, "Introduction," in Readings in African Popular Fiction, p. 6.
36 Leif Lorentzon
moves into the city, is picked up and helped by the married, rich and influ-
ential Frimpong. Initially she is reluctant to become his mistress. Then sud-
denly, much to the surprise of the reader, she loves shopping so much that
she yields and has nothing against being set up in a fancy hotel room. She
leaves him in the end, but is a far cry from the independent Pokuwoa. Even
if the difference in the characterisation of women in Konadu's prose is not
as dramatic as when one compares Mickson's Woman is Poison with Ama
Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy, it still points to Konadu's two narrative
strategies for the two readerships he writes for.
In her book on Ghanaian popular fiction Stephanie Newell criticises the

notion that people in the third world, and cultural workers in particular, are
seen as passive recipients of metropolitan culture. She claims that the com-
plexities of local regional cultural scenes are forgotten in such criticism.
Newell admirably goes on to show how popular Ghanaian writers such as
Blay and Mickson, subvert the genre, language and style they borrow from
England. It is not mere imitation, but subversion of a Western genre in the
form of quotation and the embeddedness of the Bible, formal English, local
popular narratives, characters, and types and plots, and Newell compares
this with the traditional use of proverbs. 130 The proverb is quoted because it
is familiar to all, in order to emphasise a point, and bestow authority on its
user. "Each mode of quotation marks a moment in the text when the author
uses the discourse of another to generate meanings which are both familiar
and dynamic." 131
In the conclusion Newell uses Konadu's Ordained by the Oracle as a
"striking example of the dissolution of ' h i g h ' - ' l o w ' literary boundaries,"
and claims that its main characters
have become saturated with popular marital templates. Indeed, they have
accrued so many local themes by the conclusion of the novel that they have
become prototypical characters and, as a result, their story can be viewed as
both a rehearsal of and a comment upon an entire history of popular repre-
sentations of marriage within Ghana. 132
Here then is a novel that apparently does not quote primarily European
texts, but local popular ones. The encounter is more local than between
Europe and Ghana, and the possible mimicry quite different from the one
130 Newell, Ghanaian Popular Fiction, see chapter 1, which also is found in Research in Af-
rican Literatures 31:1 (2000), pp. 32-49.
131 Newell, Ghanaian Popular Fiction, p. 27.
132 Ibid., pp. 158, 159.
usually considered when we talk of African novels imitating Euro-

pean.
In line with this, or perhaps in spite of this, I wish to suggest that there is
more Western imitation, mimicry, in Konadu's two novels published in the
UK—the ones with academic, critical, and "anthropological" ambitions—
than in the local ones, which Newell never really considers. In Ordained by
the Oracle Konadu may quote locally, but he quite clearly does so less than
in his locally published novels. In the latter we also find what Newell
points to as local material in Ordained by the Oracle, but here not as only
embedded texts; rather it is the dominant text, transforming the novel
genre. The two Heinemann novels repeat more then re-present the Western
novel—to use Homi Bhabha's term, with an indigenous theme as the only
"authentic," local element. They are "almost the same but not quite," 133
while the local ones are far from "almost the same." One pivotal reason for
this is that popular culture in West Africa and Ghana is distinguished by its
lack of formal and stylistic regulation from without, from the metropolitan
centre, as Karin Barber has argued in a seminal article. 134 And Konadu's
prose, his two narrative strategies, illustrate this quite well. It is also related
to what Stephanie Newell, close to Barber's notion of popular art in West
Africa, calls para-colonial cultural processes in the Gold Coast. These
"took place alongside and beyond the logic of British culture and colonial-
ism." 135 In this light Konadu's local and popular novels are part of a
para-colonial cultural process, produced alongside colonial culture in Gha-
na for the local market. The UK novels are visibly more a consequence of a
British presence in Ghana, being published in Britain and written for a
foreign readership.
In the interview Konadu himself mentions D. H. Lawrence and Charles
Dickens as writers he read and admired. If we wish to, we might therefore
perceive the novel genre from the metropolitan perspective, using what
Newell critically calls the "center-periphery model of cultural transforma-
tion." 136 These two British novelists would then be understood as the
"paradigm," from which deviations may be observed. I am however not
saying that this is the only, or even the preferred, perspective only that con-
133 Bhabha, p. 89.

134 Karin Barber, "Popular Arts in Africa," The African Studies Review 30:3 (1987), pp. 1 -
78, see particularly 9 - 1 2 for this discussion.
135 Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana, p. 29, see also pp. 4 2 ^ t 6 for her elaborate
discussion of the term.
136 Newell, "Introduction," in Readings in African Popular Fiction, p. 9.
38 Leif Lorentzon
sidering Konadu's own words, this will enable us to perceive the two dif-
ferent stylistic levels of Konadu's prose.
Nor do I claim that Konadu, in any of his novels, merely imitates the
Western novel. Instead he uses that form, discourse and genre, for his own,
but at times—which is my point—different ends. His novels are "contact
zones," social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple
with each other."137 It is in this "contact zone" Konadu creates hybrid texts,
where at least two different discourses encounter each other in a single ut-
terance, the novel, to paraphrase Bakhtin, 138 who also writes: "the novelis-
tic hybrid is an artistically organized system for bringing different lan-
guages in contact with one another.'" 39
My point is that Konadu's local novels are far more deviant from West-
ern "authenticity," exemplified by Lawrence and Dickens, than the UK
novels are. In the local novels I see more subversion of the novel genre, a
more clearly hybrid text. Writing for his local readers Konadu did perhaps
not heed what he had learnt from school and his readings of English litera-
ture; it appears he felt more at liberty to quickly hammer out the needed
plot. What could it matter if the protagonists acted out of character, if
people disappeared unaccounted for, if dialogue was inconsistent, if tem-
poral gaps appeared haphazardly and the ending was completely baffling;
the narrative is centered on the hero's exploits and the moral of his ending.
In his popular novels I believe Konadu simply used the novel genre to tell
exciting, quickly readable, and recognisable moral narratives for his own
people. And it worked. According to him the sales of these local novels
were staggering: Don't Leave Me Mercy sold 85 000 copies, Come Back
Dora 100 000 copies, and Shadow of Wealth 65 000 to mention the most
successful ones.140 Considering his later enterprises, the urge to make
money had perhaps no little part in his local "subversive" writing.
When Stephanie Newell writes that Ordained by the Oracle dissolves
the "high"-"low" literary boundaries, I beg to differ. I believe that it is also
possible, even preferable, to view Ordained by the Oracle as a novel that
elucidates the "high"-"low" literary boundary. By here imitating the West-
ern novel more than in his local ones, and largely failing, as most critics
have indicated, Konadu in Ordained by the Oracle shows the pitfalls of
137 Pratt, p. 4.
138 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, p. 358.
139 Ibid., p. 361
140 Konadu, Interview, 1974.
popular writing trying to reach that "high," or "extrovert" 141 literature

Konadu calls "books for criticism." It appears that Konadu himself was
aware of this danger, even his failure, as in almost the same breath he ad-
mits that it is "not necessarily a very good literature book." 142
In the "higher," "extrovert" literature of Ghana between Nkrumah and
Armah the cultural encounter is less daring, and there is more imitation of
the Western novel. I believe I have shown this in the seven novels I dis-
cussed above, as well as in Konadu's. In the last part of this paper Kona-
du's prose has allowed me to further highlight the imitation of the more se-
rious literature of the time, compared to the more subversive popular fic-
tion in Ghana. Konadu's novels for the local market are better "literature
books." And I insist that it is here, in that "low" literature of such writers as
Blay, Mickson and Konadu where we find, at least at the time in Ghana,
the more conspicuous cultural encounters, the more subversive African
novels, a home-grown hybridity for a home-grown audience.
141 This is Eileen Julien's term for that African literature aiming outside Africa, compared
with that for local readers: "The Extroverted African Novel," in Franco Moretti (ed.), II
Romania, vol. 4 (Milan: Einaudi, 2002), pp. 155-179.
142 Konadu, Interview, 1974.
NELSON GONZÄLEZ-ORTEGA
Amerindian and European Narratives in Interaction
Introduction
Ever since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492
there have been increasing economic and cultural contacts, at first between
Europeans and Amerindians and later between the West and Latin Ameri-
ca. 1 The contacts, often the consequence of conflict, have given rise to two
significant outcomes in Latin American history: the establishment of the
Spanish empire on the American subcontinent (1492-1825), and the subse-
quent independence of colonial America from Spain. This in turn led to the
creation of a Western-model neocolonial (political, economic and cultural)
system of development in Latin America, from which emerged more than
twenty newborn republics between 1825 and the present. Such economic
relations, developed over more than five centuries, have established real
and ideological conditions of supremacy/subordination between the West
and Latin America. 2 Indeed, it is a paradox that, at the economic and politi-
cal level, these "compulsory" or "consented" relations of subordination
have resulted in underdevelopment in Latin America, while, at the cultural
1 When I use the terms pre-Columbian, Amerindian, colonial, postcolonial, Latin Ameri-
ca, Spanish America, and the West, I acknowledge the ongoing semantic debates in
which participate, among others, C. Fernandez Moreno (ed.), Latin America in Its Lit-
erature, trans. Mary G. Berg (Ν. Y. / London: Holmers & Meier Publishers, Inq., 1980),
pp. 7 - 1 0 ; A. Rama, Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina (Mexico, D.F.: Siglo
XXI Editores, 1982), pp. 57-116; and E. Dussel, "Europa: modernidad y eurocentris-
mo." La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, perspectivas latinoa-
mericanas. Comp. Edgardo Lander (Buenos Aires: FLACSO, 1993), pp. 41-53.
2 "Ideology. A coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group or con-
sciousness. Ideology is time and place-specific [...] ideology must saturate society and
be transmitted by various social and institutional mechanisms like the media, Church,
education and the law. In the view of certain commentators, ideology is to be found in all
social artifacts like narrative structures, including written history, codes of behavior, and
patterns of beliefs." A. Munslow, Deconstructing History (New York and London:
Routledge, 1997), p. 184.
level, the similar relations have created the conditions for the cultivation of
a third literary discourse—hybrid in themes, techniques and styles—in
which new narrative models emerge in an attempt either to assimilate or to
oppose Western political and cultural paradigms.
Bearing in mind these historical and cultural conditions that have fa-
vored the formation of a hybrid discourse in colonial and postcolonial
Spanish America, my main investigative goal in this study is to examine
the literary responses to the "compulsory" or "consented" relations to-
wards cultural hegemony as elaborated by colonial and postcolonial
writers in their texts. I will examine two kinds of encounters between Eu-
ropeans (Spaniards) and Amerindians (Mayans and Incas). On the one
hand, the reciprocal impressions of cultural differences as depicted in the
Amerindian books Popol Vuh (fifteenth century), Chilam Balam (eight-
eenth century), The Huarochiri Manuscript (1608) and the quintessential
Spanish imperial text, The Journals of Columbus (first voyage 1492-93).
On the other hand, the textual encounter in twentieth-century novels be-
tween ancient Amerindian themes and oral devices and modernist Euro-
pean literary techniques as they appear in the novels El zorro de arriba y el
zorro de abajo (The Fox from Up Above and Down Below) (1971) by the
Peruvian J.M. Arguedas, Hombres de Μαίζ (Men of Maize) (1949) by the
Guatemalan M. A. Asturias, and El otono del patriarca (The Autumn of the
Patriarch) (1975) by the Colombian G. Garcia Märquez. 3
These texts will not necessarily be studied in chronological order, but
will instead be examined according to the sequences created by the con-
nection of themes and arguments put forward in this investigation. Specifi-
3 Popol Vuh. The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. English and Quiche, trans. D. Tedlock
(New York: Touchstone, 1996); Heaven Born Merida and Its Destiny. The Book of
Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Manuscript). English and Mayan, trans. M. S. Edmonson
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986); The Huarochiri Manuscript. English and
Quechua, trans. F. Salomon and G. L. Urioste (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991);
Journals and Other Documents of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, trans.
S. E. Morison (New York: The Heritage Press, 1963); J. M. Arguedas, The Fox from Up
Above and the Fox from Down Below, trans. F. Barroclough (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh UP,
1984); M. A. Asturias, Men of Maize., trans. G. Martin (Boston: Dell Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1975); G. Garcia Märquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch, trans. G. Rabassa (New
York: Harper And Row Publishers, 1976); B. Sahagiin, Florentine Codex General Histo-
ry of the Things of New Spain (Manuscript). English and Aztec, trans. Arthur J. O. An-
derson and Charles E. Dibble, The School of American Research, Monograph 14, Part II
(Santa Fe, New Mexico: The School of American Research and the University of Utah,
1950; 1955). When quoting from the seven texts that constitute the primary sources for
this study, I will only write in capital letters their titles' main initials followed by the
numbers of pages quoted. The Columbus Diary is rendered as Journals.
42 Nelson Gonzälez-Ortega
cally, these texts will be analyzed as narrative forms in order to explore

two main hypotheses related to certain transculturation processes embed-
ded in narrative transferences from Spanish America's colonial times to
the present.
Firstly, I would like to demonstrate how the examination of ancient
Mayan and Incan codices and manuscripts reveals that the main structural
characteristics of these texts appear to be their implicit magical tone as
well as the presence of cultural and linguistic hybridity, represented in
theme (monotheism versus polytheism), technique (the narration of the
myth of nahualismo as an oral and written tale of magic) and style (the
combined use of indigenous and European languages and dialects). 4 1 pro-
pose to disclose the extent to which realismo mägico, as theorized and
practised by the Guatemalan writer Asturias, stems from nahualismo, the
immemorial narrative technique used by ancient and present-day Maya In-
dians for (re)telling, both orally and in codex form (Popol Vuh), their own
myths of creation, religious rituals and social rites.
Secondly, I would like to analyze diverse episodes depicting religious
and textual encounters between Europeans and Spanish Americans, ex-
plored at the intratextual level (inside each text) and the intertextual level
(between old and new texts), to determine if colonial and twentieth-century
Spanish American authors have often represented their cultural identity
and difference from Europe and the United States by employing what we
4 The term hybridity derived from the Spanish terms "Hibridacion/hi bridez" / "procesos
de hibridacion" that were coined and conceptualized by Spanish American and Portu-
guese men of letters, historians, anthropologists, and economists centuries before post-
colonial critics adopted them in the 1970s to analyze Asian and African societies.
Procesos de hibridacion are manifested in many forms, racial-ethnical (criollo, mestizo,
mestizaje), cultural (aculturacion, transculturacion), religious (sincretismo) linguistic
(ιcreolizacion), literary (real maravilloso, realismo mägico), etc. Darcy Ribeiro, Las
Americas y la civilizacion. Vol 1: La civilizacwn occidental y nosotros. Los pueblos tes-
timonio (Buenos Aires: Centre Editor de America Latina, 1969); J. J. Arrom, "Criollo:
definition y matices de un concepto," in J. J. Arrom, Certidumbre de America (Madrid:
Gredos, 1971); P. Urena Henriquez, Literary Currents in Hispanic America (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 1945), pp. 9-34; L. Zea, Filosofla de la historia america-
na (Mexico, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1978), pp. 103-162; F. Ortiz, Contra-
punteo cubano del tabaco y el azticar (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, [1940] 1978), p.
86; Rama, pp. 32-56; N. Garcia Canclini, Culturas hibridas (Mexico D. F. Grijalbo,
1989), pp. 14-15, 263-327; M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1981), p. 279. The notion of "Hybridity" is further stressed in other ar-
ticles included in this volume and vol. 3:1. Cf. M. Petersson "Hybridity in English Indian
Literature"; S. Larsen "African Literature or African Literatures"; and C. Nygren "Ap-
propriations of European Theatre in Japan, China and India."
today could call "narrative discourses of resistance." 5 If this is so, then it is

important to determine if these "resistance discourses" have been articu-
lated in themes (as opposition to colonial and neo-colonial forms of Chris-
tian evangelization) as well as in technique (as in nahualismo, to recount,
with equanimity, the metamorphosis of people into animals) and also
through several variants of realismo mdgico (as in Asturias's renewed
form of nahualismo and in Garcia Märquez's narrative modes of "other-
ing").
In an attempt to answer these questions, I propose to analyze the seven
texts that compose the corpus of this investigation using the following con-
cepts and methodologies elaborated by Latin American and Western
critics: Transculturacion narrativa by A. Rama; Procesos de hibridacion
by N. Garcia-Canclini and M. Bakhtin; Modes de Transtextualite by G.
Genette; Intertextuality by J. Culler; Resistance Discourse by R. Terdiman;
and Resistance Literature by B. Harlow and M. Zimmerman. 6
Writing the Foundational Text of the Incas

The Huarochiri Manuscript
Originally composed partly in Quechua and partly in Spanish, probably in

1608, The Huarochiri Manuscript is a compilation of pre-Colombian and
colonial oral accounts of Andean gods participating in myths of creation
and human heroes engaged in wars and contests during harvesting ceremo-
nies performed by the pre-Incan community of Warn Cheri who existed
from 600 to 1250 AD. Such oral recollections had been passed down
through generations of pre-Columbian Indians until the conquest of Ameri-
ca in the fifteenth century, at which point they were compiled by a copyist
working for a commission headed by the Catholic priest Francisco de Avi-
la (1573-1647). Avila had been designated in 1609 by the Spanish Catho-
5 See note 9.
6 Rama; Garcia Canclini; Bakhtin; and Estetica de la creation verbal. (Mexico: Siglo XXI
Editores, 1997); J. Culler, The Pursuit of Signs'. Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction
(Ithaca and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); G. Genette, Palimpsestes. La lit-
terature au second degre (Paris: Seuil, 1982); R. Terdiman, Discourse / Counter-Dis-
course: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth Century France
(Ithaca and London: Cornell UP., 1985); B. Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York
and London: Methuen, 1987); M. Zimmerman, Literature and Resistance in Guatemala
Textual Modes and Cultural Politics from el Senor Presidente to Rigoberta Menchu
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Sudies, 1995).
lie kings as the first "Visitor of Idols" in America authorized to "extirpate

idolatries" in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Both the copyist and the priest en-
thusiastically engaged in compiling, writing, editing, and translating the
narration from oral Quechua into written Spanish, achieving in this way
one of the most complex textual transcriptions ever done in colonial times.
In The HuarochiriManuscript's preface, the copyist and the editor Avi-
la are described in the act of collecting and editing information for com-
posing the text:
(1) If the ancestors of the people pacha called Indians
had known writing in the earlier times,
then the lives they lived would not fade from until now.
As the mighty past of the Spanish
Vira Cochas is visible until now,
I set forth the lives of the ancestors of Huaro Cheri people,
which all descend from one forefather.
What faith they held, how they lived up until now,
those things and more;
Village by village it will be written down:
how they lived from their dawning age onward. 7
The writer of this Preface is a bilingual person, and in all probability a per-
son of mixed indigenous and Spanish origins (a mestizo) for he makes an
adroit comparison between the oral Quechuan culture and the written
Spanish culture. The bicultural person of this foreword—who acts as the
subject of enunciation—appears to be very aware of two facts: that he is
giving textual testimony to Amerindian myths and legends through his tell-
ing, and that he is writing history for posterity employing a quintessential
element of the Renaissance book: a preface.
Indeed, this pre-Columbian narrative of the Waru Cheri people was
transcribed from oral into written Quechua with Spanish titles resorting
both to the introduction of the Latin alphabet and the adoption of a
Renaissance book structure as it is evidenced in the organization of the nar-
rative matter in the form of a preface, chapters headed by titles, and the use
of sections/paragraphs that follow a chronological and thematic sequence.
Some of the section headings were written in Spanish as, for instance, the
first heading that states: Como fue anteguam[en]te los ydolos y como
guerreo entre ellos y como auia en aquel tiempo los naturales (What the
Idols Were Like, and How They Warred Among Themselves, and How the
Natives Existed at That Time).
7 ΗΜ,ρρ. 41-42, 157.

An examination of the form, content, and linguistic style of the preface,

the Spanish headings and the first chapter of The Huarochiri Manuscript
leads to the following presumptions. Firstly, that the allusion to "ydolos"
(idols) in the inserted heading may point to the editorial addition of the
Spanish heading after the chapter was written. Secondly, that the writer of
the heading is actually a bilingual person whose mother tongue is not
Spanish, given the heading's mistaken Spanish syntactical structures (a
non-concordance between the verb and the n o u n — f u e l ydolos) which are
improbable in the speech of even non-educated monolingual Spanish
speakers. Thirdly, given that the structure of the manuscript's initial chap-
ters resembles replies to a series of questions, it can also be suggested that
the copyist, acting as compiler and transcriber, may have recast the stories
(responses) of the Indian informants in the format of the questionnaire,
specifically, the kind of forms issued and distributed among the Crown's
official chroniclers and historians in early colonial times by the imperial
agencies, la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla and El Concejo de Indias.
Such questionnaire forms provided explorers, chroniclers and historians
with proper writing models both to catalog and register the ethnicity, the
flora and the fauna of the newly colonized American continent. In this
light, the Spanish heading would appear to be an answer to the royal en-
quiries about how the Incas existed at that time and what the idols were
like. Consequently, one might gather that the Spanish heading could have
been added in 1609, when the Catholic priest Avila was officially commis-
sioned to denounce, persecute, and prosecute any religious practice other
than the one authorized by Spanish Catholicism.
The Spaniards who came to America were in fact depicted in Colum-
bus's Journals as conquistadors, Catholic priests and state officials com-
missioned by imperial Spain to win over territories and impose Christianity
on Amerindians by way of military force and Catholic evangelization.
Conversely, the Amerindians represented in The Huarochiri Manuscript
were depicted in the political act of disobeying imperial orders to compel
them to convert to Christianity and to abandon their long-standing reli-
gious ceremonies and ritualistic festivities:
(2) On that occasion, they say people celebrated a major festival [Chau-
pinamca], dancing and drinking all night long [...] during Corpus
Christi and the other major Christian holidays [...]
[T]hey dance right along until they get drunk. And as for the Catho-
lic priest, they fool him saying, "Padre I ' m back from cleaning the
canal, so I ' m going to dance, I ' m going to drink."
As far as that goes, all the people do the same thing.
True, some don't do it any more, because they have a good padre
[Francisco de Avila],
But others go on living like this in secret up to the present. [...]
During the paschal festival, the Huacsas would dance for five days
carrying coca bags [...]
They say that when they danced the Casa Yaco, Chaupi Namcare
rejoiced immensely, because in their dancing, they performed naked,
some wearing only their jewelry, hiding their private parts with just a
cotton breechcloth.
Chaupi Namca enjoys it to no end when she sees our <crossed out>
[cocks] private partsl" They say as they danced naked.
After they danced this dance, a very fertile season will follow. 8
(Italics mine.)
In the fragment cited the Want Chert informants or myth tellers recount
orally to the bilingual compiler-transcriber religious, secular, popular,
public and secret stories in distinct but not autonomous narrative voices
(see especially the italicized phrases). Actually, there are subsumed in the
text diverse ideological voices:
a) Father Avila's hegemonic editorial voice (echoed by the myth tellers

with subordinate respect) whose authority stems from being the official,
designated religious censor of imperial Spain, with power to erase from
the manuscript the Indian myth-tellers' plain voices conveyed in the
text's descriptions of ritual songs and dances for fertilizing the earth
(see the crossed out and bracketed word for the body's intimate parts).
b) The mestizo's subordinated narrative voice asserting that the Huaro-
chiri Indians who do not have a "good padre" (i.e., father Avila) do "go
on living like this (in sin) in secret up to the present" which illustrates
the textual representation of a subordinate, colonized subject, inferior in
rank to the colonizer Avila, the imperial priest.
c) The copyist—the compiler and transcriber—of the manuscript, as indi-

cated by textual evidence, is a bilingual person and a mestizo who, in
spite of being a subaltern subject without a voice of his own, manages to
give an historical testimony of the people of Warn Cheri (see the Pref-
ace, the first heading and the quoted excerpts).
d) The diverse voices of the manuscript are articulated in Spanish and

Quechua and, therefore, they become linguistic indicators of the im-
perial authority as well as of the ethno-social affiliations of the colo-
8 Ibid., pp. 65, 78.

nized copyist who compiled, transcribed and helped to edit the indig-
enous text.
e) The oral traces—left by the overall use of colloquial speech that are ex-
pressed in the form of anacolutha, repetitions, parallel sentences and
"reported speech"—remain very visible in the written transcription of
the oral reports and even in the more "book-like" style of the preface,
revealing a palimpsest of pre-Columbian, colonial and imperial voices
that coexist and oppose one another in the manuscript.
All such stylistic indicators point to the fact that the subordinate colonial
writer of the manuscript did manage to oppose, despite strict religious cen-
sorship, Spanish imperial Catholicism. He did this by creating a new space
of testimonial enunciation in which his bicultural (mestizo) identity
emerged by resorting to the textual articulation of a variety of voices and
discourses that resist and challenge the dominant imperial Spanish policies
aimed at depriving the Incas of their ancient religious beliefs by forcing
them to convert to Christianity. This, the mode of hegemonic control repre-
sented textually in The Huarochiri Manuscript has been described by An-
tonio Gramsci as "domination by force" not by consent. In short, orality,
testimony, and "resistance discourses," were important structural compo-
nents subsumed and subordinated in The Huarochiri Manuscript.9
Given such textual evidence it can be suggested, in the terms of Michail
Bakhtin, that The Huarochiri Manuscript encapsulates a polyphony of
voices or a linguistic hybridity manifested in the text by a multivocal lan-
guage situation (the telling of ancient oral myths and stories by Inca and
mestizo informants) which generates multivocal narratives and narrators
(the written transcription and "edition" of Inca oral stories and myths told
by diverse informants, compilers, copyists, transcribers, narrators and edi-
tors of The Huarochiri Manuscript).10 Such conflicting textual relations—
Spanish imperialism versus Amerindian-dependent, cultural expressions—
9 Resistance discourse or "Counter Discourse. A term coined by Richard Terdiman to

characterize the theory and practice of symbolic [literary] resistance. [...] [H]is term has
been adopted by postcolonial critics to describe the complex ways in which challenges to
a dominant or established discourse, specifically those of the imperial center, may be
mounted by the periphery [...] Thus, such challenges are not simply mounted against the
texts as such but address the whole of that discursive colonialist field within which impe-
rial texts—whether anthropological, historical, literary, and legal—function in colonized
contexts." B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Stu-
dies (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 56, 57; Terdiman, p. 13.
10 Cf. Hybridity in Indian English Literature. (See M. Petersson's article in this volume).
reveal, ultimately, the diverse tensions and worldviews subsumed in early

indigenous colonial writing such as Popol Vuh, Chilam Balam in Meso-
america and The Huarochiri Manuscript in the Andes.
In conclusion, the examination of The Huarochiri Manuscript presented
here, although limited in scope, may hopefully cast light on the implied
textual relationships of hegemony and subordination between imperial
Spaniards and colonial Inca Indians. Since Father Avila, while "editing"
the Manuscript (1608), was appointed (1609) by the Spanish Crown as the
first extirpator of idolos (the Spanish word for designating the Andean dei-
ties) of the Viceroyalty of Peru, one may certainly acknowledge, on the ba-
sis of the above-mentioned textual evidence, that the authorial intentions
articulated in composing, or contributing to, the composition of The Hua-
rochiri Manuscript were those of an official priest whose main role was
"editing-censoring" books and cultural artifacts under the imperial com-
mission of the Holy Spanish Inquisition. Conversely, since the mestizo ap-
pears to have been working as a compiler, copyist, transcriber, narrator and
editor for Father Avila, who was the one who really controlled the editing
of the manuscript, one may also expect that the mestizo, as a subordinate
editor, was not free to select, translate, compose and edit the book as he
might have wished. It seems that with the transcription/editing of The Hua-
rochiri Manuscript, Father Avila—convinced either by authentic confes-
sional beliefs or by his strong desire to become a bishop—was eager to
make visible, in a testimonial narrative form, the Andean rituals and "false
idols" in order to show the imperial authorities that he was effectively
counter-attacking "heresy." 11 Therefore, against all expectations, he did al-
low, and perhaps even encourage, his junior editor to procure vivid de-
scriptions of the secular religious celebrations or sacred rituals that were
performed clandestinely (in reality and in the text) by the colonized Huaro-
chiri people under a steady imperial gaze. Consequently, The Huarochiri
Manuscript, which was initially intended to be, in Father Avila's inquisi-
torial eyes, an exposition of ritual objects (i.e., ancestral totems, mummi-
fied body parts, divinatory llamas, birds, stones and plants) as well as a
written evangelical manifest of "satanic" rites to be used as evidence in the
colonial idolatry trials of the early seventeenth century, ended up paradox-
ically as both an authentic testament of ancient Andean gods and a colonial
cultural memory of the pre-Incan people of Waru Cheri.
11 Teodoro Hampe-Martinez "El trasfondo personal de la estirpacion": la carrera y la for-

macion intelectual de Francisco de Avila y Fernando de Avendano." Colonial Latin
American Review. 8:1 (1999), pp. 91-111.
Rewriting the Colonial Memory of the Waru Cheri People in

the Peruvian Novel El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo by
J. M. Arguedas
The colonial themes and devices that we have seen articulated in The Hua-
rochiri Manuscript appear "re-presented"—brought to the present as inter-
text—in Arguedas's novel El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo. As inter-
textuality is one of the main literary strategies employed by twentieth-cen-
tury Spanish American writers to re-present colonial topics through the
lens of parody, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of this term. Within
the framework of this study, "intertextuality" refers to the diverse modes
by which the modern text (quoting text) interrelates, interacts, or estab-
lishes a dialogue with other prior, literary or non-literary texts (quoted
texts) through the use of parody, thematic allusion, stylistic imitation, or
other structural or generic modes (quotations); these devices bring to the
forefront the cultural contexts in which the intertextual references are con-
structed, not only by authors but also by readers who are informed enough
to supply the missing links between prior and present texts and contexts. 12
Thus, through the technique of intertextuality, colonial narratives from the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the historical spaces metaphorized in
them are appropriated and incorporated as intertexts into twentieth century
Spanish American novels.
In the case of El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo intertextuality and
parody are used to recreate the conflict between the conversion of Indians
to Christianity and the adherence to ancient Incan myths recorded original-
ly in The HuarochiriManuscript. In order to illustrate the way in which in-
tertextuality is constructed in literary terms in Arguedas's novel to articu-
late pre-Columbian Inca myths and colonial themes, I will examine, on the
one hand, how dialogues function inside The Huarochiri Manuscript (at
the intratextual level) and, on the other, how dialogues (at the intertextual
level) are connected to each other in texts whose dates of composition and
publication are separated by more than four centuries in time.
Here is an intratextual dialogue that occurs in the source text, The Hua-
rochiri Manuscript:
(3) [A] fox who'd come from down below and one who had come up
above met face to face there. One fox asked the other, "Brother, how
are things in upper Villca?"
12 Genette, p. 8: Culler, p. 103.

"What is good is good. But a lord in Anchi Cocha, a Villca as a mat-

ter of fact, one who claims to know a whole lot, to be good himself, is
terribly ill. [...]
Then he asked, "And how are people doing in Lower Villca,
brother?"
The other fox answered similarly, saying, "There is a woman, the
offspring of a great lord and a Villca who almost died because [.. .]13
The ellipsis points inserted at the end of this fragment indicate not only that
the telling of an Incan Myth (an adulteress who was turned to stone) will
follow, but most importantly, it shows that the dialogue—between the
foxes from above and below—function structurally in The Huarochiri
Manuscript as a narrative framework to introduce the antagonistic but
parallel stories about the myths and legends of pre-Colombian and colonial
Peruvians, namely serranos or highlanders represented as foxes from up
above and costenos or coastal dwellers represented as foxes from down be-
low.
In order to show how the ancient foundational book of the Warn Cheri
people of the Andes enters into an intertextual dialogue with Arguedas's
modernist novel, I will quote a passage from chapter five of The Huaro-
chiri Manuscript that narrates both the myth of the adulteress turned to
stone and the story of Huatya Curi, a poor man who challenges a rich man
to a series of tests:
(4) One day the challenger said, "Let's have a drinking and dancing con-
test." [...]
The rich man was the first to dance in the contest.
His wives, who numbered almost two hundred, danced along with
him, and after they were done the poor man [...] danced to the skunk's
drum he'd brought along, the earth of the region quaked.
With this he beat them all.
Next, they began drinking [...]
And all of those people who were sitting there served him drink after
drink without giving him a break.
Even though he drank every bit of it he sat there with no problem.
Then it was his turn. [...]
But when he began to serve, starting from the head of the gathering,
they dropped down drunk in no time, one after another.
After winning all these contests [...]
Huatya Curi said, "Now, with blue tunics! And let our breechcloths
be of white cotton! That's how we'll dance!"
"Very well then, " the rich man agreed. [...]
As he was dancing, Huatya Curi charged down on him from outside
13 HM, pp. 42^13,45.

screaming. That man panicked, turned into a brocket deer and ran
away.
And his wife followed him [...]
Chasing them, he caught the wife on the road to Anchi Cocha [...]
And right then and there she turned into a stone instantly,14 (Italics
mine.)
T h i s ancient m y t h of Huatya Curi narrated in a d i a l o g u e f o r m in The Hua-

rochiriManuscript (quoted text) h a s b e e n ( r e ) p r o d u c e d in A r g u e d a s ' n o v e l
El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo ( q u o t i n g text), p e r h a p s to represent
literally an u n f i n i s h e d d i a l o g u e that started c e n t u r i e s a g o b e t w e e n a high-
lander (a f o x f r o m u p a b o v e ) and a coastal d w e l l e r (a f o x f r o m d o w n be-
low):
(5) The fox from down below: [...] This is our second encounter. Two
thousands five hundred years ago we met in Lautasco Mountain in
Huarochiri; we spoke to each other by the sleeping body of Huatya-
curi, the son who was born before his father, craftsman son of the god
Paracaca. There you revealed the secrets that let Huatyacury win the
contest he had been challenged to by the son-in-law of Tamtanamca, a
vain, ill and faltering god. First the son-in-law challenged him to sing,
do ritual dancing, and drink; and he sang and danced two hundred dif-
ferent dances with two hundred women [...] The son of Ρariacaca
passed all of the tests; he presented himself wearing a garment made of
snow [...] he made a blue puma roar; he himself roared even more fer-
ociously while dancing dressed in white and black; he frightened his
rival and changed him into a deer, and his rival's woman he changed
into a miraculous stone harlot. [...]
The fox from up above: Now you're speaking from Chimbote; you're
telling the stories of Chimbote. Two thousand five hundred years ago
Tutaykire (Great Chief or Wound of the Night), the warrior from up
above, son of Pariacaca, was detained in Urin Allauka, a yunga valley
of the world of down below, he was detained by a harlot virgin [...]
The individual who tried to take his own life and is writing this book
was from up above; he still has ima sapra swaying in his bosom.
Where is he from, what is he made of now? 15 (Italics mine.)
T w o literary p r o p o s i t i o n s b e c o m e e v i d e n t in f r a g m e n t s 3 and 5 q u o t e d
a b o v e : the first is that the transcribed v e r b a l d i a l o g u e r e p r e s e n t e d in The
Huarochiri Manuscript serves as the textual and c o n t e x t u a l structural
f r a m e w o r k f o r A r g u e d a s ' s n o v e l El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo\
and t h e s e c o n d is that e a c h narrative in b o t h texts is structured in parallel
syntactical c o n s t r u c t i o n s that s y m m e t r i c a l l y c o r r e s p o n d to or o p p o s e e a c h
14 Ibid., pp. 58, 59.

15 FAFB, pp. 53, 54.
other, the presentation in direct dialogue form (questions and answers be-
tween the foxes) being the main structural device employed in the two
texts.
Indeed, the title of Arguedas's novel (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de
abajo) not only alludes to themes or "conversations" articulated in the two
texts but also anticipates the binary structure that characterizes the entire
work: "the fox from up above" is a rich man and "the fox from down be-
low" is a poor man. The two fictional characters engage in antagonistic
dialogues and duels and, in so doing, introduce readers either to Incan
myths or legends (The Huarochiri Manuscript) or to the parodied retelling
of them (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo). Arguedas's novel presents
a dual structure in which terms interrelate with or complement each other:
it has two parts (I, II); two paratexts: The Prologue and the Epilogue; two
main discursive modes: the diaries and the storytelling form of the chap-
ters; two predominant narrative forms: dialogues and monologues; two
main sets of characters: the protagonists (the foxes from above) and the an-
tagonists (the foxes from below); and finally, it conveys metaphorically
two chronological times and geographical spaces (or to put it in Bakhtin's
technical terminology, two main narrative chronothopo): the colonial In-
can realm of the Quechua Indians of Warn Cheri and the urban setting of
present day Peruvian Indians. Therefore, one may say that, taken in the
context of the entire novel, this unfinished dialogue symbolizes the incom-
plete dialogue Arguedas—through his narrator and readers—has estab-
lished between colonial and modernist texts and their relative, cultural con-
texts.
By reading these myths in both texts and comparing them, the readers of
The Huarochiri Manuscript (composed 1608) and El zorro de arriba y el
zorro de abajo (written in 1971) participate actively in the process of inter-
textuality by supplying the missing links between the cultural contexts of
the Incas' colonial past and the neocolonial present of Peru, which includes
the author's extraliterary reality. 16 Accordingly, in the last part of the frag-
16 Additional "intertextual dialogues" occurring between these two narratives are: the in-
tentional use of Quechua, the language of ancient and present day Incas, side-by-side
with Spanish, the language of colonial Spaniards and modern Creoles and mestizos.
There is another kind of hybridization that occurs at the level of syntax. Thus, the con-
structions of "unfamiliar" Spanish syntactical structures that distort and fragment the
Spanish language by intentionally imitating Quechuan linguistic structures: for instance,
the use of repeated double verbs with gerund value, a common linguistic feature in Que-
chua, but completely strange to Spanish. ( F A F B , p. 154: "Dijo, diciendo" (He says to me
saying", p. 154: "baila bailando" (dance, dancing), p. 156: "gira girando" (roll, rolling).
ment cited the author Arguedas, by way of his narrator, presents himself in
its narrative as "one of the above," a serrano, a highlander Quechua Indian
who writes in Quechua, even if he may subsequently admit in the novel's
last page his bi-cultural background, when he declares that: "I have been
happy in my inadequacies because I was perceiving Peru in Quechua and
in Spanish." 17
An additional narrative theme in Arguedas's novel transcribed from The
Huarochiri Manuscript is the Westerners' colonial and contemporary will
to convert Inca Indians to Christianity. As indicated in the previous sec-
tion, the Catholic priest Francisco de Avila, the main editor of The Huaro-
chiri Manuscript—as the first priest authorized by the Spanish empire as
"extirpator of idolatries" in the Viceroyalty of Peru—possessed the official
religious authority to decide the conversion of the Incas to Christianity. By
narrative contrast, the three main priest-figures who appear in El zorro de
arriba y el zorro de abajo (the American priest associated with the Peace
Corps, the Monsehor, and the preacher Moncada) appear to have lost all
official and confessional authority to evangelize the present-day urban In-
dians of Peru portrayed in the novel.
Actually, the great official and confessional authority traditionally at-
tributed in Catholicism to high-ranked church figures like the Monsehor,
as well as the high appreciation of well-articulated sermons expected from
priests in general, are completely undermined in the novel:
(6) Out of the small group of men near the archway came a priest dressed
in lay garb, with a hard white collar. He raised a battery-powered bull-
horn, like the richest pedlars carried.
"Brothers, Brothers, companeros...," he broadcast. "Not being dis-
position that you carry crosses nor corpses to this cemetery to other
cemetery. Only new dead bodies buried in other cemetery, other side
San Pedro. You people to decide, most illustrious Bishop, Monsignor,
to respect. I to give name illustrious Bishop, blessing. [...]
From the cemetery the American priest went to the bishop's office.
He was speaking in English with the American bishop of Chimbote.
17 FAFB, p. 259. As autobiographical information confirms, Jose Maria Arguedas (1911-

1969) was a highlander, a bilingual Quechua-Spanish speaker and a Peruvian novelist
who foretold in this novel and other documents his own suicidal act. E. Gomez Mango,
"Todas las lenguas. Vida y muerte de la escritura en 'Los zorros' de J.Μ. Arguedas," in
Eve-Marie Fell (ed.), El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Cientificas 1990), pp. 360-368; S. Harmuth, "Jose Maria Arguedas:
El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo," in H.-O. Dill et al. (eds.), Apropiaciones de la
realidad en la novela latinoamericana de los siglos XIX y XX (Frankfurt: Vervuert,
1994), pp. 308-310.
54 Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega
Monsignor they [the Indians] are both tame and wild. One never
knows... 18
Likewise, the character Moncada is presented as a mentally ill preacher
who in his fits of madness imitates Christ's Gospel, preaching in incongru-
ent street harangues directed to by-passers or to the open-mouthed citizens
standing in the city's open markets:
(7) On the first corner of El Modelo Marketplace, the main one in the city,
near the stall with clothing, vegetables and a thousand odds and ends
spread over more than half the street, Moncada set down the cross he
has been carrying on his shoulders. [...] [He] began to preach. [...] "I
am God's toreador. I am a beggar for his affection, not for the false
affection of the authorities, of humanity too. Look here!"
He shouted loudly and began bullfighting near the cross. [...]
"Ah, ah! Life, death, the stink of fish meal, of genteel American
monk, a gentleman that does not pronounce Castilian as it ought to be
pronounced. The Yankee priest clergy hear this, hear this is never
going to talk Castilian—the kind of Spanish we speak—as it should be
spoken. That doesn't matter. They don't come here to impose their will
on us. They preach here, they put themselves in danger, gentlemen,
amidst the pestilences, amidst the foul odors, like Moncada does, imi-
tating Moncada, who would also preach with good deeds if he had the
monis(Italics mine.)
Arguedas's narrative presentation of the "sermons" given by the evangeli-

cal priest and Moncada in the city streets greatly diminishes the authority
of both priests by resorting skillfully to four stylistic and technical devices
commonly associated with surrealisme: firstly, the use of syntactically
fragmented structures like the transcription of a broken gringo-Spanish,
which in Arguedas's novel helps to convey the speech of the American
priest; secondly, the creation of "odd" characters whose erratic actions usu-
ally cause chaos, as is the case of Moncada, a self-appointed Christ-like
outlandish character whose actions parody the sacred figure of Christ as
traditionally presented by institutional Spanish Catholicism; thirdly, the
use of the technique of ecriture automatique to convey speeches with no
apparent semantic directions, a feature commonly present in surrealist
novels, and also illustrated in Arguedas's novel by Moncada's flashy
speeches; finally, the introduction and/or intermingling of the city voices
of streetwise characters with the voices of blue- and white-collar workers
who (mis)communicate in urban slang or in distorted words from different
18 FAFB, pp. 68,70.

19 Ibid., pp. 56, 62.
languages and dialects (that is, monis) or in coastal Peruvian Spanish

slang. 20 All these modernist linguistic and literary techniques commonly
associated with surrealisme are aimed at the literary elaboration of an ur-
ban multilingual milieu in which the voices of the main narrator, the Indian
workers, the citizens and the foreigners are disarticulated in a linguistic
chaos that conveys the predictable miscommunication of characters por-
trayed as displaced newcomers in urban milieus.
The metaphorizing of the chaotic transculturation that contemporary
Peruvian Indians have undergone and of the contemporary attempt to con-
vert Indians to Christianity is a central topic that Arguedas's narrator has
taken up from an old (con)text—The Huarochiri Manuscript—and skillfully
transformed into a new (con)text—El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo.
Resorting to modernist narrative techniques, Arguedas not only succeeds in
achieving this kind of "transculturacion narrativa" 21 but also articulates in his
novel a discourse of resistance that, on the one hand, questions in a literary
mode the hegemonic role that Spain and the United States have played in the
evangelization of ancient and present-day Incas and, on the other hand, de-
picts the contradictions between neocolonialism and the ongoing, imperfect
modernization in Peruvian and Latin American societies metaphorically de-
scribed in the novel.22 Indeed, the social contradictions caused by the inter-
connection in third world societies of economic neocolonialism, incongruous
modernity and the vestiges of peripheral globalization—in the form of de-
pendent, transnational capitalism—are the very topics represented in Argue-
das's novel.23 Thus, the reader confronts the depiction of the labor exploita-
tion and ethnic degradation suffered by present-day Inca Indians when they
migrate from rural, highland villages to the urban, coastal cities and become
workers of multinational corporations and marginalized consumers who in-
termingle in brothels with prostitutes and foreigners. 24
20 Peruvian Spanish slang as well as Quechua words and sentences and also English mis-
spelled words occur throughout the entire novel ( F A F B Glossary, pp. 271-280; and pp.
62, 99, 132).
21 Rama, pp. 32-56.
22 Canclini, pp. 13-25; 65-93.
23 Hybridity in the context of "The new phase of Global Capitalism and its contradictions,"
is further discussed in M. Petersson's article "Hybridity in Indian English Literature," in-
cluded in this volume.
24 FBFB ch. I and III; see especially p. 114: "the face of Peru" with its features: "Pope John
XXIII, USA., Peruvian Industry, Communism, Peruvian Government, Peruvian people."
In sum, intertextuality, parody, and the religious and social conflicts as literary tech-
niques and themes occur throughout the novel, see especially, pp. 85, 90, 94, 100, 102,
114.
In fact, to express in novel form the contradictions between the innova-

tive, modernist narrative (surrealisme and plurilingualism as a literary
practice) and inadequate modernity (as it appears in Peruvian society), Ar-
guedas has masterfully reconstructed in El zorro de arriba y el zorro de
abajo a shattered mirror that reflects surrealistically the vestiges of Spanish
imperial colonialism, overlaid by fragmented images of a Peruvian mo-
dernity. This modernity represents the unfinished process of economic,
cultural, ethnic, and linguistic hybridizations that have not found their own
system of social and cultural articulation, and, therefore, accounts for rela-
tionships of domination/dependency characteristic of the neocolonial,
capitalistic order metaphorically described in the novel.
At the textual level, it is also interesting to note that scriptural and cul-
tural intertextuality help bring to the forefront the ideology imbedded in
the making and the reading of both the ancient manuscript and the modern-
ist novel. Namely, "the question of what or whose ideology is in play" 25 in
texts can be detected clearly in both narratives if the observant reader cor-
relates the roles of editor and narrator played respectively by Father Avila
and Arguedas in The Huarochiri Manuscript and El zorro de arriba y el
zorro de abajo. Father Avila, as an imperial editor, conveys his official
ideology by censoring and revising a local (pre-Incan) text written in Que-
chua, allowing—in the name of judicial "authenticity"—the introduction
of syntactical errors in the Spanish sentences used by the mestizo in the co-
lonial text. By contrast, Arguedas, as a Peruvian author, conveys his ideo-
logical resistance to neocolonialism by also allowing the introduction of
morphological and syntactical errors in the Spanish words and sentences
used by the American and Peruvian preachers in the modernist novel. It be-
comes evident that the reading response or hermeneutical activity set off
by reading Arguedas's novel affects diverse levels of reception for in-
stance, the uninterested response that Moncada's religious harangues
awaken in the characters stands in contrast not only to the probable, hilari-
ous response of observant readers who can detect parody in the narrative
setting, but also to the "competent" response of the readers whose histori-
cal horizons includes acquaintance with Arguedas's Spanish version of the
manuscript: Dioses y hombres de Huarochiri (1975).
Ultimately, then, analysis of the colonial manuscript and the modernist
novel, as narratives and cultural texts, shows clearly that dialogue is used
intratextually and intertextually to convey the cultural perspective of In-
25 Zimmerman, p. 17.
dians both at the conversational level of the story and at the written level of
the discourse. Dialogue functions in the manuscript mostly as an intratex-
tual narrative framework that subordinates the transcribed conversations of
the Inca informants to the imperative, editorial voice of the priest Avila.
Therefore, one may say, in Bakhtin's terms, that the manuscript is a mono-
logical narrative. By contrast, Arguedas's modernist novel is a dialogical
one because the dialogues represented in it are not governed by a predomi-
nant authorial voice but are independent voices engaged in intratextual and
intertextual conversations with fictional characters and texts from different
historical times. 26
Writing the Foundational Texts of the Mayas:

Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam
At the time Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the West-
ern hemisphere, Maya-Quiche Indians from the Mesoamerican region were
in the process of compiling, in their indigenous languages, their two major
foundational narrations, later called Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam. During
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Quiche, a Mayan ethnic group,
compiled their ancient oral myths on the creation of humans by carving
them on tree bark in a codex form named Popol Vuh. Today three manu-
scripts, which were composed originally in glyphs and later in alphabetic
forms, have been preserved: Dresdensis-Dresden, Peresianus-Paris, Tro-
Cortesianus-Madrid. The Popol Vuh was composed of glyphs (carved fig-
ures and symbols) that mingled writing (phonetic signs) and painting
(depictional drawings); these may be deciphered by using an interpretative
system in which words and pictures are displayed together to convey
meaning.
Popol Vuh was considered to be a sacred Council Book and was sup-
posed to represent everything existing on the sky-earth (kajulew). The en-
lightened diviners, day keepers and priests, supposedly endowed with a
cosmic vision, were meant to be able to see (read) in the Council Book the
past, present and future events which affected the creation and destruction
of gods and humans. The events narrated in the Popol Vuh were structured
26 The terms "dialogue" and "dialogical" refer here to Bakhtin's clear-cut distinction be-
tween dialogue as real and fictional speech acts broken down into replies, and dialogue
as an intertextual conversation that interconnects (parts of) texts from different periods.
Bakhtin, pp. 316-317.
a posteriori in five parts, according to Tedlock's translation. The first part

describes how the Mayan gods ("Bearer, Begetter, and Sovereign Plumed
Serpent") created the world: "for the forming of the earth they say, 'Earth.'
It arose suddenly, just like a cloud, like a mist, now forming, unfolding." 27
Having created earth, the Mayan gods appeared in Popol Vuh—parts one
and four—undertaking the creation of the aboriginal Mayan and Quiche
man. At first, the gods failed in their attempts to make (mold) man from
mud and wood, but afterwards the gods succeeded in molding adequate hu-
man beings out of a perfect substance, maize:
(8) [T]he Bearer, Begetter, the Makers [...] sought and discovered what
was needed for human flesh. It was only a short while before the sun,
moon, and stars were to appear above the Makers and Modelers. Split
Place, Bitter Water Place is the name: the yellow corn, white corn came
from there [...]
And then the yellow corn and white corn were ground, and Xmu-
cane did the grinding nine times. Food was used, along with the water
she rinsed her hands with, for the creation of grease; it became human
fat when it was worked by the Bearer, Begetter, Sovereign Plumed Ser-
pent, as they are called.
After that they put it into words:
The making, the modeling of our first mother-father,
With yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh,
Food alone for the human legs and arms
For our first fathers, the four human works.
It was staples alone that made up their flesh. 28
Maize being an omnipresent product for Mesoamerican Indians, it may

seem appropriate that the Mayan gods created the aboriginal man out of it,
the cereal that ancient Olmecs started to cultivate around 1400 BC, and
which is still today the staple food for indigenous Mexicans and Central
Americans.
The second and third parts of the Popol Vuh recount the mythological
and vivid adventures of the young heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque and
their parents who, after many wanderings, endeavors and vicissitudes,
were sacrificed by the Evil Spirits in the dark kingdom of Xibalbay. The
fourth part of Popol Vuh deals not only with "the beginning of the concep-
tion of humans" 29 but also with the naming of "the first people who were
made and modeled" and presided over the origin of the Maya-Quiche
people and their realm. The fifth and last part of the Council Book is a
27 PV, p. 65.
28 Ibid., pp. 145-146.
29 Ibid., p. 145.
compilation of foundational accounts of the origin of the Mayan peoples:

their wars, migrations and geographical distribution in Mesoamerica as
well as the historical accounts from the ancient divine Quiche ancestors to
the sixteenth century Lord Quiche families and their lineage gods, that is,
from around the year 3372 BC (the first year recorded in the Mayan calen-
dars, according to their own vision of their history) until the Spanish Con-
quest of Mayan territories at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In one
of the Popol Vuh's last paragraphs entitled, "and here shall appear the
faces, one by one, of each of the Quiche Lords," there appears a name-list-
ing of fourteen Quiche generations of Lords. Representatives of the last
three generations of Lords, who were in power during and after the Span-
ish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado invaded the Quiche kingdom in 1524,
are mentioned in this way:
(9) Three Deer and Nine Dogs, in the twelfth generation of lords. And they
were ruling when Tonatiuh arrived. They were tortured by the Castil-
ian people.
Black Butterfly and Tepepul were tributary to the Castilian people.
They had already been begotten as the thirteenth generation of lords.
Don Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes in the fourteenth genera-
tion of lords. They are the sons of black Butterfly and Tepepul?0
My underlined words call attention to two historical and cultural facts:
firstly, that Tonatiuh, which means "Sun" in Nahuatl, was the name that
the Mexicans gave to the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado ( 1 4 8 6 -
1541), who in 1524 invaded the Quiche kingdom; and secondly, that by re-
cording in the original Quiche text the Spanish and Mayan names to pin-
point the patri-sanguineal family filiations ("Juan de Rojas and Don Juan
Cortes are the sons of Black Butterfly and Tepepul"), the narrator not only
reveals the mestizo affiliations of the recorded persons who are from indig-
enous and Spanish origins, but also makes the Popol Vuh's reader an actual
eyewitness to a process of ethnic mestization and cultural hybridization
which is still going on today in the American continent.
The Popol Vuh is worthy of comparison with the other major text of the
Mayan Chilam Balam. Firstly, both texts were composed in languages be-
longing to the Mayan linguistic families, the Popol Vuh in Quiche and Chi-
lam Balam in Yucatecan. Secondly, both texts are foundational books be-
cause they represent their cultures through written signs and, in so doing,
offer a mythical and historical explanation of the origin of the peoples of
30 Ibid., p. 195.
Quiche and Yumayel in Mesoamerica. In addition, both were—and are still

today, to a lesser extent—considered by their once-polytheist communities
to be sacred and magical books because the Mayan priests who interpreted
them to their communities were believed to "see" in these cosmological
narrations prophesies of salvation and doom: the coming of new gods and
the predestined end of the Maya empire and civilization.
Although there is no doubt that the greater part of the Chilam Balam nar-
rations deals with Mayan mythology and polytheist religion, it is also true
that, interspersed among the sacred themes, there are also a summary of the
most notable events of Mayan history, synthetic chronological accounts in
the "Katuns series," a collection of riddles whose sacred function was to
serve as the symbolic formula of religious initiation, and a list of prophe-
cies attributed to the indigenous Priest Chilam Balam, who is the major
narrator of this series of texts. The central character in the Chilam Balam
books is the main God of the Maya-Yucatecan Indians, Citbil, the Creator
{ah ch'ab), the True God (hahal ku), who united in his being some of the
twenty gods and goddesses present in the Mayans' myths of creation. The
Mayan cosmology and theology are profoundly interwoven with myth,
mystique, ritual, a sacred numerology, and a calendaric system dominated
by quadripartite sets for counting time. 31
In Chilam Balam, the spokesman (prophet) of the Jaguar, using Yucate-
can-Maya strophic forms, evokes and invokes both the Mayan ancestors
and the disastrous effects Christianity had upon the Mayan (Yucatecan and
Quiche) Indians:
(10) How much more cannot be told.
For in fact the knowledge comes
From the Ancestry of us Maya.
This stone knows its meaning,
Which comes from their country,
is here.
One looks at the stone
And divine its meaning. [...]
Only by this was the divination,
And these were the diviners.
When misery came,
When Christianity came
From these many Christians
Who arrived
With the true divinity,
The True God.
31 ChB, pp. 1-30.

For this indeed was the beginning of misery

For us,
The beginning of tribute,
The beginning of tithes,
The beginning of strife over purse snatching,
The beginning of strife with blowguns,
The beginning of strife over promotions,
The beginning of the creation of many factions,
The beginning of forced seizure for debts,
The beginning of forced imprisonment for debts,
The beginning of village strife,
The beginning of misery and affliction,
The beginning of forcible separation,
The beginning of forced labor for the Spaniards. 32
In the face of these arguments, it would not be difficult to make broad gen-
eralizations about the evils of the Spanish conquest and colonization of
America as manifested in the brutal imperial policies of forced labor and
compulsory evangelization imposed on Amerindians by colonial army of-
ficers, Catholic priests and royal officials of the Spanish Crown. Neverthe-
less, anthropological evidence shows that the Mayan and Aztecan Indians
promoted internal wars in which they vandalized and burnt temples, killed
and enslaved Indians from neighboring tribes and tortured them to death in
acts of blood-letting, as human sacrifices offered to the stars and the sun,
which were considered by them great deities. 33
Few will dispute the annihilation of native American Indians and their
cultures caused by the Spanish invasion of the New World. However, it
should be remembered that the Spaniards' imposition of Christianity on
Amerindians took two main forms: an imperial enterprise that helped legit-
imize the economic and socio-political power of the Spanish Crown in co-
lonial America, and an evangelical mission carried out mostly by Francis-
cans, Dominicans and Jesuits whose ambiguous role in the colonization of
America may be characterized as an historical paradox. On the one hand,
Christian priests like Francisco de Avila and Diego de Landa 34 aided in the
32 Ibid., pp. 109, 110, 111.

33 R. E. W. Adams, Ancient Civilizations of the New World (Boulder, Colorado: Westwiew
Press Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 1997), p. 85; M. D. Coe, The Maya (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1999), pp. 151-152; 175-177.
34 The Spanish priest Diego de Landa first burned books and other cultural objects of the
Mayans because he believed they were the work of the devil; afterwards he tried meticu-
lously to reconstruct (Relacion de las cosas de Yucatän) the Mayan cultural and religious
history content in the codices he had burned. This paradox symbolizes the two sides of
the Spanish cultural imperial policies in the Christianization of America.
killing, exploitation, and destruction of Amerindian culture by burning

manuscripts and tearing down ancient pyramids, religious centers and
stone monuments in order to make America's indigenous peoples reject
their long-standing religious beliefs and embrace the Christian faith. On
the other hand, other priests and missionaries—like Bartolome de Las Ca-
sas (1470-1566), Bernardino de Sahagun (1500-1590), Jose de Acosta
(1539-1600), and Juan de Torquemada (1560-1624)—undertook the com-
mendable tasks of compiling and transcribing into Spanish or Latin the
myths and legends of Amerindians. They also wrote religious summaries,
historical chronicles, art books, and dramatic representations. By virtue of
this transcultural process, the Spanish missionaries and friars preserved for
posterity indigenous cultural artifacts that today may give us an historical
glimpse of how ancient peoples from the Old and New World lived and in-
termingled socially during the conquest and in colonial times.
Rewriting the Colonial Memory of the Maya-Quiche People in

the Guatemalan Novel Hombres de Maiz by Μ. A. Asturias
The policies and practices that brought about the Indians' forced or willing
conversions to Christianity, as well as the economic exploitation of indig-
enous races, provide the central topics for the novel Hombres de maiz by
the Guatemalan Nobel Prize winning writer Miguel Angel Asturias. Like
Arguedas, Asturias makes use in his novel of intertextuality, parody, and
surrealist writing to recontextualize the ancient indigenous mythology and
religious/cultural conflicts recorded in the two foundational books of the
Mesoamerican Indians Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam.
Indeed, resorting to both parody and literary discourses of resistance, the
narrator of Hombres de maiz presents contemporary conflicts between dif-
ferent religions. Cultural encounters of the religious kind are illustrated in
the following anecdote, where a Catholic priest tries to forcibly instill the
Christian faith into a present-day Mayan Indian who literally resists it to
the death:
(11) Well, this Indian was dying, and the Holy Father, after a thousand diffi-
culties, because he lived far away, brought him the viaticum. The road
was so bad the priest lost the host, and when he arrived at the rancho,
not finding anything else to give the sick man, he picked up a cock-
roach and pulled off one of his wings. The Indian was very near the
end, gasping, and the Holy Father, beside the cot, was saying, 'Do you
believe this is the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ?' 'Yes, I do,' replies
the Indian. 'Do you believe this little wafer is his Holy Body?' Ί do,'
repeats the Indian. 'And do you believe in life eternal?' 'Yes, yes, I
do.' 'Then if you do, open your mouth-' At that moment, the Indian
pushes the priest's hand away and says, Ί believe, father, but I ain't
swallowing it.' 35
The Indian character portrayed here knows the Catholic protocol of confes-
sion and competently answers affirmatively all the priest's questions until
he is asked to swallow the false host; then he chooses to refuse it, and by
doing so, he mentally and emotionally rejects confession and the Christian
faith altogether. 36 This Indian character, as the ancient Amerindians por-
trayed in Chilam Balam and The Huarochiri Manuscript are reported to
have done, followed Christianity in the letter, but not in the spirit. In fact,
through the use of parody, Asturias's narrator tells in a novel form not only
how rural Catholic priests have failed in their efforts to completely convert
Amerindians to the Christian faith, but, most importantly, he metaphorical-
ly emphasizes the Indians' silent resistance to the imposition of a foreign
culture and religion. "The passive resistance of Indians is an important trait
that has appeared even in the earliest short stories of the Guatemalan
writer," acknowledges Gerald Martin, a leading critic of Asturias's work. 37
Asturias's novel Hombres de maiz is structured externally in six parts:
"Gaspar Ilom," "Machojon," "The Deer of the Seventh Fire," "Colonel
Chalo Godoy," "Maria Tecun," "Coyote Postman" and an epilogue. How-
ever, any attentive reader can also detect a dual internal structure of the
story presented in four main sections. The first section deals with the initial
four episodes; the second recounts the story of Maria Tecun; the third is
about Coyote Postman; and the fourth is the epilogue. By referring inter-
textually in his novel's title (Hombres de maiz) to a central theme of Popol
Vuh, by giving Mayan Indians central roles as protagonists, and by allow-
ing the indigenous beliefs to occupy most of the narration, the author,
through his narrator, imposes in his novel the perspective of the Mayans.
These narrative strategies become evident in the novel's first lines:
(12) 'Gaspar Ilom is letting them steal the sleep from the eyes of the land
of Ilom.'
Gaspar Ilom is letting them hack away the eyelids of the land of Ilom
with a x e s . . . '
35 MM, p. 172.
36 The rejection of Catholicism by the Maya Indian is emphasized linguistically by the use
of the idiomatic expression 'Wo me lo trago" ("I ain't swallowing it") which in colloqui-
al Spanish means "I certainly do not believe it."
37 MM, p. 394; footnote 48; my translation.
Gaspar Ilom is letting them scorch the leafy eyelashes of the land of
Horn with fires that turn the moon the angry brown of an old ant ...'
[...]
Bare earth, wakeful earth, sleepy maize-growing earth [...]
We got to clear the land of Ilom of them who knock the trees down
with axes, them who scorch their forest with their fires, them who dam
the waters of the rivers that sleeps as it flows and opens its eyes at the
pools and rots for wanting to sleep...The maizegrowers.' 38
In this kind of poetic prose the land is given a face—eyes, eyelids, eye-
lashes—to see, and a voice to claim and accuse those who devastate and
burn the Indian highlands: "the maize growers." In these first pages land
becomes a central narrator who "sees" and also "tells" the story, reflected
through the point of view of a person (Gaspar Ilom) who perceives reality
as a Mayan Indian. Thus, personification as well as syntactic parallel sen-
tences, rhythmic evocations in triads, unexpected images distorted by
dreams and even the use of ecriture automatique are the very narrative and
poetic, surrealist techniques used by Asturias to reincorporate in his novel
the Amerindian cosmogony and the social and religious protest which orig-
inally appeared in the ancient Mayan folk-tales reported in Popol Vuh. Ac-
tually, Asturias verifies the existence of a "Latin American surrealisme" in
these words: "For us, Surrealism meant [...] to find in ourselves, not the
European style, but lo indigena, lo americano."39
In this first section the two protagonists (Gaspar Ilom, a descendant of
Mayan Indians) and Colonel Gonzalo Godoy (a descendant of Spaniards)
oppose each other to protect their own people's ideological and economi-
cal interests. Ilom, the Indian chief, stands up for his land and for the spirit-
ual right of Indians to cultivate maize solely as a food and not as a com-
modity because, as he argues, maize "sown to be eaten is the sacred suste-
nance of the men who were made of maize. Sown to make money it means
famine for the men who were made of maize." 40 This argument, which re-
fers to the title of Asturias's novel, is intertextually related to the Mayan
myth of creation, in which the ancient Mayan Gods molded man out of
maize. 41 By contrast, Godoy confronts Ilom militarily to protect the indus-
trial "maizegrowers" of Spanish descent (maiceros ladinos), who have
burnt the forests of Ilom to grow maize and to trade it commercially. After
38 Ibid., pp. 1 , 2 , 4 .
39 L. Lopez Alvarez, Conversation con Miguel Angel Asturias (Madrid: Editorial Magiste-
rio Espanol, 1974), p. 80; my translation.
40 MM, pp. 5 - 6 .
41 Cf. PV, part 3, ch. I.
Godoy massacres most of the Indians, Ilom kills himself so as not to sur-
vive his men. Subsequently, the Indian sorcerers avenge him and his men
by cursing and punishing the perpetrators of the massacre with death, a fate
that is fulfilled in the three remaining episodes.
Two cultures confront each other in this section: the pre-industrial
Mayan culture, represented by Ilom and the Indians for whom money
(gold) does not have any value; and the industrial Western culture, repre-
sented by Godoy and the industrialist "maizegrowers," for whom money is
a capitalist necessity. Given the reality that underlies Asturias's fiction in
that Ilom is the name of both a geographical region in Guatemala and an
historical person (Gaspar Hijom, an Indian leader who revolted against the
Guatemalan government for authorizing Mexican settlers to appropriate
Indian lands), 42 it can be claimed that in Hombres de maiz the author takes
a real fact (a social text) from Guatemala's history and incorporates it into
his novel (as a literary intertext). Hence, Hijom's revolt represents the col-
lision between Indian and Ladino cultures both in reality and in fiction.
The author himself confirms this fictional appropriation of reality: "Some-
times I reread to myself entire paragraphs of Men of Maize, and I realize
that there is a popular richness, born of the people, not born of me, that I
have only transposed it to the pages, namely, characters that speak, that I
have heard speaking, and I have carried them to Hombres de maiz"n
The second structural component of the novel deals with the fifth
episode, the legend of Maria Tccun, who abandoned her blind Indian hus-
band Goyo Yic. This single episode narrates the story of Yic who, after re-
gaining his vision through an eye operation, becomes a salesman and fol-
lows Maria Tecun for years throughout the coastal villages and cities until
he finally find her and retires to the highlands to live peacefully with her.
Readers of this part may infer a binary opposition between city and high-
lands: Ladinos are portrayed as leading their materialistic life in the coastal
cities while Indians live permanently in the highlands or return there to
lead a quiet, spiritual life. It is particularly interesting to remember that the
binary opposition between city and highlands—connected to theme and
narrative space—is also a central literary device in Arguedas's novel El
zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo. What is different, however, in Astu-
rias's novel is the presence of intermediate characters who undergo a trans-
42 Marroquin cited in C. Gründler. See Dill et al. (eds.), Miguel Angel Asturias. Apropia-
ciones de la realidad en la novela latinoamericana de los siglos XIX y XX (Frankfurt:
Vervuert, 1994), p. 318.
43 Gerald Martin (ed.), Hombres de maiz. (Madrid: Archivos CSIC, 1992), p. 48, my trans-
lation.
cultivation process as the narration progresses: Indians who occasionally

adopt the culture of the Ladinos (Goyo Yic) or, conversely, Ladinos who
adopt the spiritual attitudes of Indians (the Spanish priest Don Casualidon).
The third section corresponds to the sixth episode, Coyote Postman. It
deals with the magical adventures of Nicho Aquino, a postman who carries
mailbags by mule from a provincial village to deliver them to the capital city.
During one of his journeys, Aquino, while looking for his wife who had dis-
appeared, meets an Indian wizard in the "Painted House" who guides him
into "the mouths of the rivers." There, the postman is transformed into a
coyote, and then, as half-animal and half-human, he has to overcome many
tests in order to be granted the right to know what has happened to his wife.
The fourth or last section of the novel is the Epilogo. It seems initially to
have the traditional narrative function of a last chapter that summarizes and
ties up the loose ends of the novel, accounting for all the characters' final
destinies. In fact, the surrealist, shifting images and the use of ecriture au-
tomatique, as well as the modernist open ending allow the novel to retain
the life-like fragmented structure that has prevailed in the entire narration.
Like Arguedas, Asturias skillfully uses surrealist techniques in Hombres
de maiz to reconstruct the shattered mirror that reflects the interconnected,
fragmented images of ancient and contemporary Amerindian cultures and
narrative traditions.
Of the various sections of Hombres de maiz, the one that is most repre-
sentative of Asturias' narrative mastery is, in my view, the third section,
"Coyote Postman" because it shows that the intertextual dialogue estab-
lished between colonial texts—Popol Vuh and Chilan Balam—and Astu-
rias's novel occurs not only at the levels of title and theme, but also in rela-
tion to structure, style and vocabulary. In order to understand the mechan-
ics of Asturias's literary creation and the internal and external dynamics of
his explicit intervention or authorial involvement in the text, it is relevant
to examine the processes by which the Guatemalan author takes up an an-
cient Mayan narrative device, nahualismo (nagualism), and introduces it in
his novel in a refashioned form: realismo mdgico.
Nahualismo, as both a theme and a way of presenting ancient Maya
myths, implies the narrative transformation of humans into animals or
vice-versa (as in Popol Vuh when two young Indian brothers are trans-
formed into monkeys by the mythical heroes Xbalanque and Hunahpu or
when a possum takes the form of Hunahpu's head and body. 44 Nahualismo
44 PV, pp. 106, 127-129.

Amerindian and European NaiTatives in Interaction 67
s t e m s f r o m t h e a n c i e n t M a y a m y t h s in w h i c h " i n i t i a t e d " m e n , p r i e s t s , sor-

c e r e r s , a n d c o u r a g e o u s w a r r i o r s a s s u m e d i n t o t h e m s e l v e s o r instilled in
o t h e r h u m a n s , b y v i r t u e of m a g i c , t h e m o s t r e p r e s e n t a t i v e q u a l i t i e s of ani-
mals, for instance, fierceness f r o m tigers, guile f r o m coyotes, and fleetness
f r o m d e e r . T h e p r i e s t V a l e n t i n U r d ä n e z , a c h a r a c t e r in Hombres de maiz,
a m b i g u o u s l y attests in t h e n o v e l to t h i s M a y a n b e l i e f :
(13)Nagualism. Everyone talks about nagualism and no one knows what it

is. He has a nagual, they'll say of someone, meaning he has an animal
to protect him. 45
[TJhese ignorant people [Indians] believe to be not only their protec-
tors but their other selves, so much so that it is thought they can change
their human form for that of the animals, which is their 'nagual,' a tale
as old as it is foolish. 46
I n d e e d , nahualismo b e c o m e s , in Hombres de maiz, a topic and a narrative

d e v i c e that A s t u r i a s a p p r o p r i a t e s f r o m t h e a n c i e n t M a y a n m y t h s r e c o u n t e d
in Popol Vuh a n d t r a n s f o r m s i n t o t h e o r i g i n a l literary t e c h n i q u e of realis-
mo mdgico in o r d e r to r e c o u n t h o w N i c h o a n d a w i z a r d a r e c o n v e r t e d i n t o a
coyote and a deer, respectively:
(14)Senor Nicho pushed the mailbags aside, took off his hat, as if he were
in church, and continued to stare stupefied. [...]
A man with blue or, rather, black hair, in any case it was shining, and
soot-stained hands [...] fingernails agleam like fireflies, took him out
of his thoughts. [...]
Ί am one of the great firefly wizards...' [... ]
'And now that you know who I am, I will tell you where you are.
You have journeyed towards the West across lands full of wisdom and
maizefields, you have passed beneath the tombs of the Lords of
Champ, and now you are on your way to the mouths of the rivers...'
Ί am looking for my w o m a n . . . ' [...]
He [Nicho] casts off his human shell, a rag doll with dripping eyes
his tragic human mourning, inseparable from the memory of his
woman changed into a pile of bones, and flesh, and hair, and clothes,
and pieces of broken jar, and cold of bracelets and earrings, and a
tangled roundlet at the bottom of a well in which she, through going for
water, went to meet her darkness. He cast off his human shell and
leaped up onto a sandbank warm but rough beneath his four extremi-
ties. The firefly wizard who has accompanied him since they met in the
Painted House was still at his side, and told him he was the Curer-Deer
of the Seventh Fire. And indeed, if one looked at him closely, his body
was like a deer's, his head was a deer's head, his tail, his rump, the way
he moved.
45 MM, p. 176.
46 Ibid., p. 173.
And he [Nicho], without saying it, proclaims himself a coyote, with

teeth from a cob of white maize, his far-fetching body like a handsaw
sawing, pitched forever forward, four paws of running rain [...]
Eyes of forest animals were the eyes of the eurer and the postman,
deer and coyote. 47
Metaphor and metamorphosis converge here to represent magic

(,nahualismo) as fictional reality, o r realismo mdgico, to u s e A s t u r i a s ' s
t e r m s . Certainly it is not only critics w h o h a v e associated Hombres de maiz
with realismo mdgico, but also A s t u r i a s h i m s e l f , w h o a c k n o w l e d g e d this
literary d e v i c e as a m a i n characteristic of his novel. H e r e l a t e d realismo
mdgico to t h e M a y a n I n d i a n ' s m e n t a l i t y in this w a y :
(15) You see, an Indian or a mestizo in a small village might describe how
he saw an enormous stone turn into a person or a giant or a cloud turn
into stone. That is not a tangible reality but one that involves an under-
standing of supernatural forces. That it is why when I have to give it a
literary label, I call it "magic realism." But there are other similar kinds
of occurrences. Due to an unfortunate accident a woman falls into a
chasm while going for water, or a rider is thrown from his horse. Such
affaires diverses as they could be called, can also be transformed into
magic events. Suddenly, for the Indian or mestizo, the woman didn't
fall into a chasm, but the chasm grabbed her, simply because it needed
a woman for a spring or for some other purpose. And the rider didn't
fall from his horse because he had a few drinks too many but because
the stone on which he hit his head or the water in which he drowned
called him. In this way stories grow into legends. The old Indian litera-
ture, the Indian books that were written before the conquest of America
by the Europeans, stories such as Popol Vuh or Los Anales de los Xähil
gain a kind of intermediate reality this way. Between the "real" and the
"magic" there is a third sort of reality. It is the melting of the visible
and the tangible, the hallucination and the dream. It is similar to what
the surrealists around Breton wanted and it is what we could call
"magic realism." "Magic realism," of course, has a direct relationship
to the original mentality of the Indians. The Indian thinks in pictures;
he sees things not so much as the events themselves but translates them
into other dimensions where reality disappears and dreams appear;
where dreams transform themselves into tangible and visible forms. 48
T h e t w o p r e v i o u s long q u o t a t i o n s are n e c e s s a r y to illustrate h o w A s t u r i a s ' s

poetics of realismo mdgico is put into p r a c t i c e in Hombres de maiz. In A s -
t u r i a s ' s aesthetic v i e w , realismo mdgico, as a literary c o n c e p t and as a nar-
rative device, is d e t e r m i n e d by ideological, m e t h o d o l o g i c a l and narrato-
47 Ibid., pp. 289, 290, 291, 292, 296, 298.

48 Asturias cited in S. Covacit Otto, Linguistic Aspects in Selected Works of Miguel Angel
Asturias (Dissertation University of Michigan, 1977), p. 17.
logical criteria. Realismo magico has an ideological dimension because the

Amerindian vision of life makes them think in pictures and see tangible re-
ality as a result of both natural (real, logical) laws and supernatural (magic,
simultaneous) forces. It expresses itself as literary creation because, ac-
cording to Asturias, (Latin) American colonial and modernist narratives
are elaborated as literature to meld reality with magic, the visible and
tangible with hallucination and dream. Finally, realismo mägico derives
from a narratological framework because it stems from an ancient narrative
oral tradition (nahualismo), by virtue of which stories grow into legends
and real events are perceived as magical ones and, conversely, magic ac-
counts are reported as real. 49
Asturias's narrative skill in describing ancient and present-day Mayan
Indians is shown diversely in his fictional writings (novels, short stories,
poems), in his academic studies (a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne
University on Mayan culture and Popol Vuh), in his ethnological essays
(such as his Master's thesis, El problema social de los indios), and in his
newspaper articles (on Guatemalan society, politics and Mayan Indians).
In addition to writing extensively on both Mayan culture and Popol Vuh,
the Guatemalan author was also a trained ethnologist who, as a child, lived
with Mayan Indians and therefore was also able to acquire a first-hand
knowledge of the Mayan's magical and real world. Given the bibliographic
and literary evidence relating to Asturias's work, it can be suggested that
he was eager to recreate in his novels, particularly in Hombres de maiz, the
perception of magic articulated in Popol Vuh by renewing the ancient
Mayan narrative device of nahualismo and, as a result of this process of in-
tertextual recreation, it might be claimed that he invented realismo mägico,
both as a modernist literary technique and as a style of literary resistance to
Western cultural hegemony.
Writing the Foundational Text of Spanish Americans:

Columbus's Journals of Discovery of America
When Peninsular Europeans arrived in the new-found Western continent,

they brought with them a specific European, Renaissance world-view.
49 The elusive and controversial concept of magic realism is described, among other books,
in Wendy B. Faris and Louis Parkinson Zamora (eds.), Magical Realism: Theory, Histo-
ry, Community (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1995).
Conceptually speaking, Renaissance thought was centered on the dichoto-

my of culture versus nature, in which culture was generally associated with
the civilized man (the European), whereas nature was associated with the
natural man (the non-European). Such a dichotomy was instrumental in the
ideological debate about the non-European peoples and cultures that took
place in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 50 Ibero-Euro-
peans, in particular, brought with them not only their medieval-Renais-
sance mentality (i.e., religious beliefs, theocentric geographical assump-
tions and ethno-Eurocentric convictions), but also their social conventions
(i.e., dress styles and Mediterranean cultural mores). Spaniards, in imperial
times, were fanatically monotheist and consequently believed—as did the
majority of Europeans—that their Christian mission was to impose their
"civilized" culture and religion on the "natural man" of the new-found
American continent.
One can only imagine the mutual surprise Columbus and Native Ameri-
can Indians felt when gazing at each other on the West Indian island of
Guanahani, where Columbus and his crew landed unexpectedly on 12 Oc-
tober 12, 1492:
(16)At two hours after midnight appeared the land, [...] they arrived at an
Island of the Bahamas that was called in the Indians' tongue, Guana-
hani. Presently, they saw naked people [...] it appeared to me that these
people were very poor in everything. They all go quite naked as their
mother bore them; and also the women [...] All that I saw were young
men [...] very well built, of very handsome bodies and very fine faces
[...] (and they are of the color of the Canary Islanders, neither black
nor white) [...] They bear no arms, nor know there of; for I showed
them swords and they grasped them by the blade and cut themselves
through ignorance. They have no iron [.. ,]51
Conversely, this is what the Aztec messengers described in astonishment to

Moctezuma II: "When the foreigners arrived: / Fifteen nineteen [ . . . ] / Here
/ in the land / Of the Neck Country, / Yucatan /": 52
(17) All iron was their war array. They clothed themselves in iron. They
covered their heads with iron. Iron were their swords. Iron were their
crossbows. Iron were their shields. Iron were their lances. And their
deer, which bore them upon their backs, were as high as roof-tops. And
50 Henrfquez Urena, pp. 3 - 2 9 ; Zea, pp. 103-162; J. Rabassa, Inventing A-m-e-r-i-c-a:

Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (London: U. Of Oklahoma
Press, 1993), pp. 3 - 1 2 4 ; C. Fernandez Herrero, La Utopia de la aventura americana
(Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994), pp. 2 1 - 1 0 1 .
51 Columbus, Journals, pp. 64, 65.
52 ChB, pp. 2 2 1 - 2 2 2 .
they covered all parts of their bodies. Alone to be seen were their
faces—very white. They had eyes like chalk; they have yellow hair,
although the hair of some was black. Long were their beards, and also
yellow; they were yellow-bearded. [The hair of the negroes] was kinky
and curly. 53
It is to be inferred from these intercultural encounters, recorded a posteri-

ori in colonial texts, that not only the Spanish crew were astonished to gaze
at the naked native American Indians, painted in black, white and red
colors, standing, as Columbus writes, under the shadows of "trees, which
were the most beautiful thing to see that ever I had seen," 54 but also the
Amerindians were greatly amazed when they saw bearded Spaniards,
dressed to excess, wearing iron arms, and appearing to have arrived in
"floating houses," "from beside the sea." 55 Although Amerindians lacked
iron, they were reported to live, despite their rough living conditions, har-
moniously in communion with a nature rich in exotic flora, fauna and sites
of gold.
It is inferred from Columbus's letters that his ambition for gold, as well
as his aspirations to obtain respect and religious authority from the Spanish
Catholic kings, make him go as far as to assume that Amerindians have
neither religion nor speech:
(18)1 believe that they easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me
that they belong to no religion. I, please Our Lord, will carry six of
them at my departure to Your Highness, that they may learn to speak. 56
Assuming a perspective of cultural superiority, Columbus accentuated in

his Journals the Amerindians' lack of material objects, which were so es-
sential to Europeans. In his eyes, Amerindians had no clothes, no posses-
sions, no arms, no iron, no religion, not even speech, but they had gold and
a "marvelous" flora and fauna. Hence, he recommended to the Spanish
Catholic kings, first, to subdue the Amerindians in a military action, to en-
slave them, and, afterwards, to impose on them the Christian faith and the
Castilian tongue. The one recommendation the Catholic kings did not fol-
low was to enslave the Amerindians, and, in fact, the Spanish kings
promulgated a law declaring Amerindians not to be slaves because, in the
royal understanding, although savages, the Amerindians still were crea-
tures of God.
53 FC, book 12, p. 19.

54 Columbus, Journals, p. 73, entry: 17 October, 1492.
55 PV, p. 16.
56 Columbus, Journals, p. 65, entry: 12 October 1492.
Within this imperial context, Columbus's Journals emerge as both an

act of inventory and an act of invention. They are an act of inventory be-
cause the Admiral was the first to classify the New World's races, fauna
and flora and report them both in written narrative and in numerical ac-
counts to the Spanish kings and to European gentlemen. By doing so, he
laid the grounds for the birth of American ethnology. Simultaneously, it is
an act of invention because the narratives that Columbus's Journals incor-
porated (i.e., mariners' verbal accounts of journeys to the Indies, Vespuc-
ci's illustrated accounts of the discovery of the New World, Wald-
seemüller's annotated maps), and other tales and chronicles which in-
formed Columbus's textual discourse of exploration have, undoubtedly,
contributed to the invention of the "colonial Other," on the basis of hyper-
bolic accounts that have ambiguously described Amerindians either as in-
nocent, handsome, noble savages, or conversely as naked, lustful, ignoble
savages and cannibals. 57
These vivid, written images of New World peoples and cultures gave rise
to an imperial discourse in which Renaissance Europeans assumed that
Amerindians and other non-Western peoples needed to be "civilized," that
is, to be Christianized by them. This superior cultural view has, since Colum-
bus's times, been articulated in texts, institutions, and historiographic stu-
dies, creating a very powerful Eurocentric perspective on extra-European
and Latin American peoples and societies.58 Such a discursive construction
of a Eurocentric view of Amerindians, which emerged during the Renais-
sance and still remains embedded in mainstream European popular dis-
courses, has been questioned by twentieth-century Spanish American novel-
Rewriting Columbus's Journals of the Discovery of America

in the novel El otono del patriarca by G. Garcia Märquez
In El otono del patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch) (1975), the Co-
lombian author Gabriel Garcia Märquez uses intertextuality, parody and
57 O'Gorman, E. La invention de America; el universalismo de la cultura de Occidente

(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1950); T. Todorov, Les morales de l'his-
toire (Paris: B. Grasset, 1991.); Rabassa; M. Palencia-Roth, "The Cannibal Law of
1503," in R. E. Lewis and J. M. Williams (eds.), Early Images of the Americas. Transfer
and Invention. (Tucson & London: U. of Arizona Press, 1993).
58 For the definition of "Eurocentrism" and relevant bibliography on that concept, see Ash-
croft et al., pp. 90-91.
realismo mdgico as literary strategies to revise both European (Eurocen-

tric) history and Spanish American (official) history. Garcia Märquez often
rewrites national and Latin American official history in his novels by intro-
ducing a fictional version as an alternative reading. For instance, the dis-
covery of America, reported originally in Columbus's Journals, is ren-
dered in The Autumn of the Patriarch from the perspective of the villagers
of a Caribbean town: 59
(19) [The dictator] began to look into what had happened to the world while
he was sleeping [...] and finally he found someone to tell him the truth
general sir, that some strangers had arrived who gabbled in funny old
talk [...] they called macaws poll parrots, canoes rafts, harpoons jave-
lins, and when they saw us going out to greet them [...] [they] shouted
to each other look there how well-formed, of beauteous body and fine
face, and thick-haired [...] they are the hue of canary birds, not white
not yet black, [...] and on the other hand they [the Spaniards] were
decked out like the jack of clubs in all the heat [...] and they wore their
hair like women even though they were all men and they shouted that
they didn't understand us in Christian tongue when they were the ones
who couldn't understand what we were shouting, [...] a wild mother-
fucking trade grew up and after a while everybody was swapping his
parrots, his tobacco, his wads of chocolate, [...] they even wanted to
trade a velvet doublet for one of us to show off in Europeland, just
imagine general what a wild affair, but he was so confused [...] so he
went back to his bedroom, opened the window that looked out onto the
sea [...] and he saw the usual battleship that the marines had left behind
in the dock, and beyond the battleship, anchored in the shadowy sea, he
saw the three caravels. 60
In this passage the narrator adopts both a local (Latin) American perspec-
tive and a narrative form of a report that converts chronological, national
and continental official history (that is, Columbus's reports of his first en-
counters with Amerindians) into non-chronological popular rumors spread
among a coastal village people who observed indifferently the most
extraordinary events, such as the arrival of strangers who wear outdated
clothes, navigate in ancient caravels, speak the same language as they do,
using old dialects, and display objects never seen before.
Realismo mdgico is particularly well adapted for the representation of
this anachronistic kind of world because, as a literary technique, it allows
59 In El arpa y la sombra (Mexico: Siglo XXI, [1979] 1989), pp. 87-88, 93, 94, 99, 100,
Alejo Carpentier also makes use of intertextuality and parody for elaborating the same
historical material (the first encounter between Columbus's crew and indigenous Ameri-
cans) as Garcia Märquez did in El otono del patriarca.
60 Ibid., pp. 41^*2.
the inclusion of a literary "organized chaos" to create narrative verisimili-

tude, as witnessed in the episode cited above, which includes both histori-
cal and linguistic anachronisms to convey simultaneously different histori-
cal periods. Accordingly, in the material order, caravels appear side-by-
side with steel-clad battleships, and, linguistically, Castilian cultisms and
archaisms (la mar, papagayos, almadias, azagaya, fermoso, dellos, la
calor, and jubon) co-exist with stylized regional slang (cayucos, encarapi-
taron, despellejarnos, carajo, and despelote). Thus, the collective narrator
inverts the traditional Eurocentric vision of history by marveling that the
Spaniards "covered all parts of the bodies," 61 and it is the Spaniards who
are mocked because they are inappropriately dressed to cope with the
tropical climate in which the semi-naked natives live.
Realismo mdgico is utilized, then, in Garcia Märquez's The Autumn of
the Patriarch not only as a narrative technique to depict the Caribbean so-
cial, political and cultural environment, with a rich interplay of contrasting
images and an exuberant, stylized, colloquial language, but also as a liter-
ary act of ideological resistance to contest ethnocentrism, the chronological
conception of history, and the textual construction of the "Other" and, by
extension, the narrative process of "othering." 62
In the episode already cited from The Autumn of the Patriarch, realismo
mdgico is also used to depict an alternative relationship or to neutralize the
"exotic" images Europeans may have of non-European peoples and cul-
tures. Thus, by resorting to parodic inversion, the collective narrator im-
poses the villagers' provincial perspective, whereby the Spaniards are "re-
ported" as "exotic" strangers, so that the latter become represented not as
the subjects and writers of history but as the objects of the narration. This
narrative process of "othering" the Spaniards is achieved both through the
use of parody (i.e., the diminishing of the importance of Europe by the use
of humor through the hyperbolic plural las Europas, in the English transla-
tion, "Europeland") and by the insertion of contrasting comparisons in
which Spaniards turn out to be the ones observed, not the observers (i.e.,
"they were decked out like the jack of clubs," "they wore they hair like
women"). In consequence, Europeans (Spaniards) are frequently represent-
61 Cf. fragment 16.

62 "In general terms, the 'other' is one who is separated from one's self. [...] Othering de-
scribes the various ways in which colonial discourse produces its subjects. [...] The con-
struction of the O/other is fundamental to the construction of the self. The process of
Othering can occur in all kinds of colonialist narratives" (Ashcroft et al., pp. 169, 170,
171, 172).
ed in Garcia Märquez's novels not as the ones who, clinging to their own
Western perspective, often "understand" or impose their interpretation on
the others (the non-Westerners) but as the ones who are misunderstood or
even misinterpreted by extra-European peoples.
Employed as a narrative order to neutralize or to oppose oppressive cul-
tural perspectives, realismo mägico—in the form used in The Autumn of
the Patriarch—can be viewed as an inversion of the technique of "de-
familiarization." An explanation is in order: if the concept of ostranenie or
"defamiliarization," put forward by the Russian formalist Victor Shklov-
sky, can be generally defined as "to make the familiar unfamiliar," 63 then
the literary device of realismo mägico, or at least the variant of it intro-
duced in the above-cited episode, can conversely be defined as "making
the unfamiliar familiar." It may be argued that the inverse and movable
perspectives inherent in Garcia Märquez's realismo mägico might become
a hermeneutical problem for foreign readers who cannot distinguish histo-
ry from invention, and, subsequently, read historical events that have been
fictionalized in novel form either as "pure" magical fantasy or, alternative-
ly, as invented stories, or even as "factual" national history. 64 This kind of
"misreading" may render twentieth century Latin American novels that in-
corporate the technique of realismo mägico only as the accounts of fabu-
lous and exotic events, even if these novels are based on national or conti-
nental history. Of course, one may turn this argument upside down by say-
ing that this very ambiguity may be hermeneutically enriching for the in-
formed reader.
Garcia Märquez, as has been suggested in the episode dealt with above,
uses realismo mägico to question both a pervasive Eurocentric perspective
of Latin Americans and a Western, Cartesian logic in which history tends
traditionally to be considered "chrono-logical," that is, linear, rational and
reasonable. By contrast Asturias, as has already been discussed, employed
realismo mägico in Hombres de maiz to encapsulate the ancient and con-
temporary history of Guatemala by transforming the magic narrative de-
vice of nahualismo into a real and fantastic discourse that questions
through literary form the Mayans' incongruous transculturation into the
63 Shklovsky cited in R. H. Stacy, Defamiliarization in Language and Literature (Syracuse,

USA, UP., 1977), pp. IX, 173.
64 According to Garcia Märquez: "The trouble is that many people believe I'm a writer of
fantastic fiction, when actually I'm a very realistic person and write what I believe is the
true socialist realism." P. H. Stone, "The Art of Fiction: Gabriel Garcia Märquez," Paris
Review 23 (1981), p. 59.
modern Western world. The fact is that Asturias, through his skilful use of
the intertextual process, invented realismo mdgico long before the Colom-
bian novelist Garcia Marquez used it and made it internationally famous in
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
Realismo mdgico has become a very elusive and controversial term, not
only because of its multifaceted presentation as theme, technique, space,
and style in works of fiction, but also because, as a literary style and as an
ideological discourse of resistance, it has been used in diverse ways by
both Asturias and Garcia Marquez, as well as other prominent Latin Ame-
rican and international writers and critics. Realismo mdgico can even be
used in different ways by the same author, as is the case with Garcia Mar-
quez in One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Autumn of the Patriarch.
Consequently in the present-day global village it is more appropriate not to
refer to only one kind of realismo mdgico, but to talk about the many and
diverse realismos mdgicos that now circulate in the literatures of the world.
Conclusion:
An Ongoing Hybridization of Spanish Literary Cultures
This study began by tracing the first cultural—ethnic and religious—en-

counters between Spaniards and Amerindians recorded in The Huarochiri
Manuscript, Popol Vuh, Chilam Balam, and Columbus's Journals, and
ends with a comparative analysis of themes and techniques that were intro-
duced first in these colonial texts and, afterwards, reincorporated as inter-
texts in the modernist novels El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo, Hom-
bres de maiz, and El otoho delpatriarca by Arguedas, Asturias, and Garcia
Marquez, respectively. I hope that the combination of an intratextual, inter-
textual, and extratextual analysis related to the seven texts studied here has
demonstrated, firstly, that there were inherent in colonial narratives both a
hegemonic ideology, presented either by imperial editors or Spanish
chroniclers, and the emergence of a resistance discourse that contested
from within the texts the ideology of dominance; secondly, that the en-
counters and clashes between European and Amerindian narrative tradi-
tions appear in the four colonial texts listed above in the form of motifs
(polytheism versus forced Christian conversion); ethnicity and clothing
(Westerners' appearance and excessive dress codes versus Amerindian
looks and scarce clothing); language style (plurilingualism); and narrative
perspective (nahualismo)\ finally, that twentieth-century Latin American
novelists have in their modernist novels both appropriated and renewed

pre-Columbian and colonial Amerindian and European narrative devices
(i.e. nahualismo, ancient magical tales, and the narrative device of other-
ing), transforming them into new themes (neocolonialism / incongruous
modernity and peripheral globalization) and modernist literary techniques
(i.e., surrealisme, realismo mdgico).
As has been shown, the artistic blend of ancient Amerindian and twenti-
eth century Spanish American narrative devices (nahualismo and realismo
mdgico) and of universal and Western literary styles (i.e., intertextuality,
parody, surrealisme) was instrumental in the innovations of the twentieth-
century Spanish American novel. In fact, from colonial times to the present
this process of cultural and narrative hybridity and literary experimentation
with foreign and autochthonous techniques has created the intercultural
conditions in Latin America for the creation of the so-called "novels of the
Boom," those best-selling narratives written by major Latin American
writers such as Asturias and Garcia Märquez whose technical innovation
greatly contributed to the internationalization of the Spanish American
novel in the 1960s.65
In this respect it is interesting to note that some Western literary critics
have claimed that, given the absence of refined literary techniques in
non-Western narrative traditions, writers in colonial times (such as Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness), in order "to represent the periphery to a
metropolitan audience," have often been obliged to select "a plot from the
periphery—and a style from the core." 66 However, this study contests those
claims by demonstrating that non-Western economically dependent socie-
ties like the Mayas and Aztecs have in pre-Colombian and colonial times
engendered sophisticated narrative techniques like nahualismo as a form of
realismo mdgico avant la lettre. Therefore, the nature of the question has
65 It must be emphasized that Spanish American literature neither starts nor ends with Astu-
rias's creation of realismo mdgico in the forties or its internationalization by Garcia Mär-
quez in the sixties. In fact, besides the novela del realismo mdgico, such trends as the
novela feminista (namely, Fanny Buitrago and Diamela Eltit), the nueva novela historica
(namely, Abel Posse, and Sergio Ramirez), and the novela testimonial (namely, Roque
Dalton and Omar Cabezas) represent some of the most important currents that exist at
the dawn of the twenty-first century and give Spanish American novels the right of entry
into the best-known and studied literatures of the world.
66 F. Moretti, "Evolution, World-systems, Weltliteratur." Studying Transcultural Literary
History. International Symposium Held in Stockholm, November 4 - 6 2004. Under the
Auspices of the Project Literature and Literary History in Global Contexts. Sponsored
by the Swedish Research Council, p. 177, note 7.
changed, as it was foretold by the well-known Latin American critic Angel

Rama in these words: "The only way that the name of Latin America
would not be invoked in vain, is when its internal cultural accumulation
will be able to provide not only raw materials, but also to project a cosmo-
vision, a language style and a technique in the production of literary
works." 67
As a concluding remark, one may then suggest that, in the process of
converting old Amerindian narrative traditions into modernist forms of
writing, as happens in Hombres de maiz, Asturias invented realismo mägi-
co·. a technique stemming from the ancient myths of nahualismo, whereby
magical transformations of humans into humanized animals acting in an
enchanted nature and the narration of supernatural occurrences and fantas-
tic deeds are recounted as if they were pragmatic, everyday events and vice
versa. Likewise Garcia Märquez in The Autumn of the Patriarch resorted
to the use of parody, invert defamiliarization and diverse linguistic and cul-
tural modes of "othering" to create his particular—and different variants
of—realismo mägico as a narrative device to question eurocentrism: the
hegemonic relations of cultural superiority and neocolonial economic
dominance towards Latin America as fostered by Westerners since their ar-
rival in the New World. However, Asturias and Garcia Märquez have ef-
fectively questioned such eurocentric discourses through their creation of
realismo mägico, both as a renewed narrative technique and as a literary
act of resistance towards Western cultural hegemony. This ideological use
of realismo mägico has, in the last decades, been either lauded or criticized
by World and Spanish American authors. Thus a new generation of Span-
ish American writers and critics refused to see their continent as "una fan-
tasia exotica," as they claim it is seen by most world readers of the novels
of realismo mägico, maintaining that such an anachronistic "misreading"
either denies or delays the entrance of Latin America into contemporary
world history. 68 Conversely, most non-Western authors and critics seem to
have embraced (mimicked?) realismo mägico, perhaps because the Latin
American novels in which it appears often depict recognizable Third
World rural social realities and urban, peripheral, globalized milieus as in-
congruous modernities skillfully mediated by fiction.
Yet, put into a global context, realismo mägico, a narrative technique
stemming from Amerindian narrative forms and re-elaborated in (post)co-
67 Rama, p. 20 (my translation).

68 A. Fuguet, McOndo (Madrid: Mondadori, 1996), p. 11-20.
lonial Spanish America, has increasingly been used as a literary device to

help articulate in fictional texts both cultural interdependency with the
West and mutual constructions of Western and non-Western literary sub-
jectivities. 69 Given this cultural circumstance it may also be suggested, as a
general conclusion, that, thanks to the creation and dissemination of realis-
mo mägico, for the first time in the history of Spanish American literature
an equal exchange of literary experiences and techniques has taken place
not only with the West but also with the entire world.
69 Cf. the international use of Realismo mdgico in the modern literatures of India and
Oman. See in this volume the articles "Hybridity in Indian English Literature" by M. Pe-
tersson, and "Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the United Arab Emirates and
the Sultanate of Oman" by G. Ramsay.
MARGARETA PETERSSON
Hybridity in Indian English Literature
Introduction
The term "globalisation" has a variety of meanings that are concerned with
the altered relationship between the local and the global in a world where
production and capital require unlimited freedom of movement. 1 Globali-
sation can be seen as bringing about a larger supranational standardisation
of the variety of local cultures. However, it can also be interpreted as facili-
tating greater personal freedom and peaceful co-existence between com-
mensurate cultural groups, both inside and outside of nation-states, whose
national borders seem to be becoming increasingly porous due to, among
other things, growing migration and media communication. Thus, globali-
sation demands that questions about cultural identity and change be asked
in new ways.
The postcolonial key-concept, hybridity, and its opposite—or point of
origin—authenticity are used to summarise different views of the status of
cultures as incessantly changeable (hybrid), as well as continuous and dis-
tinctive (authentic). They are problematic because they are at the same
time descriptive and rhetorical, and may possibly have different meanings
on different levels of abstraction. In particular, the concept of hybridity is
used in several different senses within postcolonial discussions of identity,
race, nation, tradition and history. This will constitute the focal point in the
following presentation. Firstly, I propose to demonstrate, in the Indian con-
text, how a shift in the understanding of cultures from the view of cultures
as authentic to the view of cultures as hybrid has become generally accept-
ed within criticism as well as literature, something which in turn influences
the appraisal of literary texts. Secondly, I will discuss the meaning of the
term hybridity, its usefulness and its relevance in interpretative work.
1 Nikos Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization

and Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), p. 76.
Thirdly, I will briefly reflect on the relationship between hybridity and glo-
balisation as it is configured thematically in the literary texts.
I base my analysis on a handful of novels by authors who write in Eng-
lish and have their origins in different Indian cultures. I will begin with a
text by Raja Rao, published in 1938. This work and the view of Rao's au-
thorship bring up a number of problems that provide a starting-point for the
discussion that follows. Like Rao, many of the early Indian English authors
came from a fairly uniform Hindu cultural world. This was long perceived
as being synonymous with Indian culture, in India as well as in the West.
In recent years, however, authors have also emerged from other traditions
within India. Salman Rushdie has an Islamic background, Rohinton Mistry
is Parsi, and Arundhati Roy is of Syrian-Christian origin. 2 The works dis-
cussed in the following text act in related cultural environments, where
particularly India's historical processes and scandals recur; and they high-
light, both in how they are formed and how they are received, questions
about hybridity and authenticity.
Hybridity
What is most striking about the term hybridity is its extensive distribution
within postcolonial literary research, together with other fairly precise syn-
onyms such as syncretism, creolisation and metissage. 3 This represents a
broad connotative field, including highly specialised meanings as well as
those that are more vague and imprecise. The term includes phenomena
like heterogeneity, impurity, variability and diversity in general. Some of
the meanings are connected with the word's etymological origins and de-
velopment, investigated by Robert Young in Colonial Desire. Monika
Fludernik has reviewed the meaning of the term, concentrating specifically
on Homi Bhabha's influential applications.
The term hybridity, from its moorings in sexual cross-fertilization, racial
intermixture and intermarriage, has now drifted free to connote (rather than
denote) a variety of interstitial and antagonistic set-ups which are clearly
linked to a 'subaltern' (Gramsci, Spivak) perspective and a positive revalu-
ation of hybridity. Hybridity comes to function as a key concept of cultural
2 Cf. Stephan Larsen's problems concerning the different Africas in volume 3:1.
3 Monika Fludernik, "Introduction," in Monika Fludernik (ed.), Hybridity and Postcoloni-
alism: Twentieth-Century Indian Literature (Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1998), p.
10.
diversity in which racist 'impurity' has been reinscribed as subversive mul-

tiplicity and as progressive (but not unidirectional) agency.4
Consequently, Fludernik demonstrates how a specific biological term
taken from Victorian vocabulary is metaphorically applied in new situa-
tions, because one wants to call attention to the various ways that vocabu-
lary and ways of thinking were challenged and undermined. 5 In the nine-
teenth century, the scientific theory of evolution considered hybrids as a
cross between different species. Postcolonial scholars argue that with this
term, colonial regimes and ideologies, in particular, attempted to create
strict boundaries between races and cultures. Hybrids were considered
sterile; consequently, both cultures and peoples should be kept pure and
isolated.
Bhabha and his followers have used the term hybridity primarily in the
realm of psychoanalysis, focusing on identity processes and authority. It
has been transferred to one additional area. Young uses the term in the
realm of linguistics based on Bakhtin's model borrowed from philology.
Hybrid languages such as pidgin and creolised languages constitute, in this
case, powerful models because they retain the actual historical forms of the
cultural encounter. Broadly speaking, pidgin language is structured so that
the vocabulary of one language is draped on top of the grammar of another
language. Bakhtin adapts this model so that it is applicable to all linguistic
usage. Hybridising, he means, is "a mixture of two social languages within
the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utter-
ance." 6 Thus, hybridity describes the fundamental capacity of language si-
multaneously to contain several voices. One voice can speak ironically of
and expose the other. Aspects like these in Bakhtin's thinking have be-
come very productive within postcolonial scholarship. The term hybridity
thus gains an expanded meaning in the realm of linguistics and in the theo-
ry of dialogism.
Hybridity has also received a more active "antagonistic" meaning. Here,
too, Bakhtin's distinctions are useful. According to Bakhtin, hybridisation
can be conscious or unconscious; it can be used as an opportunity for dia-
4 Monika Fludernik, "The Constitution of Hybridity. Postcolonial Interventions," in

Fludernik, Hybridity, p. 21.
5 Cf. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge,
1998), p. 173.
6 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981), p. 358. Cf. Stephan Larsen's dis-
cussion of linguistic hybridity in volume 3:1.
logue or simply for the organic welding together of different elements.

Words such as syncretism or creolisation are often used today for this har-
monious cultural mixing. 7 Bakhtin maintains that this mixture is rigid and
opaque since it does not consciously use contrasts and antagonisms. All the
same, in organic hybridity the language contains a potential for new
world-views and, historically, it has been extremely productive. Werbner
suggests that aesthetic hybridity builds on the historical foundation that or-
ganic hybridity has created. 8
Generally, postcolonial critics seem to use hybridity simply to denote
merging. In reality, however, it is the latter variation, Bakhtin's dialogic
and emancipatory hybridity, that interests postcolonial scholars. In Bha-
bha's reading, the term is usually reserved for hybridity where different el-
ements enter a dialogue, challenge or express opposition to one another or
a prevailing discourse. Attributes such as ambivalence, ambiguity and even
difference and division are thus connected to the term. 9 In that case, the
starting-point again is colonialism. Mary Louise Pratt coined the term
"contact zone," which has become productive in research concerning colo-
nial cultural encounters, to refer to "social spaces where disparate cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical re-
lations of domination and subordination." 10 Following Pratt's and Bha-
bha's examples, Ania Loomba emphasises the effects of encounters: the
authors "hybridised what they borrowed by juxtaposing it with indigenous
ideas, reading it through their own interpretive lens." 11
Consequently, the essential point is that the relations between two cul-
tures of different strengths are no longer understood as being unambigu-
ous. For example, the colonised did not passively assume the tradition of
the Western novel, but instead selected from it (and other traditions) and
recreated it. If one assumes this view within comparative literature writ-
7 Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London
and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 21; Fludernik, "The Constitution of Hybridity", p.
19.
8 Pnina Werbner, "Introduction: The Dialectics of Cultural Hybridity," in Pnina Werbner
and Tariq Modood (eds.), Debating Cultural Hybridity. Multi-Cultural Identities and the
Politics of Anti-Racism (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997), p. 5. Nelson
Gonzalez-Ortega stresses the Spanish American origin of the term hybridity in his article
in this volume.
9 Fludernik, "The Constitution of Hybridity", p. 19. She points out that Bhabha's hybridity
"is already conceived as being internally dialectic and dynamized", p. 22.
10 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and
New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 4.
11 Loomba, p. 174, cf. Pratt, p. 6.
ing, revaluation becomes possible and perhaps essential. When the first
Indian English critics emphasised the imitative and unoriginal character
of the early novels, they perhaps read the literature in too restricted a
manner, a manner that completely agrees with, for example, the British
binary view of the spreading of knowledge under colonialism. Research
concerning British identity, the formation of canons and nationalism, has
demonstrated that the British were also strongly affected by the encoun-
ter.
One area that is deeply influenced by the discussion surrounding authen-
ticity and hybridity is the understanding of the ontological character of cul-
tures. The process of hybridisation, which in this case started with coloni-
alism, is not depicted as unique, but as one of many earlier and more recent
similar processes. "Pure" cultures are seen simply as a fiction, since the
current predominant view is that cultures are not stable and continuous but
variable. The space that was once occupied by a timeless traditional es-
sence seems today to have disappeared. Consequently, the hybrid is a nor-
mal condition. Simultaneously, and somewhat contradictorily, the political
hybrid is valorised and seen as an emancipatory opportunity. It then be-
comes an anti-colonial strategy, an expression of Caliban's rebellion. 12
The problem with the concept of hybridity is that it is often used without
being defined, or with the definition at an unnecessarily high level of ab-
straction. It has been given several different meanings, literal as well as
metaphorical. It expresses a condition and a process, an aesthetic or a polit-
ical strategy. It is used both about reality and about texts, and the boundary
between them is not always clear in the discussions. It is used about differ-
ent (dissimilar) historical situations and is also often given an apparently
ideological and normative meaning. The concept of hybridity, although
full of nuances, therefore has a more or less clearly descriptive content,
while at the same time acts as a remarkably well- used rhetorical weapon. 13
The concept of authenticity, with all of its nuances, also belongs within
the discourse of hybridity. According to the OED, the first and foremost
definition of authenticity is "as being authoritative or duly authorised,"
which explains the term's role in discussions of cultural traditions that are
in one way or another authorised by some group or authority. However, it
12 Loomba, p. 174. Cf. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York:
Routledge, 1994; reprint 1997), p. 114.
13 Fludernik emphasises in the same manner that for Bhabha, hybridity signifies partly the
condition of the colonial culture and discourse, partly that it is a function that creates am-
bivalence, "The Constitution of Hybridity", p. 30.
is also defined "as being true in substance" or as "genuineness," which can

lean towards essentialism as well as towards existential authenticity. 14 The
definitions are at least in part incompatible. Today, authenticity often
stands for something that is perceived as an obsolete, colonial or funda-
mentalist understanding of cultures. When identity and tradition feel
threatened, this idea might appear as an antidote for what can be experi-
enced as the alienating and corrupt effects of other cultures or modern
civilisation. 15
Based on the various definitions and the differing cultural situations
about which the term hybridity is used, one can ask if it is at all useful or if
it primarily acts as "a profoundly mystificatory notion." 16 In the following
text, I will limit myself to the examination of hybridity in a number of liter-
ary works and how they have been understood. A more extensive investi-
gation would deepen the understanding of this form of literature as an ex-
pression of duplicity and/or merging. The scope of this article limits me to
a few notes about literary traditions.
Indian Authenticity—the Example of Raja Rao
Among the debutantes in the Indian realism wave of the 1930s, Raja Rao
(born 1908) is regarded as one of the pioneers of the modern Indian Eng-
lish novel. He has written only a handful of novels and two short story col-
lections. In 1988 he was awarded the Neustadt Prize and a special issue of
World Literature Today was devoted to his writing (vol. 62, no. 4, 1988).
There are several reasons why Rao's works are interesting. One of them is
that all of the established critics on Rao have discussed his work. The
critics are more often Indian than Westerners. 17 In addition, his writing
seems to be subjected to an ongoing revaluation. He is certainly still con-
sidered one of the pioneers. New readings, though, question his Indianness,
as well as his (and his critics') statement that he expresses an authentic In-
dian world and world-view.
14 Stuart Z. Charme, "Varieties of Authenticity in Contemporary Jewish Identity," Jewish

Social Studies 6:2 (2000), p. 134.
15 Charme, p. 136.
16 Gerry Smyth, "The Politics of Hybridity: Some Problems with Crossing the Border," in
Ashok Bery and Patricia Murray (eds.), Comparing Postcolonial Literatures: Disloca-
tions (London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 52.
17 Paul Sharrad notes that 80% of the critics of The Serpent and the Rope are Indian, Raja
Rao and Cultural Tradition (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1987), pp. 33-34.
Within early Indian English literature research, there was a consensus

that an obvious core existed in Indian culture. Scholars evaluated the de-
gree of what was perceived as authentic culture in the literary work—in
other words, their "Indianness"—meaning that the author was praised for
using motifs and symbols from (Hindu) India. Continuing into the 1980s
and 1990s, authors in the diaspora might still be accused of misappropriat-
ing their cultural heritage. The view seems to assume the existence of a
stable heritage that can be misappropriated. I will limit myself to discuss-
ing two variables that have been included in this view of culture—literary
traditions and spirituality.
Literary traditions
Research into Indian English literature often emphasises that the older
forms of literature have an imitative character; they mimic Western, chief-
ly British, prose. To imitate is considered to be an unproblematic activity.
Scholars have no difficulty in identifying India's Dickens and Chekhov.
Mund points out that Western literary forms are adapted and assimilated
into the mainstream of Indian literature. 18 The narrative implies a harmoni-
ous growth. In the same way, other scholars emphasise the unoriginal char-
acter of the early Indian novel. India's first generation of novel writers,
Macaulay's students, mimicked mediocre English novels in total servility,
writes Meenakshi Mukherjee. 19 That Rao is viewed as a pioneer means that
his relationship to the West is different and his relationship to India's own
literary traditions is considered new.
Many scholars associate Rao's literary strategies with the storytelling
tradition of Indian prose. They refer to subcontinental story patterns such
as the Indian epic, with its several layers of storytellers and listeners, and to
the mythological stories, the Puranas. In the oldest Indian English novels,
the structure is unrestricted and episodic. All kinds of digressions interrupt
the story. Mund links these literary strategies to the tradition of the
Puranas.20 In a review of the growth and development of the novel in In-
dia, Mukherjee similarly points out that there are patterns that are the same
in the texts, regardless of where in the country and in what language the
18 Subhendu Kumar Mund, The Indian Novel in English: Its Birth and Development (New
Delhi: Prachi Prakashan, 1997), p. 7.
19 Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India (New Delhi:
Oxford UP, 1985), pp. 17-18.
20 Mund, p. 148.
novels are written; this pattern is determined by, among other things, the
heritage of the Puranas.21
On the first page of his last novel, The Chessmaster and His Moves
(1988), Rao refers to kadambari, a work of prose from the seventh century.
In several Indian languages during the early nineteenth century, the name
became a genre term meaning novel, 22 and in using that term, Rao probably
wanted to demonstrate the Indian roots of his prose story. He has in fact
pointed out that his books should not be compared with Western novels.
He willingly reminds us that, above all, Indian tradition is at the bottom of
his manner of storytelling. Early scholars followed the same path, perhaps
most obviously Narasimhaiah, who uses diverse variations of storytelling
and/or prose texts as domestic forerunners to the novel form: for instance,
the Upanishads, the saga collection Kathasarithasagara (the sea of sto-
ries), the Buddhist jatakas and Dandin's The Tale of the Ten Princes from
the seventh century. 23 Dandin linked together separate stories with a frame
story—a method repeated in The Arabian Nights, and in Europe by Boc-
caccio for example.
A powerful oral quality pervades in Rao's debut novel Kanthapura
(1938). A poor, pious Brahmin widow, talkative and superstitious, tells the
story. She grasps at rumours and retells them. She invokes the goddess, prays
and arranges religious celebrations. She tells the entire story while on an
open veranda, speaking directly to a circle of listeners. The word "sister" is
frequently repeated, which indicates that the audience is comprised of
women. Therefore, the novel becomes a combination of a gossipy story-
teller's language and an account filled with diversions, as well as being a
rather austere overall composition. Linguistically, the text has often been un-
derstood as a hybrid, in the sense that terminology and syntax from the origi-
nal language, Kannada, have greatly affected the English representation.
The West also inspired Rao. Kanthapura has much in common with Ig-
nazio Silone's Fontamara, which was published in 1930 (and the English
translation in 1934). As in Kanthapura, the novel is about the exploitation
of people in a little village, a story related by three poor farmers. Silone,
like Rao, begins with a foreword where he discusses his choice of lan-
21 Mukherjee, p. 46. Historian Sunil Khilnani likewise points out some territorially related
"cultural forms": narrative structure in epics and myths and family resemblance in archi-
tecture and religious motifs (which are indeed shared from Persia to Indonesia). The Idea
of India (London: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 155.
22 Mukherjee, pp. 12 and 4.
23 C. D. Narasimhaiah, Raja Rao (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann India, 1973), p. xi.
guage. Rao talks about his preference for English and the "dialectal" Eng-
lish he uses and Silone discusses his relationship to Standard Italian.
The novel The Serpent and the Rope (1960) highlights other problems.
On one level, it is about the Brahmin, Rama, who suffers from lung dis-
ease, is married to a French woman, lives in France and is writing a treatise
about a medieval heretical sect. From the beginning, the relationship be-
tween Rama and Madeleine is full of mutual respect. She shows an interest
in his religion and he visits churches. However, the relationship becomes
complicated. Rama has assignations with other women and his and
Madeleine's sons both die as infants. The relationship is dissolved at a
lawyer's rundown office.
One is struck by Rama's lack of emotion when faced with these events.
Soon after he receives the letter about the death of his second child, he is
laughing in the bathroom and feeling a kind of happiness, seemingly be-
yond sorrow and pain. The divorce is dealt with very quickly, particularly
in terms of the space allotted in the text, and does not seem to leave any
traces. The novel can be accused of lacking a climax since it is completely
loaded with events of a dramatic character, but it seems as if Rao does not
make good use of his material, as if he does not dwell on what could be
emotional and intriguing high points.
Western critics have not recognised this form as a novel. Kanthapura
was valued for its experimental quality, lyrical language and narrative
strength. The Serpent and the Rope, in addition to having a non-dramatic
story, has an encyclopaedic tendency where history, myth, religious expo-
sitions and stories are mixed, as in the Puranas. Such a great amount of
material has been added that many scholars think that these additions can
easily be cut out without affecting the whole. 24
Spirituality
"Rao's work has a central relevance, because of our present degradation,
so unworthy of a great past." 25 Research on Rao's works used to stress that
Rao revitalised the spiritual sources and rediscovered the Indian soul. 26
24 Ibid., p. 75.
25 K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English (London: Asia Publishing House,
1962; reprint 1973), p. 154.
26 Shiva Niranjan thus cites M.K. Naik in Raja Rao: Novelist as Sadhaka (Ghaziabad: Vi-
mal Prakashan, 1985), p. 48. See also p. 43: "The central burden of the novel is to redis-
cover the lost cultural, religious and metaphysical glory through the current political
theme."
Sharrad has pointed out that Rao's works are discussed within a cultural
framework where Indianness, defined as spirituality, has been a central
theme. Earlier scholars (Indian as well as Western), such as Srinivasa Iyen-
gar, C. D. Narasimhaiah, William Walsh and S. C. Harrex, established a
"model of centralist, traditional, homogeneous and static culture" against
which the new literary works were evaluated. 27
In the criticism, Indian spirituality is connected with Hinduism, the use of
Sanskrit and something that is called Indian disposition or Indian sensitivity.
This dimension is manifested in the novel in the inclusion of myths and
hymns, paradoxes and metaphors. In Rao's work one can recognise the dif-
ferent Hindu paths to liberation: Kanthapura is said to represent karma yoga,
The Serpent and the Rope represents jnana yoga, and The Cat and Shake-
speare bhakti yoga, in other words, liberation through action, knowledge and
devotion, respectively. His debut novel, Kanthapura, is about the struggle
for liberation in a small village touched by the Gandhian resistance move-
ment. Rao establishes a clear nationalistic perspective that temporally en-
compasses earlier struggles for liberty, while geographically encircling the
entire subcontinent. As a reader, one gets the impression that everyone unit-
ed around Gandhian ideals and Hindu beliefs. As several scholars have ob-
served, a crucial difference from Fontamara is that with Silone, religion
stands out as a reactionary force, while with Rao, it becomes a necessary
condition for mustering the strength needed for the anti-colonial struggle. 28
The use of simple villagers is justified in that political history is interpreted
in mythological terms. Prayer and opposition become two sides of the same
struggle. Khilnani emphasises that such an archive of mythological stories
and pictures that relate polity to culture is peculiar to India. 29 When Rao as-
sociates Gandhi's struggle against the British with Rama's struggle in
Ramayana, the strategy is well known in India; or similarly, when Rushdie,
in The Satanic Verses, takes contemporary antagonisms between immigrants
and whites in London and dresses them in mythological clothes. 30
27 This is Sharrad's critical summation (28). Cf. Iyengar, p. 25; Narasimhaiah, p. 49; Wil-
liam Walsh, Indian Literature in English (London and New York: Longman, 1990), p. 6;
S.C. Harrex, The Fire and the Offering: The English-Language Novel of India 1935-
1970, vol. 1 (Calcutta: Writers' Workshop, 1977), p. 34; Shyamala A. Narayan, Raja
Rao: Man and His Work, (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1988), p. 28.
28 Carlo Coppola, "Ignazio Silone's Fontamara and Raja Rao's Kanthapura: A Contrastive
Analysis," Journal of South Asian Literature 1 (1981), p. 98.
29 Khilnani, p. 156.
30 Arun P. Mukherjee, "Whose Post-Colonialism and Whose Postmodernism?" WLWE 30:
2 (1990), p. 4.
In The Serpent and the Rope, the main character strives for knowledge
and insight and attains them in his studies and in his search for the authen-
tic India. He tries to find his way back to the source of Hinduism. It has in-
deed been pointed out that the religion the main character searches for has
an almost syncretic character, since he mixes elements from different In-
dian schools of philosophy. 31 However, this is located outside the text and
does not prevent the construction of a theme in the novel that suggests that
what is authentic is connected to orthodoxy; and this, in turn, is contrasted
with different variations of heresy or hybridity. The positive characters in
the novel have the ability to make contact with the older, orthodox layers
of their religion.
Hybridity as a Utopia
Authors who wrote novels during the 1980s and 1990s in India and
abroad naturally had many different traditions to draw on. For the au-
thors included in this article, in a broad sense Western traditions are most
significant, although other traditions are also distinguishable. The works
of Salman Rushdie are often viewed as a Copernican turning point for In-
dian English authors. 32 He seems to have filled the role of opening up In-
dian literary traditions and conventions to cultures from the entire world.
Authors since Rushdie have also turned to sources outside the Western
sphere, primarily to Latin America and, like Rushdie, have also been in-
spired by Indian literary traditions. Perhaps the most important tradition
they have in common is the oral narrative form. In their literary works,
they directly portray concrete narrative situations using an audience that
reflects and responds.
31 Narayan, p. 48.
32 Meenakshi Mukherjee writes about the 1970s as a relatively "barren decade ... But then
came the explosion of the 1980s" The Perishable Empire. Essays on Indian Writing in
English (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), p. 175. She continues: "It is generally agreed that
the sudden profusion, liveliness and visibility of the new Indian fiction in English in the
1980s can be traced back to the success of one seminal novel, Midnight's Children "
(176). Cf. Klaus Börner, "The Reception of Midnight's Children in West Germany," in
G.R. Taneja and R.K. Dhawan (eds.), The Novels of Salman Rushdie (New Delhi: Indian
Society for Commonwealth Studies, 1992), p. 12; Chelva Kanaganayakam, "Myth and
Fabulosity in Midnight's Children," Dalhousie Review 67:1 (1987); NiluferE. Bharucha,
"The Charting of Cultural Territory: Second Generation Postcolonial Indian English Fic-
tion," in The Postmodern Indian English Novel: Interrogating the 1980s and 1990s, ed.
Viney Kirpal (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1996), pp. 355 and 360.
Rushdie himself has emphasised his dependency on the oral tradition in

India, which he sees as being the most important literary tradition in the
country. Except in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the oral tone is promi-
nent in his narratives, especially in Midnight's Children, where through-
out, the narrator confers with his listeners, is interrupted, receives com-
ments, jokes and interjections. However, one can also notice similarities
with authors such as Laurence Sterne, Günter Grass and Gabriel Garcia
Märquez, who also employ an oral narrative tone. The question is whether
Rushdie is closer to these authors than to traditional oral storytellers. In
any case, there is a great difference between his way of telling a story and
that of the oral storytellers. Oral storytellers are seldom so complex and so
uncertain of their relationship to the reality they describe as Rushdie's
Saleem is. Rather, parallels have been drawn with the illusion-breaking
comments in Brecht's epic theatre. Without delving too deeply into the
most important sources of Rushdie's writing, one can say that the oral tone
has been inspired in several ways. 33
Similarly, authors such as Rohinton Mistry tie into the oral traditions in
different ways. He presents many narrators and lets his characters reflect
upon the way the stories are told. Rushdie connects his narrator Saleem to
the scribe in Mahabharata, Ganesh. In A Fine Balance Valmik is a wise
character, reminiscent of the writer of Ramayana. Even in his debut short
story collection, Tales from Firozsha Baag, Mistry gives the storyteller
Nariman a prominent role. The boys on the farm usually gather around him
in the evenings and listen, while the smell of cooking floats out through the
open windows. Jehangir is one of the listeners. He enjoys the tone of the
words and reflects on the choice of the storytelling method. The listener's
role is crucial in determining the character of a story, he points out, be-
cause the storyteller dips his brush in unpredictability, and ambiguity char-
acterises the palette where he mixes his colours. 34 He describes an amusing
episode in a serious manner, or expresses something important in an easy
and playful manner. Thus the listeners themselves, through their reactions,
are allowed to determine the character of the story. Mistry does not stress
the exclusively Indian character of the oral form. On the contrary, Nariman
is dependent on Western traditions. He adds new English words to his
stories, whistles music from Western films and grows a Clark Gable mous-
tache. The literary tradition seems to develop precisely in the interplay
33 Tabish Khair places both Rao's and Rusdhie's orality in the "privileged high-literacy
noetic mode of secondary orality or oral-literacy," in Babu Fictions: Alienation in Con-
temporary Indian English Novels (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001), p. 213.
34 Rohinton Mistry, Tales from Firozsha Baag (Ontario: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 147.
with the surrounding cultures. This seems to be a part of its strength: when
Nariman tells a story, no one is unaffected.
Naturally, it is difficult to argue that oral qualities in today's literature
act as obvious ties to older traditions, and specifically to India. From with-
in Indian culture, the oral form can certainly appear genuinely Indian—as
noted above concerning its use by Raja Rao. The relationship is more com-
plicated from a comparative perspective. Telling stories within an overall
story is a very old epic form and no doubt has oral origins. We find this in
Greece, when Odysseus tells the Phaeacians about his adventures. This
narrative form has also been established in other ancient cultures. Today
this narrative form occurs in its different variations and authors work with
many different fictive levels with several layers of stories within stories
and with deviations from the straightforward epic course of events. They
might just as well have been inspired by Western post-modern traditions as
by traditional Indian storytellers and Muslim, Arabic and Persian literary
works.
Consequently, for today's authors from India who write in English, es-
tablishing continuous and homogeneous literary traditions seems very
difficult and perhaps not particularly fruitful. What is notable is that tradi-
tional lines are crossed and the authors use literary forms and texts from a
number of contexts. Unlike Raja Rao and his early critics, for example,
they do not seem to feel the need to anchor or legitimise their writing in
some specific, so-called authentic context. The traditions appear to be hy-
brids.
Salman Rushdie—purity and impurity

A significant difference between Raja Rao and the writers who followed is
that few of them appear to write from a spiritual commitment; instead, they
write from a more secularised relationship to religion, and often place the
perspective that Rao creates in entirely new contexts. This also means that
religion is assigned a significantly more obscure role in the texts. Because
the authors come from different cultural groups, religions other than Hin-
duism are depicted—and neither these religions nor Hinduism is under-
stood as being synonymous with the Indianness of the authors or their
critics.
Certainly, it can be said that Rushdie formulates questions concerning
faith and doubt. In Midnight's Children he already places Aadam Sinai, as
the representative of Western rationalism and scepticism, in opposition to
his wife, Naseem, who represents traditional conservatism and supersti-

tion. Naseem's world-view is never considered interesting, however, while
Aadam's views are again a theme in The Satanic Verses, suggesting that
his problems are more important. Nevertheless, the spiritual experience is
depicted here as psychologically equivalent to love and art. The effect is
that religious experiences hardly ever stand out as unique.
In The Satanic Verses the author searches for the origins of one religion,
the source of Islam, and he shows how religion arose from the conflict-
filled transformation of a multilayered matriarchal religion to a patriarchal
one. Furthermore, religion is allowed to exist in only one approved ver-
sion. However, the origin is not unique or authentic in the sense of being
pure or unmixed but, on the contrary, is impure. The religion has devel-
oped through a long process and in the victorious version, the oppression
of the other versions can be discerned. Palimpsest is a central metaphor in
Rushdie's works. It makes boundaries vague.
In Rushdie's novels, a defiled, unholy combination stands for the vigor-
ous and innovative. In his debut novel Grimus, the hero leaves his place of
birth, where purity of race is revered with ritual overtones. The effects are
devastating. Culture comes to a standstill—it becomes petrified. In Mid-
night's Children, the hero realises that he prefers impurity in abstract and
concrete forms. His favourite hiding place is a laundry hamper filled with
dirty clothes where he becomes aware of his magical qualities. The dirty
alleys in Lahore allow him to develop a completely new sense, previously
unknown to himself. His partner, the mythological listener Padma, repre-
sents dung. Within impurity, "cross-pollination" and change arise—every-
thing is recreated. India, Bombay in particular, is a magical world where
all imaginable cultures and opportunities are represented. No pure tradi-
tions seem to exist. The main characters of the novel are mixed and have
several nationalities and religions in their baggage, something that also
generally gives rise to new creations with words. In The Moor's Last Sigh,
the main character has a mixed Jewish and Catholic identity: "I was both,
and nothing: a jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a stewpot, a mongrel
cur." 35
Symbols of hybridity (meaning merging) are common in the novels. The
Indian cuisine Hind creates in The Satanic Verses is actually made up of
several different culinary traditions. This eclecticism leads to the prosperi-
ty of the family. The positive characters in Rushdie's world place a high
35 Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), p. 104.
value on cultural encounters. This leads to clarity of vision and powerful

art in his novels, or to cultural and political growth. In The Satanic Verses
Zeeny Vakil points out that the Hamza-nama paintings are expressions of
the eclectic principle in India's history. Artists from all across the country
co-operatively painted these paintings from the sixteenth century. Each artist
incorporated his or her traditions and the greatness of the painting was due to
just that confluence of diversity.36 Therefore, if "Indianness" is to be defined
at all, it needs to be most closely related to syncretism. There are many ex-
amples of the strength of the hybrid. The strong and robust religion, Submis-
sion, is dependent on the melting pot of cultures that exists in its place of ori-
gin. This religion challenges and conquers the old obsolete power structures.
That it then itself, in Rushdie's description, becomes rigid, simply implies
the need for continual change and renewal. India's greatest artist, Aurora Zo-
goiby in The Moor's Last Sigh, works with hybrid themes; the world's great-
est female rock singer, Vina Apsara in The Ground Beneath her Feet, is a
hybrid creation and utilises traditions from all over the world.
The negative heroes in Rushdie's world are all associated with religious
and political simplicity. Pakistan means "The Land of the Pure" and is
characterised by greedy and dull narrow-mindedness. Here, border guards
and guardians of tradition patrol and negative characters of different
kinds—Naseem Aziz, General Zulfikar, maulana Dawood, Raza Hyder,
the Imam and Raman Fielding—all appear as zealots for purity. They can
only accept their own pure interpretation of reality and that is tied to power
and oppression, ignorance and fanaticism. They imagine that their version
of reality is the original and correct one. It is the version beyond the histo-
rian's world of changes. The idea of the existence or desirability of such a
culture is, however, undermined by the course of events and themes in the
novels. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the narrator stresses that the idea
of pure, delimited cultures can only be maintained in laboratories. 37
Rushdie highlights the criticism of purists fanatics by describing ways of
thinking about authentic, original culture, which remind us of Raja Rao's
views, in a completely new and markedly unpleasant discourse, the racial
one. The biggest threats in Rushdie's world come from those who advocate
purity. For example, in The Moor's Last Sigh, he alludes to the Hindu na-
tionalistic Bharatiya Janata Party, which was behind the destruction of the
sixteenth century mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. It is claimed that this
36 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988), p. 70.

37 Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), p. 95.
mosque was located on the site where the god Rama in Ramayana was
born. Here, it seems that you can see "Indianisation" (including ethnic
cleansing) and the revival of the great past as two aspects of the same
struggle. 38 A continual rewriting of the history of the Indian nation is in
progress where the predecessors of Hinduism are given a more central role,
while other cultural groups, including 100 million Muslims, are forced to
be satisfied with the role of former occupants, immigrants or converts, that
is to say, as imitation Indians by definition. Rushdie models the carica-
ture-like Raman Fielding on a leader of a nationalistic Hindu party in Bom-
bay and his message has a nationalistic fervour: "He spoke of a golden age
'before the invasions' when good Hindu men and women could roam free.
'Now our freedom, our beloved nation, is buried beneath the things the in-
vaders have built. This true nation is what we must reclaim from beneath
the layers of alien empires.' " 39 Rohinton Mistry makes the context clearer
when he allows a character to proclaim about the same leader, in reality
Bal Thackeray: "that bastard Shiv Sena leader who worships Hitler and
Mussolini." 40 The result of such a policy is a foregone conclusion: "No fu-
ture for minorities." 41
Rushdie has been called the "high priest of diasporic post-coloniality,
and a master of the hybrid tongue" 42 and this is of course accompanied by a
multitude of literary traditions which he draws upon, as well as his stub-
born reminder that what his characters experience as most authentic has
mixed origins. In his world, the migrant occupies a place apart. The mi-
grant physically embodies a cultural mixture and therefore, claims Rush-
die, has an ability to see from two directions simultaneously. In addition,
the migrant gains significance and becomes the symbol for modern human-
ity, the sense of not belonging, freedom and the multilayered identity.
Hind, in The Satanic Verses, refuses to change, or to translate, using
Rushdie's words. All of those who go through change become in some
way, at least in the beginning, mimic men, "authorized versions of other-
ness." 43 Through the agency of among others Macaulay's interpreters as
38 Khilnani.p. 151.
39 Rushdie, 1995, p. 299.
40 Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 73.
41 Ibid., p. 55.
42 Ania Loomba, " 'Local-manufacture made-in-India Othello fellows.' Issues of Race, Hy-
bridity and Location in Post-Colonial Shakespeares," in Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin
(eds.), Post-Colonial Shakespeares (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 153.
43 "The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of co-
lonial discourse also disrupts its authority." Bhabha, p. 88.
well as Indian interpreters like dubhasis (those who have two languages), 44
the number of these in-between people grew in India and at first acted in
the colonial context as tropes for impurity, dislocation and hybridity.
Bhabha, however, has emphasised the deconstructive possibilities of the
colonial stereotype. Through mimicry, the failings of the colonisers and the
imitator's opposition are accentuated. One could additionally argue, to-
gether with Bhabha, that the authority of the allegedly authentic and stable
(British) culture is questioned. 45
Mimic men are important subjects in almost all Indian English literature
and are often surrounded by humour or ridicule. In Rushdie's Midnight's
Children, one recalls Ahmed Sinai who imitates British customs so insist-
ently that his skin becomes lighter, and in the end completely loses its pig-
mentation. In addition, as a result of the alcoholic British habits he has ac-
quired he is eventually ruined. A similarly negative development can be
noted in the person who is placed in the boarding school in The Ground
Beneath Her Feet: "which based its methods upon the tried and true British
principles of cold baths, bad food, regular beatings and high-quality aca-
demic instruction, and which helped him to develop into the full-blooded
psychopath he afterwards became." 46
Saladin Chamcha in The Satanic Verses provides a more complex case
as he assimilates British polish with such thoroughness that even during his
fall from the exploding airplane he sings the British national anthem with
patriotic red, white and blue lips. At the beginning, Saladin never under-
stands more of the world than there is room for on a postcard. He grows,
however, and eventually learns to integrate his Indian heritage and to rec-
oncile himself with his origins, which results in his behaviour towards the
British becoming more independent. Through his transformation into a
devil, he embodies a concrete projection of the British fear of immigrants,
the dynamic power that is typical of cultural encounters in Rushdie's
works which he loads with overtones from the several-thousand-year-his-
tory of cultural encounters, particularly from the eclectic alchemy that
44 Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Sheldon

Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkely:
University of California Press, 2003), p. 208. Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega writing with a
similar perspective shows the role of bilingual voices in the Huarochiri Manuscript in
this volume.
45 Bhabha emphasises the similarities between mimicry and hybridity by describing both as
a "metonymy of presence", pp. 89 and 115.
46 Rushdie, Ground, p. 47.
grew out of the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria. In Grimus in particular,

Rushdie experiments with alchemical symbols, but in his later works, too,
the symbolic language is used with existential and political dimensions. 47
In The Satanic Verses, individuals, societies and religions fossilise, are
crushed and are rebuilt in a continual process.
Rushdie depicts the colonial period in several of his novels and his In-
dian characters are profoundly affected by colonialism. However, the colo-
nisers are also changed. Ironically, just as Fanon predicted, dreams of
power by the British have resulted in large-scale immigration to Great
Britain and have created conditions for the hybrid culture that is now de-
veloping there. There are many parallels between the communities that
Mahound (the devil's namesake) and the migrant Saladin (transformed into
and personified as a devil) radically renew in Jahilia and London.
Mahound and his followers are persecuted and harassed. Gibreel perceives
London as a ruin, "a Crusoe-city, marooned on the island of its past, and
trying with the help of a Man-Friday underclass, to keep up appear-
ances." 48 He is harassed by four white right-wing extremists and draws an
ironic conclusion about how the great conquering nation has changed. One
pictures the immigrants as devils, but the author reverses the metaphor
based on connotations connected with revolt and migration and allows the
immigrants to begin the renewal of the British nation.
Rohinton Mistry—hopeful change

Rohinton Mistry is of Parsi origin, which presumably characterises his cul-
tural view of both the Hindus and British. In pre-colonial India, the Parsis
were allowed to practise their monotheistic mission, but not to proselytise.
During the British period, they were strongly affected by Western customs
and preferred to identify with their colonial masters. 49 This created prob-
lems in postcolonial India and led to extensive migration to the West.
In his works Tales from Firozsha Baag, Such a Long Journey, A Fine
Balance and Family Matters Mistry structures the portrayal of his minority
tradition from two different perspectives. One emphasises decay and dis-
47 For elaboration see my Unending Metamorphoses: Myth, Satire and Religion in Salman
Rushdie's Novels (Lund: Lund UP, 1996).
48 Rushdie, Satanic Verses, p. 439.
49 The description of the Parsis is made by an Ayah in Tales from Firozsha Baag, p. 46.
Compare with Nilufer E. Bharucha, "When Old Tracks are Lost: Rohinton Mistry's Fic-
tion as Diasporic Discourse," The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 30:2 (1995), p.
58.
appointment, the other, mapping and reconstruction. His debut book,

Tales from Firozsha Baag, is a collection of short stories with a common
cast of characters, all of them living in the same apartment complex
around a courtyard. One could say that the first story in many ways sets
the tone. It begins in a lavatory, where the miser of the book, Rustom,
sits with his yellow stained unbuttoned pants, suffering from constipa-
tion. He is unshaven and toothless. The house is described as being old
and dilapidated. For Rustom as well as his young wife, the day (which
for her had begun in a spirit of expectation) was one of disappointment
and frustration.
Kersi appears as one of the collection's main characters and is the narra-
tor in the middle story. Here, he tries to prevent his father's ageing by pull-
ing out all of his white hairs every Sunday. The father is unemployed, but
on Sundays he is filled with hope in anticipation of all of the advertise-
ments in the situations-vacant column. He must look young when he ap-
plies for a job; therefore, the Sunday process of "rejuvenation" acts as a rit-
ual, an invocation. Each week brings a new disillusionment however. Kersi
is forced to accept that ageing and change cannot be stopped.
At the same time, Mistry documents Parsi traditions with an almost eth-
nographic accuracy. This sometimes means that space takes precedence
over time and that the pace, particularly in the novel Such a Long Journey,
is slow. Here, he depicts the same time period several times from different
perspectives. When one of the central characters of the book is buried, the
course of events almost comes to a complete halt as Mistry describes the
customs in detail. He dwells on the fire temple, Parsi priests, clothes and
food. This ethnographic quality in Mistry's books can be interpreted in dif-
ferent ways. The literary tradition he uses reminds one of Western realism
or, in A Fine Balance, simply of naturalism. Significantly, the book begins
with a motto from Balzac. However, in an analysis of Mistry's texts
Bharucha points out that written works by Parsi authors can generally be
understood in cultural terms. A nostalgic tone is common and is brought on
by the threat of the minority's extermination. This also explains the need to
maintain a distinct identity and record customs. Mistry does this through,
among other things, his use of Parsi words and Parsi idioms. There is clear-
ly a desire for cultural autonomy here, says Bharucha, and a reclamation of
history in a postcolonial spirit. 50
50 Today, there are only about 150,000 Parsis in the world, Bharucha, Postmodern Indian
English Novel, p. 358.
The question, however, is whether Mistry's tone can be said to be

nostalgic, and whether reconstruction of Parsi life automatically brings
with it an essentialist view of culture, a belief in an original cultural stabil-
ity. Another perspective is introduced in Family Matters: "When a culture
vanishes, humanity is the loser." 51 As a matter of fact, the whole of India
seems to be decaying in the later works. This perspective is emphasised by
the insistent detailed, linear method of storytelling and the circular compo-
sition in a book like A Fine Balance. Mistry still seems to create a mixed
feeling of love for, and antipathy to his culture, a feeling that in my opinion
is not adequately described with words like nostalgia. In his debut collec-
tion Tales from Firozsha Baag, he creates sympathy for the sensitive ado-
lescent Jehangir and then shows how his social and sexual longings are
crushed by his parents' rigid, religiously-based set of rules. This is a typi-
cal theme in the collection. Culture is portrayed as isolated, specific, some-
times in opposition to the Hindu majority culture or allied with Western
culture. Already in the debut collection, however, it is never portrayed as
autonomous, but as saturated by the West in particular. Boys read Biggies
and Blyton and, later, authors such as Shakespeare, Swift, Tolstoy and the
Greek tragedies; they listen to Beethoven and Strauss; on their walls are
paintings by Picasso. The characters remember their childhoods with plen-
ty of money and respected positions. What remains, however, are para-
lysed conventions, sometimes simply tied to superstition and oppression,
as well as authoritarian and social hierarchical relations, something that be-
comes quite clear in relation to servants and when the older generations
regulate the lives of the younger ones. A similar feeling of impoverishment
among the Parsis is created in the later novels.
Change is presented as unavoidable and perhaps as simply positive.
Such a Long Journey contains three sayings: Firdausi, in the Iranian epic
Shah-Nama, asks why the world has been left in such a sorry state; Eliot,
whom the title to the novel is indebted to, talks about travel during the
worst time of the year in "Journey of the Magi"; while Tagore's conclud-
ing sentences from Gitanjali talk about old words that fade away while
new melodies burst forth, old tracks that disappear while a new land
emerges. The sayings give a sense of foreboding that the world described
in the novel produces many negative signs, that much will disappear or be
destroyed. The changes, however, stand out as being hopeful. This is
heralded in Tales from Firozsha Baag, which can be said to contain a mise
51 Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters (London: Faber and Faber, 2002): 403.
en abyme scene, when a piece of music is presented: "the beginning in A

minor, full of sadness and nostalgia and an unbearable yearning for time
gone by; then the modulation into C major, with its offer of hope and
strength and understanding." 52 The story collection commences in apart-
ment block A, with the care-worn Rustom. A woman who becomes a
widow also grew up here, but she moves to apartment block C. She
chooses not to follow Parsi traditions when her husband dies, but overturns
conventions and represents hopefulness, calm and strength. The erosion or
relaxation of old customs thus becomes something that is at once necessary
and fruitful—those who try to preserve the purity of the religion fail, they
are defeated by society as a whole and by the younger people, who seem to
have forgotten their roots and who experience the underside of the conven-
tions. This is portrayed primarily in the many migration themes, which are
certainly not unambiguous. In almost every short story, Canada or the USA
is referred to as a dream country with unlimited access to commodities,
freedom and opportunities. The young people dream; the older ones em-
phasise that there is no future in India. Some of the dreams are contradicted
by the fate of the migrations depicted, but on the whole the structure, with
the total decay in India at the beginning and the mother's happiness over
her son's success in Canada at the end, suggests the author's intentions.
The opposite is also depicted: the safeguarding of the elders and the sup-
posedly authentic culture, but always with an oppressive and threatening
dimension. In Such a Long Journey, the India of the 1960s and 1970s is
portrayed, a period when chauvinism was tied to religion and xenophobia
was developing, particularly in the Bombay region where the novel takes
place. A wall that divides the Parsi apartment building from the chaotic
world around it becomes central to the story. The main character tries to
counteract the threatening political trends by having the wall painted. The
artist fills it with pictures of gods from all religions: "But I always like to
mix them up, include a variety in my drawings. Make me feel I am doing
something to promote tolerance and understanding in the world." The po-
lice, who in the end are forced to tear down the wall, reinforce this: "A
good mixture like this is a perfect example for our secular country." 53 The
paintings on the wall are harmonious, indicating no division or rivalry be-
tween the cultures they represent. They have no intrinsic, antagonistic
edge; however, they do have a clear political or rhetorical character.
52 Mistry, Firozsha Baag, p. 69.

53 Mistry, Long Journey, pp. 182 and 214.
Globalisation as a dystopia—Arundhati Roy

Hybridity, or rather syncretism, is described by many Indian English au-
thors during the 1980s and 1990s as something necessary, obvious and
positive. It contributes to peaceful co-existence and tolerance in the
novels' diegesis and, additionally, is a strong thematic mainstay in all of
them. Particularly in Rushdie's works, the hybrid culture creates an energy
or drive in the characters. This cultural disposition could be understood as
an aspect of globalisation. However, one can also emphasise the material
or economic aspects of globalisation as well as the asymmetry it creates
between the different parties on the cultural level. This aspect is primarily
emphasised by Arundhati Roy.
Unlike the other authors mentioned, Arundhati Roy lives in India. She is
deeply engaged in political movements concerned with the unjust
world-order emanating from the West. Like the other authors, the world
she portrays in The God of Small Things is inescapably hybrid. The focus
of the novel is a Syrian-Christian family, a family of anglophiles. Arundha-
ti Roy provides sketchy insights into the lives of the Syrian-Christians and
shows how the arrival of the English brought about conversions among the
lower castes, whose situation, however, did not change at all as the Angli-
can Church appropriated customs from its Hindu surroundings. Ironically,
the narrator of the novel points out that the same rules apply to high-caste
Christians and to high-caste Hindus. The low-caste Christians have their
own church and their own outcast bishop. 54 The difference here, compared
with the earlier authors, is that this hybridisation does not result in any-
thing good. The similarity is that religion plays a subordinate role in the
lives of characters of the novel, with the exception of the evil Baby Koc-
hamma who falls in love with a Catholic priest and converts so that she can
become a nun. When this does not produce the results she wanted, how-
ever, she returns home full of resentment. Here, it is difficult to find the
ambivalence and opposition that Bhabha has described in the encounter be-
tween the British evangelists and Indians.
The Hindu cultural heritage, in the form of Kathakali dances and epics
such as Mahabharata, seems to constitute just as self-evident a part of the
novel's cultural world as does the Christian. The Sound of Music plays an
intertexual role in the novel, but the role of Mahabharata becomes more
significant, because it interprets the main characters' own stories and ex-
54 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 74.
presses their feelings. The Western influence is quantitatively strongest

however. Hindu and communist as well as Christian figures admire, imi-
tate and copy the Western world without reservation. They are captivated
and dominated by easily accessible communications technology. The
house falls into disrepair, the gardens are overgrown; the characters sit en-
thralled in front of the television and imagine that they control the world.
In an essay Roy speaks of the Indians' complete submission to the worst
side of the West, nuclear weapons technology: "we storm the heart of
whiteness, we embrace the most diabolic creation of Western science and
call it our own." She does not promote a return to the ship "SS Authenticity
and Indianness." 55 Hindus are not the original inhabitants in India, she
stresses. There is in fact no such thing as an authentic or real India, no "au-
thorized version." 56
Consequently, Roy does not portray the encounter between cultures in
the same hopeful manner as her predecessors in the tradition. The novel
contains one figure that, in certain respects, resembles Rushdie's multicul-
tural characters. Baby Kochamma grows edelweiss and Chinese guava,
Colombian flamingo flower, South American or perhaps British phlox, and
Japanese bonsai plants. 57 Had Salman Rushdie written about her, she
would have been a symbol of extreme creativity and tolerance. However,
Baby Kochamma represents the opposite; she is the evil genius of the
novel. In many ways, Roy describes Indians who behave like mimic men,
but without any apparent destabilisation of colonialism. Rather, the brutal-
ity in colonialism is made clear and a connection created between colonial-
ism and globalisation. This is further stressed in her essays. The maternal
grandfather in the novel sets the tone. He is an imperial entomologist and
he glides with an arrogant countenance "down the narrow road in his wide
car, looking outwardly elegant but sweating freely inside his woollen
suits." 58 The British and the foreign characterise his inner and outer identi-
ties, something the woollen suit in the tropical heat and the muggy land-
scape suggest. Symptomatically, he brutally batters his own wife. This op-
pression of women is an important theme and recurs among most of the
characters. The patriarchal and hierarchical pattern is strong in both cul-
tures. Roy stresses the grandfather's behaviour by emphasising that a pho-
55 Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice (London: Flamingo, 2002), pp. 30-31.
56 Ibid., p. 33.
57 Roy, God of Small Things, pp. 26-27.
58 Ibid., p. 48.
tograph set in a place of honour in the house demonstrates his barely re-
strained cruelty. 59
The information about the grandfather is inserted into a description of
the family in his car (bought from an Englishman) on their way to the cine-
ma. The narrative time stands still during the drive and for a little while
afterwards. The clock shows the same time for almost one hundred pages,
while the moment expands simultaneously in both space and time. 60
Images of the past continually break into the emotionally charged inner-
story of the text and shed light on the interdependence between the West
and the India of the past and of today. In this manner, the impression is cre-
ated that the pattern of colonialism still lives. The clock is literally standing
still.
A long series of characters' struggles with failures in the West demon-
strates that the distribution of power between Indians and Westerners has
not changed since colonial times and that the conditions for Indians have in
fact become worse. In spite of everything, the grandfather struggles within
the scientific arena to get the insect he has discovered named after him—
that he fails is his greatest defeat. 61 The son, Chacko, has not been success-
ful in life. It is true that he studies at Oxford, but he does not earn a degree.
He marries a commonplace waitress whose father refuses to come to the
wedding. 62 The twin Rahel, in the next generation, works at a gas station
outside Washington in a bullet-proof box "where drunks occasionally
vomited into the money tray, and pimps propositioned her with more lucra-
tive job offers. Twice she saw men being shot through their car windows.
And once a man who had been stabbed, ejected from a moving car with a
knife in his back." 63 The family's increasing proletarianisation and power-
lessness against the West, as well as within their own country, is obvious. 64
The course of events is intensified by changes in the environment. When
the twins in the framing narrative return to their childhood surroundings,
59 Ibid., p. 51.
60 During the entire car trip to the cinema, during the film and afterwards, Rahel's toy
watch shows that it is ten to two, and it is primarily her experience that creates the im-
pression that time stands still. However, the narrator also depicts the time when Rahel is
sleeping and thus her consciousness is not central. In this manner, the information about
the clock-time is given a thematic relevance.
61 Roy, God of Small Things, p. 49.
62 "She had always thought of herself as a somewhat uninteresting, thick-waisted, thick-
ankled girl. Not bad-looking. Not special." Ibid., p. 245.
63 Ibid., p. 20.
64 Towards the end of the novel, Ammu and the twins fall completely out of society's safe-
ty net. Ibid., p. 302.
they find them marked by decay. The once feared river is now controlled.
It greets them "with a ghastly skull's smile, with holes where teeth had
been. ... But now its teeth were drawn, its spirit spent." 65 Through the tech-
nique of fragmentation, local history is placed within a larger contempo-
rary perspective where relations between India and the West are just as
asymmetrical as during colonial times.
Another pair of mimic men for whom cultural encounters and conver-
sion do not seem to be so devastating appears on the margins of the narra-
tive. Here the imitators come from the West. A special house, "The History
House," acts as an image for the encounter between the West and India/the
Third World, and as an allusion to a European key text that depicts this en-
counter. It concentrates the complex of problems surrounding the cultures:
time and space are pushed together and the personal is interwoven with the
societal. An Englishman who committed an unthinkable act owns the
house. He abandoned his British identity, his well-pressed starched collars
and suits, and "went native"; he spoke Malayalam and wore a mundu. It
was said that he was the region's own Kurtz, a black sahib. 66
Roy ironically calls the village where "The History House" is located,
Ayemenem, "Heart of Darkness." Accordingly, in her novel she creates an
image from inside this darkness. In this respect, the novel acts as a reply to
Joseph Conrad's representation of cultural encounters. The motto from
John Berger in Roy's novel can be read as a comment on her treatment of
Conrad's story: "Never again will a single story be told as though it's the
only one."
Roy's perspective is the opposite of Conrad's. Other whites do not see
the black sahib against a background of savages—here, the natives repre-
sent normality. Moreover, it is "Kurtz" that deviates through initiating a
sexual relationship with a schoolboy. His life is only a minor incident in
the novel, however. "Kurtz" shoots himself when the boy's parents take his
young lover away from him and send him off to boarding school. After
that, the house stands empty and a dispute begins over who is to inherit it.
65 Ibid., p. 124. In an essay, Roy attacks the West-supported development projects that have
greatly affected the poorest people in India. The construction of enormous dams is an
ecological and political catastrophe: "What is at issue now is the very nature of our de-
mocracy. Who owns this land? Who owns its rivers? Its forests? Its fish?." Roy, Algebra,
p. 45. The God of Small Things received the Booker Prize in 1997 and Roy gave the
money to the victims of the damming of the Narmada River. Literatur Nachrichten 62
(1999), p. 17.
66 The Englishwoman Margaret, Chacko's wife, experiences the trip to India as a journey
into the heart of darkness. Roy, God of Small Things, p. 267.
It is only towards the end of the novel, when the house has been renamed
"Heritage," that it becomes clear who will inherit.
Towards the end of the novel, Roy provides an additional picture of an
Englishman, or Irishman, who goes native and thus resembles Kurtz. This
is the monk, Father Mulligan, with whom Baby Kochamma is in love. He
begins studying the Hindu writings to learn how Hindus think and "in or-
der to be able to denounce them intelligently." 67 However, he converts to
Hinduism and dies as an Indian guru. He wears saffron robes, has long hair
and a (well-groomed) beard. In one photo he is standing in his saffron
robes surrounded by middle-class widows all dressed in white. The con-
version of an Englishman to Hinduism does not seem threatening and dark,
but gentle, fortunate and a little comical: "A yolk addressing a sea of
boiled eggs." 6S
Significantly enough, "The History House" reappears in the novel repre-
senting another phase of the cultural encounter. When the twins in the
frame story return after twenty-three years, the house has been converted
into a hotel, and tourism has made its appearance. It has received the
equivocal name "Heritage." It is clear what that heritage is. The neo-
colonial situation has been recreated in the region, with the grand colonial
villa as its centre surrounded by houses that have been moved there—low,
wooden houses "like a press of eager natives petitioning an English magis-
trate." The oldest of these houses had belonged to Kerala's Mao Tse-tung:
"So there it was then, History and Literature enlisted by commerce. Kurtz
and Karl Marx joining palms to greet rich guests." 69
A mutilated and tourist-adapted section of the Indian epic Mahabharata
is presented here, in traditional Kathakali form. There are swimming pool
performances, leisure stories where the tourists smother themselves in
suntan lotion while allowing themselves to be entertained by the spicy re-
gional dances. Old communists work as porters dressed in colourful ethnic
clothes and the high walls lock out the slum. The original six-hour per-
formance is butchered into twenty-minute episodes. 70 In this way, the seri-
ousness, passion and sorrow of the performance are lost. The actors dance
in order to cast aside their humiliation in the Heart of Darkness, in the
house of tourists, and in order to keep starvation at bay. Afterwards, they
67 Ibid., p. 22.
68 Ibid., p. 298.
69 Ibid., p. 126.
70 Ibid., p. 127.
stop at the temple to pray to the gods for forgiveness. Afterwards, they go
home and "beat their wives." 71 The scene might be associated with the
cheapening of art as an effect of globalisation as well as with the patriar-
chal situation. Furthermore, in the myths, women are oppressed.
The twin's most prominent characteristics when they are older are emp-
tiness and quietness. 72 Roy not only describes the psychological reasons for
this, but also sheds light on it through her sketches of the environment, and
her narrator comments on a larger dilemma, an identity disorder of the en-
tire culture. Western and Indian culture are continually mixed, but always
at the cost of the Indian. The characters in the novel become set in patterns
of unreserved admiration for the West. A few vigorous Indian customs re-
main, existing in parallell with the commercialised erosion of Indian cul-
ture. Above all, Roy brings up the caste system and the stifling border-
guarding it generates. We have come a long way from Rushdie's ideal hy-
brid cultures. By contrast, Roy's novel demonstrates unsolved cultural
conflicts. Instead of a development towards increased tolerance, the caste
laws and caste prejudices are depicted as inexorably unchangeable—or
possibly as mummified because of the strong Western pressure. On one
level, the novel constitutes a violent diatribe against "Edges, Borders,
Boundaries, Brinks and Limits." 73 On the other hand, borders also seem to
be able to provide a protection. Consequently, the novel simultaneously
describes an unprotected culture that is surpassed by another commercial
culture as well as an attack on borders of all kinds! The God of Small
Things contains many levels of conflicts—it does not describe any kind of
well-balanced syncretism, but instead something one perhaps could char-
acterise as an uneasy and sometimes destructive hybridity. We encounter
an India where different kinds of despair struggle for supremacy.
Hybridity and Rhetoric

It is not unusual for Indian English authors to look to history and take up
traditions from the past. The question is why these traditions turn out so
differently. Raja Rao recreates a uniform, grandiose, Hindu past. However,
the thoughts and ideas that he takes up appear in a new racist discourse
with authors such as Rushdie and Mistry. How should one understand a
71 Ibid., p. 236.
72 Ibid., p. 236.
73 Ibid., p. 3.
concept like authenticity based on such a divided picture? Is there any rela-
tionship between spirituality and Indian authenticity? And how does au-
thenticity relate to hybridity?
The term "hybridity" has become endowed with a multitude of mean-
ings and strongly ideologically charged within the postcolonial discourse.
This is not unproblematic. Critics often conduct their discussions on com-
pletely different levels and seem to base their criticism on different defini-
tions of the term as well as on cultural identity. Hybridity in part can repre-
sent a phenomenon in concrete historical reality, and in part be a primarily
discursive phenomenon. 74
Bart Moore-Gilbert argues that if hybridity is to have any conceptual
power, then it is dependent on its opposite: that is, the existence of non-
hybrid cultures. However, the belief today is that no such cultures exist. 75
Yet in my opinion, one could imagine a reference for authenticity, but
through a completely different level of abstraction from the comprehensive
comparative understanding that makes all cultures hybrid. The conflict be-
tween the views of cultures as being either authentic or hybrid could then
be understood as partly a difference in the level of abstraction. The idea
that hybridity is a normal condition explicitly expresses something about
actual cultures—at a certain level of abstraction and from a clear historical
and comparative perspective. At the local level and within a narrower per-
spective the relationships can appear different. Here, one can experience
something that could be called authentic culture, to which one can feel a
sense of belonging, which is used to establish culture, and is handed down.
Examples would be the world where Arundhati Roy's characters experi-
ence their culture from within and the world Raja Rao and the nationalists
seem to have sensed during the liberation movement. If Moore-Gilbert is
correct, one cannot deny the occurrence on every level of abstraction im-
aginable of something that can be seen as authentic culture, at least from
the inside. However, this does not mean that from the outside one must
also imagine authentic cultures as existing outside or above history, that
they are static and unchanging, but that just the opposite is likely, that one
imagines the authentic as being in the midst of local history and therefore
changeable. The reference point thus becomes unstable.
74 In Bhabha, the term is also abstract and actually lacks reference. It "characterizes a con-
figuration of conflicting discursive forces," says Fludernik, "The Constitution of Hybrid-
ity", p. 27.
75 Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London and
New York: Verso, 1997), p. 129.
The polarisation of the terms seems to make understanding difficult

however. Hybridity is readily articulated together with tolerance, emanci-
pation and diversity, while authenticity is connected with fundamentalism,
stagnation and with the past. It is not easy to break these patterns. How-
ever, Neil ten Kortenaar solves several of the problems I have sketched in a
simple manner. He claims that "culture" hardly has any ontological exist-
ence outside the actions of the cultural actors. Identity and authenticity al-
ways have a history and must be understood within the historical context in
which they were formulated. 76 To return to an original culture is of course
impossible, says Kortenaar. If you persist in maintaining that that is what
you are doing, as the fictional character Raman Fielding or the Bharatiya
Janata Party in contemporary India, you are following a political agenda.
Adequate reactions must therefore be formulated on a political level, not
on an ontological level. In this way, the tradition is created in the present
where it influences people's pictures of themselves and their possible ac-
tions. 77
This reasoning can be applied to the representation of what is perceived
as Indian identity. The view of spirituality as something originally and au-
thentically Indian has undergone a significant transformation. It is also
striking how closely scholars associate the concept of authenticity with the
legitimising of history. This becomes clear in investigations of how the im-
age of a spiritual Indian has developed. Now one readily claims that this
image was created by British and other Western Orientalists but that it has
been embraced and authorised within the so-called Hindu renaissance,
which the Australian literary critic Harrex maintains was the cultural
centre for what he understands as a necessary change of the Indian percep-
tion of the world. 78 From a postcolonial perspective it seems necessary to
stress the decisive role of Indians in this process.
The Orientalists placed Indian spirituality within the context of a spe-
cific perception of history. They collected and systematised knowledge
of different aspects of India and made this material available to the pub-
lic. Anthropologist Bernard Cohn claims that the British not only in-
vaded a geographical region, but also an epistemological one. Scholars
constructed the history of language categories as well as the grammati-
76 Neil ten Kortenaar, "Beyond Authenticity and Creolization: Reading Achebe Writing
Culture," PMLA 110:1 (1995), p. 30. Cf. Charme, p. 144.
77 Kortenaar, p. 40. Cf. Charme, p. 148.
78 Harrex, p. 35.
cal, social, historical and religious categories that made India at once
comprehensible and different from Great Britain. 79 This could be viewed
as a process of translation, based on a Brahminical understanding of the
diverse traditions, filtered through the late-Mughal group of interpreters,
the dubhasis. Simultaneously, a view of a history was constructed plac-
ing India low on a scale the bottom level of which constituted decay. The
scholars intended to demonstrate how India's pure original language dis-
integrated into today's many languages and dialects, how original laws
and customs in the same way decayed and split into the traditions of the
different ethnic groups. 80 Generalising somewhat, one could say that the
writing of history by the British meant that, in India, they discerned a lin-
ear development away from these unspoiled, authentic, golden days of
the past. Their own role, unsurprisingly, became the role of spreading
light after a middle (read Muslim) period of decay. In older Indian Eng-
lish research, both Western and Indian, Indian culture is depicted as
standing still, sterile and lifeless, while the British colonial power is gen-
erally seen in an abstract non-political manner as only positive. 81 "By the
end of the eighteenth century, India was to all appearance a Waste Land,"
writes the doyen of this research, Srinivasa Iyengar, pointing out that it is
India's own fault: "India was betrayed by what was false and weak with-
in her. India had become diseased and self-divided." 82 As late as 1997,
Mund writes of the British influence: "It seemed as if India was slowly
waking up from its stupor." 83
The fact that the British categories of history also agree with and sup-
port Hindu nationalism explains why the Orientalists' ideas about the
79 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Prince-
ton: Princeton UP, 1996), p. 3.
80 Ibid., p. 54.
81 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993), p. 97.
Ranajit Guha cites school essays from the 1820s that show how students associated Mus-
lim domination with a pattern of economic domination: luxury for the rulers and oppres-
sion of the people. However, they associated the British domination with great improve-
ments. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India ( Cam-
bridge: Harvard UP, 1997), p. 170. Still today Arun Mukherjee reports on how similar
ideas are presented by students with Indian origins in Toronto. "Interrogating Postcoloni-
alism: Some Uneasy Conjunctures," in Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee (eds.),
Interrogating Post-Colonialism: Theory, Text and Context (Shimla: Indian Institute of
Advanced Studies, 1996), p. 18.
82 Iyengar, pp. 23, 25. Cf. Η. M. Williams, Indo-Anglian Literature 1800-1970: A Survey
(New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976), p. 13.
83 Mund, p. 24.
spiritual India came to be embraced by those who then formulated history,

the orthodox and liberal Brahmin intellectuals. 84 Ram Mohan Roy, Vive-
kananda, Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore, all nineteenth and twenti-
eth century reformists, took up these ideas but recoded them so that spirit-
uality was rendered in a positive light and was contrasted with Western
materialism. This can be understood as an anti-colonial strategy. Partha
Chatterjee sees the construction of an identity separate and distinct from
the colonial power as one side of Indian nationalism. The establishment of
such an identity in India demanded a distinction between the outer material
world, which was ruled by the colonial power, and the inner world, to
which the colonial power did not have access and which encompassed
spirituality, customs and family. This inner, spiritual world was viewed as
the essence of culture. 85 The ideas of the grandiose past survived long into
the twentieth century. One can maintain with some justification that these
ideas continue. During the 1940s, Raja Rao participated in an organisation
built on Gandhi's ideas, which wanted to revive what was seen as the old
values of Indian culture. 86
When reading Raja Rao's Kanthapura with a focus on understanding
history based on present-day standards, one sees the importance of the year
of publication—1938—nine years before the country's independence, in
the middle of the anti-colonial and nationalistic struggle. In light of this,
the novel could also be read as an expression of the opposition to the colo-
nial power, as a part of a nationalistic self-definition in the spirit of Chat-
terjee. One would then at once see that the work perhaps creates the idea of
an essential (Hindu) culture, and sees this as having strategic and histori-
cal bases, in other words, as rhetorical rather than descriptive. The use of
the oral literary tradition here could also be relevant. The novel can be un-
derstood as part of a nationalistic discourse, where in addition, history is
perceived not from the usual centres but from the simple position of the
villagers. This choice of a centre can be seen as a protest against the British
manner of writing India's history. The novel creates identity through story
telling.
84 Khilnani, p. 159. On this development in especially Bengal history as a period of "cul-

tural interdiscursivity" and "cross-cultural self-construction," see Elleke Boehmer, Em-
pire, the National, and the Postcolonial 1890-1920: Resistance in Interaction (Oxford,
Oxford UP, 2002), pp. 51 and 53.
85 Chatterjee, p. 6.
86 Rama Jha, Gandhian Thought and Indo-Anglian Novelists (New Delhi: Chanakya Publi-
cations, 1983), p. 89.
Chatterjee thus emphasises rationality in the actions of the reformists.

Another scholar, Ania Loomba, questions whether the reformists passively
took over Orientalism's template. She claims that India's glorious history
is actively recreated when one chooses from the multitude of colonial and
domestic stories. 87 Consequently, it is a complicated process of challenging
and appropriating the colonial version of the past, not a simple acceptance
of a finished picture. It is also important to remember the part played by
Brahmins in establishing "the finished picture." From this perspective, cul-
ture is not a prescriptive grammar, as Kortenaar points out, but rather a re-
serve of possible practices often full of contradictions. 88
When the scholars, primarily during the independent nation's first dec-
ades, so strongly defined Indian culture as spirituality and Rao as one of its
foremost representatives, their attitudes can be explained partly by the his-
torical context. Ramachandra points out that they appear against a back-
ground of Indian scholars who give all their attention to British authors and
Western theories and values. 89 Therefore, the critics look back towards In-
dia's vital past. Many of them conduct veritable crusades against imita-
tions and derivatives and plead for an Indian context. They emphasise In-
dianness and try to demonstrate the relevance of Indian terms and contexts.
Mukherjee stresses that the Indian English writers were more drawn to-
wards the homogenous, the pan-Indian, essence than the vernacular
writers—as is obvious here in both Rao and Rushdie. This was partly due
to their upper-caste, elite, urban male origin. 90 This might hold true for the
critics as well.
The critics' perspective is additionally characterised by their defensive
position. They have established and won respect for the field of research of
Indian English literature. This was long looked on with suspicion in India.
Sharrad maintains that one needed to convince the rest of India's literary
establishment that this was a field dealing with true Indian subjects, as well
87 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p. 195. Similarly, Khilnani points out that the

historical heritage was amorphous and did not carry a message of uniformity, p. 156.
88 Kortenaar, p. 31. Cf. Charme, who similarly stresses the active appropriation and legiti-
mising tie-in to tradition of something that is designated as "authentic past" by and
through the present, rather than a passive acceptance of a fixed and given tradition.
89 Ragini Ramachandra, "Criticism (India)" in Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds.),
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English 1 (London and New York:
90 Mukherjee, Perishable Empire, pp. 63, 171-172, 174.
as convince the Englishmen that this was literature with a respectable tradi-
tion and quality. 91 One clear defensive strategy was to emphasise different
Indian prose traditions and show how the Indian English authors connected
to them. Thus, the novel form is described as not only an imported Western
form, but also as a natural development of domestic patterns. The connec-
tion between authenticity and legitimacy is obvious.
The re-evaluation that Rao's authorship has undergone sheds light on
the changes cultural interpretations have gone through, but also illustrates
a commonly-held view of literature and interpretative practices. The start-
ing point for critics' reactions is often the relation of the text to the reality
that the text presumes to mirror or depict. Earlier, it was maintained that
Raja Rao, who portrays a uniform and harmonious Hindu India, did so cor-
rectly to some extent; accordingly, his texts were judged to have a referen-
tial validity. Now scholars maintain that Salman Rushdie's portrayals of
India as a multidimensional society correspond better with reality. In addi-
tion, within postcolonial research, minority cultures are favoured and often
defined as questioning or critical of the majority culture. 92 After all, Tabish
Khair asks, does an "essential India" exist in a country with 930 million
people, with 1 652 mother tongues and ten different scripts and where all
of the world's great religions exist? 93
The question of correct representation thus stands as central and Rao is
now accused of having a false or antiquated, essentialistic view of culture.
In an early influential study, The Twice-Born Fiction (1971) Meenakshi
Mukherjee emphasises that Rao incorrectly portrayed India as too homo-
geneous. She has had several followers. The younger critics place Rao's
work in a historical context and do not see it as an expression of Indian-
ness, but on the contrary, as a reduction of any possible Indianness. In ad-
dition, Khair stresses the upper-class, upper-caste Hindu perspective in
Rao and the similarities between his tendency to create an essentialised In-
dia and the Orientalist paradigm. 94 As a result, criticism is generally aimed
at the question of representation, but one can also stress the marked mono-
logic quality of the novels. Furthermore, the narrators often speak in the
plural, thus enabling Rao to generalise and voice a "Sanskritized Babu-
91 Sharrad, p. 25.
92 Young, p. 24.
93 Khair, p. 214.
94 Ibid., p. 204.
Brahminical" worldview. 95 Consequently, a specific literary viewpoint is

adopted here. In order to have an opinion on the evaluation of Rao's au-
thorship one must take a stance, firstly, on the reasonableness of under-
standing literature as reflection, and, secondly, on the rationality of using
what one perceives as a correct reflection as a criterion for evaluation. Few
critics, however, involve themselves in these kinds of discussions. 96
Religion or spirituality can also be analysed thematically in the younger
Indian English authors but, remarkably, it is now impossible to equate In-
dia and a specific type of spirituality since the diversity of traditions is ob-
vious. Nor can spirituality in general, based on the novels, be said to be
typically Indian since it plays such a subordinate role. Several of the au-
thors also show the mixed or impure origin of the individual traditions,
which also counteracts the impression of authenticity. The homage to hy-
bridity is almost unanimous. 97
One could ask how such a concept as complex and difficult to grasp as
hybridity should have such an impact. Naturally, the course of events is
elusive. The concept of hybridity seems to have become simplified to
mean organic, harmonious hybridity or cultural syncretism. On top of this,
it has been loaded with a political, emancipatory message and connected
with the struggle for justice by minorities. The appreciation of hybridity is
presumed to lead to tolerance and to simplify the different groups' lives to-
gether. This understanding belongs in a liberal melting-pot discourse, or a
multicultural discourse, that does not complicate the issue of hybridity
even in a society where so-called ethnic unease is common. At the same
time, it has a harmless quality, since both colonial and other cultural en-
counters have a nimbus of uncertainty and ambivalence, which can be rea-
sonable but at the same time result in political powerlessness. The role of
ideology in the development of society demands, of course, specific
methods of investigation. I can only note that based on the discourse of hy-
95 Ibid., p. 216. One single critic Paul Sharrad, has, however, emphasised that The Serpent
and the Rope, which was first understood as a harmonious mixture between the East and
West, terms that were used somewhat unproblematically, contained ambiguities and iro-
nies.
96 Monika Fludernik is an exception here, as she declares that she perceives the literary
texts as "symbolic statements about the predicament of colonial, postcolonial or migrant
societies. Such a reading is clearly interventionist." "Colonial vs Cosmopolitan Hybridi-
ty: A Comparison of Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan with Recent British and North
American Expatriate Writing (Singh, Baldwin, Divakaruni, Sunetra Gupta)", p. 263.
97 One of the most influential writers in this regard is Amitav Ghosh.
bridity, contemporary authors find a completely different historical per-

spective from that of Raja Rao and the Hindu renaissance. The present
seems to be crucial to the image of the past.
The dialogic or antagonistic hybridity, hybridity as "an energy field of
different forces," 98 has had a lesser role in criticism and it is considerably
more difficult to distinguish in the literature. Nor, as far as I can see, is it
analysed thematically to the same extent. It is also less clear how the con-
cept should be specifically understood. Consequently, it raises questions
of emancipation and the ability to act—particularly for people in the
Third World. Exactly how this is to be accomplished, however, is less
obvious (if the discussion is limited to literary texts in any case). The ac-
tual localisation of hybridity and its agency are also problematic. If hy-
bridity is a normal condition, then it is not self-evident that it has the "in-
terruptive force" with which it is generally credited within postcolonial
theory." If hybridity is a prerequisite for discourse or an effect of rela-
tions between the colonisers and the colonised, it seems that this condi-
tion obscures the consciousness and effective agency of the colonised.
What is undermined or interrupted by hybridity needs to be elucidated as
well. Do the conditions in the concrete historical reality change, or is it
primarily about discursive wars and analyses, and how do the literary
texts stand in relation to these?
Elleke Boehmer notes that the hybridity writers like Rushdie promote is
first and foremost an aesthetic hybridity, a device, a source of themes. It
does not necessarily have anything to do with politics. They set up an ahis-
torical hybridity almost as a universal category. 100 This seems to support
Mukherjee's above characterisation of the Indian English writers' pull to-
wards homogenisation. Another explanation could be that it is the situation
of the diaspora that leads to a nostalgic attitude towards the culture that has
been left behind. Studies of Indians in the diaspora have shown that a no-
ticeable cultural continuity exists among Indian migrants. Hindu culture
98 Papastergiadis, p. 170.
99 Ibid., p. 88, cf. Werbner, p. 1. Jonathan Friedman points out that hybridity is included in
the definition of culture as an analytical concept. "Global Crises, the Struggle for Cul-
tural Identity and Intellectual Porkbarrelling: Cosmopolitans versus Locals, Ethnics and
Nationals in an Era of De-Hegemonisation," in Anina Werbuev and Tariq Modood
(eds.), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-
Racism (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997), p. 80.
100 Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1995), pp. 239 and 245.
can appear as significantly more exclusive and homogenous in the diaspora

than in the home country. 101
Perhaps hybridity discourse becomes even more problematic—or its
function clearer—in a historical perspective. It is not only the postcolonial
critics and authors who see virtue in the culture of hybridity or syncretism,
but also colonialism's ideologues who earlier saw hybridity as a central
strategy. Macaulay's production of "white" Indians is only one example. In
addition, the concept has often been included in nationalistic discourses
and acted as a way to harmonise heterogeneous societies. When after inde-
pendence Nehru wanted to construct a history for India, he portrayed cul-
ture as hybrid, and according to Khilnani, this was done in order to protect
cultural and religious differences rather than to force people into a uniform
"Indianness." 102
Hybridity (meaning syncretism) is also generally accepted within glo-
balisation discourses and here the commercial influences seem to be im-
portant. Thomas Hylland Eriksen cautions that the postcolonial intellect-
uals who support hybridity end up in an unholy alliance with transnational
capitalism and in disagreement with a greater part of the population, who
prefer to base their identity on local life experiences. 103 It seems as though
here Eriksen's discussion is carried out on two levels of abstraction simul-
taneously, but the conclusion is obvious. Support for indiscriminate hy-
bridity hides the fact that "weaker" cultures can be superseded or absorbed
by dominating cultures since differences are not emphasiesd or histori-
cised, but are smoothed over, particularly when words such as merging and
synthesis are used. Thus hybridity might be conceptualised as "the new
phase of global capitalism." 104 This is a criticism that has been formulated
by Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmad.
If this is the case, then similarities could become apparent between colo-
nialism and certain aspects of globalisation. Roy parallels these phenome-
na in her novel and seems to want to portray how her country is allotted the
same role in the two processes, or simply a lesser role in globalisation. This
101 Steven Vertovec, "Hindus in Trinidad and Britain: Ethnic Religion, Reification, and the
Politics of Public Space," in Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South
Asian Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1995), p. 132.
102 Khilnani, pp. 166-167.
103 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Historia, myt och identitet, trans. Steve Sem-Sandberg (Stock-
holm: Bonnier Alba, 1996), p. 108. Cf. Karl Marx' understanding of the global market,
discussed in Per Erik Ljung's article in volume 3:1.
104 Smyth, p. 51.
has both economic and cultural aspects: Indians become proletarians in the
global division of labour and the cultural heritage is diluted. Here perhaps
the different starting points of Roy and the other authors play a role (de-
spite the fact that there is too little material for generalisations). She is the
only one who lives in India and perhaps describes the culture on another
level of abstraction and from another perspective, where the main question
does not have to be the same as in the US or UK (namely, how one should
treat diversity and differences). Her question from the "periphery" rather
seems to deal with how one can avoid being engulfed and submerged in the
surge of globalisation.
Accordingly, the globalisation concept balances between the ideas of
"uniformity and diversity" writes Papastergiadis. 105 Many postcolonial cul-
tural scholars deny that there are any similarities between colonialism and
globalisation and maintain instead, as does Papastergiadis, that the patterns
of dominance now "have been significantly dispersed and decentred. In the
era of globalization the 'contact zone' has become more jagged." 106 Thus,
globalisation does not, according to him, act so that an "injection of the
global forms will homogenize and flatten cultural production." Rather, this
very injection of globalism is "a virus which stimulates resistance, syncre-
tism and mutant differentiation." 107 Of course, this remains to be seen.
In my opinion, the dual concepts of hybridity and authenticity appear
too ideologically loaded and also have too many different kinds of mean-
ings to act as tools in the work of interpretation, at least when the scope is
reduced to an investigation of literary traditions, as it is here. When authors
configure them thematically and critics configure them analytically, they
give the concepts a clear rhetorical or political content, whether they con-
cern reality or discourse. Because of this, the pair of concepts can also be
appropriated into such diverse discourses as nationalism, multiculturalism,
and commercialism, as well as the Hindu renaissance and fundamentalism.
Furthermore, hybridity and authenticity depend on each other. The one
concept cannot be associated solely with authoritarian monologue and the
other with decentralised opposition and subversive critique. Both can be
used and legitimised in a similar manner.
Despite the ambiguity of the concept of hybridity and the simplifications
and mystifications it has undergone, it can still be fruitful on another level
105 Papastergiadis, p. 95.

106 Ibid., p. 129.
107 Ibid., p. 95.
in studies of comparative literature, as it contributes to the focusing and

clarification of the authors' and critics' view of culture. Additionally, it
demonstrates the ambivalence and the, at least potentially, double-edged
nature of cultural encounters. Of course, the effects of hybridising/syncre-
tism cannot be judged on an abstract level, applicable for all times and
places. Describing the spreading of culture as diffusionism is more prob-
lematic, however. Whether the hybrid, in the sense of syncretic global cul-
tures, erases regional differences and roots or not, and, if it does, how this
would be distinguished from the continual change that characterises all
cultural life, can hardly be elucidated. It will require further long-range
empirical and theoretical investigations, on both higher and lower levels of
abstraction. Such investigations could shed light on transculturation within
globalisation's multitude of contact zones—in new literary histories.
STEFAN HELGESSON
Modernism under Portuguese Rule:

Jose Craveirinha, Luandino Vieira and the Double-
ness of Colonial Modernity
In the 1940s Maurfcio de Almeida Gomes, an Angolan writer, published a

poem entitled "Estrela pequenina" ("Tiny star"). 1 It begins like this :
Ora escutai, meus irmäos:
Aquele Sol no poente,
Vermelho como uma brasa
Näo e Sol somente. Näo!
Ε coägulo de sangue
Vestido por angolanos
Que fizeram ο Brasil!
(Now listen, my brothers:
That setting Sun,
Red like an ember,
Is not merely a Sun. No!
It is clotted blood
From the bodies of Angolans
Who made Brazil!)2
This is shock aesthetics: modernism in a nutshell. For an anglophone read-

er, the clotted blood of the sun might even recall T. S. Eliot's exemplary
modernist image of the evening sky as an etherised patient on a table. 3 The
national signifiers and the metaphor itself tell us, however, that this is
shock aesthetics with a difference. They ask the reader to extend the formal
reading in a historical and geopolitical direction which diverges from the
1 Quoted in Salvato Trigo, A Poetica da "Geracäo da Mensagem" (Porto: Brasilia Edito-

ra, 1979), p. 39.
2 My translation.
3 T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," in The Waste Land and Other Poems
(London: Faber & Faber, 1940), p. 9.
Modernism under Portuguese Rule 119
metropolitan context of T. S. Eliot and the dominant reception of literary

modernism. The shock needs to be historicised. This, or some aspects of
this problem in relation to lusophone African literature, is what I intend to
discuss in the present essay.
Gomes's poem visualises the human cost of Portuguese imperialism and
transatlantic trade. Yet it also constitutes a symbolic inversion of the depri-
vations and entropic effects of colonial history or, more precisely, of colo-
nial modernity. Following Paul Gilroy's suggestion that discussions of mo-
dernity must take slavery into account—indeed that the slaves shipped to
the Americas were not only instrumental in building and ploughing the
modern world but were also the first modern, alienated subjects—it should
be clear how Gomes resists the rationalised scattering of people by bring-
ing them together again through lyrical means. 4 This is achieved at two dif-
ferent levels.
Firstly, the speaking subject is by implication placed in Angola, but
links Brazil to Angola through the double movement of referring to "That
setting Sun" and directing his speech to "my brothers." These deictic
markers construct a micro-fiction within which the subject and his audi-
ence are assumed to be looking at the same sunset.
Secondly, at a metaliterary level, Gomes's choice of language and dis-
cursive mode—Portuguese, lyric poetry—is an inheritance of the very co-
lonial modernity whose violence he verbalises, yet it also enables commu-
nication far beyond the specific place and time which the poem evokes.
Hence, the discursive mode functions metonymically as a trace of the his-
tory of deprivation that the poem thematises, but tries also to push beyond
the constraints and occlusions of that history. The erstwhile metropolitan
language enables in this case the imaginary construction of transatlantic
solidarity—a communicative manoeuvre that would not have been viable
in an Angolan language such as Kimbundu. The phrase "my brothers"
gains in this way a potentially much wider reference and constructs an im-
agined community that manages both to exceed national boundaries and to
resist the amnesia of a eurocentric grand narrative that would sidestep the
historical significance of slavery. This imagined community is, however,
patriarchally defined ("my brothers"), a feature which constructs a new si-
lent zone in history, separate from but comparable with the silencing of the
slave experience. The masculinism of the poem complicates its rhetoric of
4 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso,
1993).
120 Stefan Helgesson
solidarity. The most likely reading is that the rhetorical circumstances—

the speaking positions available in the colonial context for a poet such as
Gomes—were exclusively patriarchal from the outset, which therefore ren-
dered "my brothers" (with its echoes of fraternite) the only authoritative
conception of transatlantic solidarity. In these various and even contradic-
tory ways, we see how the lyric mode in Gomes's poem becomes cosmo-
politan and modern, yet critical of modernity and cosmopolitanism. More
precisely, in its vernacular cosmopolitanism and southern-hemispheric
modernism it constitutes a microscopic counter-narrative of modernity.
I intend to expand this discussion of modernity and literary modernism
in the context of Portuguese colonialism. My argument consists of four in-
terrelated segments. Firstly, I criticise what I call the national paradigm of
literary studies and suggest that even when dealing with explicitly nation-
alist writing, we ought not to divert our attention from the global problem-
atic of modernities and modernisms. Secondly, I argue that our attempts at
conceptualising the specificity of colonial modernity are characterised by
doubleness, and that this doubleness has its own peculiar modality in the
lusophone context, partly due to the ideology of lusotropicalism. Thirdly, I
adopt a conception of modernism as an aesthetic strategy that negotiates
the doubleness of colonial modernity. Fourthly, I try to elaborate this per-
spective on modernism by examining chosen passages from the work of
Jose Craveirinha, a Mozambican poet, and Jose Luandino Vieira, an Ango-
lan prose writer. I do not offer a full introduction to Craveirinha's and
Vieira's writing, but will only discuss a few aspects of their work. Nor is it
my primary objective to compare Craveirinha and Vieira with each other,
but rather to read them in a broader context of historical conflict and liter-
ary interaction.
The Differences of Modernity
Nationalism/cosmopolitanism
The history of Portuguese imperialism denounced by Mauricio Gomes
was, partly, the product of meteorological fluke. Equatorial trade winds fa-
voured the passage from Portugal to Brazil, a trip that was faster than the
voyage from Portugal to West Africa. Once in Brazil, it was easier to reach
the coast of Angola from there or steer around the Cape of Good Hope in
order to reach Mozambique and India. For the return trip, seasonal mon-
soon winds similarly enabled a speedy passage fom India to Portugal via
Cape Verde and the Azore islands. With only slight exaggeration, one
could say that specific routes lay in waiting as the Portuguese mariners set
out on what have one-sidedly been called their great discoveries. 5
These routes laid the basis for specific networks of communication and
cultural affinities that far outreach the fractured time-frame of Portuguese
imperialism. Whereas political and economic domination has definite time
limits—as is demonstrated by the three subsequent epochs of Portuguese
domination in India, Brazil and Africa—language and culture move
through historical time with far greater inertia. Hence, Portuguese as a lan-
guage has been reappropriated by nations that not only superseded Portu-
guese colonialism but also emerged in outright conflict with this very colo-
nialism. Indeed, the attempts by independent governments in Mozambique
and Angola to establish Portuguese as a national language have far exceed-
ed the ambitions of the erstwhile colonial government and validate Ben-
jamin Abdala Junior's notion of the heterogeneous "system" of the Portu-
guese language. 6
The linguistic policies of postcolonies have been overdetermined by an
ethically ambiguous history in which narratives of dominance, emancipa-
tion and, by implication, aesthetics are intertwined. Why Portuguese and
not Kimbundu in independent Angola? Because Portuguese was perceived
to be neutral vis-ä-vis the threat of intertribal conflict. Or, more to the
point, because Portuguese, as a language that had become party to con-
siderable discursive power through print and pedagogy, never gave the na-
tionalist leadership of Angola any real choice. They could not not say yes
to Portuguese, to put it as precisely as possible. The best way to assess this
is, I believe, in terms of the historical processes of modernity. When the re-
sistance movements of Mozambique and Angola took it upon themselves
to construct a fully-fledged inclusive version of modernity, Portuguese was
already there, an avenue leading towards modernity, paved with a history
of print, scientific terminology, institutional backing and global points of
contact.
By stressing the term "modernity," I am implying that it has been under-
emphasised in critical work on African literature, continually sidelined by
the concept of "nation," which is really nothing more than one (important)
5 Mario Antonio F. Oliveira, Reler Africa (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1990), pp.
236-237.
6 Benjamin Abdala Junior, Literatura, Historia e Polltica: Literaturas de Lingua Portu-
guesa do Siculo XX (Säo Paulo: Editora Ätica, 1988); Malyn Newitt, A History of Mo-
zambique (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), p. 547.
aspect of modernity in Africa. It is particularly in discussions on luso-Afri-

can literature that the successes of both Angolan and Mozambican writers
in refashioning literary Portuguese into symbolic realisations of "national
authenticity" are routinely celebrated, and justifiably so. 7 A welcome addi-
tion to this critical reception is Phyllis Peres's Transculturation and Resist-
ance in Lusophone African Narrative. Peres reads Angolan literature as a
hybrid construct best understood as a set of "counternarratives of nation
that disrupt the monolithic construct of nation as imagined community." 8 1
endorse this open-ended view of how writing relates to nation, but would
also like to tease out its underlying assumptions by firstly, theorising the
discursive linkage of nation and literature, secondly, deconstructing the
conventional connection between "the west" and modernity, and thirdly,
discussing the specific nature of colonial modernity in the lusophone con-
text.
With regard to the first point, I am interested in how the notion of litera-
ture itself, or what I define below as literary discourse, both helps to consti-
tute and is constituted by the national description of the world—in such a
way that the arguably more fundamental issue of modernity and African
literature is obscured.
For argument's sake, I distinguish between three different conceptions
of the nation, the first of which is exemplified by the following quote from
Maria Aparecida Santilli:
[I]n order to achieve liberation, it was logical and necessary for [Africans]
to first try and decide for themselves which specific or special attributes
characterised them unequivocally. In this way, they recognised and, conse-
quently, explained and defined themselves by way of their various cultures,
and constructed aspirations that were generalised and registered through a
variety of commitments, aspirations which traversed literature through the
"topoi" of personal or national identity. 9
Here the various manifestations of national identity in African or other lit-

eratures are described rather than theorised. Santilli is pointing to the ne-
cessity of affirming difference from the received cultural values of the Eu-
ropean metropolis. A vehicle for this affirmation was poetry and prose
7 Francisco Noa, A Escrita Infinita: Ensaios sobre Literatura Mocambicana (Maputo:

Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1998); Gilberte Matusse, Α Construcäo da Imagem de
Mocambicanidade em Jose Craveirinha, Mia Couto e Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa (Maputo:
Unversidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1998).
8 Phyllis Peres, Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative (Gaines-
ville: University Press of Florida, 1997), p. 15.
9 Maria Aparecida Santilli, Africanidade (Säo Paulo: Editora Ätica, 1985), p. 65.
written in European languages. In discussions of pre-independence litera-

ture in Africa self-affirmation is generally taken for granted, whether in the
guise of pan-Africanism or nationalism, and the ideals of national libera-
tion are seen as part of a historical teleology. Examples of such a reading
strategy, which is played out within the discursive limits of the nation, can
be found in books such as The Postcolonial Literature ofLusophone Africa
0
and Southern African Literatures}
Secondly, there is the politically radical approach to third-world na-
tionalism first theorised by Frantz Fanon and reiterated by, among others,
Benita Parry and Neil Lazarus." In Fanon, a nationalism which merely al-
lows an indigenous bourgeoisie to inhabit colonial structures does more
harm than good, whereas a truly popular and democratic nationalism may
resist the disintegrating forces of imperialism and capitalism. 12 This view
of nationalism would tend to regard the unquestioning descriptive ap-
proach as, at best, potentially complicit with the bourgeois, elite version of
nationalism.
Thirdly, we have that branch of critique which is seemingly locked in
conflict with the radical promotion of nationalism. With exponents such as
Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, this critique does not so much reject the
national paradigm as disrupt it, point to its fault-lines and contradictions.
Bhabha's readings range from the failures of British authority on the colo-
nial scene to the fraying of national identities in the era of postcolonial mi-
gration; Spivak regards national ideals in terms of the "catachrestic" dis-
placement of western values, that is, their simultaneous inappropriateness
and historical necessity. 13 This critique has been developed perhaps most
famously by Partha Chatterjee, whose analysis of the paradoxes of Indian
nationalism has gained wide circulation. 14
10 Patrick Chabal (ed.), The Post-Colonial Literature of Lusophone Africa (Johannesburg:

Wits University Press, 1996); Michael Chapman, Southern African Literatures (London:
Longman, 1996).
11 Neil Lazarus, "Disavowing decolonization" in Anthony C. Alessandrini (ed.), Frantz
Fanon: Critical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 161-194; Neil Lazarus,
Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP 1999); Benita Parry, "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse," Oxford
Literary Review 9:1-2 (1987), pp. 27-58.
12 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 2001 [1961]), trans. Con-
stance Farrington, pp. 119-165.
13 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Gayatri Spivak,
Outside in the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993).
14 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); The Nation and Its Fragments: Colo-
nial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993).
The major theoretical quarrel has long stood between the Marxist-
Fanonian view and the "postcolonial" critique of nationalism, as is demon-
strated perhaps most thoroughly by Neil Lazarus's close and critical read-
ing of postcolonial theorists. 15 The quarrel can be understood as a struggle
for liberationist legitimacy. Is it more emancipatory to insist on the univer-
sality of the Marxist analysis of capital, or continually to point out the
blind spots, the failure of both Marxist and liberal nationalist historiogra-
phies to account for "local knowledge" and "subaltern modes of resist-
ance"? The stalemate between these two positions has, it seems, been in-
surmountable. In his illuminating study Provincializing Europe, Dipesh
Chakrabarty manages however to step beyond it. By offering a model of
critique which moves between what he terms "analysis" and "herme-
neutics"—corresponding roughly to the object/subject divide—he enables
the postcolonial critic to employ Marxist or liberal analytical modes with-
out eliding the specificity of different nationalisms and modernities outside
the west. 16
What is needed in this debate is, I believe, a higher degree of specificity
with regard to one's theoretical claims. When dealing with literature—
written literature in alphabetic script—the theorisation of slippage, cata-
chresis, and so on is apposite. It is not a question of retrieving the writers'
intentions or self-understanding, but more of analysing the conditions of
(im)possibility that determine the production of literary and aesthetic
meaning in specific contexts pertaining to colonial or postcolonial modern-
ity. The hermeneutics of hybridity and ambivalence elaborated by Homi
Bhabha remains the most signal contribution to such a project—its ab-
struseness notwithstanding. However—and here I agree with Ania Loom-
ba, one of Bhabha's fiercer critics 17 —I am not prepared to speak of "a" or
"the" postcolonial condition, even when referring to one and the same
country. Armed struggle, peasant uprisings, religious movements, oral per-
formances, popular music—each of these practices has its specific agenda
and conditions of (im)possibility that may have something to do with the
conditions governing writing as often as not. It should not be forgotten that
writing is a thinly disseminated medium in countries such as Angola and
Mozambique. With literacy levels barely reaching 10 percent in the
15 Lazarus, Nationalism, pp. 16-143.

ference (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000).
17 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 96, 179—
180.
1960s,18 it should be obvious that the oppositional fervour of the ("illiter-

ate") subaltern cannot be accounted for in exclusively textual terms, as in-
deed the Subaltern Studies Group's sustained critique of liberal and Marx-
ist historiography has shown. However, if we take written literature as our
object of study this makes it even more important to attend to the peculiar-
ity of europhone textuality in colonial contexts. Bhabha's theorisation of
the "arrival of the book," and its split between an appearance of ageless au-
thority and the contingent moment of enunciation, remains a valid field for
critique.19
Given such a vantage point, I contend that it is only the postcolonial ap-
proach to "third-world" nationalism that has begun to take into account
how literary discourse, as formed conjointly by imaginative writing, liter-
ary criticism and material institutions such as print media and formal
schooling, has not only been instrumental in conceptualising the nation,20
but has likewise aggravated a division between "the west" and "the rest." A
crucial aspect of this process is the dialectic between national literature and
world literature. In the initial phases of this dialectic, the most highly
valued national literature is subsumed by the category of world literature,
the universal value of which is underwritten by its national authenticity.
The Portuguese critic Eugenio Lisboa exemplifies this when claiming that
"E<ja [de Queiros] is universal because he at the same time is profoundly
Portuguese. [...] Dostoyevsky's books are intensely Russian and inextric-
ably universal." 21 The synthesis of this dialectic would supposedly be a
cosmopolitan literature, at home in the world, unhindered by national
boundaries. But at this point one may register how different literatures, un-
der the pressure of imperialism, participate differently in the dialectic. Let
us first observe that the modernist moment in western literature was cos-
mopolitan in spirit, and that it coincided with the heyday of western impe-
rialism. Hence, with the emergence of aesthetic modernism in the late
nineteenth century, the importance of national criteria subsided. Concur-
rently, however, the national paradigm of literary discourse became all-im-
portant in the colonised or recently colonised periphery. In 1922, the very
year which saw the publication of monuments to European high modern-
18 Gerald Bender, Angola under the Portuguese (London: Heinemann, 1978), p. 151;
Chabal, p. 7.
19 Bhabha, Location, p. 102.
20 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).
21 Eugenio Lisboa, "O particular, ο nacional e ο universal" in Les litteratures qfricaines de
langue portugaise (Paris: Gulbenkian, 1989), p. 510.
ism such as The Waste Land and Ulysses, a group of Brazilian writers self-
consciously committed themselves to a modernismo that was not cosmo-
politan but deliberately set out to "brazilianise" literature, to nationalise it,
as was the case with subsequent literary movements in Africa. 22 The na-
tional/global split, rather than reflecting a dialectic of aesthetic evaluation
within each distinct national literature, becomes in this way a description
of a rupture between metropolis and periphery.
However, and this relates to my second point about modernity and the
west, given that national literatures in Latin America and Africa have been
articulated by western-educated elites, and in imported languages, it is
clearly the case that national literatures in the (post-)colonised world begin
with the cosmopolitan transgression of autochthonous space achieved by
colonialism, rather than emerge organically from local narratives and
speech patterns. Literature is mobilised in order to resist, to mark identity,
to imagine a nation that is not. National literature in (post-)colonised space
responds to the negations of imperial history. Because of this, the very
qualifier "national" risks emphasising an explicit ambition at the cost of
overlooking the larger historical and aesthetic dynamic. As Simon Gikandi
suggests, "instead of reading metropole and colony as oppositions, we
should see them as antinomies connected through the figure of moderni-
ty." 23 The distinction is helpful. It binds the (cosmopolitan) metropolis and
the (parochial, nationalist) colony together in a broader historical process,
it links colony to modernity and, by the same token, refuses to reproduce
the straightforward identification of the metropolis with modernity. The
last point merits elaboration. Seen through the optic of colonial discourse,
such an identification is desirable and natural. It justifies not only the colo-
nial project per se but likewise the anti-modern (nativist or "Tarzanist," as
Soyinka would say 24 ) convictions of a critic such as Chinweizu, for in-
stance. 25 Yet, such a monolithic identification of modernity with the west
severely distorts both African and European history. If we follow Alain
Touraine's suggestion, modernity may in fact be studied as a dual process
22 Salvato Trigo, Ensaios de Literatura Comparada: Afro-Luso-Brasileira (Lisbon: Vega,

1989), pp. 35-37.
23 Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p.
18.
24 "Neo-Tarzanism" is Soyinka's term for a retrograde conception of Africa in which "oil
rigs, hydro-electricity, my typewriter, railway trains" are left out. Chinweizu's ideal "Af-
rican" is, he argues, just as benighted as an African in a Tarzan film. Wole Soyinka,
"Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of a Pseudo-Tradition," Transition, 48 (1975), pp. 38^14.
25 Chinweizu, Decolonising the African Mind (Lagos: Pero, 1987).
which parallels the Cartesian split between object and subject. One aspect
of modernity—rationalisation—has caused alienation and disenchantment,
whereas the other aspect, which Touraine calls the emergence of the sub-
ject, has enabled resistance and agency. There is a long history, rehearsed
by Touraine, of anti-modern critiques in Europe, but there is likewise a
long history of the modern construction of subjects-in-society which has
countered the debilitating effects of rationalisation. 26
Viewed from such a perspective, inhabitants in both metropolis and col-
ony are involved in more or less elaborate attempts at managing the strains
and promises of the modern historical moment—from different racialised,
gendered and class-based positions. Nobody can claim ownership of mo-
dernity; all are in varying degrees subjected to and subjects in modernity.
Literature, as a broker of modernity, may therefore appeal to the aspira-
tions of both a, shall we say, English working-class writer and a mestigo
writer in Angola in the mid-twentieth century. However, writing does not
give straightforward access to discursive authority. As a privileged me-
dium it is imbricated but not coterminous with empowered institutions (le-
gal, commercial, academic). Writing tends rather to split the authority of
modernity/imperialism even as it sustains it.27 This split is a salient feature
in European modernism, given the aesthetic of irony, fracture and subjec-
tivism evolved by writers from Eliot and Pessoa to Joyce and Musil. As
Matei Calinescu argues, this may well be the only way to make sense of
modernism as an aesthetic term: modernism as a sign of crisis in moderni-
ty, as the anarchic and antirationalist opposition to common sense, utilitar-
ianism and faith in progress. 28 Modernism is in other words related to mo-
dernity without being interchangeable with it. Modernism should instead
be seen as a supplement, a critique or a plurality of aesthetic strategies
within the historical moment(s) of modernity. Postcolonial criticism, it
seems to me, gives this ambiguous and critical aspect of western modern-
ism short shrift; modernism and modernity tend instead to be seen as one
monolithic whole, subsumed by colonial discourse. 29 I would argue the
contrary and claim that the long-established and finely nuanced discussion
26 Alain Touraine, Critique of Modernity, trans. David Macey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995),
pp. 201-203.
27 I am thinking in particular of Bhabha's reading of "colonial nonsense" in Conrad and
Forster. Bhabha, Location, pp. 123-138.
28 Matei Calinescu, Modernitetens fem ansikten (Stockholm: Dualis, 2000), pp. 4 5 ^ t 9 , 8 3 -
88, 239-242.
29 Edward Said's take on modernism in Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and
Windus, 1993) falls under this category.
on modernism in the west should be kept in mind as we assess the plurality

of modernisms that emerge elsewhere than in the European/North Ameri-
can circuit. There is, after all, a split between progressivist (colonial) ra-
tionality and literary modernism in Mozambique and Angola as well. The
challenge for the critic is to assess this split in terms of its own historical
and aesthetic conditions.
The doubleness of colonial modernity

The previous discussion raises the question just how, within Gikandi's
"figure of modernity" that joins metropolis and colony, (post)colonial mo-
dernities differ. How, indeed, has the split been theorised in recent aca-
demic approaches to these versions of modernity? One quickly discovers
how the doubleness of the postcolony is being addressed at a theoretical
and/or methodological level, be it in the context of nationalist politics, lit-
erature, art or historiography. Consider the following list of terms (with
their theorisers mentioned in parentheses): double consciousness (Du
Bois/Gilroy), catachresis (Spivak), Manichean allegory (JanMohamed),
citizen and subject (Mamdani), subaltern and elite (Gramsci/Subaltern
Studies Group), performative and pedagogic (Bhabha), analytic and
hermeneutic (Chakrabarty), History 1 and History2 (Chakrabarty), prob-
lematic and thematic (Chatterjee), and spiritual and material (Chatterjee). 30
It is not possible in such a short space as this to elaborate on each of these
terms and their disparate uses. Even so, I venture to claim that they all, as
theoretical or methodological terms, point in roughly the same direction:
towards the insufficiency of any singular conception of modernity. This is
something other than merely a rerun of Calinescu's and Touraine's analy-
ses of discrete aspects of modernity; it also differs from the binary concep-
tualisations of modernity/tradition, black/white, Africa/Europe, and so on.
Instead, doubleness touches upon metatheory, that is our theoretical and
terminological ability to understand (post)colonial modernities. Despite the
number of modernities in the world, there has hitherto only been one way
to make sense of them. As Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, only "Europe"
30 Gilroy, pp. 1-40, 124-145; Bhabha, Location, p. 145; Chakrabarty, pp. 18,47-71; Abdul
JanMohamed, Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa (Am-
herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983), pp. 1-13; Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen
and Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Gayatri Spivak, Outside in
the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 60; Chatterjee, Nationalist
Thought, pp. 36-53; Chatterjee, The Nation, pp. 3-13.
is theoretically knowable. Due to the history of the social sciences and the
intrinsic logic of historicist thought which places a spectral notion of Eu-
rope at the frontline of history, (post)colonial contexts are always "in ex-
cess": there is always an imperfect fit, something that escapes the conven-
tional categories of modernity or, alternatively, national citizenship, and
which therefore needs to be accommodated by introducing an additional
term or a different approach. 31 To my mind, such a notion of doubleness is
helpful. It can be more dynamic than hybridity, which all too easily reverts
to a vague and rather homogenous sense of mixture and, moreover, can be
extended to any form of representation or cultural practice. Once hybridity
starts challenging the notion of purity, the battle is soon won, since it is
possible to argue that any language, any genre is hybridised in one way or
another. 32 As we shall see, hybridity was in fact valorised as a colonial
ideology in late-imperial Portugal. Doubleness, on the other hand, redirects
our gaze to the tension between different positions or modes of understand-
ing within different modernities.
One productive way of dealing with (post)colonial doubleness in the
context of literary studies is suggested by Walter Mignolo's notion of "co-
lonial semiosis." The term refers to a fluid condition of ongoing semiotic
interactions within shifting signifying systems and loci of enunciation, in-
teractions that occur in an asymmetrical context of power and epistemic
violence. As Mignolo writes, colonial semiosis implies "the coexistence of
'high' and 'low' cultures" as well as "power relations between, on the one
hand, the group of people controlling the politics and the economy and, on
the other, the subaltern communities." 33 What I find appealing is the
non-deterministic and dialogical (or agonistic) nature of the term. While
openly admitting that power relations are inscribed in the procedures of
signification both in colonial and academic contexts, as well as recognising
the disjunctive relationship between different cultural systems of significa-
tion, Mignolo retains a sense of historical contingency. Colonial semiosis
is less of a conceptual prison-house than "colonial discourse." Indeed, the
latter may be redefined as merely one aspect of the former, which also
31 Which is, indeed, one reason why Neil Lazarus is so critical of much postcolonial theory.
Its insistence on doubleness in theoretical approaches tends to weaken the authority of
the Marxist analysis to which Lazarus adheres. Lazarus, pp. 68-143.
32 See also Margareta Petersson's discussion in "Hybridity in Indian English Literature" in
this volume.
33 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colo-
nization (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 10.
alerts us to the fact that our academic understanding of colonial semiosis,

historically imbricated as it is with colonial discourse, is incomplete and
biased. 34 Hence the need to focus on doubleness as a productive distur-
bance in our epistemological procedures.
Luandino Vieira and Jose Craveirinha both produce notoriously high-
cultural inscriptions in the context of colonial semiosis. And yet, by inter-
pellating radically new forms of imagined communities they subvert the
prejudices of colonial high culture. To grasp this paradoxical status of writ-
ing one might follow Homi Bhabha's lead when he argues that our at-
tempts at grasping the metaphoricity of imagined communities requires "a
kind of 'doubleness' in writing; a temporality of representation that moves
between cultural formations and social processes without a centred causal
logic." 35 This retains the sense of historical contingency in colonial semi-
osis, as opposed to the static dichotomies (for example African vs. Euro-
pean) that remain common in most discussions of lusophone African writ-
ing. Instead, Bhabha insists on the "double and split" time of national rep-
resentation which oscillates between the "pedagogic" formation of dia-
chronic, authoritative narratives, and the synchronic, repetitious, "per-
formative" mode of social being and identification which brings to mind
Ernest Renan's description of the nation as a "daily plebiscite." 36
This peculiar doubleness in the imagining of the postcolonial nation is, I
shall argue, of utmost importance when we read the modernism of both
Jose Craveirinha and Jose Luandino Vieira. It is also here, in the non-
totalisable split between pedagogic and performative modes of the imag-
ined nation that their writing also exceeds the strictures of national ideolo-
gy and engages with transnational aspects of modernity. However, the spe-
cific circumstances of colonial semiosis in Angola and Mozambique re-
quire a modification of Bhabha's argument.
34 For discussions of the confluence of academic and colonial discourses, see for instance
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention
of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (London: James Currey,
1988) and Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present (London: Routledge, 1999).
36 Ibid., pp. 144-146; Ernest Renan, "What is a nation?" in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation
and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 19.
Colonial rule and lusotropical ideology

Under the Portuguese dictator Salazar's Estado Novo—the "new state"—
there was a renewed interest in exploiting the colonies. 37 The 1940s
through to the 1960s witnessed a concerted attempt to export Portuguese
unemployment and poverty by establishing a new class of settlers in Mo-
zambique and Angola. 38 This aggravated social conflicts in the previously
rather dormant cities of Lourcnco Marques and Luanda. In Luanda, partic-
ularly, the transition from a "city of sand" to a "city of concrete" in the
1940s and 1950s was a signal disruption of the creolised social relations
that had evolved since the demise of the slave trade in the mid-nineteenth
century. 39 Until 1961, this increasingly racialised social conflict had its ju-
ridical corollary in the distinction between indigenas ("natives" without le-
gal rights) and assimilados ("civilised" blacks or mestigos with legal
rights) 40 —yet another instance of the African subject/citizen divide investi-
gated by Mahmood Mamdani and, as such, an attempt at managing contra-
dictions between the economic rationale of colonial exploitation and the
need for a semblance of civilised rule based on individual rights. 41 Assimi-
lationism is often referred to as the key ideology of Portuguese colonial-
ism, appropriated at an early stage by many mestigo intellectuals. Accord-
ing to Gilberto Matusse, assimilationism—in its call for an unconditional
surrender to the Portuguese language and Portuguese civility—was the
sum total of colonial ideology in the 1950s and 1960s.42
However, ideology changed as Portuguese imperialism underwent a
crisis at a political level after the Second World War. Following Indo-
nesian and Indian independence, formal decolonisation continued apace
37 Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa (London: Hurst & Co., 1981), pp. 188-190.
38 Ibid., pp. 163-164.
39 The entire thematic of Jose Luandino Vieira's writing evolves, as we shall see, around
this transition.
40 According to the revised Portuguese Constitution of 1951, an applicant for full citizen-
ship must be 18 years of age, speak proper Portuguese, hold a profession or public office,
be able to support his/her family and other dependants, look well kept, be cognisant of
and adept at exercising the rights and duties of a Portuguese citizen. Claudia Castelo, "O
Modo Portugues de Estar no Mundo ": Ο Luso-Tropicalismo e a Ideologia Colonial Por-
tuguesa (1933-1961) (Lisbon: Edigöes afrontamento, 1998), p. 60.
41 This is comparable, moreover, with the French colonial division between evolues and in-
digenes, as analysed in Michael Azar, Frihet, jämlikhet, brodermord (Stockholm: Sym-
posion, 2001), pp. 56-57.
42 Gilberto Matusse, Α Construgäo da lmagem de Mocambicanidade em Jose Craveirinha,
Mia Couto e Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa (Maputo: Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1998),
pp. 60-63.
throughout the 1950s. The newly founded United Nations, dominated by

the victors of the Second World War, grew increasingly critical of colo-
nialism, whereas on the other side of the divide, the Bandung conference in
1955 consolidated the notion of a "third" world. In 1960, no less than
seventeen African countries gained independence, and a few years later
only a scattering of territories remained under European rule.
These events affected the Estado Novo, but only at a political and
ideological level. The option of physically withdrawing from the colo-
nised countries was never considered. Both the Salazar government and
its suppressed opposition were united up until 1969 by their commitment
to the principle—if not the conduct—of Portuguese rule in Africa. 4 3
What did occur was the evolution of an explicit state ideology called
luso-tropicalismo, or lusotropicalism. 44 The basis for this ideology was
the work of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) who,
beginning with Casa- grande & Senzala in 1933, argued that Portuguese
colonialism had created a uniquely hybridised culture in Brazil. Due to
three main factors—prolonged historical contact with Islam, Portugal's
sub-tropical climate and the slow maturation of the colonial project in the
fifteenth century—the Portuguese colonisers had been more prone than
other Europeans to mix with local populations, miscegenate, acclimatise,
and adapt their customs. Extrapolating from the Brazilian context, Freyre
gradually included all of the Portuguese empire in his speculative theory.
The lusotropical culture that resulted from the process of transculturation
was not, according to Freyre, ethnocentric but Christocentric. Nor was it
bourgeois, capitalist or exploitative, but geared towards humane and
harmonious co-existence. 45
The genealogy of lusotropicalism cuts across the fields of the social sci-
ences, politics and literature, and includes, for instance, the enthusiastic re-
sponse to Gilberto Freyre's early work in the 1930s by dissident Cape
Verdian writers as well its continued rearticulation today through a writer
such as Jose Eduardo Agualusa or in Portugal's relations with other luso-
phone countries. 46 Moreover, it should be noted that Freyre's first major in-
43 Castelo, pp. 14-15.

44 The most thorough, if somewhat overstated, study of lusotropicalism as a colonial ideol-
ogy is Gerald Bender's Angola under the Portuguese.
45 Ibid., pp. 28-43.
46 Ibid., pp. 80-81, 140; Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Dansa igen: krönikor och berättelser frän
den portugisisktalande världen, trans. Marianne Sandels (Uppsala: Almaviva, 2002).
tervention as sociologist in Brazil was controversial. By valorising the Af-

rican and Amerindian contribution to Brazilian identity, he challenged the
dominant racist idea that the history of miscegenation meant that Brazil
would inevitably degenerate. 47 Freyre offered in this way a postcolonial
reading of Brazilian modernity and countered the dominant English-
French-German paradigms of modernity. 48
Hence, by appropriating luso-tropicalism as its colonial ideology in the
1950s, the Portuguese state put an ambiguous intellectual construct to
shrewd use. 49 It could in this way redefine its empire as a non-racial enter-
prise that was organically linked with Portugal's national destiny. Few in-
ternational observers were taken in by this rhetorical whitewash (or brown-
wash) of colonial rule, but its discursive rationale resembles the French de-
fence of colonial rule in Algeria in the 1950s: Algeria was no colony, it be-
longed organically to France and was, hence, a beneficiary of the "uni-
versal" civic values of France. 50 "Algeria" was in this way subsumed under
a double appeal to the European values of the Enlightenment (egalitarian-
ism) and of Romanticism (nationalism)—barring, of course, the option that
Algeria could constitute a nation of its own. Lusotropicalism's appeal to
international opinion pressed similar buttons. "Mozambique" and "Ango-
la" may exist, so went the argument, but not as dominated territories nor as
separate countries; they existed in the same sense that the provinces of
Alentejo or Tras-os-Montes existed as organic parts of a single Portuguese
whole which enjoyed the benefits of an enlightened Christian civilisation.
It is worth noting that this conceit had its direct corollary in the work of
certain literary critics, notably Rodrigues Junior who argued that there
could be no such thing as "Mozambican literature"—there only existed an
"overseas literature" which dealt with the experiences of the Portuguese
people in all their diversity. 51
The combination of lusotropical ideology, assimilationist ideals and an
increasingly conflictual social situation in Mozambique and Angola gave
rise to a complex semiotic environment for the modernism of Jose Cra-
47 Castelo, p. 29.
48 Walter Mignolo argues with great clarity for the separation that occurred in modernity
between the rhetorically burdened Castilian and Portuguese on the one hand, and French,
English and German as the languages of knowledge and science on the other. Mignolo,
pp. viii-x.
49 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
50 Azar, pp. 51-62.
51 Matusse, p. 12.
veirinha and Luandino Vieira to evolve in. More specifically, the construc-
tion of Portuguese colonial discourse in the 1950s was divided between the
"performative" aspect of repetitive, Manichean, synchronic racism—ar-
rests, verbal abuse, forced labour, legal distinctions between citizens and
subjects—and the "pedagogic" narrative of lusotropicalism, which envel-
oped the Portuguese colonies in a diachronic shroud of hybridity. It is at
both of these levels, I argue, that we must begin to assess the efficacy of
modernist writing under Portuguese rule. On the one hand, the divide be-
tween (black) subject and (white) citizen made the valorisation of "the na-
tive" risky, since "the native" was already set in place by colonial dis-
course as modernity's Other. On the other hand, any celebration of inter-
racial fraternity was easily co-opted by metropolitan lusotropical pedago-
gy. Race became a wild card, impossible to ignore, yet without any stable
value in the attempts at imagining a non-colonial form of community. Na-
tion and modernity were by the same token ambiguous terms, since they
had already been appropriated and disseminated by the "pluricontinental"
Portuguese nation. Accordingly, the agonistic context of modernist writing
in Angola and Mozambique was highly textured, and the creation of liter-
ary meaning a contingent struggle over language and imagination.
Language and the city

With regard to the "cultural encounter" of assimilationism and lusotropic-
alism alike, the literary use of Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique was
entangled in a web of interpellations, appropriations and counter-appropri-
ations. This may be imagined as a split between Craveirinha's and Vieira's
overdetermined choice of Portuguese as aesthetic medium, and their re-
spective urban environments. On the one hand, the historicity of Portu-
guese entailed a specific set of canonical texts, and a specific historical
(colonial) frame of reference and communication network, all of them dif-
ferent than would have been the case had they been written in French or
English. As I have argued elsewhere, the implications of linguistic differ-
ence in African literatures are often underemphasised—and this despite the
perennial African language debate. 52 Instead of nodes such as Nairobi,
Kampala, Lagos, London and New York, the lusophone world-map first
52 Stefan Helgesson, "Black Atlantics" in Maria Eriksson Baaz and Mai Palmberg (eds.),
Same and Other: Negotiating Afican Identity in Cultural Production (Uppsala: Nordic
Africa Institute, 2001), pp. 23-36.
includes places like Lisbon, Säo Paulo, Luanda and Maputo/Lourengo

Marques. 53 By the same token, the lusophone library is different from its
anglophone counterpart; Camöes, Ες a de Queiros and Guimaräes Rosa are
more likely literary references than Shakespeare and Wordsworth for
writers like Craveirinha and Vieira. However, the fact that Portuguese is a
weaker global language than English means that the lusophone library also
tends to include elements of francophone and anglophone literature—more
so than the other way around. Linguistic weakness can paradoxically be-
come a strength.
The loci of enunciation of Craveirinha's and Vieira's writing require
consideration against the institutional history of Portuguese. The literature
that emerged in Angola and Mozambique after the Second World War was
a distinctly urban phenomenon. In Luanda, the generation of Mauricio
Gomes, Viriato da Cruz and Antonio Jacinto was the product of newly
founded liceus (high schools).54 Luandino Vieira is an exception—he
started working at the age of fifteen—but his identification with the capital
of Angola is obvious already from his choice of nom de plume: Luandino
means "Luandan." In Mozambique, Lourengo Marques was by the same
token the focal point of literary or, more precisely, poetic activity. From
the 1940s onwards, small but high-quality journals such as Itinerario
(1941-1955) and A Voz de Mogambique (1960-1975) maintained an ad-
vanced level of cultural critique. The singularly long-lived mestigo weekly
Ο Brado Africano (1918-1974) intermittently published articles on black
and African writers, as well as the occasional poem. Jose Craveirinha, poet
supreme of Lourengo Marques/Maputo, worked for a number of years as a
journalist on the Brado.55
Gradually, Lisbon emerged as a third urban node for Angolan and Mo-
zambican writing under the auspices of the Casa dos Estudantes do Im-
53 This is stating the obvious, but it needs to be said. What is casually called "the world"
changes depending on one's linguistic perspective. The typical rhetorical construction of
"the world" in postcolonial academic discourse consists in supplementing "the West" or
Britain or France or the US, with one or two "other" countries, notably India. By con-
trast, in the lusophone context, what I would venture to call a narcissistic preoccupation
with Portuguese leads to a supplementation of "the west" with the seven so-called luso-
phone countries. Fernando Rosas and Maria Fernanda Rollo (eds.), Lingua Portuguesa:
a Heranga Comum, (Lisbon: Assirio & Alvim, 1998). See also the Afterword in this vol-
ume.
54 Oliveira, pp. 372-373.
55 Francisco Noa, "Da literatura e da imprensa em Mozambique" in Fätima Ribeiro and
Antonio Sopa (eds.), 140 Anns de Imprensa Mocambicana: Estudos e Relatos (Maputo:
AMOLP, 1996), pp. 237-242.
perio (an association of students from the colonies) which in the 1950s and
1960s indulged sporadically in publishing, including such landmark works
as Vieira's first collection of short stories, A Cidade e α Infäncia and
Xigubo, Craveirinha's first collection of poems.
Outside the lusophone world, Johannesburg exerted a powerful influ-
ence on Mozambican writers, whereas Paris, (particularly considering Por-
tugal's long-standing cultural affiliation with France) was of crucial impor-
tance to the flux of intellectual exchanges that informed post-war African
writing in both French and Portuguese.
From a sociological perspective then, the written literature of Angola
and Mozambique was not only entrenched in the colonial cities of Luanda
and Lourengo Marques, but was materially and intellectually attached to a
number of urban centres. This serves to underscore that the privileging of
the nation in literature was a choice made within and against transnational,
modern circuits of textuality and pedagogy. Conversely, it alerts us to the
fact that the modernist aesthetic of Craveirinha and Luandino is played out
within a semiotic context for which "nation" is an inadequate name.
Jose Craveirinha
No one and the abyss of discourse
Jose Craveirinha's early collections of poetry, Xigubo (1964) and Karinga-

na ua Karingana (1974), abound with images of the deprivations of colo-
nial modernity. Both books—Karingana is the longer and more elaborate
of the two—also provide exemplary instances of the nationalist imaginary,
of prophecy, portraits and parables as well as evocations of traditional life
and an abundance of linguistic grafting, that is the use of Ronga expres-
sions in lusophone diction (which parallels Vieira's use of Kimbundu).
Early on, in poems such as "Xigubo," "Grito negro" and "Manifesto," 56
there is a strong affinity with the straightforward inversion of racist dichot-
omies that was current in francophone negritude. However, Craveirinha's
poetic practice just as readily exceeds negritudinist strategies. I wish to
demonstrate, by focusing on two different poems, just how finely textured
his lyrical response to the performative and pedagogical levels of colonial
56 Jose Craveirinha, Obra poetica 1, (Lisbon: Caminho, 1999), pp. 9-12, 31-34. (Reprinted
from Xigubo.)
semiosis in Mozambique can be. First, in the poem "Ninguem" 57 ("No

one"), written in the 1960s and published in Karingana, we see how he en-
gages with the performativity of racism:
Andaimes
ate ao decimo quinto andar
do moderno edificio de betäo armado.
Ο ritmo
5 florestal dos ferros erguidos
arquitectonicamente no ar
e um transeunte curioso
que pergunta:
- Ja caiu alguem dos andaimes?
10 Ο pausado ronronar
dos motores a oleos pesados
e a tranquila resposta do senhor empreiteiro:
- Ninguem. So dois pretos.
(Scaffolding
all the way to the fifteenth floor
of the modern building in armoured concrete.
The sylvan
5 rhythm of iron bars raised

architecturally in the air
and a curious passerby
who asks:
- Has anyone fallen off the scaffolding?
10 The unhurried purring of
engines with heavy oil
and the calm response of the contractor:
- No one. Just two blacks.)
Normally Craveirinha's city is sharply divided between concrete and sand,

between the city centre and the ramshackle suburbs where the majority
lives. 58 Not so in "Ninguem." The poem focuses instead on a single image
of modernity under construction, the fifteen-storey edifice of armoured
concrete. This is modernity as process, not a static condition. The images
of rhythmic bars and purring engines have a sensual, quasi-futurist quality
about them. The building signals "newness" in its barest, apparently ahis-
57 Ibid., p. 79. (Reprinted from Karingana ua Karingana.)

58 Francisco Noa, A Escrita Infinita (Maputo: Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1998), p.
27.
torical form. There is no diachrony here, just the performance of techno-

logical power. The celebration of modernity is, however, viciously under-
cut by the final line. In fact, the contractor's reply transforms the entire
poem and turns it, despite its semantic immediacy, into a complex state-
ment on colonial modernity, a statement which can be broken down into
three consecutive, interrelated segments.
Firstly, modernity is conceived of in terms of height, rising and emer-
gence (lines 1-6). At the beginning, the gaze of the poem is already far
above the ground, directed not only towards the "modern building" but al-
so, by implication, towards the light. The vector of the poem points, at this
moment, unequivocally upwards. Secondly, the possibility of an opposite
direction is introduced (9). The modern building may entail falling as
much as rising. But more than this, the question opens a rift in the repre-
sentational status of the poem. The initial eight lines contain no apparent
irony. On the contrary, modernity as a life-world of urbanism, monumen-
talism and technology—as a process of change, rising and progress—is
celebrated. The comparison between the reinforcing bars and the rhythmic
interweaving of branches in a forest naturalises modern architecture. This
metaphoric manoeuvre begins, however, to be ironised by the question.
Thirdly, the final stanza may be said to complete the irony: falling is in-
deed integral to modernity.
Thus far, my reading of the poem fits comfortably with a standard con-
ception of modern experience, as articulated by Marshall Berman: "To be
modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure,
power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the
same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we
know, everything we are." 59 This is also how Gilberto Matusse reads
Craveirinha's exposure of "the false belief in technological progress as a
guarantee for advancement." 60 Matusse refers to another poem, poignantly
called "Civilisation":
Antigamente
(antes de Jesus Cristo)
os homens erguiam estädios e templos
e morriam na arena como cäes.
Agora...
tambem constroem Cadillacs. 61
59 Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Lon-
don: Penguin, 1988 [1982]), p. 15.
60 Matusse, p. 89.
61 Craveirinha, p. 76.
(In ancient times

[before Jesus Christ]
men erected stadiums and temples
and died in the arena like dogs.
Today...
they also make Cadillacs.)
The trajectory of "Ninguem" is rehearsed: the structures of civilisation

point upwards, men die like dogs on the ground. However—and this is im-
portant—the irony of the final line in "Ninguem" cuts deeper than that. In
line thirteen, modernity is not just an ambivalent technological and spatial
phenomenon, but also a question of discourse. The contractor's dual re-
ply—"no one" and "two blacks"—introduces us to the notion of race as a
constitutive element of modernity. More than that, it is a double ma-
noeuvre which first excludes certain individuals from the fellowship of
Man, and then resurrects them as racialised others. In this way, the poem
not only renders the representation of modernity ironic and ambivalent by
turning the tall building into an abyss. Rather, it demonstrates the potential
for violence inherent in the very material of the poem—language itself—
and rips open the racialised abyss of discourse.
"Ninguem" engages with the performativity of racism in the colonial
city. This is a level of racism that admits neither history nor future, and that
needs neither justification nor deliberation, but is just the shock of the
now... and now... and now... of absolute othering. Craveirinha's lyrical
deconstruction of such racism is, however, extremely effective. The slip-
page of meaning through irony simultaneously exposes racial discourse
and undermines its discursive authority, ultimately by hinting at a sup-
pressed narrative—that it is the "no one" of the title that constructs the
modern building. Such a reading corresponds with Paul Gilroy's critique
of the contradictory relation between "black" experience and modernity.
On the one hand, Gilroy contends that the very construction of "race" and
subsequent othering of "blacks" is a product of modernity and, more spe-
cifically, of the era of slavery. On the other, in a critical discussion of Mar-
shall Berman and Jürgen Habermas, he claims that no assessment of mo-
dernity and the Enlightenment heritage will be credible without acknowl-
edging the history of slavery. 62 This is so because the black slaves were in-
strumental in producing the economic value upon which industrialism was
founded and because they as alienated subjects were the first modern sub-
62 Gilroy, pp. 46-58.

jects, forced already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to come to

terms with homelessness and radical existential solitude, experiences that
were thematised much later in European cultural practice. Hence, "black-
ness," itself a racial signifier produced throughout the history of colonial
expansion and slavery, becomes the figure of simultaneous negation and
affirmation, a doubleness which Gilroy finds encapsulated in W. E. B. Du
Bois's notion of "double consciousness."
As I (and others) have argued elsewhere, Gilroy's reasoning has its
weaknesses with respect to African history, but remains, at a general (not
strictly diasporic) level, a decisive intervention in the debate on race and
modernity. 63 The final line of "Ninguem" evokes a racial terror fully con-
sonant with the terror perpetrated against slaves. Yet, the extreme irony of
the last line exemplifies the paradoxically affirmative nature of an uttered
negation: its ultimate function in the poem is to negate the negation and
claim that "blacks" are in fact the constructors of modernity, its movers
and builders.
Using/undoing culture as identity

By reading Craveirinha's engagement with the performativity of colonial
discourse in this way, I intend to expand the point of departure for inter-
preting his poetry. Ana Mafalda Leite has previously asserted that Cra-
veirinha's poetics "assimilate and reconfigure, in exemplary fashion, his
knowledge of European literature and culture by embroiling it with his tra-
ditionally Mozambican roots." 64 The general idea—as has been reiterated
by Francisco Noa and Gilberto Matusse—is that Craveirinha moves "be-
tween cultures," a view well elaborated by each of these critics.
What I would like to add, however, is that Leite, whose reading of
Craveirinha is mainly structuralist, projects the term "culture" in pedagogi-
cal terms as an origin, a manageable tradition that may be narrated, re-
ferred to, claimed as an identity or even "mixed" with other cultures and
traditions. At the performative level, however, the tidy reference to "cul-
ture" falls apart. "Ninguem" addresses the issue of difference and encoun-
ter, but transfers it to a non-totalisable level of ironic response to moderni-
ty. As we direct our attention to the pedagogical moment of Craveirinha's
modernism, we will find that the notion of "culture" returns with a ven-
63 Helgesson, pp. 23-36.

64 Leite, p. 23.
geance—not, however, as simply a nativist origin, nor in terms of the spu-

rious hybridity of lusotropicalism, but as a shifting repository of histories
and narratives that puncture the claims of colonial discourse. An early
poem entitled "Africa" is particularly interesting in this regard. It begins-
Em meus läbios grossos fermenta
a farinha do sarcasmo que coloniza minha Mäe Africa
e meus ouvidos näo levam ao coratjäo seco
misturada com ο sal dos pensamentos
a sintaxe anglo-latina de novas palavras. 65
(On my thick lips the flour of sarcasm

that colonizes my Mother Africa is fermenting
and my ears do not lead the anglo-latin syntax
of new words to my dry heart mixed with
salted thoughts.)
Who is speaking here? Hardly Jose Craveirinha in person. It is rather "the

African" as an allegorical Everyman. To whom is this African's speech di-
rected? This is made clear in the following stanza which claims: "They
love me with the single truth of their gospels / (...) / and fill me with
sounds that I don't understand / of songs from places that I don't know." 66
We find here a condition of absolute non-comprehension, a breakdown of
communication which deflects the speech from "them" and directs it to-
wards the speaker's compatriots. Does this turn the poem into a soliloquy?
That is to say, are we overhearing an allegorical "African" subject speak-
ing to itself by way of rejecting everything associated with the west? Such
an interpretation would tie in with a strictly negritudinist schema. How-
ever, as the poem progresses, the image of western civilisation broadens.
The electric chair, Buchenwald, Al Capone, Hollywood, Ku Klux Klan,
Sharpeville, Hiroshima: these are included in a catalogue of western mo-
dernity. It continues with "Plato, Marx, Gandhi, Einstein and Jean-Paul
Sartre," a remarkable gathering of thinkers (Gandhi!) which demonstrates
the diversity but perhaps also the hypocrisy of intellectual discourse in
western print-media. 67 Emancipatory philosophy is one thing, colonial
realpolitik another. All told, the disavowal of the west in the poem
"Africa" works in two discrete registers. On the one hand, we find the "Af-
rican," claiming to be immune to the machinations of western language
65 Craveirinha, p. 13.
66 "Amam-me com a unica verdade dos seus evangelhos / [ . . . ] / e enchem-me do sons que
näo sinto / das can^öes das suas terras que näo conheijo.", ibid.
67 Ibid., p. 15.
and culture. On the other, this same poetic subject demonstrates an inti-
mate acquaintance with and understanding of contemporary global history.
Even here, then, the use of nativist imagery ("amulets of leopard claws")
seems to be a deliberate, even ironic use of racial stereotypes ("thick lips"),
in order to challenge the claims of western modernity. Besides this image-
ry, the poem in no way restricts itself to colonised space, but adumbrates
instead what James Clifford has called "discrepant cosmopolitanism" and
what Bhabha terms "vernacular cosmopolitanism." 68 It engages with histo-
ry in such a way that it transcends cultural or racial limitations, yet poses a
direct challenge to the cosmopolitan outlook monopolised by the west.
Cultural markers—not least Ronga words in poems such as "Xigubo,"
"Mangondo," "Msaho," "Hossanas ao Hössi Jesus" and "Sia-vuma"—are
used by Craveirinha in a way that both mimics and undermines colonialist
conceptions of African culture. In "Xigubo," for example, what in colo-
nialist representation would be seen as an exotic dance is turned into a
threat of war. Rather than affirm the choice of identities assigned by colo-
nialism (either "native" or "modern"), Craveirinha splits and expands it.
By splitting the epistemic horizon of the speaking subject, a poem such as
"Africa" displays and disrupts the doubleness of colonial semiosis. It of-
fers an alternative pedagogy of a modernity which has been "built at the
cost of the blood / gold, ivory, amens / and biceps of my people." The
speaking subject is both in and of modernity. He is, as in "Ninguem," the
one who is coerced to actually build it—and therefore needs to snatch it
from the claws of colonial pedagogy.
By saying "he" I have, of course, indicated a crucial dimension not only
of Craveirinha's work but of most modernist writing of the period in Mo-
zambique and Angola. Just as Mauricio Gomes only directed his speech to
his "brothers," so is defiance in Craveirinha's poetry coded as male. Gen-
der is not emphasised in "Africa," but the aggressive self-assertion of the
speaker easily leads the reader to associate the poem with masculinity.
Femininity is instead assigned the position of mother and origin in the
trope "Mother Africa." In other poems, the prostitute and the elderly
mother are common figures. Prostitution is in fact a major feature of Cra-
veirinha's—as also of Vieira's—vision of urban deprivation and (colonial)
capitalist exploitation. This gives us an outline of a historical narrative in
68 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cam-
bridge: Harvard UP, 1997); Homi Bhabha "Dialektal kosmopolitism," Glänta 3 (2001),
pp. 16-26.
which the image of African authenticity bears the mark of motherhood,

whereas the rupture of colonial modernity is inscribed on the reified body
of the prostitute. Colonial modernity is coded as masculine, as is defiance
of and resistance to it, somewhat along the lines of Ashis Nandy's "hyper-
masculinity." 69 The speaking subjects and points of view in Craveirinha's
poetry come across as clearly masculinist. It would seem that patriarchal
masculinity offered a negotiable speaking position within the colonial
semiosis of Mozambique, whereas femininity tended to be reduced to pas-
sivity and suffering.
Luandino Vieira
The wound of memory

This is not the place to discuss at length the significance of Craveirinha's
and Luandino Vieira's different choices of genre: lyric versus prose narra-
tive. Remarkably, though, their poetics overlap in many ways. Both of
them create their own literary diction by grafting African languages onto
Portuguese. And whereas Craveirinha's poetry often has a narrative ten-
dency, Vieira's treatment of language—particularly in his later work—has
lyric qualities. 70 This generic indeterminacy is an intriguing feature of their
modernist projects. Even so, Vieira's prose does bring time into play more
consistently than Craveirinha's poetry. I would suggest that in Vieira's
work, the universal and the historical overlap and bring each other to crisis.
His first short story cycle, A Cidade e α Infäncia ("The City and the Child-
hood"), establishes two basic premises of his writing: the loss of childhood
innocence and the transformation of modern (colonial) Luanda. In the title
story of A Cidade we read how "[n]owadays lots of buildings were being
constructed. The mudhouses with their zinc roofs were being replaced by
buildings of iron and concrete, the red sand was tarred black and the street
was no longer called Rua do Lima. They gave it another name." 71 These
sentences contain the blueprint for all of Vieira's narratives. As Salvato
Trigo writes, "A Cidade e α Infäncia may [...] be seen as the precursor of
practically all Luandinian ecriture, just as the author himself contends that
69 Ashis Nandy. The Intimate Enemy (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1988).

70 Leite, pp. 85-125.
71 Jose Luandino Vieira, A Cidade e α Infäncia (Lisbon: Edi^öes 70, 1997[1957]), pp. 8 2 -
83.
in these 'first stories everything was already there,' that is to say, all the
other texts that he would eventually produce." 72 As a broad assessment of
Vieira's writing, this requires no revision. I want to stress, however, the
underlying doubleness of what is generally seen as his single theme, the
contrast between childhood memories and the Luanda of the 1950s and
1960s. What we find in A Cidade are attempts at forging universal, human-
ist narratives about the passing of time and the pain of growing up, narra-
tives which are disrupted in various ways by modernisation. This conflict,
which creates difficulties at a diegetic level for Vieira's narration, is then
dealt with stylistically and linguistically in Luuanda, the second of two
books that will be discussed in this sub-chapter. With Luuanda as my sec-
ond choice I follow the example of previous critics who see this collection
of estorias as a pivotal moment in Vieira's writing—although I hesitate to
use Salvato Trigo's term "africanisation" to capture this moment. 73 Indeed,
Luuanda also had an unparalleled political impact. In 1965 it was awarded
a prize by the Portuguese Writers' Association which provoked a violent
reaction from the Salazar government. The book was banned, the associa-
tion disbanded. My focus will however be strictly on the narratives, not on
the Portuguese dictatorship's unwarranted intervention in the field of liter-
ary criticism.
To see how doubleness operates in Vieira's narratives, let us begin by
looking at the very title A Cidade a e Infäncia. As Trigo points out, it con-
stitutes an oxymoron: "childhood" and "the city" are mutually exclusive
terms. However, whereas Trigo simply sees in "childhood" a metonymical
reference to the musseques, that is the marginalised social space of Luan-
da's shantytowns, I shall argue that the implications of these terms—and of
the stories—are more complex than that. 74 Note first of all the conjunction
of place and time. "The city," although as yet without a name, implies
place and specificity. "Childhood" denotes a temporal period which is, in
formal terms, the same for all human beings and hence universal. The no-
tion of childhood is also related to a circular rather than a linear conception
of time, insofar as it connotes the repetition and reproduction of human ex-
istence. The neutral copula "and" supposedly joins these two different cat-
egories of understanding (space and time) to form a conceptual whole. The
stories turn this reading on its head, however. Childhood emerges as an un-
72 Salvato Trigo, Luandino Vieira: ο Logoteta (Porto: Brasilia editora, 1981), p. 210.
73 Trigo, Luandino, p. 206; Peres, pp. 22-23.
74 Trigo, Luandino, p. 213.
attainable paradise, a "place" in memory severed from the lives of the adult
protagonists by the city itself, which in turn is transformed into a linear and
apparently irreversible "time" of historical transformation. We can follow
this theme of time as loss and separation in every story, from "Encontro de
Acaso" ("Chance Meeting") through to "Companheiros" ("Mates") at the
end.
In "Encontro de Acaso," where the narrator chances upon the old leader
of his boyhood gang, we read how "everything has changed and all that re-
mains is the wound inflicted by memory." Further down we read: "Life
drew us apart. Each one with his own cell in this vast prison." 75 The use of
the word "life" is of particular interest here. "Life" indicates the passage
from childhood to adulthood and is, as such, ambivalently poised between
a universalist and a historical notion of being. Life spans the treacherous
gap between childhood and city. Life is what the stories supposedly nar-
rate, but the narration lacks coherence; it is divided against itself.
In "O Despertar" ("The Awakening") the protagonist relishes his soli-
tude and freedom after having been released from prison. Finally he can
engage in "Man's struggle with Life." 76 Prison was apparently an interrup-
tion in the normal, repetitious order of "Life," but the reader finds that it is
in fact the anomalies of prostitution, debt, poverty and prison that tend to
constitute Life. At the end prison is seen as a learning experience, not a
rupture with normality. The continued allegorisation of life at the end of
the story becomes in this way productively ambivalent insofar as it bal-
ances between contingency and historical necessity. It is best read in a
double register, as ironic and defiant at the same time: "He had studied the
lesson of Life well. Now he would go out with a smile on his lips and the
sun playing in his hair and find a job. A hands-on job. He was going to fol-
low Life. He must live it. He would follow it and with his small hands, now
calloused by the prison bars, he would work. Life lay in front of him. He
had hands to catch hold of it!" 77 Prison, as it is also employed metaphori-
cally in the first story ("this vast prison"), becomes what one must expect
and go through. Only by squarely facing limitation—the historicity of
75 "tudo se modificou e so a ferida feita pela memoria persiste ainda"; "A vida separou-nos.
Cada um com a sua cela nesta imensa prisäo." Vieira, Cidade, p. 50.
76 "[a] luta do Homem com a Vida." Ibid., p. 56.
77 "Toda a ligäo da Vida fora bem estudada. Agora sairia de sorriso nos läbios com ο sol a
brincar nos seus cabelos e procuraria emprego. Um emprego manual. Seguiria com a Vi-
da. Devia vive-la. Seguiria e com as mäos pequenas, agora calosas das grades de prisäo,
trabalharia. Tinha a Vida ä sua frente. Tinha mäos para a possuir!." Ibid., p. 59.
Life—will there be release from the paralysing shock of the loss of child-
hood. Even as Vieira's stories explore the disjunctive relation between
childhood and the city, the acts of narration resist this disjunction and show
a clear tendency towards appropriating modernity, often proleptically.
Nostalgia is held in check; the wound of memory, the shock of the wound,
is used in the interests of healing, so as to devise new and viable notions of
community and agency.
Building and reading

To elaborate on the above, I shall briefly focus on two topoi in Vieira's
representation of modernity: construction (of various kinds) and the act of
reading. Already in the first story, "Encontro de Acaso," there is an image
of the childhood friend laying down plumbing in the street, as well as the
mention of "jealous tractors" that destroyed the edenic forest of child-
hood. 78 In "O Nascer do Sol" ("Sunrise") a building is being erected—in
tandem with the phallic awakening of sexuality in the same story—and in
the title story I have already referred to how "lots of buildings were being
constructed." 79 In "A Fronteira de Asfalto" the toil of construction has just
been completed, but the newness and strangeness of the tarred road is con-
stantly brought to the reader's awareness. 80
Towards the end of the book, in stories like "Faustino" and "Compan-
heiros," we see less of construction per se: the city is a fact now, racism
and alienation are entrenched. Instead, we find in the penultimate story
"Quinzinho" a monologue addressed to the deceased Quinzinho whose
life and death was intimately connected with his desire to construct ma-
chines. We find here two moments in the narrative deployment of the to-
pos of construction. First, we have construction as destruction. Not un-
like Craveirinha's "Ninguem," this aspect of construction entails a strict
racial dichotomy. There is in Vieira's stories a homologous relation be-
tween the splitting of Luanda into musseque and city of concrete, and the
hardening of the epidermal hierarchy. In "A Fronteira de Asfalto," the
tarred road is a perfect metaphor for Fanon's analysis of the two distinct
zones of colonial society (anticipating Fanon's book by a year), 81 with
one slight difference: there is in the margins of the stories, as in the im-
78 Ibid., p. 50.
79 Ibid., pp. 66-67, 82-83.
80 Ibid., pp. 73-77.
81 Fanon, pp. 29-31.
age of the childhood friend laying down water-pipes, the commuting

workers in "O Despertar" and the metaphoric and metonymic references
to "blacks" in the image of the asphalt frontier, an insistent reminder of
who is actually doing the work of construction. This feeds into the sec-
ond moment of Vieira's representation of construction, whereby imagi-
nation bridges the gap between alienated labour and the appropriation of
modernity. In "Quinzinho" we are told that "[a] worker mustn't dream
[...] Life isn't made for dreaming," statements which underscore the re-
ality principle of historical living. 82 In opposition to this interdiction of
Utopian imagination, however, the story valorises Quinzinho's capacity
to dream up fantastical contraptions that "distribute water to the house"
or "build many houses at the same time." 83 Quinzinho belongs to a day
yet to come: "a death like yours builds future freedoms." 8 4 This is hardly
subtle, but in the context of A Cidade it spells out an understated aspect
of Vieira's critique of modernity. What first seemed like nostalgia is
transformed into something far more ambitious and transformative. In
this way childhood too becomes more than a memory; it becomes a re-
source in the act of imaginatively appropriating modernity and refashion-
ing construction into something other than racialised destruction.
The second topos, that of reading, confirms and extends such an inter-
pretation. Reading may be seen in Foucauldian terms as an instrument of
(self-)discipline. 85 This is particularly true of colonial modernity in Africa
where the specificity of the print-medium as a medium of hierarchisation is
impossible to ignore. In the title story we read that the protagonist "remem-
bers the day when his father taught him to read the first word. Printed in
bold letters in the 'Provincia de Angola': WAR." 8 6 A striking introduction
to reading, centrally placed in the book. The last piece, "Companheiros,"
affords a similar view when snippets of painstakingly decoded newspaper
articles are interspersed with the story of three street-wise boys trying to
survive on the streets of Nova Lisboa (Huambo—the only story that is not
set in Luanda). Joäo, one of the three, sells newspapers for a living, but can
82 "Operärio näo pode sonhar [...] A vida näo e para sonhos.," Vieira, Cidade, p. 119.
83 "maquinas estranhas para trazer a ägua do chafariz para casa [...] mäquinas para cons-
truir muitas cubatas ao mesmo tempo.," ibid., p. 121.
84 "uma morte como a tua constroi liberdades futuras.," ibid., p. 119.
85 Simon During, Foucault and Literature: Towards a Genealogy of Writing (London:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 147-164.
86 "Lembra-se do dia em que ο pai ο ensinou a ler a primeira palavra. Na 'Provincia de An-
gola' escrita a letras grandes: GUERRA.," ibid., p. 83.
barely spell his way through the headlines. The little reading he knows he
has picked up from the mestigo Armindo who functions as an intermediary
not only between "races" but also between the pouvoir/savoir of the subal-
tern and the institutional puissance/connaissance of colonial modernity.
His cousin is a sailor who brings home stories from "every harbour in Afri-
ca and Europe." 87 These stories are oral, apparently unaffected by any
mode of institutional power, and become part of the conversations and
daydreams of the young boys: there lies a whole world waiting for them
beyond the seas. Concomitantly, the newspaper begins to open up the
world for Joäo who "laboriously spelled his way through the paper he had
saved for himself: - U p . . . ri... sing in South A . . . fri... ca..." And later: " -
War in In... do..." 8 8 Both the headlines, defamiliarised and highlighted
through the spacing, and the stories from the harbours of the world are jux-
taposed with the narrative of Armindo 's arrest and desperation in the
musseques. However, while the sailor's stories give rise to a longing for
travel, the topos of reading develops the ambivalent function of associating
the labour of decoding the alphabet with globally disseminated conflicts.
Reading gives access to a certain amount of institutional power in modern-
ity and a certain version of progress, but offers at the same time a pessimis-
tic view of what modernity leads to. Joäo's act of reading challenges in this
way the long-standing western view of the medium of alphabetical writing
as a self-evident mark of humanity and a vessel for ethically beneficial
values. As Henry Louis Gates points out, "Europeans privileged writing—
in their writings about Africans, at least—as the principal measure of the
Africans' humanity, their capacity for progress, their very place in the
great chain of being." 89 (Italics in the original.) In A Cidade, Vieira re-
verses this notion by making reading an instrument of disenchantment
rather than a measure of civilisation. Reading conveys not reason nor
pleasure but the cruelty of man. In this respect, the reading scenes also be-
87 "todos os portos da Africa e da Europa," ibid., p. 126.

88 "Negro Joäo [...] soletra a custo ο jornal que sobrava"; " - Guerra na In... do...," ibid.,
pp. 127-128.
89 Henry Louis Gates, "Writing 'Race' and the Difference it Makes" in Gates (ed.),
"Race," Writing and Difference" (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), p.
9. The cultural and political authority of alphabetical writing is a mainstay in post-colo-
nial studies. Colonial governance was, says Bhabha, carried out through writing (Bhab-
ha, Location, p. 93); the perceived lack of writing was seen from the very beginning of
the Iberian colonial period in Mexico as proof of the so-called natives' "beastliness" and
lack of any form of cultural signification. (Mignolo, pp. 34, 76.)
come allegories of the reading of A Cidade. The stories refuse to console

the reader, and the topos of reading reconfirms that refusal in an almost
Brechtian manner. It deprives the reader of an excuse to divert his or her
attention from the imperative to bring about change.
In "Faustino," the representation of reading is more than an interruption
in the flow of narrative: it constitutes the story's basic premise. Faustino
works as a lift-attendant in a three-storey residential building in Luanda.
Confined all day in the cramped space of the lift, he negotiates constantly
between the few subject-positions available to him. Within moments he
switches from obedient labourer (when operating the elevator) to sheepish
"black" (when pestered by white children) to diligent student (in moments
of solitude). These quick changes affect our reading of the elevator, which
becomes linked to a number of other phenomena: metaphorically to the
prison cell, the shack and the scholar's study; metonymically to modern
technology and alienated labour; phenomenologically to claustrophobia,
repetition and a paradoxical combination of motion and immobility.
Reading, it would seem, is the only activity that promises transcendence:
"But as soon as he has a moment to spare, he sits down on the chair beside
his tiny table and starts studying. Geometry. Geography. He reads his
primer. His eyes widen as they follow the words and his mind gets con-
fused by what is written." 90 The moral of the story is predictable: the work-
ing conditions and racism of the residents make it impossible for Faustino
to pursue his studies. The familiar colonial contradiction is exposed once
again, insofar as the colonial ruler's claim of disseminating a universally
attainable modern rationality is undermined by the colonial regime of ra-
cial difference. Faustino is objectified, forced to serve under (white) mo-
dernity without being granted subjective space to master it. Hence, it
would appear that reading is portrayed less ambivalently in "Faustino"
than elsewhere in A Cidade, not as a problem in its own right, but as a
privilege denied. However, Faustino's confusion in the passage just quoted
bears elaboration. The subsequent sentences, referring to the primer, read:
"The House." The house has many rooms. This room. That room. The sew-
ing room. The children's room. The children's room! But in his own house
his smaller brothers—there are two of them who spend their days chewing
sand in the streets of the musseque where they play—sleep together with
90 "Mas quando tem um momenta livre senta-se na cadeira da sua pequena mesa e estuda.
Geometria. Geografia. Vai lendo ο livro de leitura. Os olhos abrem-se com as palavras e
ο cerebro baralha-se com ο que estä escrito." Vieira, A Cidade, p. 112.
their sister and mother! And his eyes show him new houses, houses never
seen in his world. Not even in the white quarters. 91
This amounts to a complex statement on the relationship between reading

and modernity. In representational terms, the primer is unsatisfactory read-
ing. It remains silent with respect to Faustino's living conditions, a lack
which the very book A Cidade attempts to redress. At the same time, it
demonstrates how writing is not just a question of mimesis. On the contra-
ry, the technology of writing engenders a reality of its own, as is succinctly
captured in the penultimate sentence: his eyes show him what he cannot
see. The gaze of the reader is, in the act of reading, transferred to the spe-
cific procedures of literacy, with its own institutional history of discipline
and discourse. In addition to this is the poignant fact that "Faustino," as
Phyllis Peres observes, is the first instance where Vieira incorporates oral
storytelling techniques. 92 Right at the beginning, he addresses an imaginary
audience: "I will now tell you the story of Faustino. It wasn't Dona Ana
who told me, no sir. I saw this with my own eyes, and he himself told me
the rest." 93 Juxtaposed with the reading scene, this mode of narration,
which Vieira will use consistently at a later stage, hints at an alternative
notion of writing and reading that displaces the authority of the primer.
"Faustino," and indeed other stories in A Cidade, refuse in this way to
valorise literacy. What the topos of reading does instead is to challenge its
transparency, make it visible as a chief aspect of the doubleness of colonial
modernity. In so doing, the progressivist pedagogy of colonialism is also
questioned, leaving room, at least hypothetically, for the alternative, Utop-
ian pedagogy of "childhood" which points toward a non-racialised future,
but without pandering to lusotropical fictions.
Note the close affinity between my assessment of A Cidade and the pre-
vious discussion of Craveirinha's "Ninguem." In both cases, we find repre-
sentations of urban contexts which tie in with a straightforward leftist-lib-
eral critique of the racial underpinnings of colonial modernity: for every
building that rises from the ground, there are individuals that fall into the
91 " Ά Casa.' A casa tern muitos quartos. Ο quarto disto. Ο quarto daquilo. Ο quarto da
costura. Ο quarto das criansas. Ο quarto das crian§as! Mas em casa dele os irmäos—säo
dois que passam ο dia a comer areia nas ruas dos musseques onde brincam—dormem to-
dos juntos com a irmä e a mäe! Ε os olhos mostram-lhe casas novas, casas nunca vistas
no seu mundo. Nem mesmo nos bairros dos brancos." Ibid., p. 112.
92 Peres, p. 21.
93 "Contarei agora a historia do Faustino. Näo foi a Don' Ana que me contou, näo senhor.
Estahistoria eu vi mesmo, outra parte foi ele mesmo que contou." Vieira, Cidade, p. 111.
abyss. Added to this, both writers also address the discursive nature of ra-
cial/colonial capitalism. In Craveirinha it is language itself—"No one, just
two blacks"—and in Vieira it is literacy, but in both cases the role of dis-
course in the racial ordering of society is beyond doubt. The modernism of
both writers attains in other words a metalinguistic and metafictional level
which challenges colonial modernity more profoundly than would the
straightforward indignation of protest literature.
"...that same beginning was also the end of another beginning... "
In Luuanda, Vieira moves even further away from protest literature. If A
Cidade displayed a number of themes and motifs without developing them
at length—the aporias surrounding construction and reading are left unre-
solved—then Luuanda is the work of a far more mature writer. It presents
us with three stories, of which the central piece, "Estoria do Ladräo e do
Papagaio" ("The Tale of the Thief and the Parrot"), is the longest. In these
stories, Vieira engages more profoundly with form and language. His writ-
ing not only points towards gaps and fissures in the narration, but also of-
fers an entirely different mode of writing which posits the spoken language
in the musseques as the starting point for "literature." By calling the stories
estorias rather than contos or historias, he undercuts the authority of writ-
ing as well as of the authorial subject and defers them to a secondary posi-
tion in relation to the orally disseminated tales of the musseques. Signifi-
cantly, the final "Estoria da Galinha e do Ovo" ("The Tale of the Hen and
the Egg") begins: "The tale of the hen and the egg happened in the
musseque of Sambizanga, in this our land of Luanda." 94 At the end, Vieira
calls it "My tale," but this is immediately inserted in a context of mutual
exchange. The final words, both here and in "Estoria do Ladräo," are: "If
it's pretty, if it's ugly, only you know. But I swear I didn't tell a lie and that
these affairs happened in this our land of Luanda." 95
Stylistically, Vieira achieves a sense of immersion in an orally based
community. This is particularly true of "Estoria do Ladräo" and "Estoria
da Galinha," where the talking never seems to stop. Contrary to A Cidade,
94 Luandino Vieira, Luuanda, trans. Tamara Bender and Donna Hill (London: Heinemann,
1980), p. 88. "Estes casos passaram no musseque Sambizanga, nesta nossa terra de Lu-
anda." Luandino Vieira, Luuanda (Lisbon: Ediijoes 70, 1989 [1964]), p. 125.
95 Vieira, Luuanda (trans.), p. 109. "Se e bonita, se e feia, voces e que sabem. Eu so juro
näo falei mentira e estes casos passaram nesta nossa terra de Luanda." Vieira, Luuanda,
p. 153.
whose narrators often remain at a distance from the events narrated, the
tight, colloquial style in Luuanda makes simple distinctions between narra-
tor and diegesis less obvious. In the "Estoria do Ladräo," for instance, the
mode of dialogue shifts continually between direct and indirect speech. By
the same token, the point of view moves from character to character. Add
to this the hidden narrator's tendency to speak of "us," and one finds that
the style validates the basic pattern of reversal and confusion in the narra-
tives. There is a famous meditation by Xico Futa, placed centrally in the
book, that elaborates this perspective. It begins like this:
Can people really know, for sure, how something started, where it started,
why, who for, who by? Really know what was going on in the heart of the
person who starts confusions, looks for them, or undoes or ruins conversa-
tion? Or is it impossible to grab on to the beginning of things in life, when
you get to that beginning you see after all that that same beginning was also
the end of another beginning and then, if you go on like this, backwards and
forwards, you see that the thread of life can't be broken, even if it's rotten at
some point it always mends itself at another point, it grows, it strays, flees,
advances, turns, stops, disappears, appears... 86
There is no lack of commentary on Xico Futa's irresistibly metafictional

meditation, but I still wish to return to it in the specific context of my argu-
ment on colonial modernity. 97 Notice first how the word "life" reappears
here, "life" that was allegorised in A Cidade but had such bleak chances of
affirming itself. In Xico Futa's meditation, there is no longer any question
of whether or not life may prevail in the purgatory of colonial modernity.
The "thread of life" always prevails. Rather, it is the question itself that is
revised. Futa asks what constitutes life, how it can be narrated, and where
the "tale begins"—only to explain, through an extended allegory of the
numerous transformations and "lives" of a cashew tree, that there is no be-
ginning except a number of overlapping, shifting points of view that
change even as they are being articulated. Critics have rightly focused on
this passage, since this is where Vieira's challenge to the truth-regime of
Portuguese and colonial discourse becomes explicit. Trigo, in particular,
96 Vieira, Luuanda (trans.), pp. 43^44. "Pode mesmo a gente saber, com a certeza, como e
urn caso cometôu, porque, praque, quem? Saber mesmo ο que estava se passar no
coragäo da pesso que faz, que procura, desfaz ou estraga as conversas, as macas? Ou
tudo que passa na vida näo pode-se-lhe agarrar no principio, quando chega nesse
principio era tambem ο fim doutro principio e entäo, se a gente segue assim, para träs ou
para a frente, ve que näo pode se partir ο fio da vida, mesmo que estä podre nalgum lado,
ele sempre se emenda noutro sitio, cresce, desvia, foge, avanca, curva, para, esconde,
aparece...," Vieira, Luuanda, pp. 69-70.
97 Peres, p. 23; Chabal, p. 134; Trigo, Luandino, pp. 395-399.
makes an extended Barthesian analysis of Xico Futa's parable of the

cashew tree as an "allegory of the text as a writing-practice" and the point
at which Vieira's ecriture enacts an erasure of the subject that clears a
space for the other. 98 This is the rationale for Trigo's claim that Luuanda
splits Vieira's oeuvre in two—in earlier works (and I am glossing Trigo's
structuralist argument), the realistic and representational paradigm of nar-
ration prevailed, which by definition required a centred subject-position.
Trigo's analysis of Vieira is as yet unparalleled in its thoroughness and
ambition. Even so, his monolithic distinctions between an "African" and a
"western" mentality are a major problem. He connects, for instance, the
metaphor of the cashew tree to a typically "African" conception of na-
ture—and sidesteps in this way the marginal importance of landscape and
nature in much African writing." He speaks sweepingly of the griot tradi-
tion in the Angolan context, despite the fact that this is a regional phenom-
enon in West Africa. 100 He embraces the typical view, as discussed by
Eileen Julien, that orality is a mark of African authenticity rather than one
contingent circumstance among many that make up the context of African
writing. 101 Most importantly, the philosophical opposition as such between
Africa and the west, between Africanisation and modernisation, needs to
be seen as a product of modernity. In his writing, Vieira transcends these
categories, in full cognisance of the doubleness of his predicament: on the
one hand forced to deal with the binary concepts of western discourse, on
the other determined to challenge these concepts.
Let us see how this challenge is conceived. A number of things occur si-
multaneously in Xico Futa's soliloquy. Firstly, a considerable chunk of
narration is abruptly ascribed to the voice of Xico Futa—more than three
pages of reported speech, but without quotation marks as in other dia-
logues. The authority of the narrator is in this way diffused. The poly-
phonic mode of the estoria is established, as is the comedy of errors that
makes up this particular "estoria." Secondly, Futa's meditation seriously
questions mechanistic notions of time, causality and progress. Instead of
challenging colonial repression on its own terms by replacing one Mani-
chean conception of history with another, Futa attempts to reject the
naivety of reducing being to "progress" and binary oppositions. The image
98 Trigo, Luandino, pp. 394-395, 402.

99 Ibid., p. 398.
100 Ibid., pp. 171-172.
101 Ibid., pp. 172-183. Eileen Julien, African Novels and the Question of Orality (Blooming-
ton: Indian University Press, 1992), pp. 3-25.
of the cashew tree is in that respect rhizomorphic rather than arboretic,

since despite being cut down, the tree (arbor in Latin, the etymological
root of arboretic) lives on in unforeseeable, non-totalisable ways. 102
All told, this issues a subtle challenge to such colonial authority—not
least the authority of the English, Portuguese etc. book—that projects itself
as myth and origin at its moment of enunciation. This is a split authority
that aims at transparency—understood by Bhabha as "the action of the dis-
tribution and arrangement of differential spaces, positions, knowledges in
relation to each other, relative to a discriminatory, not inherent, sense of
order." 103 Transparency is what gives the colonial order its allure of sim-
plicity, as well as what produces the desire for a wholesale reversal of its
binaries—along the same-but-opposite lines—as is testified by certain sto-
ries in Vieira's A Cidade. Transparency, indeed, is at work in assimilation-
ism and lusotropicalism alike, in their respective attempts at appropriating
the difference of the "others" in favour of a lusocentric historical narrative.
Transparency, finally, is displaced by Xico Futa's reflections as well as by
the narratorial performances in Luuanda. "Estoria da Galinha e do Ovo" is
a dilemma-tale that stages a Kimbundu maka—a heated argument or a
state of confusion—and refuses, with comical effect, to reconcile opposing
views concerning the ownership of the egg. 104 "Vavo Xixi" complicates the
reader's sympathies and unsettles the authority of the protagonist young-
ster by refusing to reduce his failed attempts at finding food and work to
simplistic political explanations. (The story may just as well be read, as
Trigo shows, as a variation of the parable of the grasshopper. 105 ) "Estoria
do Ladräo" rejects, as we have seen, the straightforward progression of
realistic narrative. The tale culminates, moreover, in the tragicomic story
of the cripple Garrido Fernandes and his failed attempt to kill a parrot who
taunts him with words picked up from its owner, Inäcia, and from children
in the musseque. Garrido, a mestigo, is helplessly in love with the black as-
similada Inäcia, who only makes fun of him. Garrido transfers all of his
hurt and aggression onto the parrot who keeps chanting "Kam'tuta, sung'o
pe'" 0 6 ("Masturbator, swing your foot"). He steals the parrot, but is arrested
before he can kill it. This parrot, whose speech is mimicry in its purest and
emptiest form, mocks not only Garrido, but also the reader of the story: it
102 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Milles Plateaux (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1980).
104 Peres, p. 24.
105 Trigo, Luandino, pp. 43-45.
106 Vieira, Luuanda, p. 86.
begs to be interpreted. One possibility would be to associate it with assimi-

lationism. On the other hand, the parrot mimics Kimbundu, not Portu-
guese. Another option would be to read the parrot as a mockery of mimetic
writing. Vieira's tale, which is "the truth, even if none of it ever hap-
pened," is something more than a mechanical mirroring of musseque
life.107 The third and strongest option is that the parrot mocks the reader's
desire for an origin. What is explicitly called the "root" of the tale—the
parrot and its mimicry—is no "real" beginning at all.108 Without collapsing
the difference between Bhabha's notion of mimicry—evolved in the con-
text of V. S. Naipaul's narratives and Indian literature—and Vieira's story,
it is still remarkable how they both point to the destabilising potential of
mimicry. Vieira might be said to cut even deeper than Bhabha, since the
comedy of the parrot affects the rationale of narration as such. It under-
writes Xico Futa's reflections on the thread of life and criticises by impli-
cation the focus on the surface-effects of colonialism. Vieira does not
valorise mimicry but neither does he demonise it. Rather, he restores to it
its ambivalence, its double nature of producing real harm and passion (in
Garrido's case) without being "real" itself—not unlike literature. The fig-
ure of the parrot leads in this way to a mise en abyme. It reiterates the re-
fusal to offer an absolute and comforting foundation for the reader, be it
political or ontological. It opens an ethical perspective in which the process
of social signification in the tale becomes a necessarily unfinished task: the
rest is up to the reader.
Closing Remarks
Modernism has long been a moot point in postcolonial literary critique,

caught between eurocentric valorisations of the term and nativist rejections
of the same. My attempt here has been to relate the specific cultural prac-
tice called literature—or, more to the point: chosen examples from the
oeuvre of Jose Craveirinha and Jose Luandino Vieira—to current debates
on transculturation and postcolonialism. In the process, I have made three
polemical claims. The first is that the national paradigm of literary criti-
cism can be too restrictive. It can freeze the reception of, in this case, luso-
107 Vieira, Luuanda, (trans.), p. 86; "isto e a verdade, mesmo que os casos nunca tenham
passado." Vieira, Luuanda, p. 122.
108 Vieira, Luuanda, p. 73.
phone African writing in the teleological frame of nationalism and bypass

many aspects of its complex relations with colonial modernity, such as its
contingency, its cosmopolitanism, and so on. The second is that debates on
European modernism have been more nuanced than is generally admitted
in the postcolonial field, and that therefore a simple opposition between
European and "other" modernisms is untenable. The third is that "double-
ness" better accounts for (post)colonial modernities than "hybridity," inso-
far as it also refers to a metatheoretical instability. It is here, moreover, in
the negotiations with the doubleness of colonial semiosis, that I locate im-
portant aspects of Craveirinha's and Vieira's modernist aesthetics. The
"pedagogical" and the "performative" are twin aspects of enunciation en-
gaged in Craveirinha's poetry, in which he unsettles the colonial aspects of
both. This generates a shock aesthetic that responds to the shock of coloni-
sation. As an example, the poem "Ninguem" manages, through irony, to
expose and undercut the absolute negation of racialised modernity. Viei-
ra's narratives are less concerned with colonial inscriptions of history and
civilisation per se, but proceed rather to resituate the centre of Luandan ur-
banism to its "peripheral" musseques. This act of countermapping attains
in Luuanda a formal and linguistic radicalism that far exceeds the straight-
forward act of reversal and protest. Instead, Luuanda challenges the very
ambition to arrive at conclusive, pedagogical narratives. It is intent on per-
forming a fiction, on allowing the space of fiction to become a space of
polyphony.
MARJA Kaikkonen
The Detective in the Service of the

Emperor, the Republic, and the
Communist Party
1. Introduction
In Europe and the United States, the detective story rose to great popularity
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The same happened in
China almost simultaneously: the first Chinese translations of Western de-
tective stories appeared in 1896,1 after which the number of translations
and Western-inspired indigenous productions increased dramatically with-
in a few decades. This development led to an almost total eclipse of the tra-
ditional Chinese detective genre, the "public case" or "court case" (gon-
gan) story, which had reached similar heights of popularity during the
nineteenth century. This article seeks to establish the reasons for the sud-
den popularity of the Western genre, and focuses on the cultural context of
the detective story rather than on a narratological or psychological perspec-
tive.
A similar question about the Western popularity of the detective story
was naturally asked by early Western critics of the genre. They studied the
relationship of the ideas embodied in the fiction and the historical moment
of its inception, and concluded that detective fiction appeared after impor-
tant changes had taken place in British and Western European judicial sys-
1 Eva Hung, "Giving Texts a Context: Chinese Translations of Classical English Detective
Stories 1896-1916." In David Pollard (ed.), Translation and Creation: Readings of
Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840-1918 (Amsterdam & Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publ. Co., 1998), p. 157. The first English detective story in Chinese
translation was "The Naval Treaty" by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in three install-
ments in The Chinese Progress (Shiwubao) in August-September 1896.
158 Marja Kaikkonen
tems. 2 "[T]he detective story, as distinct from the crime story, flourishes
only in a settled community where the readers' sympathies are on the side
of law and order, and not on the side of the criminal who is trying to escape
from justice." 3 This may of course be true for Europe, and may even be the
reason why the public case genre once developed in China, but it certainly
does not explain why Chinese readers suddenly switched from traditional
Chinese stories to Western-type detective stories. It is true that changes
were on their way even in China's judicial system, especially after the
founding of the Republic of China in 1912, but they were slow in coming
and had not yet occurred when the detective story made a breakthrough.
The European explanation is therefore inappropriate.
While fascists in both Italy (1939?) and Germany (1941) banned English
detective stories because of their "foreign" and "decadent" ideas, positive
evaluations of detective fiction flourished in the Anglo-Saxon world. 4
Even socialist countries banned detective fiction, as China would do later. 5
Already in 1941 the idea was put about that the detective genre could only
exist in democracies, as it was only in democracies that it had been pro-
duced "on any large scale." The idea of proof was seen as a prerequisite to
such stories, and proof, an attribute of a fair trial, was considered charac-
teristic of democratic jurisdiction where evidence was required and scruti-
nised. In contrast, "despotisms" had no "methodical criminal investigation
with accuracy and impartiality for its objectives," and therefore it was nat-
ural that the detective story, "wedded to the exercise of reason" as it was,
was banned by dictatorships, "dependent on uncritical acceptance of
propaganda for their very survival." 6 One reason for the bans was found in
the fact that the detective was an amateur "with his freedom to think, act,
2 See e.g. Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Omnibus of Crime" (1929). In Robin W. Winks (ed.),
Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays. 2nd enlarged ed. (Woodstock: Foul
Play P, 1988), pp. 53-83; and Robin Woods, '"His Appearance Is Against Him': The
Emergence of the Detective." In Ronald G. Walker and June M. Frazer (eds.), The Cun-
ning Craft: Original Essays on Detective Fiction and Contemporary Literary Theory
(Macomb: Western Illinois U P, 1990), pp. 15-24.
3 Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story
[1941] (New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1972), p. 316, quoting Lord Hewart of Bury, once
the Chief Justice of England.
4 Ibid., p. 312.
5 See Ernst Kaemmel, "Literatur unterm Tisch: Der Detektivroman und sein gesellschaftli-
cher Auftrag." Neue Deutsche Literatur, vol. 10, pp. 152-56; and Josef Skvorecky, "De-
tective Stories: Some Notes on 'Fingerprints'." In Martin L. Friedland (ed.), Rough Jus-
tice: Essays on Crime in Literature (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991), pp. 231-248.
6 Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure, p. 313.
The Detective Story in China 159
and criticize," who managed to solve the mysteries faster than the police.
The emphasis on the amateur was also one of the main German objections
to the genre. 7
The Chinese public case fiction naturally refutes some of these Euro-
pean ideas 8 and shows, for example, that detective fiction can exist even in
non-democracies—in imperial China. Even Chinese history disproves such
ideas: early handbooks for judges-cum-detectives 9 testify that detective
work could very well be done by people other than amateur detectives—in
this case by imperial officials. Traditional Chinese jurisdiction also shows
that democracy is in no way an absolute requirement for the pursuit of a
fair trial, although perhaps with a slightly differing definition. 10 The sig-
nificance of the amateur seems a more promising line of thought, with the
reservation that the "freedom to think, act and criticize" in a dictatorship is
not necessarily granted to anyone, and would, if put into practice, be equal-
ly threatening no matter who took the liberty to speak up. It appears that
these arguments to explain the popularity of detective stories in the West
are not directly applicable to the Chinese case.
Another, later, approach in the Western interpretation of detective
stories in cultural context is the idea that they provide relaxation or escape
from the worries of daily life in democratic society, a view pioneered by
William Aydelotte in 1949.11 This view was further developed in the 1980s
from a Continental critical, broadly Marxist, point of view to claim that de-
tective fiction "legitimates the power of a dominating social group or
class,'" 2 and promotes the socio-cultural status quo. Drawing on Frankfurt
7 Ibid., p. 317.
8 They were contested even in the West already long ago. See e.g. William O. Aydelotte,
"The Detective Story as a Historical Source." Yale Review, vol. XXXIX (1949-50), pp.
76-95.
9 See e.g. the Song dynasty (960-1279) manual T'ang-yin-pi-shih: Parallel cases from un-
der the pear-tree. Trans. R. H. van Gulik. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1956).
10 On imperial Chinese jurisdiction, see e.g. Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Im-
perial China (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1973); The Great Qing Code. Trans.
William C. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Melissa Macauley, Social Power and Le-
gal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford U P, 1998);
K.G. Turner, J.V. Feinerman and R.K. Guy (eds.), The Limits of the Rule of Law in Chi-
na (Seattle & London: U of Washington P, 2000).
11 Aydelotte. He argues that detective stories have totalitarian political setups: the criminal
resembles the scapegoat, the detective the dictator, and as such the genre shows the un-
bearable psychological strains that democracy places on individuals, while the stories
simultaneously relieve the burden by affording escape.
12 Heta Pyrhönen, Murder from an Academic Angle (Columbia: Camden House, 1994): 84.
For examples of this approach, see Stephen Knight, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction
160 Marja Kaikkonen
School ideas, these leftist radical critics may have had a fundamental wish
to improve Western European society; therefore they were not even look-
ing for globally or historically relevant solutions. Apart from appearing
embarrassingly elitist and patronising toward the popular readership in
general, these theories are clearly ahistorical and inapplicable to the sud-
den and early popularity of the detective story in China. China in the early
twentieth century was in an overall state of flux, so the status quo which
fiction presumably could have tried to preserve—if any—was the imperial
order, which scarcely matches these theories. Moreover, for someone who
rejects Marx's interpretation of history or society, it is naturally impossible
to accept the use of any theory derived from his views. 1970s American
cultural studies, if also too far removed from the Chinese early twentieth
century, at least claim a positive role for detective fiction 13 —a relevant
point as there is no doubt that detective stories in China were received with
a sense of conviction of their benefits.
Because of the communist aversion to urban popular culture, Chinese
critics and literary historians have only in the last decade or two started
looking at early twentieth-century popular fiction with the intention of ana-
lysing it, rather than simply placing it in a politically preconceived slot.
While we can observe a cautious liberalisation of thought by comparison
with the earlier, strictly condemnatory attitudes, there have so far been few
novel analytic approaches. 14 There have been even fewer Western studies;
the only major one, although not dealing mainly with detective fiction, ba-
sically subscribes to the "fiction for comfort" idea and to the views of
American 1970s criticism in claiming that this fiction was a way for people
in Chinese cities to "keep westernization at an arm's length,'" 5 a view that
I do not share.
The popularity of the detective story in China coincides with the most
intensive and comprehensive—as well as overdue—period of modernisa-
tion in the country, and the most obvious conclusion is that there was
(London: Macmillan, 1980); Dennis Porter, The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in
Detective Fiction (New Haven & London: Yale U P, 1981); Jerry Palmer, Potboilers:
Methods, Concepts, and Case Studies in Popular Fiction (London & New York:
Routledge, 1991).
13 See e.g., John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art
and Popular Culture (Chicago & London: The U of Chicago P, 1976).
14 For one, see Yuan Jin, Yuanyang-hudiepai (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1994), pp.
188-202.
15 E. Perry Link, Jr., Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twenti-
eth-Century Chinese Cities (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: U of California P, 1981).
something in detective stories that matched this atmosphere of modern

change and reform. Therefore it seems natural to look for qualities in de-
tective stories that could be viewed as carriers of modern ideas. In this ar-
ticle I hope to illustrate how a few of these are embedded in detective
stories. But which ideas are modern? And what is "modern," anyway?
In this article, "modern" is something that has to do with modernisation.
I have elsewhere presented a tentative description of modernisation 16 that
attempts to avoid Eurocentric historical approaches, including the post-
colonial one, which in my opinion simplifies the rest of the world into col-
lectives of victims whose only choice has been to relate themselves to the
West. Even in the nineteenth century China was enough of a superpower in
Asia to dissuade us from any such view, and its twentieth-century history
is also a proud, although dearly bought, statement against such an interpre-
tation. 17 My idea of a de-Westernised view of modernisation emphasises
more universal attributes in the developments that are named modernisa-
tion; therefore I also reject the term "Westernisation" as patronising and
conducive to misunderstandings. 18 My views have grown out of work on
popular culture, and a desire to avoid an academic bias, which to me con-
sists not only of moralising, patronising and/or antipathetic attitudes to-
ward the popular in general, but also a tendency to give undue weight to
dogmatic, rather than pragmatic, explanations of historical developments.
My choice is based on a desire to have a better understanding of the histori-
cal and cultural dynamics of the modern and the popular, as they seem to
belong together, 19 and not on any presupposition of how things ought to be.
The basic tenets of my description of modernisation are, first, that it has
as its core a number of technological and scientific inventions. It is impor-
tant to emphasise the technological aspect as fundamental, since it is glo-
bally neutral and shared to a greater extent than any other changes, while
the common way to explain modernisation today starts out from European
history with the Enlightenment, globalisation, and so on, and leads un-
16 A simple sketch is published as "Globalization, Modernization and Popular Culture."

Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 10 (1999), pp. 85-96. The topic is elab-
orated in more detail in "Modernisation De-Westernised," forthcoming.
17 Cf. related issues discussed in this volume in Roberta Micallef's article "Cultural En-
counters in Contemporary Turkish Children's Literature: Victims or Heroes?"
18 Other scholars have also recently questioned the view that modernisation is a simple is-
sue of Westernisation; see e.g. Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shang-
hai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley: U of California P, 1999), pp. 294-295.
19 Cf. Christina Nygren's article in this volume, "Appropriations of European Theatre in
Japan, China and India."
162 Marja Kaikkonen
avoidably into Eurocentric interpretations. The use of technological and

scientific innovations has generally been welcomed. But the application of
such inventions radically challenges the existing economic system, wher-
ever they are applied. Economic systems have a symbiotic relationship
with power, so every radical transformation in the economy causes strong
reactions from those whose privileges are at stake. 20 Not surprisingly, we
find in history national elites frequently wishing to import foreign technol-
ogy while simultaneously rejecting foreign "culture."
But the fact that modern technology can reduce the burden of manual la-
bour and thus make life easier makes this technology particularly desirable
for the common people. Even today, the general desirability of things mod-
ern is clearly shown by the way that those who still lack access to them
crave them and are prepared to forsake many things for them. 21 When the
common people raise their standard of living by earning cash wages or be-
coming entrepreneurs, their economic advances upset the previous pattern
of wealth and cause the economic elite to view the changes as a threat and
to oppose them. The cultural elite, which is closely allied to the economic
elite, naturally follows suit. The meaning of "elite" should be here be un-
derstood in a neutral way, as opposed to non-elite. In my view, every so-
ciety has elites, but it is in the means of access to elites that societies differ:
European aristocracy had access by birth, imperial Chinese officialdom by
education from childhood. Modernisation makes it possible to widen the
access to anyone who exerts him/herself, and who makes an individual ef-
fort. For this purpose, the individual needs to be created, every traditional,
collective identity changed into a modern, individual one.
European history provides ample illustration of elites' opposition to
modernisation: neither democratic institutions nor their cultural counter-
parts, universal education or literacy, were won without struggle. 22 Conse-
quently, the popular or mass culture which arises during the modernisation
process seems to carry ideas which are essential to modernisation and are
20 This applies for example to Luddites, although our postmodern age prefers to see them
merely as anti-technology agents. Cf. e.g. Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future:
The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (Reading: Addison Wesley,
1995) and Nicols Fox, Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature,
Art, and Individual Lives (Washington: Island P, 2002), pp. 24-40.
21 E. g. through illegal immigration.
22 See e.g. Maurice James Quinlan, Victorian Prelude: A History of English Manners
1700-1830 (New York: Columbia U P, 1941), pp. 68-100; Patrick Brantlinger, The
Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
(Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana U P, 1998).
therefore threatening to those whose interests are being challenged. How

else can one explain the repeated acts of suppression, orchestrated by vari-
ous elites, of expressions of modern popular culture, in Europe, China, and
elsewhere, in the past and even today.
My second tenet is that it is because modern developments benefit and
therefore are supported by the common people that the history of mod-
ernisation is also the history of egalitarian and democratic ideas. Wealth
necessarily entails power, and the demands for democracy and equality
are therefore a natural consequence of the rising material standard of the
common people striving to participate in power. Consequently, it would
be surprising if popular-cultural products contained no trace of this aspi-
ration. On the basis of the early detective-story critics' observations and
the multiple bans imposed on detective stories in dictatorships, I think we
can expect that detective stories do contain elements of these ideas—or at
least they did: today's detective stories fall outside the scope of this arti-
cle. The question that interests me is whether one can find evidence of
such ideas and values in detective stories, and if so, how they are mani-
fested.
In the following I hope to be able to offer examples of some evidence of
modern ideas in a Chinese 1920s detective story. As a contrast and com-
parison that only China can offer us, I include a similar analysis of a tradi-
tional public case story as well as a communist police story from the
1950s. What is noteworthy in these three genres is that they are in some
way bound to their respective political systems: while public case fiction
was very popular during the nineteenth century, it lost its appeal when de-
tective stories arrived. The Maoist system could not tolerate urban popular
fiction at all, and soon ended up banning all modern and traditional genres,
including detective stories and science fiction, although some still deemed
them didactically valuable for their rationality and the effect they were
considered to have in promoting interest in modern science. Instead, au-
thors were made to produce crime fiction with calculated "revolutionary"
messages with the help of Soviet examples. It was not until after the Mao-
ist era that popular literature of every kind was revived. In the Chinese
case, then, detective work has been described through three chronological-
ly sequential genres, each during a different political and, consequently, ju-
dicial, system. Can this be explained by the ideas embodied in the genres?
I would like to claim that it is the modern ideas or mentality in the detec-
tive stories that made them supersede the public case genre as well as made
them unacceptable in a system built on Marxist teachings.
164 Marja Kaikkonen
As this is a literary-historical subject, I propose to present readings of

the stories with an eye to the information and world-view that we can sup-
pose an ordinary Chinese reader, contemporary with the stories, to have
had. Of course, this will not prevent my benefiting from some historical
hindsight in the analysis. Such an "historical" reading is something quite
different from a reading where we, Western readers of 2005, are the con-
sumers of the literary work, no matter what origin or age it has, and where
we can express our own views or reflections on the piece from today's
point of view. A Chinese reader reading a Western-type detective story in
the 1920s did not think like today's European theorists or critics; we have
no reason to put anachronistic ideas into the heads of past readers. 23
The rest of this article is divided into the following parts: Parts Two to
Four each briefly present a Chinese genre of detective fiction from an his-
torically and politically specific period, analysing a piece belonging to
each of these genres. Part Two deals with the traditional Chinese public
case fiction; Part Three describes the reception in the early twentieth centu-
ry of the Western-type detective story, and Part Four takes up the 1950s re-
jection of the detective story and presents a Maoist police story. Finally,
Part Five discusses the ideas the three stories embody, particularly those
that can be viewed as modern.
The choice of the three stories analysed was made at random except for
the thematic similarity, which was chosen to make the stories at least in
some respect comparable. All three stories have been reprinted in antholo-
gies in the People's Republic of China (PRC) since the death of Mao Ze-
dong. This means that they are seen as "representative" of their genres by
the publishers. It also means that they may to a certain extent reflect Mao-
ist preferences.
All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
2. The Public Case Story

The Chinese public case (gongan) fiction is a genre of traditional oral
storytelling which has been a source of countless written anecdotes,
theatrical plays and stories in the vernacular since the Song dynasty (960-
1279). The genre seems to have evolved around an historical person, Judge
Bao Zheng (999-1062), who was an incorruptible official known for his
23 The articles in this volume treat this question in various ways. See e.g. Christina Ny-
gren's article.
stern but fair judgement. Stories of his feats have been passed down for
centuries: a corpus of 100 crime cases adjudicated by Judge Bao first
evolved into written form, published as Bao Longtu Resolves a Hundred
Court Cases (Bao Longtu pan baijia gongan), around 1600.24
The stories primarily tell of spectacular solutions of unusual crime
cases, and natural selection has led to the evolution of stories where the act
of detection receives unusual focus. This evolution made the Chinese pub-
lic case fiction into an early and very Chinese form of detective story. Thus
we have Judge Bao resolving crime cases in disguise or while pretending
to be ill, or by tricking the culprit into revealing his guilt; in some stories
Bao is in contact with the culprits in an unusually direct way, very likely
possible only in fiction. All through these stories, Bao remains an elevated
figure, "a hero half human, half god" who often receives superhuman help
in his work. 25
Judge Bao soon had a great number of followers. Similar stories with
other main characters appeared particularly during the nineteenth century,
and the total number of public case story collections is estimated to be well
over one hundred. 26 The collections consist of individual shorter episodes
with often only a very weak frame story, which gradually come to deal
more and more with the valiant men who volunteered to work for, help and
protect the incorruptible judges. In an even later generic development, the
judges were totally overshadowed and gradually replaced as main charac-
ters by these brave men—but by then we are dealing with a different genre:
knight-errant (wuxia) fiction.
The public case genre gradually became anachronistic in the early 1900s
with the abolition in 1905 of the civil service examinations which had sup-
plied the country with the kind of civil servants that were appointed judges,
and even more so with the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912
and the gradual transition toward a modern judicial system, with a regu-
lated division of labour between police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges.
Simultaneously, the modern detective story was introduced to China and
rapidly became very popular.
24 See e.g. Patrick Hanan, "Judge Bao's Hundred Cases Reconstructed." Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies, 40:2 (1980), pp. 301-323.
25 Zhao Nanrong, "Qianyan." In Xiao Jinlin, Zhongguo xiandai tongsu xiaoshuo xuanping:
Zhentan juan (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1992), p. 3; Wang Chungui and Liu Bingze,
Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo gailun (Taiyuan: Beiyue wenyi, 1993), p. 91.
26 Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. Trans. Robert van Gulik. [1949] (New York: Dover,
1976), p. 231.
166 Marja Kaikkonen
The judge stories are to a certain extent historical stories. Most of the
judges are historical persons with biographies included in the official dy-
nastic histories, and an occasional case is also verified in non-fictional
sources. In part, then, the background of these stories coincides with his-
torical fact. However, as many of the stories have been passed down in oral
tradition for centuries, they seem to have lost their historical particularities
and melded together to reflect a rather stereotyped image of Chinese impe-
rial jurisdiction. 27
This stereotype is based on the figure of the judge, the county magistrate,
the lowest grade of state civil official. Magistrates were all appointed to their
posts by the emperor for a period of three years, from the pool of qualified
men formed by those who had passed the civil service examinations. 28 Cru-
cial to the rule of any county was the moral backbone of the magistrate. The
corruption often present in Chinese society was contagious, and often went
unpunished in practice. An official who was not corrupt did not necessarily
reap any fruits from his firmness of principle other than a good conscience
and the appreciation of the common people. On the contrary: he could easily
incur the wrath of powerful colleagues or superiors, influential nobles or
landowners or relatives of any notable person. These could falsely accuse
him of misconduct, and this would lead to an investigation, the outcome of
which could easily destroy or delay his career. The historical Judge Bao was
by no means immune to such machinations, and as it happened he could not
avoid being demoted at some time or another.
There were naturally strict regulations to prevent lax or abusive exercise
of power, and the mighty imperial censors could turn up anywhere incog-
nito to check the officials' work. The people had a general right to appeal
to higher judicial instance for a retrial, and the officials had the right—or
duty—to denounce their superiors to higher authorities so as to avoid shar-
ing responsibility for judicial errors. 29 It was of course well-known to the
readers of public case stories that these good principles were in practice not
always able to guarantee fair judicial treatment. 30
27 On the view of jurisdiction in public case stories, see Carsten Storm, Von Tätern und Op-
fern: Rechtsmentalität in chinesischen Kriminalerzählungen zwischen 1600 und 1900
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004).
28 On the examinations, see e.g. Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examina-
tions in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000).
29 Alison W. Conner, "True Confessions?." In Turner, Feinerman and Guy, pp. 132-164.
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee: XX-XXI.
30 See e.g. S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, 2 vols. (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen [1883]
1965), vol. 1, pp. 502-515.
In fiction the main character is always the incorruptible official and

judge. The reason why Judge Bao Zheng became the greatest favourite of
this type of fiction appears to be that the emperors whom he served (or at
least one of them) acquired great confidence in him as well as a respect for
the principles that Bao upheld, and therefore came to endorse Bao's judge-
ments. Bao also attained a position of higher rank than that of the stereo-
typical county magistrate, which gave him more leeway to use his power.
According to tradition, Bao did not judge people according to their rank or
position. All this made it both necessary and possible for him to punish
people even in high positions, people who usually would have got away
with crimes by bribing or intimidating witnesses, judges and others in-
volved. In this respect, Judge Bao differs from the usual non-fictional his-
torical world and becomes a legend.
2.1 Analysis of a Sample Story

The following story, "An Interlocking Murder Case Uncovered by a Pig
Head" is a typical episode in the later Judge Bao narrative. 31 Not found in
the early editions, it appears in the Aural Record of [the Lord of] the Impe-
rial Sketch (Longtu er lu), a prose work transcribed between 1820 and
1850 from the live performances of a storyteller. 32
The story starts with a woman wanting to present a petition to Bao. She
claims to have written it herself. Bao makes her rewrite the text to prove
that she is telling the truth; only after that does he accept her petition. That
a woman can write is of course unusual; obviously she comes from an en-
lightened family. Writing a petition for one's arrested son when one has no
31 This title is the one used in Exchanging a Leopard Cat for a Prince: Famous Trials Con-
ducted by Lord Bao, compiled by Hu Ben (Beijing: Foreign Languages P, 1997), p. 75.
In the original, episodes have no names; instead, every chapter is designated by two
phrases which cryptically describe the contents of the chapter. This episode begins at the
very end of Chapter 9, covers all of Chapter 10 and most of Chapter 11 of Longtu er lu,
vol. 1, pp. 104—25. The designations that refer to this episode are: Ch. 10: "Student buy-
ing a pig's head meets with severe calamity; a gallant disguised as a beggar catches a
murderer"; Ch. 11: "Ye Qian'er is interrogated and Judge Bao settles the case." See
Longtu erlu. 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1981), vol. 1, p. 1.
32 Translations and paraphrases of the episode, although from later originals, can be found
in: Susan Blader, Tales of Magistrate Bao and His Valiant Lieutenants: Selections from
Sanxia wuyi (Hong Kong: The Chinese U P, 1998), pp. 13-32; Exchanging a Leopard
Cat for a Prince: 75-97; and in Shi Yukun and Yu Yue, The Seven Heroes and Five Gal-
lants (Beijing: Chinese Literature P, 1997), pp. 76-89.
168 Marja Kaikkonen
male relative to do so is certainly commendable, so she is found trust-

worthy and our judge has shown his conscientiousness and his attention to
detail.
The woman, Mrs. Han, is a widow who rents three rooms in Bai Family
Village. She supports herself and her son by doing needlework, a dignified
job for a woman in dire straits. One evening the son, Han Ruilong, sees a
man enter his mother's room. Upset at the thought of his mother perhaps
not being a chaste widow, he rushes into her room but cannot see anyone.
When the same thing is repeated the next evening, he tells his mother what
he saw. He checks the room, but no one can be found. She has been proved
innocent, and he has proved that he is morally alert and prepared to take
over the responsibility for their household (or at least for his mother's
chastity), as a grown son should do, all in accordance with Confucian
teachings. The shadow that the mysterious man casts on Mrs. Han's char-
acter creates a slight suspense in the story: is there something supernatural
about her?
Han Ruilong discovers a chest filled with gold and silver buried under
his mother's bed. Reluctantly, the mother agrees to use the money, but re-
quests that they first make an offering to the gods. To discover a treasure in
a newly rented room certainly would raise questions as to whom it belongs,
and the mother's reluctance is reasonable—although she never considers
informing the landlord. It is the possibility of heaven's pity and a super-
natural reward for her honesty that makes her change her mind; obviously
she is conscious of her virtue and believes that such a reward is possible.
Excited, the son gets up early and goes to buy a pig's head for an offering.
Since he has brought no basket, butcher Zheng wraps the head in a cloth
which he lends him.
The social hierarchies of traditional China are now revealed and will
turn out to be decisive for the fates of the characters. Chinese traditional
society was divided into four social groups: gentry, peasants, artisans, and
merchants, in descending order of importance, theoretically at least. Sev-
eral groups of people, even professionals, were left outside these groups,
e.g. actors and performers of various kinds, prostitutes, executioners, lie-
tors, policemen, and slaves. They were pariahs, whom people from the four
classes would usually not marry, and whose professions were not an option
for the common people if they wanted to honour their ancestors. They were
also discriminated against by the judicial system: if one of them killed
someone with a higher status, he would be punished more harshly than if
the roles were switched. Even butchers belonged to this marginalised

group. 33 Popular religious and Buddhist views also give butchers and exe-
cutioners an ominous quality since they take lives. The appearance of a
butcher in the story is a sign that we are faced with someone likely to be
guilty, in strong contrast to the two earlier figures who appear faultless.
Policemen discover a woman's head in Han's bloody bundle and take
him to the magistrate. Horrified, he can only tell what happened. When the
butcher Zheng denies ever selling him a pig's head, they are both arrested.
The stereotypes work for and against each of these characters. A frail stu-
dent is found with a woman's head but blames Zheng for giving it to him.
He is not tortured but only arrested; obviously he has convinced the magis-
trate that he would not be capable of such a crime. The butcher claims to
have had nothing to do with the matter, but is still arrested—because he ap-
pears suspicious.
When Judge Bao, appearing here as a higher official, arrives at the local
court, he sends the magistrate to investigate the Hans' home. It turns out
that the chest under the bed was filled with funerary paper money, but be-
neath it was found a headless male corpse. When the magistrate cannot re-
port how the man had been murdered, he gets a reprimand from Bao. The
magistrate is rather incompetent, but that of course makes Bao shine the
more brightly.
One of Bao's assistants, Zhao, wants to help and decides to go out dis-
guised as a beggar. He catches a man who acts like a thief but says he has
not stolen anything—yet. When Zhao discovers a woman's headless body
on the spot, the man, Ye, comes under much more suspicion, but denies
having killed her. The Zhao episode adds a long farcical section to the
story. Zhao is a true anti-hero who paradoxically also produces the crucial
detective discovery. He is so stupid that his colleagues make fun of him
and his servant exploits him. Why he is simply not replaced by his smart
servant is of course because the servant is low enough to cheat on Zhao,
which morally disqualifies him from serving anyone on high, namely,
Judge Bao. In fact Zhao is quite virtuous. His motive for acting in this case
is merely to help Bao solve the problem. He is not concerned with prestige
or face: he gladly shows himself in a ridiculous beggar's outfit in front of
Bao's entire staff. He is optimistic, generous and very loyal. Despite these
qualities, Zhao is portrayed as too rash to be wise. His servant needs to
33 Anders Hansson, Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late imperial

China (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pp. 50-53.
170 Marja Kaikkonen
point out to him that he cannot disguise himself as a doctor, since he can-
not even read, much less write a prescription. But high morals bring luck:
Zhao stumbles upon a culprit who has a lot to tell.
The interrogation and Ye's vivid character bring more comedy to the
piece. Ye indeed has bad luck at every turn: he is initially caught when he
is only planning to steal, and happens to be caught in a place where a
corpse is found, which incriminates him seriously. He confesses that he
was going to steal, since he has to care for his old mother, and that he had
bad luck in being caught the first time. Ye is enough of a Confucian to
know that the duties toward parents are so formidable that even morals
come second to them. 34 He tells the truth about planning to steal and not
having killed, but he is not believed. Flogged to extort a confession, he
happens to reveal that he has stolen several times before, something he has
denied earlier. Poor Ye is not bright enough to lie successfully; his memo-
ry is no match for Bao's. Furthermore, his story shows that this good-for-
nothing petty thief has had a good deal of bad luck before. Ye calculated
on earning some money or food by helping the rich man Bai, but was given
neither. Disappointed, he went back in the night to steal. Since Bai had lav-
ished valuables on his concubine Yinniang, Ye went to her apartment. He
happened to witness Yinniang receiving Bai's steward An in her bed,
which gave him an opportunity for blackmail, but bad luck returned when
he happened to steal a box with a man's head instead of jewels. This was
not only worthless for blackmail purposes but also incriminating. Bearing
a grudge against the old man Qiu, who had beaten him when he stole Qiu's
melons, Ye simply tossed the head into his courtyard.
Poor Ye, a simple melon thief without evil intent, ends up with more
problems than he seems to deserve. His character illustrates clearly that the
risks on the path of crime are enormous, while the gains are never guaran-
teed. His pathetic attempts to conceal the truth about his thefts also seem
intended to show how only people with very simple minds would choose a
criminal career, in contrast to the superiority of the representative of right-
eousness, the judge.
The butcher Zheng is the second pitiful figure in the story. Unlike Ye, he
seems unaware of the moral wrongfulness of his deeds; this quality appar-
ently makes him capable of serious crime. The backyard where the female
corpse was found belongs to butcher Zheng, and he finds it best to confess:
34 This was not just an excuse: the criminal code allowed for an exemption from the death
penalty for the only living kinsman of an elderly parent or grandparent. Williams, vol. 1,
p. 510.
a young woman had run into his shop to hide from her pursuers. When
Zheng made advances to her with the help of a knife, her head just
"dropped off." Zheng had buried the corpse and was picking off her valu-
able hairpins when he was interrupted by a customer, Han. As if to demon-
strate his lack of a sense of guilt, he is made to complain that he had not
even had time to enjoy his booty before being caught. Zheng's social status
is shown as a self-fulfilling prophecy: morally and intellectually deprived
as can be expected from a social pariah, he can only view his deeds in a
utilitarian light.
The old man Qiu, his farmhand Hou, and Hou's cousin Si are presented
as sketches only. Qiu, who appears to be a farmer, puts comfort before
honesty and bribes Hou to get rid of a problem—the head tossed into his
yard by Ye. Hou is then blackmailed for the silver by Si, who is of un-
clear—but certainly low—status; Hou refuses to pay, and kills Si instead.
Hou is pathetic in that he reveals his serious crime by getting too nervous
to think straight: instead of showing where he buried the head, he reveals
Si's corpse. The man with a higher status, Qiu, is less of a criminal than the
two greedy figures Hou and Si, who go so far as to kill and to blackmail a
relative, respectively.
The rich man Bai has, together with his steward An, killed his cousin
Liu, whom Bai owed a large sum. An buries the corpse in the storeroom,
but keeps the head in mercury in case his affair with Yinniang is revealed.
Bai seems to confirm the high-status-low-crime/low-status-high-crime
principle: we are not told how he got rich, but he is probably a merchant, as
he is not presented with any title. Even his criminality, then, works to
strengthen the stereotype of the four social strata, where merchants are
ranked lowest. As if to counter the status-enhancing effect that his wealth
gives him in society, we are given more negative details about his charac-
ter: he is shown as stingy (for not rewarding Ye for his help), unreliable
and ungrateful (for not paying his debt to Liu who helped him out when he
was poor), greedy (for renting out haunted rooms to Mrs. Han), prone to
pleasures (for keeping a concubine), and unable to discipline his household
(his concubine and steward betray him). All this convinces the reader that
he must be capable of crime. Bai is not shown in a pitiful or comical light
as the butcher Zheng and the thief Ye are; it is as if their low status makes
their criminality so self-evident that their characters can be exposed
through ridicule without the risk of the message not getting through.
Judge Bao himself gets surprisingly little attention in the story. But then,
of course, he does have about a millennium of tradition behind his charac-
172 Marja Kaikkonen
ter. The story is also taken from the middle of a book, where a general
presentation of his character would be unlikely. The story ends in the usual
way: Judge Bao pronounces the sentences and shows how he brings justice
to the world. 35 Moral aspects closely tied to both social and Confucian hier-
archy are important factors in Chinese jurisdiction, and Bao's judgement
naturally uses them to perfection. Zheng, Hou and Bai deserve the most se-
rious punishment and are to be beheaded for murder. The cases are uncom-
plicated, as the perpetrators have the same social status as the victims. The
butcher kills a prostitute, who, although she claims never to have agreed to
such treatment, has committed a crime by running away from her legal
owner, and is therefore not an honourable person. Hou kills his cousin and
Bai his; details reveal no differences in status. An's is a different case alto-
gether. Besides assisting in murder, he has committed adultery with his
master's concubine, thus betraying his master's trust in him. This earns
him execution by strangulation. Ye is to be conscripted for trying to impli-
cate someone by way of revenge; Qiu is to be banished for secretly burying
a head and for offering bribes to avoid being implicated. Yinniang is to be
sold by the authorities, a surprisingly slight punishment as she would, after
the execution of her husband, quite likely be sold anyway. The local
magistrate, who ought to be reported for carelessness, may keep his post as
he has shown improvement. Han Ruilong, who ought to be punished for
secretly harbouring suspicions about his mother, is exempted as he is
young and ignorant; he is to show filial piety to his mother and study hard.
These two pronouncements are interesting as displays of leniency, a pat-
ronising but also caring attitude, and a concern about morals. Mrs. Han is
to be rewarded with silver from the local treasury for supporting her son's
studies and for not being lured by riches, also a very sympathetic gesture
from the good judge.
3. The Detective Story
Western detective stories were introduced into China in the late 1890s and
soon became very popular. 36 Translations of Sherlock Holmes stories ap-
35 For a hierarchy of punishments, see e.g. The Great Qing Code, pp. 33-36.
36 The popularity was subsequently explained by the similarity of detective stories to tradi-
tional Chinese public case stories and by the public's liking for stories where evil gets its
punishment. A Ying, Wan Qing xiaoshuo shi (N.p.: Shangwu yinshuguan, n.d.), pp. 274,
282f.
peared for the first time in the Shanghai journal The Chinese Progress
(Shiwubao) in 1896. They were soon followed by a number of collections
by different translators, 37 some of which were reprinted continuously for
decades. Edgar Allan Poe's detective stories were also translated from ear-
ly on, starting with "The Gold Bug" in 1905.38 Nick Carter Investigates
Cases (Nie Katuo tan an), [Sexton] Blake [?] Talks Detection (Bei Ke zhen
tan tan), [Dick] Donovan Investigates Cases (Duonawen tan an) were
other collections translated before 1911,39 while a translation of the col-
lected cases of Arsene Lupin by M. Leblanc appeared a few years later.
From around 1900, Chinese authors also tried their hand at creating "de-
tective cases." Wu Jianren and other conservative writers, torn by the con-
flict between the idea that detective stories "had nothing to do with the
politics, education, or customs of our country" (that is, China does not
need foreign/modern culture) and the idea that "our country has [always]
had this kind of writing" (that is, the West is really only learning from Chi-
na; there is nothing new in detective stories), tried to adapt public case
stories into detective stories.40 At the same time, some others clearly
modelled their work on Western detective fiction. 41
In the 1910s, the number of indigenous detective stories grew con-
siderably. Cheng Xiaoqing was the first to create a bestselling Chinese de-
tective. Modelled on Sherlock Holmes, Cheng's "Huo Sang, the Chinese
Holmes," appeared from 1919 onwards in more than a hundred "cases." 42
Huo Sang achieved unprecedented popularity and continued to be re-
printed for decades and to influence all subsequent Chinese detective writ-
ing.
37 Link, 129. Hung, 157. Liu Yangti, Liubian zhong de liupai—"Yuanyang hudie pai" xin
lun (Beijing: Zhongguo Wenlian, 1997), pp. 279-280. For a list of early translations of
Sherlock Holmes stories, see Hung, pp. 174ff.
38 Anna Song and Zexin Huang, "Zhongguo zhentan xiaoshuo fazhan de lishi huigu."
Zhuomuniao No. 1, 1996, pp. 155ff.
39 Cheng Xiaoqing, "Zhentan xiaoshuo de duofangmian," 70. Nick Carter was created in
the 1880s by John Russell Coryell, who used the name as his pseudonym. Sexton Blake
was the hero of a "large syndicate of detective authors," while Dick Donovan appears to
be the hero-cum-pseudonym of Joyce Emmerson Muddock. John Carter, "Collecting
Detective Fiction." In Haycraft, The Art of the Mystery Story, pp. 469-470.
40 Song and Huang, p. 156. Wu Jianren's stories were published as Chinese detective cases
(Zhongguo zhentan an) by Guangzhi shuju in Shanghai, 1906.
41 For details, see Fan Boqun, "Zhentan xiaoshuo 'Zhongguohua' zhi zongjiang—Cheng
Xiaoqing." In Cheng Xiaoqing, Zhentan taidou Cheng Xiaoqing (Taibei: Yeqiang,
1993), pp. 2-10.
42 Lu Runxiang, Shenmi de zhentan shijie: Cheng Xiaoqing Sun Liaohong xiaoshuo yishu
tan (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1996).
174 Marja Kaikkonen
Another bestselling figure was the "Arsene Lupin of the East" (Yasen
Luoping), modelled by the writer Sun Liaohong, while He Puzhai and Yu
Mugu created a competitor of the same name and inspired by the same
source. Zhang Biwu's hero was named Song Wuqi (see below). Another in-
digenous detective was the writer Lu Dan'an's amateur detective Li Fei. 43
From the mid-1920s, more than 50 writers were engaged in writing detective
stories. Journals specialising in detective stories were even established. 44
It is therefore possible to state that there was a real detective-story "fe-
ver" in early twentieth-century China. This was a development that to a
large extent had to do with the political and social changes in China. The
latter half of the nineteenth century had been characterised by frustrated at-
tempts at reform and it ended in a shocking awakening to the nation's
military defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95)—shocking, because
China had always viewed Japan as an inferior little neighbour. The reme-
dies that were designed to restrengthen China included a revitalisation of
Chinese culture, a project in which literature came to play a role. The new
century began with a daring move: the abolition of the civil examinations
in 1905. This soon led to the spread of schooling, and, with rising litera-
cy,45 contributed to the flourishing of popular fiction as one form of urban
mass culture.
Another important change, one that strongly contrasted with traditional
ideas, was that fiction, or novels (xiaoshuo) as a genre, were promoted
from around 1900 as an important form of writing and as a way to "save
the country," by people such as the influential reformer Liang Qichao, who
adopted the idea from John Fryer (Fu Lanya), an American missionary. 46
43 Luan Meijian,"Siwei zhenmi de zhentan xiaoshuojia—Lu Dan'an pingzhuan," in Liu

Xiang'an (ed.), Zhongguo zhentan xiaoshuo zongjiang—Cheng Xiaoqing (N.p.: Nanjing
chubanshe, 1994), p. 281. The collection was entitled The collected cases of Li Fei (Li
Fei tan an ji).
44 See e.g. Luan Meijian, p. 282; Sun Jilin, "Xiandai zhentan wenxue qikan jian jie," in
Xiao Jinlin, pp. 30-33.
45 On changes in education and literacy, see e.g. Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Education and
Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1979); David Johnson,
"Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China," in Johnson, Nathan
and Rawski (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: U of California P,
1985), pp. 34-72; Sally Borthwick, Education and Social Change in China: The Begin-
nings of the Modern Era (Stanford: Hoover Institution P, 1983).
46 Yuan Jin, Zhongguo wenxue guannian de jindai biange (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui-
kexueyuan chubanshe, 1996), pp. 67ff. Fryer is identified in Wang Lixin, Meiguo chuan-
jiaoshi yu wan Qing Zhongguo xiandaihua (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin, 1997), p. 518. On
Liang Qichao's et al. theory of the novel, see e.g. Yan Tingliang, Wan Qing xiaoshuo
lilun (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996).
L i a n g wrote: " [ . . . ] political n o v e l s should b e given the highest credit f o r

b e i n g i n s t r u m e n t a l in t h e steady p r o g r e s s m a d e in t h e political s p h e r e in
A m e r i c a , E n g l a n d , G e r m a n y , F r a n c e , Austria, Italy, a n d J a p a n . " 4 7 H e ar-
g u e d that it w a s t h r o u g h t h e r e a d i n g of n o v e l s c o n v e y i n g u s e f u l ideas such
as science and d e m o c r a c y that the C h i n e s e p e o p l e c o u l d b e r e m o u l d e d so
as to m e e t t h e c h a l l e n g e s of t h e n e w times. T h i s w a s seen as urgent in the
a t m o s p h e r e of e t h n i c c o m p e t i t i o n created by S o c i a l - D a r w i n i s t ideas that
h a d spread to C h i n a .
If one intends to renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its
fiction. Therefore, to renovate morality, one must renovate fiction; to reno-
vate religion, one must renovate fiction; to renovate politics, one must reno-
vate fiction; to renovate social customs, one must renovate fiction; to reno-
vate learning and arts, one must renovate fiction; and to renovate even the
human mind and remold its character, one must renovate fiction. Why is
this so? This is because fiction has a profound power over the way of man. 48
D e t e c t i v e n o v e l s w e r e seen as tools f o r t h e i m p r o v e m e n t of the p e o p l e , as

they w e r e seen to contain m u c h - n e e d e d scientific k n o w l e d g e , the lack of
w h i c h w a s v i e w e d as a reason f o r C h i n a ' s p r o b l e m s :
Unscientific peoples will be overcome by scientific peoples, irrational

heads will be overcome by rational heads, [...] If we want to cleanse
unscientific, irrational heads a little, there are naturally many methods to do
so, for example by promoting scientific education, working hard to spread
science, etc. But the first thing is to arouse the common people's interest in
science, their awareness of and respect for rationality. If we want to accom-
plish this, detective stories are indeed a powerful pioneering troupe. This is
because detective stories are based on rationality and science, while fiction
is the easiest way to affect people; if only a wide interest in detective stories
can be aroused among the common people, then mystery-ridden heads will
not be hard to overcome, and rational, scientific heads will not be hard to
foster 49
T h i s w a s not j u s t a question of facts but of a mentality:
Detective stories can be said to contain all essential scientific methods of

observation, gathering evidence, deduction, induction, judgment etc. It is
true that detective stories do not supply any material science such as astron-
47 Liang Qichao, "Foreword to the Publication of Political Novels in Translation" ("Yi yin
zhengzhi xiaoshuo xu"), trans. Gek Nai Cheng, in Kirk A. Denton (ed.), Modern Chinese
Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945, p. 73.
48 Liang Qichao, "On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People"
("Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi"), trans. Gek Nai Cheng, in Denton, p. 74.
49 Zhang Yian, "Xu," in Cheng Xiaoqing, Huo Sang tan an huikan, 13 vols. (Shanghai:
Wenhua meishu tushu yinshuagongsi, 1931), vol. 1, pp. 1-2.
176 Marja Kaikkonen
omy, physics, or biology etc., but through their subtle influence they sug-
gest scientific methods. We are of the opinion that in our era scientific
methods are tools with which we ordinary people meet any kind of facts;
their use is by no means limited to the needs of pure scientists. 50
O n e of t h e cultural evils that rationality w a s to cure w a s superstition and

other old ideas:
I admit detective stories are a kind of popular science textbooks in disguise;

apart from literary enjoyment, they also have the function of awakening
curiosity and arousing intellect. In such an inveterately superstitious and
decadent society as ours, detective stories are certainly needed as a remedy
suited to the disease, a remedy that cleanses, destroys and sweeps away [old
ideas]. 51
T h e m a i n appeal of t h e detective story, clearly e x p e r i e n c e d by t h e early

translators, readers, a n d writers, w a s its rational quality, its appeal to rea-
son. A c c o r d i n g to C h e n g X i a o q i n g , " n o v e l s are a kind of art w h i c h m o s t l y
a p p e a l s to feelings, but detective n o v e l s are an e x c e p t i o n — b e s i d e s feel-
ings, they appeal also to p e o p l e ' s intellect." 5 2 Similar a r g u m e n t s c a m e to
b e e m p l o y e d to legitimise detective n o v e l s f o r a l o n g time. P e r h a p s they
also c o n t r i b u t e d to a f o c u s on the p o l i c e and j u d i c i a l s y s t e m of the c o u n t r y :
Finally, the state of our judicature on the whole is simply too pitiful! When
a violent crime occurs somewhere, the speed [of the investigation] is usu-
ally decided by the social class of the victim. If the victim is a commoner
with neither property nor influence, it makes no difference whether the case
is solved or not. When the case is opened, there is the unavoidable display
of perfunctory routines, but after a few days the case will automatically
vanish like smoke. If the victim is influential, it is also no problem. The
responsible inspectors just catch any Tom, Dick or Harry and count him as
the perpetrator; in this manner even tremendous crime cases can be brought
to an end just like that. Such praxis is naturally much simpler as far as for-
malities are concerned, since there is no need for scientific investigation
methods, but the lives of commoners come a bit too cheap! 53
T h e radical literary m o v e m e n t of the M a y F o u r t h p e r i o d (around 1919)

soon c a m e to criticise u r b a n p o p u l a r fiction f o r w h a t w a s seen as its lack of
50 Cheng Xiaoqing as quoted in Huang Yonglin, Zhong χ I tongsu xiaoshuo bijiao yanjiu
(Taibei: Wenjin, 1995), p. 117.
51 Cheng Xiaoqing, "Zhentan xiaoshuo de duofangmian", pp. 70-71.
52 Cheng Xiaoqing, "Zhentan xiaoshuo zuofa zhi yi," in Huo Sang tan an waiji, vol. 1, as
quoted in Zhao Nanrong, p. 4.
53 Cheng Xiaoqing, "Tan zhentan xiaoshuo," Part II. Original published in Hong meigui,
vol. 5, No. 12 (21.5.1929). Reprinted in Rui Heshi et al. (eds.), Yuanyang-hudiepai
wenxue ziliao, 2 vols. (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 64—67.
moral or political purpose and for its entertaining character. Although it

seems that detective stories ought to have been exempted from this criti-
cism because of their eventual utility in "renovating" the people, in the
virulent attacks of the critics no such subtleties were possible. Modern en-
tertainment literature was scornfully named "Mandarin-Duck-and-Butter-
fly School" literature and came to be identified through the periodicals that
specialised in such literature. As detective stories were indeed published in
these journals, they also came to be included in this category, a move that
sealed the fate of the genre with dire consequences. This did not mean that
the proponents of the detective story were silenced, only that the loudest
reformists no longer cherished this cultural form. They did not go so far as
to negate the value of fiction completely, but they came increasingly to
turn against modern urban cultural phenomena. It was the same radicals
who under the communists came to dominate cultural life in the PRC,
when detective stories consequently ended up in the cold.

The following story, "Female Corpse in a Crate" ("Xiang zhong nüshi") is
written by Zhang Biwu. 54 The story is set in 1920s Shanghai. Just like the
Sherlock Holmes cases, this story focuses strongly on the detective Song
Wuqi, his daily life and his work of detection. Like Holmes, Song has a
secretary, Wu, who sometimes comes up with good ideas. Like Holmes,
Song leads a comfortable life with a house and garden, servants, and an
easy and polite, somehow British, lifestyle. He has no family.
Having read a report in the morning paper, Song and Wu hurry to a
roadside outside the city, where a dead woman has been found in a crate.
The guards recognise Song and allow him to inspect the corpse, although
officials have not seen it yet. The detective is clearly well-known, re-
spected, and independent of the police. Displaying some knowledge of
forensic medicine, detective Song examines the victim's body carefully.
The vicinity of dead bodies is in China traditionally associated with many
bad omens and risks, and is avoided altogether if possible. Choosing to
stay long enough in such "company" to coolly observe details about the
corpse is already a feat that gives most normal people the shivers. It is a
sign of professionalism in the detective that he does not allow fear to inter-
54 It was first published in the journal Happy (Kuaihuo), issues 22 and 24, 1923 (or poss-
ibly 1924), and reprinted in 1994 in Liu Xiang'an (ed.), pp. 341-59.
178 Marja Kaikkonen
vene. At the same time, examining a female body, which may not even be
properly clothed, might either embarrass the traditional male or secretly
awaken the voyeur in the beholder. Examining a female body could under
traditional conditions barely be done with a prostitute, and such an act may
have further deepened the contempt felt for the woman. The fact that he is
able to do a serious, competent job in such a situation tells of concern for,
as well as respect for, the victim's situation. Both capacities in the detec-
tive can be viewed as signs of deep vocational commitment and profes-
sional integrity based on modern, individualistic empathy: while dead
bodies in traditional society were dealt with by social pariahs, the detective
defies such attitudes with his rational, matter-of-fact behaviour. He sees
the human individual and a life that has ended in tragedy, and not just a de-
caying corpse in need of removal.
The victim's husband Zhou engages Song to catch the culprit and prom-
ises a handsome reward, something that Song says he never haggles over.
Song is told that the victim, Zhuang Weizhen, was a woman so peaceful
and submissive that she never even quarrelled with servants. She was from
an old-fashioned family and married to an equally old-fashioned young
man, at least from the perspective of women's liberation. Zhou had investi-
gated her past before he married her and found a spotless reputation. Such
a detail was probably quite reassuring for the reader at the time: this was
not another story about "modern" women. This perfect woman is ensured
the reader's sympathies. She is young, beautiful, slightly educated, and be-
haves traditionally. She has no child yet because they have only been mar-
ried for a year. At the same time, the husband is modern enough to take her
out from time to time for walks or to entertainments. This is Shanghai, af-
ter all. But, reassuringly, she never goes out alone. Such cautious adapta-
tion to modern city life reflects the lingering patriarchal values: things may
change, preferably a step at a time, as long as women's morals remain un-
changed—they are known to be the last thing that need be modernised. The
elaboration of her virtue is apparently necessary since Song has concluded
that murder cases with a woman victim are usually committed either for
money or out of jealousy, and as both motives now seem to be elimi-
nated—she had very little money on her—the case is even more puzzling.
Zhou had been shopping with his wife, and she was to return home alone
through busy streets, where no murder could have passed unnoticed.
The detective work that Song then produces is not particularly impres-
sive. With certain cartographical skills, he traces the tobacco crate in which
the body was found to the shop where it was sold, empty, to a woman who
paid a whole silver dollar for it, and then to a rickshaw puller who took the
woman and the crate to a wilderness out of town. He does not travel to the
site to see for himself, however. Instead, he needs an improbable stroke of
luck to find out how the crate got further with the body in it. After days of
frustrated search for an informant among the town's rickshaw pullers, a job
that seems doomed from the beginning, Song miraculously happens to
overhear a rickshaw puller boast about a well-paid ride to the same road-
side. Without revealing his identity, Song questions the man and learns the
crucial address.
Song takes no risks: he gets warrants of arrest from the county head and
takes four policemen with him when he nears the ramshackle house. The
two suspects are arrested, and Song gets permission to interrogate them.
The pair are a mother and a son, whose names are not revealed. They are
found smoking opium, a common habit at the time. Bloody ropes and a
knife are discovered in the house, and the two simply find it best to talk.
This makes them appear modern, rational individuals: they need not be tor-
tured to confess. They both describe themselves in negative terms: he says
he is a "swindler," and she is "not a law-abiding person" who brings men
and women together, a madam. They show a matter-of-fact attitude to their
criminality. He has access to a magic drug, which, thrown onto a person,
makes him/her unconscious but able to walk, follow him and obey his in-
structions. He gives an unconvincing story of how he fell in love with the
woman, drugged her, took her home, and finally stabbed her to death. But
he cannot explain why he killed her. In traditional stories, drugging is done
by monks or Daoists who master secret medicines, with the purpose of
making women succumb to sexual assault without protest. Here the writer
seems to be titillating the readers' expectations.
The mother finally reveals the facts: one of her clients, Mr. Tan, had
hired them at great expense to kill a woman she had once presented to him
but who had now fallen in love with someone else. Her son did not know
what she looked like, so he had to rely upon a photograph. The two have
not even realised that he had killed the wrong person. There is no mention
of sexual assault.
A drug which makes people obey someone against their own will is, in
the hands of a culprit, a fascinating ingredient, perhaps too much for a
modern story. So wonderful is the drug that it is amazing that the son has
not managed to make better use of it. He should have been a millionaire.
But he is not, which shows that he is not very enterprising or smart. With
the drug, the son could also have commanded the victim to commit suicide,
180 Marja Kaikkonen
for example, so why bother to stab her?! And why did he not use the drug
on the police? He is clearly not used to wielding the power the drug gives
him.
These poor people are not shown in a comical light. In fact there is no
comedy in this piece at all. The culprits are presented as thin sketches only:
the mother is motivated by revenge and money, the son probably by money
only, and Tan by jealousy and a wish to avoid loss of face. Mother and son
rely on illegal activities, so they have already put themselves beyond the
pale of morality. Greedy, drugged, slovenly—they have few positive quali-
ties. Both of their occupations would seem to require a certain amount of
cunning, but they display few signs of it. They had premeditated the crime
which they carried through unskillfully. The son had the wonderful drug,
so for him the job was easy. The son is a good son, in the traditional sense,
as he obeyes his mother who has agreed to the crime. There is nothing
sympathetic about them, but neither is there anything spectacular or sick,
which would make a more captivating story.
The police in this story seem more than grateful for the assistance in
catching the culprits, and the cooperation between Song and the police
works very well. He seems to function almost as part of the system of au-
thority, for example, by giving orders to the local constable to guard the
culprits' house. This is similar to the relationship that Sherlock Holmes
had with the police: friendly, civil, helpful cooperation. Song utters no
criticism and seems never to behave in a controversial way.
In this story, an innocent person is victimised. Both traditional Chinese
popular fiction such as public case stories and, according to some Chinese
scholars, 55 even Chinese detective stories comply with the rule of poetic
justice, that at the end good is always rewarded with good and evil with
evil. 56 This is also in line with the traditionally commonly held belief that
individuals' fates are governed by the good or evil they did in their previ-
ous life. Those who had led a morally blameless life would be rewarded
with high status in their next life, and those who sinned might be born as
beasts of burden or pariahs. In practice this also seems to have been taken
to mean that those with a high position in life had been rewarded for the
good deeds they had done in their previous life, while those who belonged
to the social pariahs did so because they had deserved it. A somewhat sur-
55 Huang Yonglin, p. 118.

56 Poetic justice was presented as a requirement even by some reformers of Japanese
theatre. See Christina Nygren's article in this volume.
prising consequence of this belief was that it was apparently seen as only
natural that those who had sinned in a former life could very well do so
again, which resulted in negative expectations and "justified" contempt of
the socially marginalised, easily making them into predestined suspects or
culprits, as the Judge Bao story shows. This reflects a systemic inequality
built on seemingly logical conclusions.
The tragic solution of this detective story definitely introduces an excep-
tion to the above line of thought. Uncomfortable as it is, we can possibly
distinguish a positive aspect in it: it thwarts the above principle of reincar-
nation which turns into predestination and discrimination, and allows an-
other practice to rule, namely, that of chance, an unruly element which at
least strikes at random. Chance is naturally devoid of discriminatory fea-
tures, and can therefore be seen as just and egalitarian.
An interesting and modern outcome of the crime and its solution is that
the girl who was to be murdered, Azhen, will benefit from it. She is also
the only beneficiary. Although she is barely mentioned in the story, she ap-
pears very important for the message. She is a girl from an ordinary family;
quite possibly she was cheated into becoming Tan's concubine, judging by
the fact that the madam calls herself "unlawful" and that Azhen did not
want to reward her. To be a concubine was not something a girl wanted, as
it meant a very vulnerable status. Only a man's first wife had wife's status
officially vis-ä-vis his family; concubines were extra playthings for rich
men to show off. A concubine had no rights in the household whatsoever
and could be neglected or discarded at will. To fall in love with someone
else, as Azhen had done, was naturally the worst thing a concubine could
do. According to the traditional view, she deserves to be punished. But in-
stead of a punishment, she is liberated from her master as he will end up in
jail, if he is not executed. The madam also risks execution, so Azhen will
be without enemies. According to tradition, she has not deserved this luck,
but from a modern point of view, she had not deserved to be made a concu-
bine, either. Thus the fact that she is rewarded by the outcome recommends
her choices, definitely modern, to the reader: she does not submit to her lot
in a traditional manner but takes her fate into her own hands and falls in
love with a man of her own choice. In contrast, then, the seemingly point-
less and undeserved death of the perfect wife Zhuang appears as a punish-
ment for adhering to tradition.
The plot in this story is weak. The crime lacks credibility to begin with.
It is a ridiculous mistake which an innocent person loses her life over; it is
simply tragic. Therefore the detective's constructive contribution to society
182 Marja Kaikkonen
by solving the crime seems somehow devalued. He cannot put things right,
no matter what he does. As in the public case stories, the judgment is made
known in the end, as if to placate the reader: the guilty did get punished.
But we are not told the details of the sentences, only that Tan was the main
culprit, and that the mother and son were also found guilty.
4. The "Clear-Away Counter-Revolutionaries" Story
Ever since the 1920s, leftist critics have described Mandarin-Duck-and-

Butterfly novels in contemptuous terms as something that "pandered to the
low taste of the leisured classes and the petty bourgeoisie." Popular
readers, however, were not influenced by such criticism, and entertainment
literature flourished, although the Japanese occupation (1931—) and the
War of Resistance against Japan (1936-45) gradually led to a decrease in
its production.
In the PRC the communists chose, in the name of ideological purity, to
suppress both cultural production and consumption. Among other things
they discouraged, confiscated, and banned Mandarin-Duck-and- Butterfly
fiction, including detective stories:
When it comes to the novels on gods and spirits and knights-errant since the
Qing dynasty, as well as exploration and detective stories imported from
capitalist countries, such as American Western novels [...] , they are noth-
ing but propaganda for imperialist colonial policy and for the fascist regime
of the Chiang [Kai-shek] bandit gang. Frenzied, they advocate racial dis-
crimination and ethnic oppression, propagate despicable individualism,
openly instigate murder and arson, rape, seduction, and thievery. They even
[...] embellish the reactionary rule of police and spies, making the reader
forget imperialist aggression and the Chiang bandit gang's bloody crimes,
and willingly accept enslavement, oppression and exploitation. 57
"Scientific" methods were also utilised to show the pernicious effects of

the kinds of fiction that were disapproved of: from late 1954, "surveys"
were made in Chinese cities about the circulation of "harmful" books, peri-
odicals, and cartoons, and news from all over the country reported "serious
problems" caused by such materials, which included detective novels: 58
57 Zhang Xiasheng, "<Shuihuzhuan>, <Xiyouji> he wuxia shenguai xiaoshuo you shenme

qubie." [1955], in Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiaoshuo lilun ziliao vol. 5: 1949-1976 (Beijing:
Beijing daxue, 1997), pp. 121-124.
58 See Neibu cankao 24.12.1954, 6.1.1955, 19.1.1955, 12.2.1955, 3.5.1955, and
29.12.1955.
Some teenagers and young people, having read reactionary detective

novels, wrote the words "U.S." and "Confidential spot" at their teacher's
entrance, wanting to know "whether the teacher manages to find out."
Others spontaneously organised sabotage groups and, using methods such
as "individual contacts" and "sole leadership," engaged in arson, plunder,
destruction of state construction, and so on. Most of the more than thirty
different reactionary sabotage groups that local Bureaux of Public Security
have recently caught and disbanded have consisted mainly of eighteen- or
nineteen-year-old youths, who are dissatisfied with us [the Communist
Party of China] because their access to higher schooling or employment has
not been solved, and who therefore have spontaneously set up organisations
such as "China's Labour Party," the "Youth Vanguard Anti-Communist
Group," and the "League of Heroes." Their aim in establishing these sabo-
tage groups has been not only to plan to sabotage our work of various kinds,
but also to find contacts to defect to the enemy. 59
Consuming popular fiction, particularly detective stories, was thus por-

trayed as directly resulting in subversive political activity. In 1955 the Chi-
nese government organised a general confiscation of "reactionary, porno-
graphic and absurd" books and periodicals, and, in an editorial in the
People's Daily (Renmin ribao)60 declared that "ordinary detective stories"
could continue to be rented at book-renting stalls.61 This editorial marked
the start of a wide campaign to cleanse book-renting stalls in Chinese cities
of traditional adventure literature, love stories and otherwise unwanted fic-
tion. Book-renting stalls, a form of private economic activity that families
were dependent on, was by that time the only public area left where such
materials were still prolific—publishing companies and bookshops had
been dealt with earlier. 62 Although this declaration appeared to be a green
light for detective stories, they never made a real recovery, which was not
surprising, since it was never defined what "ordinary detective stories"
were, while at the same time the continued renting of "politically extreme-
ly reactionary" books was declared illegal and punishable. What book
renter could have afforded to take the risk? Reports also record the dubious
political class backgrounds of many stall-keepers, 63 in an attempt to com-
59 Li Xinmin, "Jiangsu sheng qing, shaonian shou shenguai, yinhui shukan de duhai shen
da." Neibu cankao (3.5.1955), pp. 13-14.
60 "Jianjue chuli fandong, yinhui, huangdan de tushu." Renmin ribao 27.7.1955.
61 Chen Bixiang, Tongsu wenxue gailun (Hangzhou, 1991), p. 155.
62 See e.g. Fang Houshu, Zhongguo chuban shihua (Beijing: Dongfang, 1996), pp. 2 2 8 -
251; Frederick C. Teiwes, "Establishment and consolidation of the new regime," in The
Cambridge History of China, 14 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1986-98), vol. 14,
pp. 90-91.
63 See e.g. Luo Jiali, "Shenyang shi fandong, yinhui, huangdan tushu de qingkuang." Neibu
cankao 29.12.1955, pp. 296-297.
184 Marja Kaikkonen
promise their image, legitimise repressive measures, and substantiate the

idea that certain class backgrounds correspond to a tendency to commit
criminal acts. With the hardening political climate, detective stories as well
as other pre-1949 entertainment literature came under increasingly strong
ideological attacks in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Although there are no
statistics that can illustrate the development, the end result is well-known:
during the cultural revolution (1966-76) the ownership of almost any
pre-1949 fiction could be a political crime.
After 1949, the idea of a private detective outshining the police became
apparently impossible for Chinese cultural authorities to accept, and the
detective never reappeared in PRC fiction. There were certain efforts to de-
velop police fiction instead, and, as a stimulus, some Soviet thrillers were
translated into Chinese in the 1950s. From 1953 Chinese stories appeared
in which police detectives caught spies, class enemies, and counter-revolu-
tionaries. Typically, these novels were called "counter-espionage fiction"
(fan te xiaoshuo), or "clear-away counter-revolutionaries fiction" (su fan
xiaoshuo). A clear shift toward politicisation and a subjective us-versus-
them discourse and administration of justice apparent in this fiction were
symptomatic of the development of a growing contempt for the law in the
period leading up to the cultural revolution. 64 Around 1960, even counter-
espionage novels were banned, not to be revived until after 1978. 65
"A long-pending case" ("Yi jian ji'an") from 1959 by Guo Qiao is the
piece chosen to represent PRC Maoist police stories. It was published in
the anthology Selection of Clear-Away Counter-revolutionaries Fiction
1949-1979 (Su fan xiaoshuoxuan 1949-1979).66
When considering this story we should keep in mind that it is a piece
written according to a political prescription. The characters are stereotyped
combinations of either recommended "revolutionary" qualities, or despised
"reactionary" qualities, and have no personality of their own. The story has
very likely been processed during a large number of sessions, where every
64 On PRC legal functions during the Mao era, see Stanley B. Lubman, Bird in a Cage: Le-
gal Reform in China after Mao (Stanford: Stanford U P, 1999), pp. 40-101.
65 On PRC police fiction, see Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Lit-
erature in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford U P, 2000).
66 In Su fan xiaoshuoxuan 1949-1979 (Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe, 1979), pp. 116-68.
detail has been examined, revised and authenticated by political experts. 67

It is heavily laden with Maoist political symbolism, and could easily be in-
terpreted exclusively in such terms.
All through the Maoist era the Communist Party of China orchestrated
increasingly sharp categorisations of the entire population in order to deter-
mine who was a class enemy and who was not. 68 Whereas individuals be-
longing to the "labouring people" were to be treated leniently, enemies,
who by definition could not belong to the people, had to be treated harshly.
This was a leading principle even in police work, as this story reveals.
There are two vague frame stories. One is the political situation at the
time of action, spring 1958, some time after the start of the Great Leap For-
ward, and in the midst of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Among other things,
the Leap was characterised by the denigration of intellectual endeavour,
and during the Anti-Rightist Campaign many intellectuals were persecuted
on political charges. 69 The Leap, which was supposed to make China sur-
pass the industrialised nations in a quick effort of hard work, has made the
Shenyang police work hard on their backlog of cases. The present case is
amongst the last and toughest ones.
The second frame story involves the three police detectives: Cui is the
leader of the investigation and the head of the detective department. His
colleague Chen Fei, although less than 30 years old, is already an experi-
enced detective. Chen is asked to solve the case together with Zhao Ying, a
19-year-old female graduate of the police school who is emotional, im-
patient, but hard-working, a stereotype of Maoist youth. Chen realises that
he is to be an example for Zhao and turn her into a good detective, "both
red and expert," politically correct but also professional.
The crime case is a presumed murder, reopened as a result of a fresh
(1958) report about a headless, limbless woman's body found ten (!) years
earlier in a basket sent to a railway station. A miraculous jig-saw puzzle of
67 Even single pieces of work could be repeatedly treated in such a way during the Mao era
in order to supply publishers/performers with politically correct versions as the interpre-
tations of various crucial political principles changed frequently. For a description of
how much work was invested into a piece of propaganda writing, see Lao Han, '"Hao
lianzhang' you san hao." Quyi No. 4, 1964, pp. 57, 61-62. A part of the article is trans-
lated in Marja Kaikkonen, Laughable Propaganda: Modern Xiangsheng as Didactic En-
tertainment (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1990), pp. 150-151.
68 Gao Hua, "The theory of class origins," a talk at the Universities Service Center, Chinese
University of Hong Kong, 18.4.2001. Lubman, pp. 41^42.
69 The verdicts were reversed for most of the survivors after 1976. See Lynn T. White,
"Chaos and Courts: Reformed Law in China and in Shanghai," in Eberhard Sandschnei-
der (ed.), The Study of Modern China (London: Hurst and Co., 1999), pp. 232-236.
186 Marja Kaikkonen
evidence shows that the victim was apparently Quan Yajing, a nurse at
[St.] John's Hospital and Medical College, rumoured to have disappeared
with a Nationalist army officer. Her body, swathed in gauze and cotton,
had been cut up by a professional, she was two months pregnant and there
was no sign of violence on the torso.
After the public is notified of the case at the hospital, the police receive
numerous tip-offs. From then on we do not always know how the police
have arrived at the information. "Activists" reporting against people were a
regular feature in the Anti-Rightist and other such campaigns, and they
were welcomed by the politicised police. That was regarded as the police
solving cases "with the help of the people."
In this story, there is only one culprit, Professor Wu Jiren, a surgeon.
Quan was his assistant when she disappeared. Wu was then getting married
to Miss Liu, daughter of the hospital director. He told a colleague that he
was not interested in the marriage, but wanted to get to America with di-
rector Liu's help and get a PhD. Wu promised to take Quan with him to
America and train her to be a doctor. It is understood that he seduced or
raped her. Later, on the morning of W u ' s wedding day, Quan came to his
office. She was pregnant, but refused the abortion medicine Wu gave her.
Realising that Wu had destroyed her life and her relationship with the sur-
geon Fu, her boyfriend, she threatened to reveal Wu's deeds to everybody.
He killed her with a hammer.
Wu has been given all the negative qualities that marked a class enemy
in Mao's China: he has had two foreign acquaintances (ten years earlier);
he has foreign money (rumours tell of a big bank account in America); he
is Christian (he went to church ten years ago); he is highly educated and in
a high position; he wants to dedicate his life to science; he is disinterested
in politics; he has criticised the Communist Party (its medical policy) and
China while he praises and admires America (its academic freedom); his
marriage is devoid of feelings; his clothes are dirty, and he is bald. He also
has a voracious sexual appetite, as he even had a relationship with their
housemaid. Even more compromising evidence gathers around him: he
starts shaking when he must amputate a young pregnant woman's leg, and
Fu has to take over. His wife reveals that he was away even on their wed-
ding night and only came home in the morning, looking awful. A caretaker
remembers how his laboratory door had been nailed the day after his wed-
ding, and how Wu for once had cleaned the rooms himself that day. Cui
states that Wu is apparently not just a "capitalistic individualist, but also an
anti-party, anti-socialist rightist element": each of these five compromising
qualities would suffice for repressive measures against him. Wu is arrested

and after two excruciating interrogations, he confesses.
Compromising details were first accumulated about Fu to such an extent
that the detective girl Zhao was convinced that he was the murderer: he
was Christian; his brother had been a Nationalist army officer in 1948; he
had worn Nationalist army clothes during the war; he was nearsighted, and
when he dated Quan, she stopped wanting to see him and started crying at
nights, and so on. But he is innocent, and this means that there is then one
person in the story who deviates from the standard black and white picture.
That he is painted in "grey" tones creates a certain suspense.
Another negatively represented person is W u ' s wife Liu who seems to
be burdened by guilt through association, although in Mao's China the rea-
son is really her family, i.e. class background. She was also trained as a
nurse at the college. She was a bad student, but as the director's daughter,
she still received her diploma. After her father arranged her marriage to
Wu, she worked for some time, but "since she had been spoilt in her family
with a capitalistic lifestyle," she treated patients badly, and quit after their
first daughter was born. "First daughter" signals that she has more than one
daughter, traditionally a dubious quality in a woman, whose main duty is to
bear sons. She also reveals a number of negative facts about her husband,
and although this is of crucial importance for the police, it is apparently
still unforgivably disloyal for a wife to do so and weighs therefore on the
negative side. Although actually mistreated by two males, father and hus-
band, which ought to earn her sympathy, she is still made to exemplify the
kind of worthless person that "capitalistic families" produce.
The characters who belong to the "labouring people" are veritable accu-
mulations of positive qualities. Su Yizhen, a college mate of Quan's and a
head nurse at the hospital is doing laundry by hand outdoors with her chil-
dren running around her, that is, she has no maid (machines were not an
option yet), but takes care of her own housework and children although she
also has an important job. She has not been spoilt by her education or posi-
tion, as many people are. She is a paragon of traditional female virtue: fer-
tile, well-groomed, hardworking, and modest. She not only remembers a
lot about Quan, she also becomes an informer to the police, reporting on
things even when they are told to her in confidential conversations. This
makes her a communist paragon. Besides Su, there are a few minor charac-
ters who are helpful to the police: a bicycle rickshaw driver, a railway sta-
tion baggage room worker and a caretaker. The expert in forensic medi-
cine, a person with higher education and the one who gives miraculously
188 Marja Kaikkonen
exact information, is never described other than that there were eighteen
persons with the same name living in his area, so the police had to do some
tracing to find him. The message is clear: intellectuals are nothing special.
The victim herself is also quite perfect, and her positive qualities add up
to make the crime even more atrocious. Quan grew up in an orphanage—
the perfect class background. She is attractive and everybody likes her. She
is very hardworking and intelligent, therefore she was made assistant to a
professor, even though she was only a nurse. It is obvious that her strange
behaviour before she disappeared was due to the seduction/rape and preg-
nancy, which made it impossible for her to continue her relationship with
Fu. That she refuses the abortion medicine is a sign of traditional female
virtue—"faithfulness," to have a sexual relation with one man only, to re-
serve her body for the first man that she experiences. For such a view to
apply to possible rape is naturally a male fantasy. It contains the idea that a
sexual encounter automatically leads to such enjoyment for the woman that
it spellbinds her to the man, no matter who he is or under what conditions
she has been subdued. This means that after the seduction/rape Quan
would naturally have liked to marry Wu, but he was engaged to Miss Liu.
Quan, who in traditional manner had internalised male preferences, was
thus left with no option: only a morally despicable woman would agree to
experience a second man, even if it were her fiance. Neither could she
possibly offer a "used" woman to her beloved Fu. That was why she
stopped seeing him and started crying at night.
On the other hand, Quan is the only woman in this story who dares to
dream of personal emancipation, in the form of education abroad. Her sad
fate appears as a punishment for the mere thought of it. In 1958, the
thought of going abroad was of course politically despicable, and since ac-
tions could be condemned retroactively, it made no difference that her
dreams had existed ten years earlier in totally different circumstances.
The detective work in this story is detailed but rather boring: the crime
is, after all, a decade old. It is as if the writer tries to illustrate the didactic
potential of police fiction. There is a feeble effort to create suspense by de-
scribing a midnight visit by the detectives and the old caretaker to Wu's
laboratory, but nothing exciting happens, and there is no reason why the
visit has to be made at night! Some suspense is created in the flashback on
the events leading up to the murder, as well as in the interrogation of Wu,
which seems aimed at frightening the reader.
The scientific knowledge contained in the piece is very limited, con-
sidering that it was written in the era of space flights. There is a description
of Wu's office being photographed by Zhao, which corresponds to the

most elementary instructions on how to use a camera. One can almost pic-
ture the author copying directly from an instruction manual. The rooms are
measured by the two detectives, and a drawing of the rooms is made—for
what purpose, one wonders. This is perhaps something the author knows
detectives always do!
The breakthrough evidence that makes Wu confess is produced by the
blood stains on his old wedding costume. We are not told how the jacket was
discovered, why it was examined—since the stains were invisible!—or how
it was examined. Since no mention is made of what blood type Quan had, the
fact that the stains are of a type different from Wu's is of course no proof of
anything. It is hard to believe that a surgeon would be convinced by such
evidence, much less frightened by it into confession. It is even hard to be-
lieve that ordinary readers would be taken in by such unconvincing logic.
One gets the feeling that the author himself did not quite master the princi-
ples of blood testing, and therefore chooses to mystify the evidence.
From the late 1950s, the method of literary creation enforced by cultural
and propaganda authorities in the PRC was that of "personal experience"
recorded and embellished into stories. The sad thing was that the people
who were a natural part of any real activities and experiences were not
educated enough or in the right way to write about them. Writers, on the
other hand, usually came from academic milieux with no experience of the
type of activities that literature was ordered to reflect (physical labour, the
fight against natural calamities, class struggle, enforcement of political re-
forms, etc.); they needed to acquire the experiences. To this end, writers
were from time to time transported to areas of politically laudable local ac-
tivity, scenes of important construction projects, or simply country life in
exotic ethnic minority settings. They were to listen to the locals, observe
the action, participate in a symbolic manner in some event, and write about
such model activities.
We do not know whether the creation of this piece was informed by such
observation; it certainly tries to look like it was. A general effect of such a
method of creation, however, if applied to detective stories, would be a
ruthless revelation of the level of police technology, which, as there is rea-
son to believe, did not always meet the genre requirements of police fic-
tion, when it comes both to equipment and to training. As this obviously
could have a negative effect on the prestige of the police, it is conceivable
that the scarcity of police fiction during the Maoist time had to do with this
weak point.
190 Marja Kaikkonen
The most striking part of this piece is the interrogation of the suspect,
which appears shrewdly cruel and, from the point of view of a detective
story, unnecessary. Obviously the police need to extract a confession from
the suspect before their job is considered finished. This is a return to the
imperial practice; the confession can be viewed as a statement of submis-
sion to the state doctrine. We are not told what the eventual sentence will
be; someone has requested execution. The interrogation resembles an act
of punishment, a revenge, aimed at causing the suspect the maximum
amount of fear, humiliation, and powerlessness. As if it was an exemplary
quality in a police chief, Cui displays sarcastic and nasty behaviour. Such
was the expression of loyalty to the party at the time: blood-thirstiness was
considered a laudable quality in a people who were to fight against (class)
enemies. In contrast to the public case story, which used only slightly dif-
ferent methods to extract confessions, this interrogation is not public; it is
also unlikely that the court session will be. This means that there are no
checks on Cui's performance and thus the entire field of abusive and re-
pressive practices is open, and apparently also called for.
Extracting a confession from someone without revealing the accusation
is the nastiest feature of Cui's interrogation, interspersed with derisive
comments on Wu. The principle was "leniency to those who confess their
crimes, severity to those who refuse to" (tanbai cong kuan, kangju cong
yan). The absence of confession was taken as a refusal to confess, a prin-
ciple which presupposes that only those guilty are interrogated. Cui's
claim that since Wu had been lawfully arrested, he is naturally also guilty
of a crime may sound absurd to us, but the Communist Party considered it
entirely logical and truthful at the time. The Maoist police could not be
mistaken.
It becomes quite clear that we have now moved into the realm of a
totally different kind of justice. Here the rights of an individual do not
exist; on the contrary, even the idea is ridiculed by Cui. In the black-
and-white world of "either us or the enemy," there can be no neutral fig-
ures such as judges, who try to balance the interests of others. There are
only two sides: one is the entire collective of "us," "the good," the Party,
the state and all its good citizens, represented by Cui. The other is the class
enemy, by definition a category that is to be annihilated, represented by
Wu. The fact that the class enemy identity is never proved but simply con-
structed in the minds of the police and possibly the public from bits and
pieces of information—anonymous and unverified rumours, is a strikingly
unjust part of this system. In the world of fiction Wu is, of course, a culprit
that we do not need to waste our sympathy on. For a contemporary reader,
however, Wu's attributes were another reminder of the categories of citi-
zens that could expect to be ousted from "the people."
5. Conclusion
Having examined the above stories, I would claim that the Western-type
detective story indeed contains elements of modernisation, such as the con-
cepts of egalitarianism and emancipation as well as ideas that pertain to in-
dividualism. I will discuss some of these qualities in more detail below.
It has been suggested that the traditional Chinese judicial system had no
need for private detectives and would not have allowed private investiga-
tions. 70 But the idea of a private investigation is that no-one needs to allow
it; it is undertaken voluntarily by the detective at his/her own risk. We do
not know whether such figures existed in imperial China, but in the above
story the judge's assistant Zhao goes out to investigate on his own, without
orders from his master, and thus for one episode somewhat resembles a de-
tective. The difference between him and detective Song is that he is a sub-
ordinate, which means that his efforts will be credited to the judge, where-
as the detective is a private entrepreneur, whose efforts will enhance his
personal fame and success. The detective story also ends in a statement
that because of the case, Song's name became known to all. Here, I think,
we have a very important modern quality in the detective story: the detec-
tive demonstrates personal success through independent effort, certainly
the dream of all modernising individuals who left their villages to look for
a better life in cities.
Most early detectives in Chinese novels, like their Western counterparts,
were private ones, whether professional or not. This points to some impor-
tant differences in comparison to public case stories. In public case stories,
the usual division of labour is very conventional and follows the social
norms: the elite is schooled and therefore clever and wise, and should
therefore make decisions, all in accordance with Confucius's teachings.
The judge always does the thinking, and sends his underlings to find out
whether his suspicions can be confirmed. The next step is that the judge is
given further information and decides on the next move. The underlings
are seldom given very independent roles or even personalities in the
70 Zhao Nanrong, p. 1.
192 Marja Kaikkonen
novels, since their job is simply to do the dirty work according to wise in-
structions from the judge, and their social status is indeed very low. 71 The
judge must be shown as their superior in every aspect, something which
also applies to the PRC police chief.
In this respect detective stories differ: their hero is the person who not
only does all the thinking but also does the dirty work himself. One can see
an anti-elite, egalitarian tendency in this change. By clearly having chosen
his profession of his own free will and not because of low birth or lack of
other alternatives, the detective commands a new kind of respect for his
more unpleasant tasks. This signals a modern attitude to work tasks and so-
cial status: professions (and consequently even social status) are detached
from a person's birth. If justice is important, then it needs to be handled by
qualified persons, no matter how "dirty" the work is. Moreover, if we agree
that all professions are necessary for society, then people should not be
scorned for the work they do. These are important principles in modern life.
The detective's new professional image—practical knowledge of
modern sciences combined with a middle-level status in society—makes it
possible for him to participate in dirty work without losing his dignity. His
character thus combines at least two traditional roles, which makes him
more complicated, more dynamic, and more interesting than any tradition-
al figure alone. Compared with the detective, the traditional judge appears
stale and fettered by his role and position, which command at least outward
expressions of respect and tend to standardise his surroundings, his rela-
tions to others, and thereby even himself. It is through this very contrast
that the detective emerges as a model for the modern man: rational, practi-
cal, unbound by hierarchical/ritual formalities, conscious and proud of his
professionalism and the independence it gives him.
It was implied in the imperial system that the authority to rule came
from heaven. Delegated authority, which magistrates and judges received
through their appointment, was then simply an extension of this celestial
authority. Faith in celestial authority was naturally upheld with prestige,
not with reason, agreement, or empirical facts, and therefore this prestige
had to be protected from doubt and attacks. Detective stories seem to sup-
ply the readers with a different attitude, an impetus to change or at least
modify these views. The detective has no authorisation from above as the
71 This does not apply to knight-errant stories, a later development, where helpers of the
judge become main characters. This can be seen as an egalitarian—and therefore also
modern—development, as it lifts the characters with low status to a position which does
not correspond to that in traditional social hierarchy.
judge has, nor is he dependent for his job on those with authority as the
runners or constables are; he is independent. 72 He is respected for his
modern, scientific knowledge and his rational way of thinking and using
his knowledge. His only job is to find evidence that reveals the facts of the
criminal case, and he will not judge those who are part of the case.
A distinct difference between the fictions of imperial and republican ju-
risdiction is the importance attached to oral testimony. 73 In the imperial
system, oral testimony reflecting personal experience was treated as the
truth, and oral confession was required before anyone could be sentenced.
(That this resulted in confessions being extracted by torture was well
known, and the system contained ways to deal with false confessions.)
Logically, then, personal experiences in the form of dreams and ghosts
were just as valid as experiences that could be shared by others. Conse-
quently, many judges find the solution to their detective problems via su-
pernatural experiences.
This contrasts sharply with the world of the detective, where concrete
proof and evidence, "facts," are the one and only acceptable category of
truth, and where his position is not protected by myth. Facts in modern de-
tective stories have an independent status; they are seen as existing in their
own right regardless of the personal experience or the status of the individ-
uals involved, and they are by definition shared, in the same way as scien-
tific truth has to be reproducible in an empirical experiment. The same ap-
plies to the use of logical inference, not necessarily present in public case
stories. This newer thinking was naturally the very same modern, scientific
way of seeing things that promoters of fiction, detective story writers, and
translators admired and consciously wanted to spread to China. And it was
obviously welcomed by readers.
On the other hand, in the above detective story the supernatural is in the
hands of an unskilled criminal, an ordinary person, not the omnipotent
judge, a representative of positive power, or a crafty master criminal sym-
bolising evil forces. This is a case of modern empowerment. The man can
count himself lucky: luck is no longer reserved for those predestined for it.
But apparently noblesse oblige: when he uses his treasure to commit a
crime, he has exhausted his luck. Clearly, moral backbone is a condition
for luck even in the modern world.
72 He has to earn his living and is therefore in a way dependent on his clients, of course, but
he could certainly earn his living in other ways.
73 Zhao Nanrong, p. 2.
194 M a r j a Kaikkonen
Other characteristics of the detective story are the modern rationality,

scientific methods, detached professionalism, cool non-violence, and the
relative lack of moralising with which the detective does his job. This must
have appeared as very sophisticated at the time, compared with the tradi-
tional judge, who does not hesitate to use tricks, threats, torture, and cruel
punishments to impose his will. The detective counts on rational behaviour
from everyone, even from the criminal; his expectations of the opposite
party are higher than those of both the judge and the police. I would claim
that for the development of democracy, the common people need to feel
that faith is placed in their ability to make good choices, and this feeling is
delivered by the detective. Thus the detective personifies civil society,
while the judge, of course, is a very authoritarian figure. The PRC police,
on the other hand, combine rational methods with a strong political mis-
sion, dictated by dogma, to rid the country of citizens that the dogma, not
human morals, has rendered unacceptable. If anything, the police are not
detached; they serve a lord that requests absolute loyalty from them. In this
there is nothing new or modern.
The police clearly want to be good detectives, and they succeed quite
well when it comes to inference. The difference from the detective is that
to the PRC police, people are never neutral. They either belong to us or to
the enemy. A butcher to the traditional judge is equivalent to a professor to
the PRC police in 1958: low expectations, high suspicion. The police see
people through a biased lens, where individuals' qualities are interpreted in
terms of preconceived clusters of political right and wrong. The detection
of one bad quality is reason to suspect that there are more, while a good
quality in a person known to have some bad qualities is not an extenuating
circumstance but a sign that the person is especially sly. We are back with
premodern thinking: people are born unequal.
In the public case story, a crime is to be investigated by the local magis-

trate, but obviously those involved are not convinced that this gives the
correct result, as Mrs. Han writes a petition to Bao, a higher instance. She
needs to prove that she is worthy enough and her case grave enough to be
taken up by Bao. Petitioning a higher instance, she must necessarily ques-
tion the competence of the magistrate, either in finding out the facts or in
judgement. In this way, she becomes a threat to the system—no matter
how minor a threat, and how calculated, perhaps even necessary, a threat.
The process of petitioning is there to control this threat. Mrs. Han's case—
and her character—is righteous and reasonable, but what about the cases
that are dismissed?
The detective story opens with the publication in the press of some of
the facts as well as the confirmation that the local official will inspect the
evidence. Obviously the victim's husband is not convinced that the police
will do a good enough job, as he asks detective Song to solve the case. De-
tective Song's capabilities and services are basically on sale to anyone. I
think we need to realise the egalitarian quality of this fact. No longer
would your social status, education or your familiarity with the rules of de-
corum be decisive for having your petition approved. They were all mat-
ters that the individual in traditional society was not able to choose; they
came to you automatically with the right family background, whereas
those who had the bad luck of being born into less privileged families had
no way of acquiring these qualities. A detective was not a demi-god like
the judge; he had no power or official position, and his social status was
much closer to the common people. He was also willing to help anyone.
Perhaps he only selected the more challenging cases, but that at least was
not a function of the client's social background. In 1920s Shanghai,
able-bodied men and even women could make a good living with no capi-
tal other than their labour power. In comparison with the hierarchical and
stratified traditional society, this meant a golden opportunity for ordinary
people, newcomers from the provinces who wanted to improve their lot. 74
They had every reason to be optimistic about possibilities to earn money.
In such a situation, being able to buy things for money—facts in a crime
case, for example—was in fact egalitarian. It was clearly the more egalitar-
ian alternative, compared to the traditional dependency of one's family and
its connections, which may be effective but which also reproduces hierar-
chical structures where individuals are placed in their slots by others, not-
withstanding their own wishes or efforts. Modern choices allow individ-
uals to liberate themselves from this slot. Even in this respect the police
story displays a return to a premodern principle. When individuals'
chances are a direct, unavoidable consequence of their "class origin,"
which they have no way of escaping, a hierarchical order is reinstated.
The detective's independence cannot be expected to be the equivalent of
inner strength as we might suspect today. Compared with a traditional indi-
vidual bound to others through bonds of complex hierarchies of family,
clan and village, independence in the modern individual is also to the
74 On the conditions of Shanghai commoners, see Hanchao Lu.

196 Marja Kaikkonen
greatest extent a detachment, a loneliness which at the outset appears quite

risky. Without traditional bonds, in other words as an independent person,
individuals are vulnerable. I believe it is for this reason that individuals
who choose independence/vulnerability are also bound to make their own
moral choices so as to be prepared for encounters, to take responsibility for
their own decisions—personal moral choice thus becomes an act typical of
the modern man. The detective—modern, independent, vulnerable—
makes a positive moral choice: he wants to do good—an expression of
conscious, responsible individuality, which invites positive responses from
other individuals, for example readers, who recognise the shared vulnera-
bility as well as the solution. Thus the detective seems to help us construe
our own moral choices, our inner authorities, to replace those of bygone
hierarchies and/or expired authoritarian systems.
The detective's lack of moralising about crime is also a consequence of
modern attitudes in the detective. Detective and culprit are two independ-
ent individuals who have each made their moral choice: one of them has
chosen to do good, the other to do evil. Their choices are free, and they are
each responsible for their own choice: in this they are equals. It is only in
the consequences of their choice that they differ, something that their com-
mon society has agreed on through the judicial system. By not moralising
about the crime, the detective expresses a respect for the individuality of
the culprit and his freedom to choose, a basic egalitarian tenet. At the same
time, he shows his strong disapproval of crime by his own choice of occu-
pation: he dedicates his life to solving crimes, that is, to catching culprits,
in other words, to helping society to make individuals take responsibility
for their own moral choices, for their freedom to choose. It is conceivable
that it is the very juxtaposition of the two individual moral choices illus-
trated in the detective story—those of the detective and the culprit, re-
spectively—that makes the genre so acutely relevant for the modernising
man.
The detective has no powers of jurisdiction, which also signals a more
modern division of labour along the lines of specialised professional cate-
gories. He has indeed very little formal power. His only power, which is
not necessarily connected to his position in society at all, comes from his
knowledge and ingenuity, but also from his urge to reveal the truth so that
the guilty can be punished. One could say that he actually refuses to use
any power that he might be able to extract from the cases: he remains a de-
tective, case after case. His wish to reveal the truth can therefore be seen as
of a higher moral order than that of the traditional judge, since the detec-
tive does not hold a position in society where he is supposed to behave in a

morally exemplary way, unlike the judge. The detective does it of his own
free will. He will receive no direct personal gain for his action, since he is
an unimportant person. Therefore he is in fact unselfish. The judge, on the
other hand, will be famous if he simply lives up to the expectations that ac-
tually were a condition of his getting his position to begin with. The detec-
tive does not use his urge to reveal the truth (nor the power it could give
him) as an instrument of social climbing or of anything else. Viewing the
persons involved in the cases as nothing more than individuals, he keeps
himself neutral and personally aloof from the cases, supplying only his in-
tellectual capacity when required. To solve a case is an intellectual chal-
lenge for the detective, which gives him professional satisfaction. His
gains are also strictly professional—his reputation as a clever detective
will grow. In that sense the detective is a modern professional, with a ma-
ture moral outlook based on individual consciousness, and on rational per-
sonal choices made by a consciously responsible member of society. These
qualities made him look like a very modern figure in the early 1900s.
According to Chinese common sense—which appears particularly prag-
matic—good deeds are usually prompted by a conviction that they will
benefit the actor in a practical, usually even material, way. When X does
something that benefits Υ, X counts on Y's wish to "pay back" this kind-
ness some time later. This applies in matters as varied as ancestor worship
and personal contacts (guanxi) in business. That X would do something
merely out of professional interest and in such a way as to have a beneficial
effect (actually, a side-effect) for Y, without X expecting compensation
from Y (or from anywhere else), is then a very different way of looking at
things, and one that applies to the modern detective. It produces a new
equation: instead of X's doing good deeds and benefiting Y, and then Y
generating rewards for X in return, this calculation is changed into the fol-
lowing: X does good deeds and benefits Y, and X gets a reward out of his
deeds directly, while Y will not be obliged to compensate X. Theoretically
then, Y can use his or her luck to generate benefits for someone else in the
society, and this in turn can create a chain reaction of "selfless" good deeds
which do not need to be compensated. Basically this is a question of no
longer viewing a good deed as something instrumental, something one
gives away so that a deficit appears which then must be made up by the
contracting party, but instead seeing it as the conscious choice of an inde-
pendent individual always to try to do good, a choice that frees the individ-
ual's energy for constructive purposes instead of defence. In this way, the
198 Marja Kaikkonen
whole reckoning can be seen as a production where values are created in

accordance with the principle l + l = m o r e than 2.
It appears that detective stories are tantamount to conglomerates of modern

ideas put into practice on a personal level in the characters of the stories,
particularly the detective. I am convinced that the extreme popularity of
detective stories was due to the modern qualities that their readers could
sense in them, taste, sample, and eventually emulate.
Modernisation is not easy. Like all change, it needs its visions, its fic-
tions and its optimisms in order to become accessible. The detective, who
in the real Shanghai of the 1920s was an unusual phenomenon, managed as
a fictive figure to encompass so many of these ideas, dreams, and desires
that he became an indispensable companion to generations of individuals
needing inspiration on their way to their own modern choices.
CHRISTINA NYGREN
Appropriations of European Theatre in Japan,

China and India
In this study I intend to analyse the encounters between European spoken

theatre and indigenous theatre forms in three very dissimilar regions of
Asia: Japan, China and India (Bengal). 1 These three countries have been
chosen because in each of them European spoken theatre has acquired a
clear social role. The form of these encounters has varied greatly in these
three countries, as have their conditions and effects. I assume that a dialec-
tical relationship did come about and shall study its effects.
In Japan, the "new theatre" was used as a means of and as a symbol for
the democratisation process after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, while in
China, the spoken theatre was a political tool for the greater part of the
twentieth century. In India, European spoken theatre was introduced by the
British colonial powers, but the form was later used, mainly in Kolkata
(Calcutta), to strengthen national integrity and as a display of resistance to
foreign oppression. To make the vast Indian situation more easily manage-
able, I have chosen to concentrate on one region of India—Bengal, with its
capital Kolkata—where significant theatre encounters between different
theatre cultures existed along with a growing quest for modernity. Kolkata
became a crucible of cultural encounters in general. 2 Accordingly, there
will be a slight imbalance in the overall framework of my study as it is not
1 I stress the somewhat unusual English concept of spoken theatre, since the cultures I am
writing about usually define theatre differently from the Europeans.
2 The historical name Bengal is used with regard to the actual context of the time dis-
cussed in the article. Bengal was temporarily divided between 1905 and 1911 and be-
came permanently divided in 1947 into the Indian provinces of West Bengal and East
Bengal, which belonged to Pakistan. In 1971 East Bengal was proclaimed the independ-
ent state of Bangladesh. The name Bengal is used throughout the article as a definition of
a regional "cultural umbrella." An extended discussion on the subject is available in Joya
Chatterji, Bengal Divided (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, [1995] 1996).
possible in an article of this length to cover the whole body of information

on the causes of the colonial period in India. 3 In comparison with the "na-
tional categories" China and Japan, Bengal will serve as a regional repre-
sentative for theatre encounters that spread in the larger Indian subconti-
nent.
The starting point for this work is the claim that theatrical encounters do
not occur merely at an aesthetic level, and can therefore not be studied out-
side their cultural and social contexts. My aesthetic and theoretical evalua-
tions are combined with contemporary social, economic and political con-
ditions in the countries, contemporary with the period under consideration.
Therefore, I shall take each country's own traditions as my point of depar-
ture, also considering the situation at the time European drama and theatre
was introduced. Furthermore, I try to avoid making distinctions such as
"high and low" or describing indigenous art forms using Western terminol-
ogy. When terms like "opera," "ballet" or "score" are applied to non-West-
ern theatrical art, problems arise, partly because the theatre of the cultures
being studied generally has several components not easily distinguishable
in a performance, and partly because the genre systems are essentially dif-
ferent. "Theatre" is used as a general term since the dramas in the regions I
study were not intended to be read but to be performed.
In the three countries involved in my study, the traditional, indigenous
theatre is built on a number of fixed components and codes well known to
the public. Text, music, speech, song and dance all build a unit, while spo-
ken drama, with speech alone or where the spoken dialogue is central, did
not exist before it was introduced from the West (with the exception of the
in many respects specific Sanskrit drama).
A fundamental aspect of my study is the performed text. The drama (the
text) is not isolated from the theatrical performance, but is instead defined
here through its dual function as a literary text and as a theatrical means of
expression, including both written, oral, and corporal traditions. This in-
vestigation requires a comprehensive view that puts the theatrical event it-
self in the centre, indicating a process characteristic of the theatre and of
dance as art forms. 4 The performance "occurs," takes place at the instant.
In contrast to many other art forms that are first created and then enjoyed
3 It must be added that India is a complicated case, given its size and the intricacies of its
political, social and cultural situation.
4 "The theatrical event" as a term is discussed in detail, for example, in Willmar Sauter,
The Theatrical Event. Dynamics of performance and perception (Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press, 2000).
innumerable times, the theatre cannot be relived. It re-forms itself

through instant contact with the audience while still anchored in tradi-
tion, social life, political systems, philosophy, and religion. The "event"
is thus to be understood in a broad perspective, made up of a multi-
dimensional occurrence in which many components contribute to the
unity that each spectator experiences personally. This event is the prima-
ry source for theatre studies. In historical research on the theatre, atten-
tion is given, in cases where the performance is not personally experi-
enced by the researcher, to oral and written portrayals by authors, actors,
directors, artists and members of the audience, and to texts written by
earlier researchers of the theatre and history. This, together with visual
images and theatre design, recordings and the like, forms a mixture of
both primary and secondary sources. The general picture of history and
theatre history in this study builds on first-hand knowledge of the mate-
rial and on my own research but, for the reasons just stated, also relies on
earlier research in which, however, a comparison between Asia and Eu-
rope has not been made.
There are major variations between the ways in which European drama
and theatre were introduced into Japan, China and India. In Japan, the en-
counter took place in an atmosphere of domestic aspirations and expecta-
tions, as part of a democratising process that included an imposed "West-
ernisation." The Chinese situation was a combination of external influence
and domestic interest, where spoken theatre was seen as a harbinger of de-
velopment and modernisation. What these countries have in common are
the ideological and political discussions that followed and the conflicts be-
tween factions unable to agree on artistic principles and the role of the the-
atre in preserving tradition and facilitating renewal. Furthermore, spoken
theatre was enlisted in the service of politics. In India, colonisation by the
British meant that European drama was introduced much earlier than in Ja-
pan and China. Even though English theatre in Bengal prompted affluent
Indians to arrange imitative performances in their own homes, it cannot be
said that the introduction of spoken theatre was stimulated by any "aspira-
tion." It took a while before a spoken theatre evolved on stage that was im-
bued with Indian traditions and could be understood by the public (that is
performed in Bengali). However, in time, modern drama and spoken the-
atre became here too, a means for social and political expression.
The following study will amount to a hypothetical examination of the
extent to which encounters between Japanese indigenous theatre and West-
ern spoken theatre at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the
twentieth century contributed to the restoration of the country and to the

spread of democratic ideals. Further more, in China's case, I will investigate
how the corresponding encounter between theatre traditions, around the
same time and a little later, was integrated into the revolutionary goals and
used for purposes of political repression. I shall thereafter examine the spo-
ken theatre in the Indian context, and inquire into the encounter between
Western spoken theatre and Bengali theatre at the end of the British colonial
period, in order to find out whether it carried potentials for use in a national
struggle against foreign power. The entire discussion is imbued with the as-
sumption that popular and folk culture is, in the final analysis, the most sub-
versive and powerful medium among the many levels of theatre art.
In order to illustrate the fact that there is little consensus about the notion
of "encounter," I shall start by discussing how certain researchers under-
stand the concept of a "cultural encounter," followed by some basic views
concerning intercultural theatre. The encounter between European spoken
theatre and drama and indigenous theatre and drama in the three countries
will be studied through references to events in the theatrical world that
took place in the context of that time. The flow of events is summarised in
hypothetical political terms like democracy (in Japan), politicisation (in
China) and "nationalisation" (in India), also showing differences in the
process of modernisation. Dramas and perceptions born of this cultural en-
counter are taken as examples for the discussion on authenticity and hy-
bridity, and the status and significance of popular and folk theatre in trying
times. Finally: I will use the two concepts (well established in theatre
studies) of presentation and representation—presentation built on distance
and representation on mimesis—with reference to the general notion that
traditional theatre in Asia presents events on stage while European spoken
theatre attempts to represent events. 5
Cultural Encounter or Clash?

Views on culture, cultural encounters and theatre encounters vary to such
an extent that I doubt if they can be summarised in coherent terms, espe-
cially since perspectives and points of departure are naturally dependent on
the beholder's own reality and motives. We have different ideas about the
dilemma of historical discourse.
5 This is discussed in the general context of stage art in Asia, specifically in Japan, in
Christina Nygren, Möte mellan Ost och Väst (Stockholm: Carlssons Förlag, 1993).
Writing about encounters between cultural phenomena that occurred

decades and centuries ago involves an interpretation based on our own
times, yet placed in the special context of the events. Writing about theatri-
cal encounters in Japan, China and Bengal at three different historical pe-
riods is an attempt to further chart and interpret the available material and
earlier research "in a long chain of interpretations, each one usually claim-
ing to be closer to the reality of the past, but each one merely another re-
inscription of the same events, with each successive description being the
product of the historian's imposition at the levels of the trope, employ-
ment, argument and ideology." 6 However, it is not only historical descrip-
tions that must be discussed; a series of terms and concepts must also be
comprehended. The conceptual apparatus is ambiguous and complicated and
right from the start a relevant question is posed: Is this a study of drama (the
written text) or of theatre (the performed text, including the grammar of the
style of acting)? Here I want to point out that, apart from European closet
dramas (literary dramas primarily intended to be read), drama is meant to be
performed, and it is only through such embodiment that drama receives its
complete form. That is why this study focuses on performances.
Rustom Bharucha claims that spoken words, even when they are pre-
sented with few or no movements at all, are embodied or "lived" in the per-
formance, and are dependent on the means of expression and training of
the actors. 7 Karen Brazell uses the term "performance manuscript" for the
written text in indigenous Japanese theatre and argues for the use of "the-
atre" instead of "drama" as the texts are not meant to be read as dramatic
literature. 8 Sudipto Chatterjee claims likewise in a discussion about spoken
theatre from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Bengal that the writ-
ten text is never final. "A written text is meant to be changed during re-
hearsal, on its way to the performance space." 9
6 Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 35.
7 "theatre language works against the absolute demands of linguism. Even purely verbal
text with minimal or no movement at all is embodied ('lived') in performance. How it is
'lived,' and what kind of 'life' gets transmitted through its presence on-stage, is open to
being questioned, depending on the performative circumstances and training for the ac-
tors involved." Rustom Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practice. Thinking through
Theatre in an Age of Globalization (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2000, 2001), p. 89.
8 Karen Brazell, Traditional Japanese Theater (New York: Colombia University press,
1998), p. xi. Brazell touches further on the inevitable question of documenting and de-
scribing theatre performances.
9 Sudipto Chatterjee, "Mise-en-(colonial-)scene. The Theatre of the Bengal Renaissance"
in J. Ellen Gainor (ed.), Imperialism and Theatre (London and New York: Routledge,
1995), p. 34.
When carrying out historical studies of drama and theatre, we are con-
fined to descriptions and "eye-witness accounts" that are understood, inter-
preted and reinterpreted in accordance with the conditions of the produc-
tions, the expressed intentions of the artists, earlier historical descriptions
and the situation at the present moment. The researcher and the reader are
thereby in fact fellow creators in the chain of interpretation.
The past is not discovered or found. It is created and represented by the his-
torian as a text, which in turn is consumed by the reader. /.../ By exploring
how we represent the relationship between ourselves and the past we may
see ourselves not as detached observers of the past but, like Turner, partici-
pants in its creation. 10
The concept of "cultural encounter" has been considered, over recent dec-
ades, from various perspectives, and "the encounter" has been questioned
from several different angles. In theatre studies, discussions of intercultural
and intracultural perceptions of theatre have engaged many writers, who
have their pros and cons. An eager proponent of intercultural theatre en-
counters is Richard Schechner, who prefers to talk about exchange in the
same way that Eugenio Barba uses his concept of "barter." Barba however
avoids taking political stands, in his "Euroasian theatre" and sees an en-
counter between East and West in which "seduction, imitation and ex-
change are reciprocal." 11 Schechner looks rather for an "exchange in which
both parties take,'" 2 while stressing that "the exchanges are at equal levels
of interest." 13 In Schechner's theories about exchange, there is a conviction
about the possibilities for a "culture of choice" even when it concerns artis-
tic style. He argues that people in the future will choose culture in the way
many of us now choose what food to eat. 14 "We will select what elements
of what cultures we want to belong to, and most people will choose their
parents' culture to promulgate, as it were—but that will be a conscious
choice." 15 In expressing this somewhat flippant view, however, Schechner
ignores the various power structures that control the living conditions of
artists in different parts of the world. This apparent extended freedom,
10 Alun Munslow, Deconstructing, p. 178.

11 Eugenio Barba, "Euroasian Theatre" in Patrice Pavis (ed.), The Intercultural Perform-
ance Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 219.
12 Patrice Pavis, "Interculturalism and the Culture of Choice. Richard Schechner inter-
viewed by Patrice Pavis" in The Intercultural, p. 46.
13 Ibid., p. 48.
14 Richard Schechner, The End of Humanism (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publica-
tions, 1982), p. 125.
15 Ibid., p. 49.
which is hardly hailed by non-Western artists and researchers, does not

weigh more heavily than Schechner's own words.
A hundred years ago, there was no question; a German was a German, a
Frenchman was a Frenchman, a Nigerian was a Nigerian. Nobody could
move out of that. Now, the other side of it being threatened is that you can
choose to maintain it; you can gather groups to maintain it. We see that
quite a lot.16
Peter Brook reflects on what the word "culture" actually means to him in
the light of the different expressions he has lived through. "It gradually be-
comes clearer that this amorphous term covers three broad cultures: one
which is basically the culture of the state; another which is basically that of
the individual; and there is a 'third culture' ,"17 And he goes on:
What to me is the 'third culture,' [is] not the one that carries a name or defi-
nition, but which is wild, out of hand, which, in a way, could be likened to
the Third World—something that for the rest of the world is dynamic,
unruly, which demands endless adjustments, in a relation that can never be
permanent. 18
Brook's conclusion about culture as a "mysterious element" hints at his

concept of culture and the conditions of the theatre:
For the 'third culture' is the culture of links. /.../ It has to do with the dis-
covery of relationships where such relationships have become submerged
and lost—between man and society, between one race and another, between
the microcosm and the macrocosm, between humanity and machinery,
between the visible and the invisible, between categories, languages, gen-
res. 19
Even Patrice Pavis uses the word "link," but apart from this, he has used
the image of "crossroads" as a description of cultural and theatre encoun-
ters. Here he starts from the limited encounter that takes place when West-
ern artists look for inspiration in cultures outside the Euro-American cul-
tural sphere.
16 Ibid., pp. 49-50. Rustom Bharucha is extremely critical of this point of view." I would
emphasize the euphoria underlying the neo-liberal pursuit of 'cultures of choice' from
within the comforts of metropolis, where cultures can be readily consumed along with
their cuisines." Rustom Bharucha, The Politics...: 54-55. Bharucha also seeks a discus-
sion about 'desiring the Other.' "While much theoretical work has been done on 'desir-
ing the Other,' relatively little attention has been paid to the somewhat bleaker prospects
of being rejected by the Other," ibid., p. 54.
17 Peter Brook, "The Culture of Links" in Pavis, The Intercultural, pp. 63-64.
18 Ibid., p. 65.
19 Ibid., p. 66.
Crossroads refers partly to the crossing of the ways, partly to the hybrid-
ization of races and traditions. The ambiguity is admirably suited to a
description of the links between cultures: for the cultures meet either by
passing close by one another or by reproducing thanks to crossbreeding. All
nuances are possible. 20
As I have mentioned, and shown through some examples, views on cultur-

al and theatre encounters and on interculturalism are varied, and do not
lend themselves well to unitary theorisation. Obviously, the way in which
we choose to apply the concepts depends on which part of the world we be-
long to. Critical voices have been raised by Ania Loomba and Rustom
Bharucha. Loomba points out that cultural meetings never occur in a
vacuum, that they are always marked by power relations (first colonialism,
then globalisation) and that they are all based on economic, technological
and media dominance. Instead of erasing history, she wants to make it vis-
ible, and instead of disputing "Eurocentrism," she speaks about "provin-
cialising Europe." 21 Loomba points out the danger in generalising and in
the careless sorting of the world into regions, and she is highly critical of
much of the postcolonial debate in the West, which she regards as often be-
ing merely a cursory understanding of the issue, devoid of nuanced ana-
lyses of a complicated situation. She is also hesitant about the simplified
discussion of hybridity that has become common in the postcolonial de-
bate: "it has become a kind of common-sense that hybridity is a necessary
marker of the post-colonial condition." 22
As early as the 1990s, Rustom Bharucha maintained a forcibly critical
attitude towards the intercultural elite in the West. He chooses to talk about
collisions in culture and theatre rather than encounters, taking European
and American icons of the theatre like Jerzy Grotowsky, Eugenio Barba,
20 Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture [1990], trans. Loren Kruger (London
and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 6-7.
21 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998):
255-256. Loomba is referring here to Dipesh Chakrabarty who introduced the discussion
on "provincializing Europe" in an essay published in Representations, 37 (1992).
Chakrabarty elaborates further on the idea in Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial
Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
2000).
22 Ania Loomba, "Local-manufacture made-in-India Othello fellows': Issues of race, hy-
bridity and location in post-colonial Shakespeares" in Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin
(eds.), Post-Colonial Shakespeares (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 143.
She further stresses the importance of "location" in order to "suggest that any meaning-
ful discussion of colonial or post-colonial hybridities demands close attention to the spe-
cificities of location as well as re-orientation, which requires taking on board non-Euro-
pean histories and modes of representation." Ibid., p. 144.
Peter Brook and Richard Schechner to task. 23 Bharucha claims that artists
like Gordon Craig and Jerzy Grotowski tend to confront other cultures
rather than to encounter them and points out that Richard Schechner's en-
thusiasm for interactive meetings with non-Western cultures is a soft ex-
ample of "cultural tourism." 24 Furthermore, Bharucha shows how intercul-
turalism is presented as a basic force:
In some readings, interculturalism is almost evoked as a primordial state
that has been arbitrarily disrupted by the ruptures of the nation-state. /.../
While nationalism is clearly the villain of this breezy Utopian universalism,
there are other contexts in which interculturalism has been nurtured through
the fall-out of global trade, war and colonial history.25
Bharucha suspects that not every cultural exchange is "dynamic." In some

cases it may be coercive or assimilationist, if not "blatantly colonial." 26
The postcolonial stress on cultural differences at the cost of political and
economic inadequacy is criticised, and Bharucha claims that these theories
were created in "the more privileged diasporic sectors in First World
academia." 27 He allies himself with Miyoshi Masao, who in an analysis of
postcolonialism and globalisation states that "postcoloniality has begun to
'look suspiciously like another alibi to conceal the actuality of global poli-
tics,' thereby deepening the 'complicity' of intellectuals in 'the T N C ver-
sion of neocolonialism' ." 28
A more reconciliatory view is shown by Christopher Balme, who thinks
that the "postcolonial drama" has been badly neglected in studies about
new drama and literature in English. His theories about "syncretic theatre"
assume that a special form of intercultural theatre exists in formerly colo-
nised countries, where indigenous dramatists integrate elements of their
perceptions with those of Western theatre:
The concept of syncretic theatre, includes the amalgamation of indigenous

performance forms with certain conventions and practices of the Euro-
American theatrical tradition, to produce new theatrico-aestethic principles.
23 Rustom Bharucha, "Collision of Cultures" in Theatre and the World. Performance and
the Politics of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, [1990] 1993), pp. 13-41.
24 Ibid., pp. 13 and 35.
25 Rustom Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practise. Thinking through Theatre in an Age
of Globalization. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 39.
26 Ibid., p. 40.
27 Ibid., p. 59.
28 Ibid., p. 59. Bharucha cites Miyoshi, Masao, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World
Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism" in Critical Inquiry, 20:2 (1993), pp. 728 and
751.
I define syncretic theatre as those theatrical products which result from the
interplay between the Western theatrico-dramatic tradition and the indig-
enous performance forms of a postcolonial culture. The term 'syncretism' is
borrowed from the discipline of comparative religion and denotes the pro-
cess whereby elements of one religion are absorbed into another and rede-
fined. /.../ Theatrical syncretism /.../ is in most cases a conscious, program-
matic strategy to fashion a new form of theatre in the light of colonial or
postcolonial experience. It is very often written or performed in a Euro-
phone language but almost always manifests varying degrees of bi- or mul-
tilingualism. 29
Balme goes on to claim that "syncretic theatre" is an effective means for

decolonising the stage since it makes use of both indigenous and European
cultures in a creative "recombination" of their respective elements without
slavishly following one or the other tradition. 30 He concludes by saying
that this middle way in intercultural theatre is at its best when it finds the
right balance between two poles and discovers a theatrical language whose
signs are read by different cultures without any artistic or cultural integrity
being lost.31 Other proponents of interculturalism have a grimmer view that
does not include colonial and post-colonial theories. Ariane Mnouchkine is
not referring to any "encounter" when she simply proclaims that Asia is
useful for explorers but "In Asia the theatre seems to have stopped today,
but traditions which die can give life to something elsewhere." 32
Many artists and theatre theoreticians still have what Rustom
Bharucha calls a "neo-colonial obsession with materials and techniques
from the 'Third World' ,"33 Orientalism lurks round the corner: "the prac-
tice of interculturalism cannot be separated from the larger history of ori-
entalism in which it has been inscribed." 34 Ania Loomba gets the last
word here in reference to Edward Said's theories about Orientalism:
"Said's project is to show how 'knowledge' about non-Europeans was
part of the process of maintaining power over them; thus the status of
'knowledge' is demystified, and the lines between the ideological and the
objective blurred." 35
29 Christopher Balme, "Between Separation and Integration. Intercultural strategies in con-

temporary Maori theatre" in Pavis, The Intercultural, pp. 1801-81.
30 Ibid., p. 181.
31 Ibid., p. 186.
32 Ariane Mnouchkine, "The Theatre is Oriental" in Pavis, The Intercultural, p. 96.
33 Rustom Bharucha, "Somebody's Other. Disorientations in the cultural politics of our
times," in Pavis, The Intercultural, p. 207.
34 Ibid., p. 206.
35 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism", pp. 44-45.
In discussing examples of theories, methods and points of view, I have

tried to show both the possibilities and the dangers involved in taking
terms and concepts at surface value and in understanding strategies and
events without contextualising them. At the same time, it is hardly possible
to ignore our own times and simply dive back into history to make a decon-
textualised analysis. Can cultural meetings in theatrical art in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries be called intercultural despite the fact that
the term had not even been coined at that time? I believe that this is poss-
ible and that studying the past with twenty-first century spectacles, while
still not ignoring the specific context, can be fruitful. Perspectives adopting
Said's views on Orientalism or later theories of colonialism and postcolo-
nialism are naturally valid, although it is true that naive and simplistic ex-
pressions of neocolonialism can be hazardous for a study of cultural en-
counters.
An excessively effective analysis based on enthusiastic categorisations of
the material in order to study expressions of authenticity, assimilation or hy-
bridity will probably not serve this study very well. The grid of "grammar"
that every indigenous theatre tradition puts onto the "new" theatre from with-
out (which in all cases in this study means Western spoken theatre) will col-
our it, whether strongly or weakly. A cross-fertilisation may occur. In both
cases, I consider it more meaningful and interesting to study what the event
generates intra-culturally in the theatrical art form and in its own period of
time than to analyse isolated artistic expressions and variations.
Japan—Restoration and New Democratic Ideals
The developments within Japanese theatre that took place at the end of the
nineteenth century were due to Meiji ishin (the Meiji Restoration) when
certain social groups rose and took power from the shogunate that had been
maintaining an isolationist policy for 250 years. 36 The earlier slogan "Ex-
pel the barbarian" was overtaken by an intensive interest in the world at
36 During the Edo Period (1603-1868), the Tokugawa Shogunate governed Japan accord-
ing to strict feudal principles and Confucian rules. Foreign contact and influence were
considered a serious threat, and Christianity was banned while the country was closed to
the outside world. The stability attained within Japan's borders led to a blossoming in art
forms like poetry and woodcuts. Bunraku, kabuki and no prospered, especially in the big
cities.
large, especially Europe and America. 37 The feudal system was dismantled
and the emperor became the head of the nation, while Shintoism was pro-
claimed the national religion. The strict division of social classes was abol-
ished and a new system of government was formed according to the pattern
of a constitutional monarchy. 38
The kabuki was the contemporary form of theatre in the urban entertain-
ment quarters and was considered sophisticated and colourful, a "theatre
for the eye" rather than the ear. 39 Among its most prominent characteristics
was the onnagata tradition, with men in female roles, spectacular scenery,
a star cult and strictly preserved conventions within the actor clans. His-
torical pieces would include actual and fictive themes and events from the
pleasure-loving middle class, portraying triangle dramas, conflicts of
loyalty, repayment of debts or contradictions between social pressure and
personal desire. 40 Because of its association with, among other things, the
world of entertainment and prostitution, rules and prohibitions were placed
on kabuki. Theatre buildings were forced into entertainment and amuse-
ment areas and visitors to these areas as well as actors who had business
outside were subject to special regulations. 41 The shows had wide appeal
and new developments and current events found their place onto the stage.
Once, a piece was produced based on a sad contemporary incident in
which two young people who, seeing no way of living a life together, com-
mitted "love-suicide" (shinjü). It had a strong effect on the audience, and
following a similar suicide committed in real life, the play was banned.
During the Meiji Restoration, the theatre was to be reformed through
"civilisation and enlightenment" (bunmei kaika) and the art itself was to be
37 The slogan "Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarian!" (Sonnö jöi!) was however used
by opponents of the shogunate in their struggle to establish imperial power but also to
withstand Western pressure in the middle of the nineteenth century for Japan to open it-
self. Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History, comp, by Janet E. Hunter (Berke-
ly, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 331.
38 In Donald H. Shively (ed.), Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1971), some famous researchers describe the profound
changes within areas like literature, art, theatre, music, philosophy, religion etc., brought
on by the Meiji Restoration.
39 Brian Powell, Kabuki in Modern Japan (London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1990), p. 4.
40 The idea is expressed in the Japanese dichotomy giri-ninjö, denoting a central ethical
rule maintaining social order in Japan.
41 The period is portrayed more in detail by Donald H. Shively, for example in " The Social
Environment of Tokugawa Kabuki," while acting conventions are analysed thoroughly
by James R. Brandon in "Form in Kabuki Acting," in Brandon, Malm and Shively,
Studies in Kabuki (Hawaii: University Press of Hawaii, 1978), pp. 1-61, 63-132.
adjusted to fit the image that Japan wanted to create for itself, suggesting
that the country aimed to be seen as a modern and respectable society. Nö
theatre's close connections to the shogunate and to Buddhist philosophy
and mythology meant it was rejected for decades, and the dedication of the
nö masters to their art was put to the test when many of them had to survive
by engaging in other occupations.
The Department for Religious Guidance (Kyöbushö) was formed in
1872 to support patriotism, and to strengthen ideas about the revered state
of the emperor, his will and his heavenly origin, and to guide the people in
their choice of lifestyle. It was part of the department's duties to supervise
actors and authors, who, along with spiritual leaders, were supposed to in-
stil a particular culture into the citizens. Nothing that could not be watched
by children and their parents together could be presented. 42
It was, however, still the popular kabuki that reflected aspirations
towards modernisation. The reformers thought it too vulgar and demanded
that it should be restructured into a moral and refined art form that Japan
could be proud of showing to foreign guests. The Society for the Reforma-
tion of the Theatre (Engeki kairyökai) suggested that "enlightened" and
cultivated authors and researchers should be given the job of writing new
dramas with a content worthy enough to represent the new Japan. 43 The re-
formist society formed a plan of action to create a modern theatre building
that was similar to those of Europe, like the Theatre de Francais, for ex-
ample, suitable for the renewed and realistic style of acting in which exag-
gerated gestures and artificial speech would be limited. Prancing move-
ments, together with the entire onnagata tradition, were to disappear and
the earlier mixture of tragedy and comedy would have no place in the new
dramas. Dramatic elements were to be constructed according to theories
about the "unity of action," while contents were expected to give praise to
goodness while evil and vice were to be condemned and punished. 44 Theat-
rical pieces were to emphasise "the beautiful," and the moral summarised
42 Donald Keene, Dawn to the West. Japanese Literature in the Modern Era, Poetry, Dra-
ma, Criticism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), pp. 399ff.
43 Shigetoshi Kawatake, Nihon engeki zenshi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten [1959] 1979),
pp. 735-860. See also A. Horie-Webber, "Modernisation of the Japanese Theatre: The
Shingeki Movement" in W. G. Beasley (ed.), Modern Japan. Aspects of History, Litera-
ture and Society (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, [1976] 1980), pp. 147-165.
44 Ibid. Cf. Toyotaka Komiya (ed.), Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, English
trans. E. G. Seidenstecker and Donald Keene (Tokyo: Obunsha, 1956), pp. 215ff.
in the expression kanzen chdaku (reward the good and punish the evil) was
to be the foundation for all refined theatre. 45
It soon became clear to those wishing to reform the strongly plebeian ka-
buki that it was not an uncomplicated medium that easily could be trans-
formed into a nationally representative theatre. At the same time, such per-
formances were to be used in support of reforms, after limitations had been
placed on old and familiar patterns of presentation and after censorship of
dramatic content had been applied, in order to make them suit the new so-
cial structure. However, when the backbone of the kabuki tradition itself
was taken away, the public reacted negatively, demanding performances in
the traditional style. 46 Alongside the attempts at reforming kabuki, a new
political theatre (söshi shibai), which did not emphasise literary quality,
had appeared. Performances were especially effective in Osaka, where
Sudö Sadanori produced dramatised versions of his own short stories.
However, this politically tinged theatre did not appeal to the broader public
in the long run. Textual quality was not given importance. Also the star cult,
the onnagata tradition, and the complicated predetermined patterns of pres-
entation (kata) were toned down. The unaccustomed audience was easily
bored by the repetitive attempts to use realism and realistic expressions.
In time, the performances lost some of their political message and por-
trayed contemporary events with sensational and spectacular expressions,
under the guidance of Kawakami Otojirö, who had come to Osaka not long
after Sudö had started making political theatre, and who had also brought
his performances on tour to Tokyo and Kyoto. In the beginning, he was
seen as a trouble-maker who fought for the "human rights" of the Japanese,
something he thought was extremely neglected. Through juggling and by
making fun of the country's new elite, his oppositional sketches soon be-
came very popular. Kawakami successfully portrayed events during the
war between China and Japan in 1894-95, and his journey to the front gave
him material for patriotic war dramas and spectacular war scenes. His
troupe was dominant for a while in Tokyo, showing contemporary dramas
from the battlefront. Kawakami disguised his stories in kabuki outfit but
aimed, both in form and in content, to produce realistic theatre. These per-
formances strengthened the significance of the new shimpa (new school/
style) theatre and underlined Kawakami's position as the earliest represent-
ative and creator of a new Japanese theatre. 47
45 Suematsu, "Engeki Kairyö Iken," 1887, Meiji Bunka Zenshü, Vol 12, pp. 222-229. Cited
in A. Horie-Webber, "Modernisation of the Japanese Theatre...", pp. 154-155.
46 Yoshinobu Inoura and Toshio Kawatake, The Traditional Theatre of Japan [1971], first
one-volume ed. (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1981), pp. 221-222.
J a p a n e s e t r a d i t i o n s a n d m o d e r n W e s t e r n i d e a s w o r k e d t o g e t h e r e v e n in
p e r f o r m a n c e s l i k e katsurekimono (living-history theatre) and zangirimono
(short-hair theatre), t h e latter inspired b y the J a p a n e s e a c c e p t a n c e of a
Western hair-style. These, together with shimpa, pointed towards the
shingeki ( n e w theatre) that w a s to d e v e l o p in t h e early t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y .
T y p i c a l o f shingeki w e r e its a t t e m p t s at f o r m i n g a literary t h e a t r e in o p p o -
sition to the earlier "old school" ( k y ü h a ) theatre that e m p h a s i s e d acting
techniques like gestures, beautiful poses and spectacular expressions.48
T h e kabuki actor I c h i k a w a D a n j ü r ö I X ( 1 8 3 9 - 1 9 0 3 ) w a s o n e of those
w h o w e r e e n t h u s e d b y t h e r e f o r m m o v e m e n t a n d p e r f o r m e d in p l a y s w i t h
t h e m e s b a s e d on c u r r e n t events. H e tried to u s e a p s y c h o l o g i s i n g style
c a l l e d haragei (inner presentation) that w a s totally alien to J a p a n e s e actors
and audiences of the time.49 W h e n a n e w theatre ( S h i n t o m i z a ) w a s o p e n e d
in 1872, D a n j ü r ö represented his actor c o l l e a g u e s in the inauguration
s p e e c h a n d c o n d e m n e d the d e c a y of t h e traditional theatre:
W h e n o n e t h i n k s b a c k u p o n it, t h e t h e a t r e of r e c e n t y e a r s h a s d r u n k u p filth
a n d h a s s m e l l e d of t h e c o a r s e a n d t h e m e a n . It h a s d i s c a r d e d the b e a u t i f u l
p r i n c i p l e of r e w a r d i n g g o o d a n d c h a s t i s i n g evil, it h a s f a l l e n i n t o m a n n e r -
i s m s a n d d i s t o r t i o n s , it has b e e n f l o w i n g steadily d o w n h i l l . P e r h a p s at n o
t i m e h a s this t e n d e n c y b e e n m o r e m a r k e d t h a n n o w . I, D a n j ü r ö , a m d e e p l y
g r i e v e d b y this f a c t , a n d in c o n s u l t a t i o n w i t h m y c o l l e a g u e s , I h a v e r e s o l v e d
to c l e a n a w a y t h e d e c a y . 5 0
47 Kozo Hagii, Shimpa no gei (Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1984). It is interesting to note that
Kawakami's theatre troupe was the first to introduce Japanese theatre to a broader Euro-
pean audience. At performances in Paris at the World Exhibition in 1900 the group was a
big success with "The Geisha and the Samurai" and "The Government Spy." Ironically,
Kawakami himself had rejected the kabuki tradition in favour of ideas for renewal from
the shimpa theatre. However, his performances were considered conventional kabuki in
Europe. Kawakami's wife, Sadayakko, had acted as a stand-in in the otherwise male-
dominated performances, and on the troupe's return to Japan she pioneered the new-
fangled practice of women appearing on stage. Christina Nygren, Mate: passim.
48 Christina Nygren, Möte, pp. 62ff.
49 Samuel L. Leiter, Kabuki Encyklopedia. An English-Language Adaption of Kabuki Jiten
(Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 1979), p. 129. Also see Komiya,
Toyotaka, Japanese Music and Drama, p. 34.
50 Komiya, Japanese Music and Drama...", pp. 191-192. Kabuki actors had a low status
due to the disparaging view of actors as "kawara kojiki" (beggars of the river banks).
The earlier forms of kabuki were performed by artists wandering along the dry river-
sides. With the changes in the theatre world of the Meiji period, actors gained a respect
that they had never had before. One undeniable proof of kabuki's respectability was the
Meiji emperor's attending—the first emperor to have ever done so—a kabuki perform-
ance in 1887, and commenting "Chikagoro mesurashiki mono wo mitari" (I have wit-
nessed a most unusual spectacle). Donald Keene, Dawn to the West, pp. 400^401.
However, I regard it as a matter not only of modernisation but also of

Westernisation comparable to a revivalist movement. It was also a striking
example of change according to a Western pattern in the non-Western
world. 51 In the beginning, certain Western functional objects were mani-
fest, like wristwatches and pocket watches, together with dress details, mu-
sical instruments and stage effects. In a performance in 1878 that treated
events from the Satsuma uprising the year before, "Western" fire-crackers
were used, which surprised and enraptured the spectators. 52 The play Okige
no kumo harau asagochi (The Morning Wind from the East Blows Away
the Clouds from the Southwest) was epoch-making because of the topical
theme and because the leading cast included some of the period's most fa-
mous kabuki actors. Theatre director and producer Morita Kan'ya (1846-
1897) became famous thanks to the new thinking and the modernisation in
accordance with the Meiji period's basic ideas. Not only was he successful
in building a theatre outside the strictly limited amusement area where the-
atre buildings were supposed to be situated, he also tried to enhance
knowledge about the theatre among the rich in order to create a base for a
national theatre constructed according to European patterns. His theatre
was visited by a string of celebrated domestic and foreign guests, and in
1879, a group of English actors who were performing in Hong Kong were
invited to participate in the production of Hyöryü kidan seiyö kabuki (The
strange story of the wanderer: A foreign kabuki). However, the audiences
missed the spectacular patterns of contemporary kabuki and found the per-
formance uninteresting. This was a setback against the background of ear-
lier successes. 53
Westernisation culminated during the Rokumeikan period (1883-87).
Rokumeikan was the name of the festival hall built fully in a Western style
in Tokyo to facilitate social intercourse between foreigners and Japanese
51 The issue of modernisation in contrast to Westernisation is discussed in J. Thomas

Rimer, Toward A Modern Japanese Theatre; Kishida Kunio (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1974), pp. 7-55. The profound transformation of Japan during the Meiji
era is analysed, for example, by Michio Nagai, "Westernization and Japanization: The
Early Meiji Transformation of Education," in Shively, Tradition and Modernization. He
points out the strong influence modernisation had on the educational system and that
"the transformation of Meiji Japan which began in 1868 is the first and most striking ex-
ample of Westernization in the non-Western world", p. 35.
52 Komiya, Japanese Music and Drama, p. 34.
53 Ibid., pp. 30-33. In the index on, p. 516, the play title is instead given as Hyöryü kidan
seiyö geki. The term kabuki is associated with the specifically indigenous theatre, while
geki generally means "theatre."
and to provide training in Western styles of social communication. At the

end of this period, the exaggerated adaptation and extreme interest in
Western lifestyles was criticised. By the end of the 1800s, engagements at
the Rokumeikan had ceased. What was characteristic of the kabuki-like
performances was that the transformation was largely superficial, while a
profound and psychologising drama with appropriate techniques lay in
wait.
The reform and renewal of the drama occurred at a slower rate than the
change in the art of acting itself, and it was only during the 1890s that the
initial stages of a modernised Japanese drama could be discerned. Some of
the most important sources of inspiration were Ibsen's dramas, which inci-
dentally have retained their strong position until today. Initially, it was
mainly translations and pieces written in a Western mould that gained
ground, and the most successful examples combined chosen representa-
tives of drama and theatre from both East and West. Even contemporary
kabuki theatre was "enriched" by revisions of Western plays like Victor
Hugo's Hernani and Schiller's Wilhelm Tell.54
Two principal figures in drama in its early stage of development were
Kawatake Mokuami (1816-1893) and Tsubouchi Shöyö (1859-1935). Ka-
watake was a well-known representative for groups of authors commis-
sioned by famous and influential actors to write popular kabuki dramas. He
contributed dramas based on real events that emphasised Confucian ideals
in the so-called "living-history pieces." At the same time, Kawatake wrote
modernised plays for the "short-hair theatre" in which he introduced the
innovations that had become a part of Japanese daily life after the Meiji
Restoration's opening to the surrounding world. The first piece was called
Tokyo nichinichi shinbun (Tokyo's daily paper) and was performed in
Tokyo in 1873. The title alluded to an article in a newspaper, which was a
new phenomenon in the country. In the dialogue of the drama, modernities
were touched on, like steamboats, trains, the telegraph and foreign travel—
the last was a practically unknown concept during Japan's almost 200
years of isolation. 55
Tsubouchi lived and worked some time after Kawatake and his activities
were more varied. His great significance for the development of the theatre
was accompanied by his various other activities as a novelist, critic,
teacher and translator. Tsubouchi stressed realistic drama that was coherent
54 Kawatake, Nihon engeki zenshi, pp. 871-872.

55 Keene, Dawn to the West, pp. 4 0 3 ^ 0 5 .
and unified, and in which the individual character of the roles was central.
A work that was ground-breaking in the Japanese context was his Shösetsu
shinzui (Essence of the Novel) published in 1885.56 Tsubouchi was influ-
enced not only by Western drama but also by Western literature. However,
he did not keep to a line of modernisation that merely imitated the West.
Instead he presented the view that one must keep to one's own traditions to
create a modern Japanese drama based on indigenous conditions. In his
work, he successfully combined ideas from the East and the West, in ac-
cordance with the decrees of the Meiji government. In pieces like Kiri
hitoha (A Pawlonia Leaf), the influence of Shakespeare was obvious, and
in his gakugeki (musical theatre) song, dance, music and spoken dialogue
are mixed, possibly as a result of studies of Wagner. 57 The Department of
Literature started by Tsubouchi at Waseda University in Tokyo in 1890
was of decisive significance for the development of modern Japanese the-
atre. The following year he founded the literary magazine Waseda bun-
gaku (Waseda Literature), and when he started work on Bungei kyökai (So-
ciety for Literature and Art) in 1905, he was involved in writing theatre
history as one of the prominent figures in the "new theatre," shingeki.
Henrik Ibsen's decisive role in the development of Japanese drama dur-
ing the twentieth century is uncontested, and the production of John Ga-
briel Borkman in 1909, in a translation by Mori Ögai (1862-1922) is often
considered the starting point for shingeki.5* When a Japanese magazine
carried out a survey in 1920 among domestic dramatists as to which for-
eign author had most inspired them, the list was led by Shakespeare and Ib-
sen, followed by Strindberg and Maeterlinck. 59 After Ibsen's death in 1906,
a Japanese Ibsen society was formed in which a group of authors with a
naturalist stance congregated around Ibsen's dramas. These had actually
been published a decade earlier, but it was only after his death that the real
56 See Keiko Kockum, The Emergence of the Modern Japanese Novel, in vol. 3:1.
57 Ibid., pp. 411, 416. Keene claims that the play Kiri hitoha is the fruit of Tsubouchi's
studies of both Shakespeare and Chikamatsu Monzaemon, and even refers to an essay by
Tsubouchi entitled "Wa ga kuni no shigeki" in Meiji Bungaku Zenshft Series (1969),
where he describes his views on Japanese and Elizabethan drama.
58 Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, pp. 42-43. The performance was a collab-
oration between Osanai Kaoru and Ichikawa Sadanji and was produced at Yurakuza in
Tokyo. The ensemble here consisted not only of amateurs but also of professional kabuki
actors.
59 Mitsuya Mori, "The Family Relationship in Scandinavian Drama and Its Perception in
Japan" in Seijö bungei, 127 (1989). Mori even asserts that "Ibsen is the most important
European dramatist in the history of the modern Japanese theatre."
Ibsen frenzy broke out.60 From the very start, Japanese dramatists were
drawn by the strength and inherent power of the individual portrayed in Ib-
sen's dramas. A debate about female emancipation started only after A
Doll's House was produced for the first time in 1911. Many men made fun
of the play's content, and Nora's final decision to leave her home was
strongly criticised.61 In traditional dramas, the roles were stock characters
acting more in accordance with the role type they belonged to than as indi-
viduals. Especially after being influenced by Ibsen, it became even more
attractive to have individual characterisations of each figure to create a dra-
ma adapted to the new Japanese theatre.
When Osanai Kaoru started Jiü gekijö in 1909, he had no experience of
the modern theatre movement in Europe. That is why he associated himself
with the actor Ichikawa Sadanji II who a few years earlier had been on a
long trip to Europe and America. Unlike Tsubouchi, Osanai chose to work
with kabukl actors who, under the motto "Ignore tradition!," had been
trained in the modern spirit of which he himself was a representative front
figure. 62 Osanai was of the opinion that the Japanese theatre could develop
in the right direction only if contemporary Western methods were adopted
and used. With the help of Ichikawa's stories, and programme scripts and
newspaper cuttings he had sent to Osanai from Europe, Osanai learned the
latest techniques. He named his theatre group after Antoine's Theatre Li-
bre and Otto Brahm's Freie Bühne. Further inspiration for training the
group's actors was found in Gordon Craig's theories about the "Über-
marionett," with the actor as the perfect instrument for the text and the di-
rector as the actual creator of the piece of art shown on the stage. In order
to get the former kabuki actors to work according to this line of thought, he
used among other things Jaques-Dalcroze's theories about rhythm to liber-
ate them from the patterns of movement of traditional theatre. During re-
hearsal, Osanai frequently had to remind the actors "not to dance but to
move" and "not to sing but to speak." 63 Osanai chose at the outset to use
foreign drama, finding domestic plays too limited. Ten months after it was
formed, the group had its first performance, choosing Ibsen's John Gabriel
Borkman. Since no suitable actresses could be found, the female roles were
still performed by men. Although Osanai was later to stage both domestic
and foreign dramas, during the first years, most attention was given to Ib-
60 Kawatake, Nihon engeki zenshi, p. 1055.

61 Mori, "The Family Relationship...": (35) 144.
62 M. Shimamura, cited from A Horie-Webber "Modernisation...", p. 161.
63 Ibid., p. 162.
sen, Chekhov, Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Gorky and Strindberg. Osanai

and Sadanji concentrated on theatre without any interest in music, song or
dance, which they thought was mass entertainment. Instead they attended
to realistic and psychologising spoken drama, as in their first production of
a translation of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman.64
The break from Japanese dramatic and theatre traditions made during
the first decade of shingeki (1909-1919, when Jiü gekijö was closed), to-
gether with the problems this brought in its wake, meant that the first the-
atre groups did not survive very long. The audience found it hard to identi-
fy either with the dramatic form or with the artistic expression of the
pieces. The Western plays mirrored foreign atmospheres and the psycholo-
gising style of acting was hard to comprehend, despite the fact that there
was quite some interest shown and many found the Western plays exotic
and exciting. The introduction of film at the end of the nineteenth century
was also significant for the development of modern theatre, and the form
that film took during its first decades provided further examples of the dif-
ficulties that shingeki had to deal with in the initial stages. Traditional the-
atre always involved someone with a coordinating function (nö chorus,
bunraku narrator, kabuki gidayü singer, and so on), and because of this,
both the portrayals and the dramatic form could allow themselves to be
fragmentary and "illogical." In film, the public missed listening to a
voice-over explaining passages and tying together different sections, and it
became common for a benshi, a presenter in festival attire, to act as the au-
dience's guide throughout the show. Shingeki did not adapt in the same
way to the audience's need for a commenting voice or guide, which was
one of the reasons for its lack of popularity. The new theatre adopted West-
ern drama and modern European methods of acting without adapting it to
the conditions prevailing in the domestic culture.
China—Revolution and Political Control
Through colonial trade and missionary contacts, China was confronted by

foreign literature and drama at the end of the nineteenth century. Since as
early as 1644, when a Tungus tribe from the north toppled the Ming Dyn-
asty and founded the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese had been under foreign
64 Benito Ortolani, "Fukuda Tsuneari: Modernization and Shingeki" in Shively, Tradition

and Modernization, p. 486.
domination, physically and psychologically. 65 Men were forced to wear

Manchu queues, the habit of binding women's feet continued to spread and
everyone had to dress in Manchu clothes. However, all this did not stop the
Manchurians from picking up Chinese habits and ways of life. The dynasty
lasted until 1911, exerting a strong foreign influence. Missionary work and
international trade increased and the fateful opium trade was started. At the
end of the dynasty, the country was controlled by the Empress Dowager Ci
Xi, who had strong conservative ideas, and who managed to stay in power
through intrigues and coups. The country's problems grew, as did opposi-
tion to the government and to foreign control, culminating in the Boxer Re-
bellion (Yihetuan yundong) in 1899-1901. 66 At the beginning of the twenti-
eth century, the situation was chaotic because of discord among the people.
Hundreds of uprisings took place in 1909 and 1910, and in 1911 a provision-
al republican government was proclaimed in Nanjing. Military forces in Wu-
han revolted, the Emperor was forced to abdicate, the Qing dynasty came to
an end and a new government was formed in the name of the Republic.
The theatre world was dominated by regional performances deeply root-
ed in popular and folk culture (difangxi), which in extension followed local
lingual and musical traditions. Many famous dramas with historical themes
or pieces with plots promulgating Confucian ideals were performed all
over the country. It was mainly in the acting and music that differences
could be noted. The theatre suffered continuous bans and prohibitions, but
despite these the Qing Dynasty was significant not only for the growth of a
large number of local theatre forms but also for the birth of jingju, the the-
atre form that was later to be considered a "national entertainment." 67 The
musically refined and poetic kunqu, once proclaimed by the emperor as
normative entertainment, and often presented in the palaces and for high
officials, was pushed aside by the lively and accessible jingju.6&
65 Earlier, drama and theatre life was influenced to a large extent by the Mongols when they
invaded China (Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368) and the Confucian intellectuals started to
write dramas to make a living. The period is often called the golden age of Chinese dra-
ma, and many dramas were written then that are still performed in traditional theatre
forms like jingju and the regional difangxi.
66 For details about the Boxer Rebellion, see, for example, Joseph Esherick, The Origins of
the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
67 Jingju (capital-theatre) has sometimes been called "peking opera" abroad. However, the
term "opera" alludes incorrectly to the European opera genre, which does not have much
in common with the Chinese jingju.
68 An in-depth analysis of the origins of the jingju is given in Colin Mackerras, The Rise of
the Peking Opera, Social Aspects of the Theatre in Manchu China (London: Clarendon,
Oxford University Press, 1972).
Some new plays with Western themes emerged, written in Chinese within
the domestic tradition. One example is Xin Luoma (New Rome), which takes
place around the time of the Vienna Congress of 1814-1815 and the march
into Rome in 1870.69 The play was staged according to traditional kunqu pat-
terns and contained a prologue and 40 acts. The characters of European lead-
ers were presented according to indigenous conventions as generals citing
Confucius, Mencius and older Chinese poets instead of Italian classics, as in
the original. In the prologue, presented by Dante, who takes the form of a
bearded Daoist, even Shakespeare and Voltaire made an appearance riding
on a cloud. Other sections told stories about conflicts and wars in foreign
lands, occupations and the living conditions of the people all framed in tradi-
tional Chinese theatrical style. It was not until some years after the turn of the
century that spoken theatre in the Western style started to appear.
The new Western-like performances were named wenmingxi (enlighten-
ment plays) or xinju (new theatre) and started as a movement among Chi-
nese students in Tokyo where two full evening performances of Heinu yu-
tian lu (The Story of a Black Slave's Complaints to Heaven, a revision of
H. Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin) were publicly given at Hongoza
in Tokyo in 1907.70 The content of the play was well suited for an adapta-
tion that matched the movement against oppression and for liberation
among young students in Tokyo. The piece had been rehearsed for two
months and contained many innovations such as divisions into acts with
curtain falls between the acts and only spoken dialogue. The sequence of
events was extended with songs and dances that had no connection whatso-
ever with the play, and a visitor from China sang an additional piece from a
traditional jingju play. Fellow students insisted on getting roles as extras,
which meant that the black slave from the America of the 1850s was sur-
rounded on stage by Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Indians. All the roles
were played by men. The performance appears to have been received en-
thusiastically, however, and six months later it was produced again at Fu-
dan University in Shanghai. A student group had earlier that same year, to-
gether with a Japanese actor, put on a short piece from Chahuanii (La
Dame au Camelias) by Dumas the Younger. 71
69 William Dolby, A History of Chinese Drama (London: Paul Elek, 1976), pp. 197-201.
70 A. R. Davis, "Out of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' Tokyo 1907: A Preliminary Look at the
Beginnings of the Spoken Drama in China" in The Journal of the Oriental Society of
Australia, 6:12 (1968-69), p. 37.
71 Ouyang Yuqian (1889-1963), one of modern Chinese theatre's prominent figures, describes
the performance in Tokyo. See Ouyang Yuqian, "Hui yi chunliu" in Zhongguo huaju yun-
dong wushi nian shiliaoji IUI (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chuban shi, 1985) I, pp. 13-23.
These performances paved the way for the development of huaju (spo-
ken theatre) and during the second decade of the twentieth century the dif-
ference was clearly emphasised between the new huaju as zhenxinxi (truly
new plays) in contrast to jiaxinju (false new theatre), which were attempts
made in earlier decades to start a modern spoken theatre. But much rejuve-
nation was still needed to transform and adapt foreign plays that had only
spoken dialogue, to suit the Chinese public.
More amateur groups had appeared after the first attempt to perform
Uncle Tom's Cabin in revised form in Shanghai, but it was not until 1910
that a professional theatre troupe was set up within the genre. The group,
Jinhuatuan (The Development Group), under the leadership of Ren
Tianzhi, had a strong political agenda and during its two years of activities
it participated in the struggle against the Qing Dynasty. Improvisations
built around given themes or loosely connected excerpts from contempo-
rary literature, called mubiaoxi (act-outline plays) were the group's speci-
ality. 72 A large board behind the stage was changed every day, giving short
directions for the improvisations. The technique built on those first Chi-
nese performances in Tokyo, where short interludes were performed while
the curtain was down in order to avoid irritation and impatience among the
public.
Another group that had a significant impact on the development of the
theatre and drama was formed in 1912 in Shanghai, when some of those
who had been members of the Spring Willow Society in Japan formed
Chunliupai (Spring Willow School). It existed for three years and put on a
variety of performances based on traditional Chinese stories, translations
or revisions of foreign dramas. There was no director or author/dramatist.
Instead, everyone in the group helped out with the chores, although, for the
most part, only short pieces and fragmentary scenes were produced in con-
nected sequence. It should be mentioned that this "new theatre" did not
reach a wide audience and was mainly performed among progressive and
politically conscious circles and at the larger universities. Within the tradi-
tional indigenous theatre, new attempts were being made at the same time
to remake and modernise the content and acting style of performances in
accordance with the spirit of the new political ideas.
After the Republic was formed in 1912, newspapers and books were still
written in the classical literary Chinese that had been the general language
of written communication for the educated and had helped to transcend
72 Dolby. A History, p. 203.

dialectal borders. A modernisation of the written language was in the off-

ing and the time was ripe for a change from the classical to the vernacu-
lar. 73 New magazines started to use the more easily accessible language
that soon became obligatory in schools. This was, however, nothing new
for literature and the theatre. For a long time a tradition of story-telling
and of literature written in the colloquial language had existed parallel
with the classical literary tradition, but it had been belittled by the edu-
cated elite.
The Enlightened Plays (wenmingxi) was to bear up the reformist ideas
of the Republic and during a flourishing period of almost twenty years
the art of the theatre preceded several important political and cultural
events: the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and founded the
Republic (1912), the Literary Revolution (1917) and the May 4 ,h Move-
ment (1919). 75 Serious and detailed studies of Western drama and theatre
were carried out and, in the spirit of the times, there appeared many ex-
ponents of Western-style analytical drama performed in colloquial lan-
guage. A large number of translations of European and American authors
were made during this period. 75 New theories of literature and drama
were discussed and at the same time authors like Wilde, Ibsen, Bj0rnson,
Strindberg and Chekhov were introduced. 76 Besides expressing a passion
for Western life and art, the new drama was also a way of rejecting the
themes used in the local theatre tradition so criticised by the prominent
figures of the movement. 77
The convention of men playing female roles became controversial with-
in modern Chinese theatre around this time. The theatre group Shanghai
xiju xieshe (Shanghai's Theatre Company), led by Hong Shen (1894—
1955), acted here as the driving force for change. After six years in the
USA, Hong Shen threw himself into theatrical work on his return to China
and was at that time unfamiliar with and unwilling to see men playing
73 For a discussion of Western influence on Chinese literature at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, see Bonnie S. McDougall, The Introduction of Western Literary Theories
into Modern China 1919-1925, East Asian Cultural Studies Series, 14—15 (Tokyo: The
Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1971), p. 153.
74 See Bonnie S. McDougall, "The Search for Synthesis: T'ien Han and Mao Tun in 1920"
in A. R. Davis (ed.), Search for Identity (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1974), pp. 2 2 5 -
253 and in Dolby, A History, p. 205.
75 A list of foreign dramas translated into Chinese before 1949 can be found in Bernd Eber-
stein, Das Chinesische Theater im 20. Jahrhundert, Schriften des Instituts für Asien-
kunde in Hamburg, 45 (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 348-385.
76 Discussed by Dolby in A History, pp. 205-206.
77 See for example Bernd Eberstein, Das Chinesische, pp. 19-21.
women in spoken theatre. 78 In protest he wrote a drama that did not have
female roles based on O'Neill's The Emperor Jones with the title Zhao
Yanwang (Zhao, King of Hell). Hong Shen's ideas caused quite a stir and
created a debate that, in a further move to press for natural role casting, he
stimulated by letting two plays be acted out in parallel, one using only men
in all the roles and the other with women in all the female roles. Hong Shen
said that the audience understood the point of natural femininity and that it
felt natural for the group to accommodate that.79
Two tendencies could be seen in leftist theatre at the end of the 1920s. In
Shanghai, Nanguoshe (South China Association) was formed in 1928, led
by the dramatist Tian Han. The group staged plays with social and human
themes and presented experimental performances at small student theatres.
This marked the beginning of a theatre that aimed at being the social con-
science of bourgeois intellectuals. After several successful tours in the big
cities, the theatre group was banned in 1930 from continuing its work by
the government. 80 At the same time, things were coming to a head at oppo-
sitional headquarters, and groupings such as the League of Left-Wing
Writers (Zuoyi zuojia lianmeng) and China's Left-oriented Dramatists' Or-
ganisation (Zhongguo zuoyi xijujia lianmeng) were formed. 81 Dramatic
troupes made up of workers, soldiers and farmers pursued their struggle by
promulgating information and propaganda. Soon the Red Army formed
theatre groups that played reportage theatre (baodaoxi) with simple propa-
gandistic and educational texts and presented popular ballads with revolu-
tionary content in an attempt to reach the grassroots.
Following the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, a growing re-
sistance had established itself by the mid-1930s even in the theatre world at
different levels. On top of this, a spoken theatre movement appeared,
mainly in the big cities, with a socio-critical profile. Repertoires had until
then consisted mainly of translated foreign drama, but now Chinese au-
thors presented newly-written plays in their own language. The themes
took the lives of the Chinese themselves in place of earlier translated sub-
jects that lacked relevance to the Chinese audience. The theatre had a
78 See Hong Shen, "Xiju banshe pianduan" i Zhongguo huaju yundong wushinian shiliaoji,
äp. 107-110. Also discussed by W. Dolby in A History, pp. 206-207.
79 Hong Shen, "Xiju...", pp. 108-109.
80 See Tian Han, "Nanguoshe shi lite" in Zhongguo huaju yundong wushi nian shiliaoji, pp.
11 Iff.
81 See, for example, Colin Mackerras "Theater and the Masses" in Colin Mackerras (ed.),
Chinese Theater From Its Origins to the Present Day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1983), pp. 147-148.
strong position among common people and was the main means for com-
munication and propaganda, as was the case during the Long March
(1934-36), when hundreds of theatre groups moved along the whole front,
providing information about the political struggle to the illiterate rural
population through a story-telling format. 82
When Japanese troops invaded many parts of China, including Shang-
hai, in 1937, political factions within the country and representatives of tra-
ditional and modern theatre were united for a time. Theatre groups now
toured large parts of the country under the slogan "Spreading patriotic
news to the countryside and to the battlefields." 83 Patriotic, naturalistic and
historical dramas were popular and were performed both in areas con-
trolled by the nationalists and in those controlled by the communists. The
performances had as their chief goal the heightening of the united people's
power of resistance. Representatives of the modern spoken theatre worked
side by side with actors of traditional theatre styles like jingju, regional
theatre forms, folk story-telling and comic dialogues. 84 The war also gave
birth to many popularised patriotic dramas with a strong propagandistic
flavour such as Fangxia nide bianzi (Put down your whips) by Xia Yan
(1900-1995). This was a revision of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, which in
the Chinese version portrayed the cruelty of the Japanese and the people's
suffering under the occupation in Manchuria. 85
The person considered in China today to be the most important repre-
sentative of early Chinese spoken theatre is Cao Yu (1910-96), who
studied English in Beijing and through contacts in the new theatre move-
ment came into contact with many foreign works. The play Leiyu (Thun-
derstorm) which he wrote in 1933 was decisive for the continued develop-
ment of spoken theatre in the country. His use of form and content con-
vinced the Chinese public of the possibilities that existed in modern drama
if it was used in ways relevant to the country. The play was the first in a se-
82 See more about this in Chang-tai Hung, War and Popular Culture. Resistance in Modern
China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press,
1994), pp. 221-269.
83 Ibid., p. 49.
84 The inclusion of traditional drama in the activities of resistance was, however, not with-
out controversy, and it was doubted whether the popular traditional performing arts
could be used in the service of the war cause. The question was whether new material
could be put into old forms—a process called "filling old bottles with new wine" (jiuping
zhuang xinjiu). Ibid., p. 86.
85 Dolby, A Chinese, p. 213. The authorship of this play has been disputed. Hung Chang-tai
claims that the play was written by Chen Liting. He also suggests it should be listed as a
"collective work." War and Popular, p. 311, note 35.
ries of realistic portraits of complicated and decaying family situations that

had grown out of the old social system. Leiyu represents the semi-Western-
ised China of the time that was struggling both against its past and against
foreign influence. This drama was followed by Richu (Sunrise) in 1936,
Yuanye (Wilderness) in 1937 and Beijingren (Beijing man) in 1940, the last
about an old-fashioned Chinese family that breaks down totally. 86
The political movements during the 1930s had a decisive impact on the
theatre. Many authors and actors worked together under conditions not
common in peacetime. Parallel with the theatre of propaganda and resist-
ance, new ways were sought in new and modernised theatre forms and
through the use of theatre techniques which had earlier only been used in
productions of foreign plays. A domestic spoken theatre with themes about
human relations and family problems presented stories that had not been
acceptable on a theatre stage before. This was underlined by dialogue in
simple language without poetic and classical refinement.
India—Colonisation and National Struggle

In India, the situation for drama and the theatre was very much character-
ised by British colonisation, especially in the big cities like Mumbai (Bom-
bay), Cheenai (Madras) and Kolkata. British fortifications had been estab-
lished in widely separated regions of the huge country but Kolkata became
the initial centre for the development of theatre and drama, and this study
will therefore concentrate on Bengal. Until the final Partition in 1947, Ben-
gal included today's Bangladesh and parts of Bihar and Orissa. 87 The Lon-
don-inspired theatre of the British quickly attracted the interest of wealthy
Indians, but it was only during the latter half of the nineteenth century that
an Indian public theatre inspired by European models was performed in
Kolkata.
86 Details of Cao Yu's extensive activities are summarised in Hu Qiaomu et al. (eds.),
Zhongguo dabaike quanshu, Xiju (Beijing and Shanghai: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu
chuban shi, 1989), pp. 67-71.
87 Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama and Theatre" in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh
1704-1971, 3: Social and Cultural History (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh,
1992, 1997), p. 494. In order to describe the development of the Western influenced the-
atre from its introduction in the eighteenth century until Indian Independence in 1947, he
introduces a division into five "epochs": Introduction of the European Theatre (1753-
mid-nineteenth century), Imitation, assimilation and formation (1795—1870s), Romanti-
cism and the Public Theatre (1870s-1920s), Social Concern and Nationalism (1920s-
1940s) and Tagore's development of the indigenous theatre (1881-1941).
The theatre tradition that the British first encountered in Bengal was
mainly nat-git (music theatre), especially the popular and widespread yat-
ra.™ Yatra had been formed in the sixteenth century by the cult of Krishna
and made use of stories together with song and dance, underlining reli-
gious dogma and the conviction of the followers. 89 For a long time yatra
was kept alive through an oral tradition, and the first preserved manu-
scripts are from the end of the eighteenth century. 50 Until the early nine-
teenth century, yatra performances focused on religious themes and spirit-
ual and moral education. Travelling theatre groups worked under the lead-
ership of the main actor or the most prominent singer, who was also re-
sponsible for maintaining a good artistic standard. The story was presented
by spoken dialogue, punctuated by song and music, and with strong melo-
dramatic expression. The educative content was aided by allegorical pres-
entation by a character called vivek (conscience), who could move freely in
and out of the play, and the role of niyati (fate), who could comment freely
on incidents and episodes and also warn the characters who were in dan-
ger. During the first half of the nineteenth century it became fashionable
for young men from rich families in Kolkata to form their own yatra so-
cieties; consequently, themes of everyday life were included. In the middle
of the nineteenth century the traditional yatra form allowed itself to be in-
fluenced by the progressive introduction of Western spoken theatre, and
even the original groups started to borrow acting styles, dramatic forms,
topical themes and decorative elements. These innovations also led to a
temporary increase in urban interest in yatra, but this very quickly came to
be seen as old-fashioned by the modern urban population. This situation
continued until the 1940s, when the Communist Party of India used the
theatre for propaganda purposes. 91
88 As the system of transliteration of Bengali language varies I have chosen not to incorpo-
rate diacritical marks in names and titles.
89 Yatra means "journey" or "procession" and is considered by some researchers to be very
old or to have come from Vedic times when the holy Hindu books took shape. A summa-
ry of different viewpoints can be found in Kironmay Raha, Bengali Theatre (New Delhi:
National Book Trust [1978] 1993), p. 36. Ajit Kumar Ghosh refers to an undefined "an-
cient times" in a historical outline in " Yatra: Sekal ο ekal" in Sushanta Sarkar and Naz-
mul Ahsan (eds.), Yatra: Udbhba υ bikas (Khulna: LOSAUK, 1994), pp. 123-145.
90 James R. Brandon, The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), p. 89.
91 Many stress the importance of not disregarding the great popularity and social strength
of indigenous theatres like yatra when discussing the value of the colonial theatre in the
formation of the modern theatre. See, for example, Chris Banfield, "Badal Sircar's Third
Theatre of Calcutta" in Brian Crow with Chris Banfield (eds.), An Introduction to
Post-Colonial Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 114-116.
The first British theatre was formed in 1753 but lasted only three years,
closing in 1756 when Nawab Sirajuddaula stormed the British at Fort Wil-
liam. The desire of the British to watch their own plays led well-situated
businessmen and officials in the area to open private stages for a limited
public during the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning
of the nineteenth century. Mostly European and particularly British dramas
were produced, and even if a few Bengali plays were included, the per-
formances were mainly by and for the British. The Belgachia Theatre,
which opened in 1858, was India's first permanent proscenium theatre,
founded after the large number of temporary stages in the region. 92
It was to take a whole century from the first encounter of British drama
and theatre with the indigenous Bengali theatre before Western-influenced
drama in Bengali reached a broader audience. 93 The first play in Bengali
performed by a totally Bengali group with both men and women on a
proscenium stage was produced by a Russian by the name of Herasim
Lebedeff (1749-1817). 94 This occurred at the Bengally Theatre in Kolkata
in November 1795, and the play was a translation of Richard Jodrell's
comedy The Disguise. Ticket prices were high, which meant that spoken
theatre only reached the propertied elite. The first drama supposedly writ-
ten according to the Western tradition was produced by Krishnamohan
Bandyopadhaya in the early nineteenth century. This play, The Persecuted,
was written in English and was performed in the language of the colon-
isers.95
The effects of a British education and of English public theatre made
Shakespeare the obvious dramatist to produce. 96 Shakespearean dramatur-
92 "The English Theatre in Calcutta" in Sushil Kumar Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta
Theatres 1753-1980 (Calcutta and New Delhi: Κ Ρ Bagchi & Company, 1982), p. 111.
93 Here we could talk about a crossing of "public spheres." According to Dipesh Chakra-
barty, British rule put in place the practices, institutions and discourse of bourgeois indi-
vidualism in India, which led to the rise of a "private" and a "public" " s e l f ' and private
and public spheres, a distinction that at earlier times could not be found in Indian arts but
now became increasingly obvious. Provincializing Europe, pp. 35-37.
94 Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1983), p. 19. Even Bharucha puts the popular folk theatre yatra in relation to the elitist
Sanskrit tradition. He also summarises his view of the colonial background of the theatre
in Bengal: "It is a startling fact that the first play in the history of the contemporary
theater in Bengal was produced by a Russian." Ibid., p. 7
95 Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama and Theatre", p. 496. Even the spelling of "Bengally
Theatre" was taken from here.
96 The effect of British education in colonial India has been extensively discussed, showing
a multi-facetted picture. For example "From a standpoint of national consciousness and
the birth of modern nationalism in India, a far more important role was played by English
gy and the European style of production continued to dominate, undimin-

ished. This influence spread and was kept alive until the 1920s, but it was
actually not until the 1930s that it started to weaken and later disappeared
to give way to indigenous theatre. The European influence was very obvi-
ous in 1831, when Prasanna Kumar Tagore's Hindu Theatre was inaugu-
rated. The Hindu Theatre was the first to be started by a Bengali with the
intention of catering to Bengalis, and the first performance presented Act
V of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the first act of Bhababhuti's Uttara-
ramacharita (The later adventures of Rama), translated from Sanskrit into
English. 97
During the first half of the nineteenth century, even indigenous forms
like sanskrit natyakala and nat-git competed with the European perform-
ances, but the British influence was paramount. 98 At the same time, Euro-
pean dramaturgy (especially Shakespeare), which was seen as an ideal
model that should be popularised, was spread by the Hindu College and
Oriental Seminary under the leadership of R. L. Richardson. 99 By the
1840s, there was a clear wish among educated groups in society to patron-
ise the newer forms of theatre, while traditional ones like yatra and other
popular ones containing dialogue, song and music were losing their audi-
ence. Even performances during the many religious festivals seem to have
lost their attraction for the bhadralok, or "respected people." A contempo-
rary newspaper in Kolkata reported in 1832 a poor show of Durga Puja
which so few people had attended that "even women from the lower orders
could easily get in and stand before the image (of Durga) /.../ There has
been a marked decline in the pomp of Durga Puja this year, and many ex-
plain it by saying that men of this country have lost their wealth." 100
education than the vast communication network." Harihara Das, The History of the Free-
dom Movement in India (1857-1947) (Jaipur and New Delhi: National Publishing
House, 1998), p. 11. When it comes to theatre and popular performances, English educa-
tion is given the blame for their continuous diminution. "All the entertainments and fes-
tivities of the common people are disappearing one by one. The jatras, the panchalis are
no longer there, let alone the kobi (songs). What will the common people live on? Only
country liquor?" Basantak, vol.11, no. 10 1874, quoted and translated in Sumanta Baner-
jee, The Parlour and the Streets. Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Cal-
cutta (Kolkata: Seagull Books, [1989] 1998), p. 203.
97 Mukherjee, The Story, p. 14.
98 Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama", p. 496.
99 For an analytic discussion of Shakespeare's drama in Bengali theatre, see Nazmul Ah-
san, Shakespeare Translations in Nineteenth-Century Bengali Theatre (Dhaka: Bangla
Academy, 1995).
100 Jnanannesan, 26 October 1839. Quoted and translated in Sumanta Banerjee, The Par-
lour, pp. 40-41.
The theatre was expected to treat subjects connected with the social
changes that education had brought and to reform the customs and habits
of the orthodox Brahmins. 101 One such play was Vidya Sundar (Vidya and
Sundar, two names actually meaning "Knowledge" and "Beauty"), con-
sidered by some to be the first drama in Bengali produced with European
techniques. It was an adaptation of the well-known poem by Bharat Chan-
dras Annanda Mangal {In praise of Annanda), and had both men and
women playing the parts. 102 Others see Kulin Kulasarvasva (The Caste-
Obsessed Brahmin), written in 1853 by Ramnarayan Tarkaratna, as the
first authentic Bengali drama that was neither a revision of an earlier poem
nor a translation of a foreign work. 103 It is about polygamy among Brah-
mins and examines the question of India's rigid caste system and the supe-
rior position of the Brahmins. Issues like the attempts at social reforms of
child marriage, polygamy, widow remarriage and women's education of-
ten split Kolkata's "respectable society" into warring factions. 104 Tarka-
ratna was a learned man with ample knowledge of the Sanskrit tradition,
which he followed in his plays, and he took after great authors like Kalida-
sa and the manual Natyasastra. In a play from 1867, Naba natak (The New
Drama), however, he broke the Sanskrit convention that a theatrical piece
should not have a tragic end, allowing the hero to die after being poisoned
by his own wife. 105
Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1824-1873) become a prominent figure for
those hoping to free themselves from the Sanskrit tradition. Although he
translated the traditional Sanskrit drama Ratnavali (The Jewels) into Eng-
lish, he thought it was worthless and was later inspired to write drama with
the aim of shaking off the strong bonds of the Sanskrit tradition. 106 His
work is believed to have been the first successful assimilation between Eu-
ropean and Indian drama. His Sharmistha (Sermista) (1859) took a theme
from the Mahabharata and had many structural similarities with Ratnavali
and the later Padmavati (published in 1860 and performed in 1865). This
was the first introduction of blank verse into Bengali theatre. The Greek
myth about the golden apple was used in the plot and the influence of
101 Bharucha, Rehearsals, pp. 8-9.

102 Mukherjee, The Story, pp. 14-15.
103 Bharucha, Rehearsals, p. 10.
104 Banerjee, The Parlour, p. 51. These issues are also discussed in many other parts of the
book.
105 Ibid.
Shakespeare was obvious, while the reliance on sanskrit natyakala was

weak. 107 Madhusudan was especially appreciated for his farces, in which
his language was light and sharp and his characters were clearly depicted.
One good example is Ekei ki bale sabhyata! (So, This Is Civilisation),
which makes fun of ultra-progressive youths blindly copying the West.
Madhusudan was considered a master in applying the Shakespearean
model and achieving unity of action, but he was rather weak in creating
dramatic tension. However, his importance for the creation of drama ac-
cording to European patterns is decisive, but as is so often the case when
prominent figures pave the way for the future, he had to suffer strong criti-
cism from traditionalists. 108
A contemporary of Madhusudan was Dinabandhu Mitra (1830-1873),
who underscored and further developed Madhusudan's drama, under the
influence of an English education. He introduced drama with a nationalist
message to the Bengalis and became known for his protest play Nildarpan
(Blue Mirror) which came out in 1860, taking up the issue of the suppres-
sion of local workers by the British indigo plantation owners. This poign-
ant protest play against the British administrators and their collaborators,
the native landowners (zamindars) led to the Indigo Rebellion the same
year. 109 When Nildarpan was staged in Kolkata in 1872, it had a very
strong impact as a symbol of opposition and was recognised by the British
as a potential weapon of rebellion. Another performance of the play was
given in Lucknow in 1875, and scenes like the one where a white planter
rapes an Indian peasant woman led to many Europeans storming the stage.
This, together with other subsequent incidents, led to theatre censorship by
the British. 110 Nildarpan continued to stir people's feelings and the play
was banned in Bengal in 1908 in connection with nationalist uprisings as
well as in later stages of the nationalist movement when copies of the play
107 Madhusudan's popularity and his ability to successfully assimilate European and Indian
traditions are discussed by many. See, for example, Bharucha, Rehearsals, pp. 12-16;
Raha, Bengali Theatre, pp. 20-23; and Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama...", pp. 498-501.
108 Rustom Bharucha discusses the correspondence between Madhusudan and his friend
Gour Das Basak in which Madhusudan defends his position and denies the alien atmos-
phere that his plays are accused of having. Bharucha states that, ironically, it was during
this period that his authorship attained a more profound insight into what it means to be
an Indian author and to live in a colonised society. Bharucha, Rehearsals..., pp. 13-14;
and note 17, p. 238.
109 Sudipto Chatterjee, "Mis-en (colonial-)scene...", p. 30.
110 Farley P. Richmond, "Characteristics of the Modern Theatre" in Richmond, Swann and
Zarilli, Indian Theatre, Traditions of Performance (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publish-
ers Private Limited, [1990] 1993), p. 389.
were seized by the police. 1 " A couple of Mitra's other pieces that are so-
cially critical show the strong influence of Madhusudan: firstly, Sadhabar
ekadashi (The Widow-Feast of a Married Woman), which treats the ques-
tion of the blind imitation of the West by the progressives, and secondly,
Biyepagla buro (The Wedding-Crazy Old Man), which criticises social
conservatism by ridiculing an old man obsessed by sex.
Criticism of the British Raj culminated in 1876 with the "Dramatic Per-
formance Control Act," which was passed after the performance of
Gajadananda ο Juboraj (Gajadananda and the Prince), a farce that was
first performed in February 1876 at the Great National Theatre. This play
ridicules a leading Bengali advocate who invites the Prince of Wales to his
house and, among other things, lets a group of women welcome him by
blowing on giant conch shells. A ban was imposed, but the show turned up
again the following week under another name, Hanuman Charitra (The
Adventures of Hanuman). The decree forbade "certain dramatic perform-
ances, which are scandalous, defamatory, seditious, obscene or otherwise"
and was the basis for the still valid regulation that performances must be
approved by the police.112
Through Madhusudan and Mitra, Bengali theatre seriously adopted Eu-
ropean dramaturgy in the late nineteenth century, overshadowing the San-
skrit tradition totally in the process. In addition, the popular and folk cul-
ture of Kolkata was steadily losing ground because of the new social val-
ues cultivated by the bhadraloks under English education. Innovations like
gas-lit stages were another reason for the urban middle-class audience to
flock to the modern theatre. The situation was intensified by nat-git, the
traditional theatre including song and music. Yatra in particular was trans-
formed by British influence during the 1860s and a new form of music the-
atre (gitabhinoy) was created. This was presented with a wealth of songs
but without the developed techniques of the proscenium stage. Initially, the
content was limited to Indian myths and revisions of existing translations
of Sanskrit pieces like Annadaprasad Bandopadhaya's Shakuntala (1865),
Harimokan Ray's Ratnavali (1865-66) and Tinkodi Ghoshal's Sabitri
Satyaban (1865).
This form matured slowly and was influenced by Manamohan Basu
(1831-1912), who, in contrast to the assimilation of European dramaturgy
as represented by Madhusudan and Mitra, wished to develop indigenous
111 Banerjee, The Parlour, p. 187.

112 Raha, Bengali Theatre, p. 36. Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama...", pp. 501-502.
forms, particularly yatra. The new form, gitabhinoy, had a faster tempo
than yatra and was constructed from many short songs, while yatra built
on long-drawn-out song sections. Basu even added textual elements from
sanskrit natyakala into Sati (1873) and Harishchandra (1875).
Madhusudan and Mitra strove to assimilate European dramaturgy, both
in its form and in its spirit, but because of political revaluations, the spirit-
ual dimension was dropped, leaving only the form and the structure. Their
contemporary, Girish Ghosh (1844-1912), was a director, actor, and
dramatist who introduced the psychological dimension into character act-
ing, role interpretation and actor training. His linguistic contribution to
Bengali theatre is uncontested, together with his reputation for having es-
tablished large commercial theatres in Kolkata which popularised the the-
atre among the Bengali middle class. He took his ideological framework
from Krittibas Ramayana and Kashiram Das's Mahabharata, something
most observable in his mythological pieces for yatra, especially Bhakti
Rasa (Devotional sentiment).113 At the same time, he stated that he saw
Shakespeare as a model to follow, but after a production of Macbeth in
1893 was a fiasco, it was obvious that the public was not ready to accept
performances that did not have song, dance and shameless behaviour. He
felt forced to liven up the performances with songs, farcical elements and
burlesques. 114 Melodramas that treat social themes and Bengali family life
such as Prafulla, dysfunction in the system for arranged marriages as in
Balidan (The Sacrificial Offering) and the suffering that Hindu widows tra-
ditionally have to endure and the uncertainty felt over remarriage, as por-
trayed in Sasti ki santi (Punishment or Peace), were used to ridicule the
discord among the middle class.
During the 1920s to the 1940s great changes took place in Bengali the-
atre after the death of Ghosh and Roy. 115 This period was marked by social
113 The title refers to the theory of rasa (flavour, sentiment, taste or joy) of Sanskrit Theatre
as explained in the Natyasastra. There are originally eight defined rasa, but a ninth was
added in the tenth century, the bhakti rasa.
115 The period from the 1870s until the Second World War is described by Syed Jamil
Ahmed in "Drama...", pp. 502-505. He depicts the first phase ending in 1905 as being
dominated by Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844-1912) and by drama mainly based on myth-
ological stories, and tales about saints and heroes, with a stress on religious fervour. The
second phase lasted from around 1900 until the First World War and was marked by his-
torical and often patriotic themes. Ghosh was still popular, but Dwijendralal Roy (1863-
1913) became more and more important. The third phase came after the Second World
War and led to a depression for commercial theatre. Besides the forms already men-
tioned, there were also gitabhinoy, social pieces and indigenous comedies. In the dramas,
consciousness and nationalism. Social themes were more attractive than

those of history or mythology. The mythological pieces that were produced
switched their focus from the supernatural to the human; for example, the
attraction of Rama depended more on his human qualities than on his role
as an epic hero. The melodramatic hero ideal in the historical pieces had to
make room for historical exactitude. This period saw the strengthening of
the divergence between the realism of the urban theatre and the indigenous
representation of the rural theatre. 116
Stage illumination and scenographic conventions were revolutionised by
Satu Sen when he came back from America in 1931. Lamps along the edge
of the stage were replaced by centrally directed general lighting and paint-
ed set design were replaced by realistic decor. 117 The theatre became more
accepted by the cultural elite as an artistic medium and even the highly
educated felt encouraged to invest in a career in the theatre. The much ap-
preciated music theatre, gitabhinoy, lost popularity in competition with the
depictive illusion of the theatre and increasing changes in contemporary
social life. Important dramatists during this period included Manmatha
Roy (1899-1988), an initiator of the serious one-act drama, and Sachin-
dranath Sengupta (1892-1961) and Bidhayak Bhattacharya (1907-1986),
both impressive interpreters of social themes. 118
The commercial theatres of Kolkata staged historical pieces and melo-
dramas with social themes awash with sentimentality for the most part, al-
though the national perspective strengthened with the rise in disturbances
and violence and as the demand for an end to the British rule increased.
Authors and theatre staff organised themselves in the Progressive Writers'
Association (PWA) in 1936. This was followed in 1942 by the Anti-Fascist
Writers and Artists Union and in 1943 by the Indian People's Theatre As-
sociation (IPTA) in Bombay. The IPTA came to have great importance for
the development of the theatre through the organising of actors in the cities
to meet the people's need for an accessible level of performances. 119
Ramesh Sheel (an artist in the folk tradition of story-telling, kabi gaan) in-
creased the consciousness of artists and worked to reform and remove feu-
the romantic tragedy continued to be played in five acts, influenced by the Shakespear-
ean model. Rustom Bharucha describes acting as mainly a declamation and the produc-
tions as melodramatic, escapist entertainment, in Rehearsals, p. 23.
116 Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama...", pp. 505-506
117 Ibid., p. 506.
118 Mukherjee, The Story, pp. 561-564.
119 Bharucha, Rehearsals, pp. 36-38.
dal mysticism from performances, replacing it with class consciousness

and patriotism. 120 Utpal Dutta was a key figure in the political theatre of the
Kolkata stage after Indian independence in 1947. Together with his
People's Little Theatre, he utilised the strong position that yatra still had
among ordinary people in politicised performances of his own plays, draw-
ing on topical social issues and satirising contemporary political figures.
With Dutta himself employing the melodramatic and operatic acting tradi-
tions of yatra, he drew audiences of thousands with his tub-thumping
Marxist rhetoric. 121
The Tagore family of Kolkata was working in parallel with the
above-mentioned events and persons, and there are many stories about the
productions and performances in their residence in Jorasanko. The dramas
of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) have a unique mixture of indigenous
traditions and European production techniques. Tagore was active over a
long period, from the beginning of the 1880s until 1939, with dramas like
Balmiki Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki), Raja ο Rani (Raja and Rani)
and Raja (The King of the Dark Chamber), which is built on a well-known
Buddhist jakata story. Rabindranath proclaimed the importance of yatra as
a form in which actors and audience are separated from each other. He
seems to have been critical of many of the stage techniques and acting
styles found in Western spoken theatre:
Bharata's Natya Shastra describes the stage but there is no mention there of
painted scenes. I do not think that the omission indicates any great loss...
The art of acting has to be subservient to the poetry (of the written word).
But that does not mean that it will be a slave to all other arts... Needless to
say, the words in the play are essential to the actor. But why the painted
scenes behind the actor?... It is not at all difficult to imagine a tree or two, a
room or a river. If even this little act of imagination is denied us through the
device of painted scenes, it amounts to a declaration of a complete lack of
confidence in us. That is why I like the jatra of Bengal. In jatra there is no
forbidding separation of the actors from the spectators.122
Everybody seems to agree about Tagore's greatness as an author and

dramatist, while his participation in theatre life in Kolkata is debated. His
120 Syed Jamil Ahmed, "Drama...", p. 509.

121 Chris Banfield, "Badal Sircar's Third Theatre of Calcutta" in Brian Crow and Chris Ban-
field (eds.), An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1996), p. 116. Also see Utpal Dutt, Towards a Revolutionary Theatre (Calcutta: M. C.
Sarkar and Sons Private LTD, 1982).
122 Raha, Bengali Theatre, p. 139. The author's translation into English of an article in Ban-
ga Darshan 1902.
drama builds on summaries of Indian patterns of thought and presentations

of universal truths rather than on advancing areas of conflict. This was an
attempt to achieve a truly Indian theatre. 123
Concluding remarks
It has been possible to present only a few representative cases to illustrate

the encounter between indigenous traditional theatre forms in the three
geographical regions (Japan, China and Bengal, that is, present-day Indian
West Bengal and Bangladesh) and European spoken theatre. The sampling,
evaluation and analysis have relied on oral and written accounts of authors,
actors, directors, artists, spectators and the texts of researchers on the the-
atre and of history, and are therefore further straws added to the continual-
ly growing stack of debated and re-evaluated history, since the theatre per-
formances themselves the original research sources are beyond reliving.
The introduction of spoken drama to Japan also meant an encounter with
the indigenous theatre, whose inherited and long dominance was first seen
as being threatened by the imported theatre form, which was highly appre-
ciated mainly by the cultural elite and reformists. The fully spoken dia-
logue was looked upon sympathetically by those revolutionaries struggling
for a "modern," Europeanised democratic Japan. Kabuki, appreciated over
centuries, provided an outward frame for a transformed content; the dance
and song elements put there for entertainment were taken away while a
representative "inner characterisation" replaced the stylised acting and
presentation that the public was used to and could easily understand. In this
way, the status of the new theatre was raised. Initially, however, the en-
counter involved hybridisation, integration of the Japanese and the Euro-
pean and a wish for liberation from a shameful feudal tradition within the
theatre, since it aimed to show a contemporary reality. Instead of depicting
a situation refined by beautiful poses, costumes and expressive acting, the
performances should now have a restrained spoken dialogue that, while
stressing literary qualities through a strict style of acting, was to represent a
standpoint against vice and in praise of virtue. This hybridised transforma-
tion of kabuki was not welcomed by the audience, and soon onnagata per-
123 Ibid., p. 141. This view was not shared by all. Many authors, cultural workers and re-
searchers have analysed Rabindranath Tagore's works and have put forth very different
theories.
formances were back on stage again, presenting a choice of well-known

kabuki pieces in traditional format. In the meantime kabuki changed from
being contemporary to being a traditional theatre form, while spoken the-
atre and the new drama were discussed as a means in social and political
contexts during the first half of the twentieth century. Spoken theatre con-
tinued as a specific genre and became an urban elitist phenomenon, with-
out the strong support of the general public that it would have needed to
become independent. Despite the high artistic quality shown by many of
those working in shingeki, only a few groups were professional in the
sense of the theatre being their main work, in contrast to the large number
of professional kabuki and nö actors that existed in Japan in the second half
of the twentieth century.
Even if the social situation in China was different from that in Japan,
there is a similar pattern in the encounter between the traditional indigen-
ous forms and the spoken theatre from Europe. Spoken theatre, huaju, was
introduced through Japan and was initially closely associated with student
movements, often linked to a growing political and social awareness. The
new way of presenting theatre without music, song, dance acrobatics and
martial arts, using a dialogue close to everyday speech, was seen as attrac-
tive and exciting by a limited group of educated people. This was com-
bined with a fascination for foreign stories felt by students with a foreign
education and by reformists, despite the fact that the presence of foreigners
in China in the early twentieth century was not always appreciated. En-
counters with the spoken theatre occurred initially through the translation
of Western classics like Shakespeare, and later by representatives of a
newer way of thought, such as Ibsen, for example. Huaju never became
popular among a wide audience, and even today traditional, locally popular
theatre forms that display a variety of artistic elements and present familiar
historical and mythological characters are preferred.
Spoken theatre came to be used during the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury for political purposes and was applied not only as stage art but even,
for instance, as "newspaper theatre" by groups following Mao Zedong and
his soldiers on The Long March (1934—36) to inform the people about
events happening along the way. In addition, as in the case of the Japanese
shingeki, huaju became an urban and elitist phenomenon. Although spe-
cific events in Chinese social life were sometimes considered in newly
written dramas, more often than not foreign plays were presented in imita-
tive performances. During the Cultural Revolution, indigenous traditional
theatre was totally forbidden and was replaced by modernised jingju, with
a strong political appeal. There was also an attempt to integrate some

Western devices into the theatre, though under the control of the "gram-
mar" of the Chinese theatre tradition with stylised movements and colour
codes. After a ten-year monopoly, this theatre fell out of favour and the au-
dience and the artists recaptured the traditional theatre forms. Jingju and
the regional forms became popular again, while spoken theatre gained a
strengthened position in urban areas through contemporary dramas that
followed a Western literary tradition while presenting indigenous themes.
Huaju was now a genre that was a copy of European theatre, and without
the multi-faceted artistic approach that was desired by the audience it was
transformed into a limited, elitist phenomenon.
The European spoken theatre in Bengal was isolated for almost 100
years and its encounter with indigenous drama and theatre happened as late
as in the middle of the nineteenth century. Conditions in India were very
different from those in China and Japan, especially regarding the wide-
spread colonisation and the fact that when Western spoken theatre was in-
troduced, India, unlike the other countries, already had an indigenous spo-
ken theatre tradition, namely the Sanskrit theatre.
British colonisation brought with it the spoken theatre that tradesmen
and a middle class of professionals who were products of an English
educational system wanted to surround themselves with. The strong prefer-
ence for Shakespeare was understandable and appealed even to the worldly
Indian upper class, even if the performances were largely by and for the
British themselves, strongly following traditions from the home country.
The performances were given, with a few exceptions, in English, and the
choice of venue and the high prices of the tickets, meant that they were for
the entertainment of an intellectual Indian elite and hardly for the general
public.
British education—the product of colonisation—and the increasing
number of public theatres led to a wish among the educated urban popula-
tion to see theatre that had connections with their own country and its prob-
lems related to the rise of nationalism. In the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury, what can be considered the first truly Bengali dramas were written.
The Sanskrit tradition had for a while been used to strengthen the passion
for Indian culture in contrast to the culture of the colonisers, but at the end
of the nineteenth century a discussion started about the ties to older San-
skrit drama that had led to attempts to end the dependence on Sanskrit. In
this chain of events, one can see a hybridisation of the theatre from a Euro-
pean spoken theatre that had undergone change. This change occurred, ini-
tially through being accepted as a form, then through being opposed by in-
digenous sources, and finally through being transformed into a unique
modern Indian theatre. This did not happen in Japan and China, since in
these countries an indigenous tradition comparable to that of the Sanskrit
theatre was lacking. Indian spoken theatre was used for protests and for so-
cial criticism, reaching a wider audience than before. In answer to this,
British censorship culminated in a decree in 1876 that severely limited the
freedom of speech within the theatre.
At the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, the pub-
lic theatres of Kolkata had gained a strong position among the urban popu-
lation which was to be maintained throughout the first half of the twentieth
century, both among amusement-seeking urban audiences and politically
and socially engaged groups. Slowly, the earlier bias that no decent women
could act on stage was abandoned, and ticket prices were lowered to a
moderate level. The new spoken theatre based on European dramaturgy
overshadowed the Sanskrit tradition. On the other hand, the traditional yat-
ra performance had incorporated certain elements of modern theatre ideals,
and the urban theatre-makers realised the value of the popular yatra tradi-
tion for reaching a wide audience. Towards the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, favoured devices of the yatra were integrated into the modern per-
formances given at Kolkata's public theatres, leading to an increase in
ticket sales.
A couple of decades into the twentieth century, theatre workers formed
politically active organisations and the theatre gained a strong position
among the art forms, alongside literature, poetry and art. In Kolkata there
continued to be modernist experiments with indigenous forms in the
group-theatre movement. The popular yatra shows performed by travelling
theatre groups gained an unparalleled popularity in the West Bengal coun-
tryside which still prevails, strengthened by the widespread activity of
amateur yatra groups in the villages. In Bangladesh the yatra continues to
decline, in spite of strong support from the rural audience, because it is
heavily restrained by political pressure. On the other hand, in Bangladesh,
the contemporary spoken theatre continues to be a significant interface be-
tween Western traditions and indigenous performing arts.
A summary of the differences and similarities in each of these countries
in Asia and Europe may be of some use but it would be unsatisfactory in
providing a detailed understanding. The political, economic and social
situation varied at every encounter of theatre traditions, which also oc-
curred at different time periods. As mentioned in the introduction, it may
be claimed, however, that the most widespread indigenous theatre forms

during the nineteenth century in Japan, China and Bengal respectively
were generally a mixture of many artistic expressions, hence they were un-
like European spoken theatre. The Japanese kabuki, like the Chinese jingju
and the Bengali yatra, was based on an integration of text (drama), music,
speech, song and dance, and would not be complete if one of these compo-
nents was taken away. European spoken theatre has naturally undergone
changes during the period this study covers, but typically it has put spoken
lines and role characterisation at the centre, while music, song and dance,
to the extent they appear, have mainly held a minor position. This is espe-
cially true of the modern spoken theatre that had its breakthrough in the
late nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century in countries like
France, Germany and Russia; it is also indebted to important dramatists
like Ibsen in Norway and Strindberg in Sweden.
It is indeed striking that European theatre at this time, as in our own
time, focused on innovation, while Eastern traditional theatre forms want-
ed to unite known and valued artistic elements with the intention of preser-
vation. There is also a noticeable tendency in the West to represent and for
artistic theatrical expression to take a position for or against the content of
a performance. In contrast, the tendency in the East is to present a perform-
ance according to existing artistic patterns without the performers' individ-
ual views shining through. This generalisation serves as a tool for under-
standing the differences that appear at the encounter of theatre traditions.
A similarity lies in the subversive power of the theatre, which is most
obvious in the popular and folk forms of performing art. It is no accident
that it was kabuki and not nö that was used for reforming Japanese society.
In the same way, it was natural that it was jingju or the different forms of
yangge, and not kunqu, that were the tools for political and social reforms
in China during the whole of the twentieth century, or that it was yatra, and
not the theatre forms more strongly connected to Sanskrit, that carried
communist and nationalist ideas to a wider audience during the same pe-
riod in Bengal. In Europe too, many new artistic innovations, among all the
different forms of art, were first noted in the theatre, and accordingly, the
theatre has been used in political and social struggle.
As I mentioned earlier, the artistic, comprehensive, full-evening per-
formances of spoken theatre expressing social consciousness were only
one side of this development. Many of the less formal performances within
the resistance movement come closer to the people by mixing different
styles and expressions, varying them from day to day. Uncomplicated
one-act plays with a clearly expressed message were favoured and were
presented in combination with folk dances, ballads and popular comic dia-
logues. Street theatre and rural entertainment with roots in the daily life of
farmers have been used in certain places to raise collective consciousness
and strengthen resistance with the help of banners, drums and gongs rather
than texts.
One realisation that stands out at an early stage of this work is that the
theatre created through the encounter of cultures, as analysed in this article,
has not become truly "popular." This theatre in a process of modernisation
cannot yet be considered to have a strong following among the people,
even including the hybrid forms mentioned. On the other hand, there is no
doubt that the theatre created by these encounters has been used to carry
subversive ideology and helped to bring about changes in the political and
social situation. It becomes increasingly clear that theatre performances
that are vigorous in the popular context (I exclude here the specific youth
culture that is actually the phenomenon that is closest to a global move-
ment and that develops "horizontally" rather than "vertically") prefer to re-
main within an indigenous tradition rather than proceed from the type of
"cultural encounters" we have been discussing.
GAIL RAMSAY
Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the

United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman
Introduction
The area and the task

Modern prose fiction in the form of short stories and novels began to ap-
pear in the small sheikhdoms situated on the eastern and south-eastern
coasts of the Arabian Peninsula in the early 1900s. The earliest of these
Gulf states to produce modern literature was Kuwait. 1 During the first dec-
ades of the twentieth century Kuwaiti students went on study missions to
Egypt and it was in the literary salons and establishments there that they
were inspired to venture into the field of literature. 2
In Bahrain short stories began to appear in the local press in the 1940s
and 1950s and since the 1960s, short stories by Bahraini writers have been
part of the cultural scene in this island kingdom. 3 The United Arab Emir-
ates (henceforth the UAE) took a decisive step into the field of modern lit-
erary creativity in the 1970s, roughly a decade before the Sultanate of
Oman (henceforth Oman). 4 Both the UAE and Oman vividly illustrate how
1 Some Arabs of the region reject the term Persian Gulf and prefer Arab or Arabian Gulf. I
have therefore chosen to refer to the region as the Gulf in this article.
2 Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, The Contemporary Kuwaiti Short Story in Peace Time and
War, 1929-1995 (Krakow: The Enigma Press, 1998), p. 17.
at-Tähir Ahmad Makkl, "Muqaddima" ("Foreword"), Mukhtärät al-qisas al-qaslra f i 18
balad 'arabi ("Selection of Short Stories in 18 Arab Countries") (Cairo: Markaz
al-Ahräm li-t-tarjama wa-n-nashr, 1993), p. 22.
3 Ibrahim <Abd Alläh Ghulüm, al-Qissa al-qaslra fl al-Khallj al-'Arabl, al-Kuwayt
wa-l-Bahrayn: diräsa naqdiyya ta'slliyya ("The Short Story in the Arabian Gulf, Kuwait
and Bahrain: A Foundational Critical Study") (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-'Arabiyya
li-d-diräsät wa-n-nashr, Second impression, 2000), pp. 761-799.
4 Thäbit Milkäw!, ar-Riwäya wa-l-qissa al-qaslra f l al-Imärät, nash'a wa-tatawwur ("The
Novel and the Short Story in the Emirates: Origins and Development") (Abu Dhabi: Cul-
tural Foundation), n. d., p. 17. Cf. Michalak-Pikulska, Modern Poetry and Prose of
Oman: 1970-2000 (Krakow: The Enigma Press, 2002), pp. 159-424.
242 Gail Ramsay
the mosaic of Arabic literature, both traditional and modern, is combining and
branching out into contemporary Gulf styles. This literature is being formed in
post- and neocolonial societies which are rapidly moving from a traditional
Bedouin society, to industrialised, modernised and urbanised societies.5
A central task of these volumes is to shed light on some of the cultural
and literary encounters that have been realised in the wake of global and
international contacts and coloured by colonial, postcolonial and neocolo-
nial contexts, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will study
some initial steps of modern literature in the UAE and Oman with the aim
of identifying some of these encounters which combine to make up this lit-
erature. I intend to demonstrate that it is possible to speak of the existence
of a modern literature, anchored in and impressed by the literary cultures
of its predecessors and societal context, in the UAE and Oman. This litera-
ture is emerging as a multaqä—a meeting point—for cultural and literary
cross-currents spanning vast historical epochs and geographical spaces.
The works that we will discuss testify to the fact that themes, motifs and
images from the more than a thousand year-old Arabic literary heritage, as
well as the modern Arabic literature of the 1900s and literary techniques
from the West, are being put to work in experimental styles and resulting
in a modern Gulf literature. It is going through its initial stages, exhibiting
various innovative styles. It constitutes an intertextual mesh of traditional
and modern literary strands and is mostly created by writers born in the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Similarly to Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega's contribution in this volume, in-
tertextuality in this article is viewed from the theoretical vantage points
presented primarily by Gerard Genette (1982, 1997) and Jonathan Culler
(1981) and refers to the various ways in which literary texts relate to and
interact with other texts. 6
5 In this article we refer to neocolonialism as defined by Peter Childs and R.J. Patrick
Williams in An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall
1997), p. 7; Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.
6 - 7 and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge,
Mass., London: Harvard Univ. Press 1999), pp. 3 and 190. For the definition of the con-
cept of modernity used in this article, consult Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The
Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (London, New York: I.B.Tauris, 1990),
p. 27.
6 Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, Channa Newman and
Claude Doubinsky (trans.), (Univ. of Nebraska Press, [1982] 1997), pp. 5 - 1 0 , 51-52,
381; Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca
and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 103, 115; Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega,
"Amerindian and European Narratives in Interaction," in this volume.
Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing 243
In an article entitled "Styles of Expression of Women's Literature in the

Gulf," I demonstrated that it is possible to distinguish three well-defined
literary trends in women's fictional writing in the Gulf region at present:
realistic, magical realist and modernist. 7 In this article we will be con-
cerned with magical realism and two other modernist styles as they are ex-
pressed in short stories by the first generation of male and female writers of
modern literature in the UAE and Oman.
In the introductory sections, "The Area and the Task," "Setting the
Stage" and "The Writers and the Texts," I bring up the historical starting
points of this article and introduce the authors with whose works we are
concerned as well as some of the societal realities in which they work and
live. This also includes a discussion on the role of traditional Arabic folk-
lore and folk-tales in the shaping of modern Arabic literature. In the fol-
lowing section, "Magic, Myth and Modernity," I proceed to analyse ele-
ments from the intertextual imagery of folktale magic and myth which are
carried over into modern short story writing, as a reaction to the surge of
modernisation and globalisation. This exemplifies how inter-Arabic as
well as foreign literary impulses presently combine in literary works from
the UAE and Oman. Here it is the question of social and global realities
pressing on the textual expression and resulting in a fusion between Arabic
folktales, popular superstitions and Western style realism in the framework
of a short story. In this section ar-Rashld Abü Shu'ayr's (henceforth Abü
Shu'ayr) findings on what he has named "magical realism in the Emirates"
are primary touchstones for our analyses. 8 We will consider the social and
cultural dimensions of the texts from the vantage point of Hisham Shara-
bi's theory on societies which are influenced by the processes of moderni-
sation, simultaneously and to varying degrees regulated by norms and
values of traditional society, entitled neopatriarchy. 9
7 Gail Ramsay, "Styles of Expression in Women's Literature in the Gulf," in Eva A. Csa-
to, Carina Jahani, Anju Saxena, Christiane Schaefer (eds.), Orientalia Suecana LI-LII
(2002-2003), (Uppsala: Uppsala University,), pp. 371-390, esp. 372.
8 ar-Rashid Abü Shu'ayr, "Tajribat al-wäqi'iyya as-sihriyya fi al-qissa al-qaslra al-
Imärätiyya" ("The Experience of Magical Realism in the Emirati Short Story") in
Madkhal al-qissa al-qaslra al-imärätiyya ("Entry to the Emirati Short Story") (ash-
Shäriqa: Ittihäd kuttäb wa-udabä' al-Imärät (Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union)
1998), pp. 42-96.
9 Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford
Univ. Press, 1988). Cf. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization, (First impression 1996) (Minneapolis: Public Worlds, vol. 1, Univ. of
Minnesota Press, Fourth printing 1998), p. 10.
244 Gail Ramsay
Experimenting by combining modern short story writing with elements

from the highly esteemed Arabic poetic tradition and the modernistic tech-
nique of defamiliarisation or ostranenie—making strange—is discussed
under the heading "Making Strange and Brief." 10 As I have demonstrated
in my article "Styles of Expression of Women's Literature in the Gulf," re-
ferred to above, the modernist Gulf writers embracing this style seem in-
clined to recapture a concept that traditionally has held a central position in
Arabic literature, namely that the question "How should we write?" has
precedence over the question "About what should we write?," as expressed
by Samir el-Youssef. 11 This modernist form may be interpreted as a reac-
tion to both Western style realism and globalisation, both of which may
carry the trademark of Westernisation. 12 We will find that the stories repre-
senting this style are marked by what has been defined by Stefan G. Meyer
as "[t]he 'fragmentary' nature of modernist form" which "tends to break
down som of the totalizing assumptions of realism." 13 The two short stories
discussed here include important aspects of modernism, such as the com-
plexity of the form and of "freeing the narrative from the determination of
the plot." 14
Ibrahim Taha's observations on the elements of "the modern Arabic
very short story" enhances our understanding of another modernist style
presently emerging in the Gulf. 15 Such stories employ techniques from the
Arabic poetic tradition as well as summary, detachedness and paralipsis,
all of which will be elaborated on in the section "Making Strange and
B r i e f ' and all of which may result in a brief and condensed modern Arabic
story.
Assisted by these theoretical guidelines we set out to map out and ana-
lyse some of the thematic and stylistic cross-currents between Arabic and
10 For the notion of modernist fiction used here, see David Lodge, The Modes of Modern
Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature (London: Ar-
nold, 1977), p. 45.
Cf. "Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically
from everyday speech," which also applies in this article. Roman Jakobson, Language in
Literature, Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (eds.), (Cambridge, MA and London:
Belknap, Harvard Univ. Press, 1987), p. 119.
11 Samir el-Youssef, "Formens fortrinn" ("The Precedence of Form") in Vinduet, Nr. 1/2,
2002 (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, 2002), pp. 9-15, esp. 13.
12 Ramsay, "Styles of Expression," p. 374.
13 Stefan G. Meyer, The Experimental Arabic Novel (New York: State University of New
York Press, 2001), p. 3.
14 Meyer, p. 3.
15 Ibrahim Taha, "The Modern Arabic Very Short Story: A Generic Approach" in Journal
of Arabic Literature (JAL), vol. XXXI, No. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 59-84.
Western literary tradition as well as traditional Arabic and modern Arabic

literature in the UAE and Oman. 16
The translations from Arabic in this article are my own and any additional
explanations are given in brackets in conjunction with the translation.
Setting the stage

It should be made clear that there exist wide varitions in opinion on to what
extent modern Arabic fiction has emerged as a result of the encounter be-
tween Western literature in translation and traditional Arabic folk-tales. In
this article about literature in the Gulf states of the UAE and Oman I pro-
pose that the contemporary prose fiction which is being created there today
is influenced by Western forms of literary expression while it simulta-
neously is stylistically and intertextually linked to and rooted in the Arab
past. The Arabic folk-tale and traditional myths constitute a rich intertext-
ual source of inspiration for some of the modern works under discussion in
this article. As Eros Baldissera has observed with respect to the Omani lit-
erary scene, traditional narratives of adab17 such as the moralising anec-
dotes about the two charming jackals Kallla and Dimna, translated from
the Middle Persian literature into Arabic in the eighth century, folk-tales
such as the fairy tales from A Thousand and One Nights and stories from
the Ayyäm al-'arab, "the Battle-Days of the Arabs" (the account of the
pre-Islamic battles), are all frequently referred to in support of the argu-
ment that the short story is not a new phenomenon in Arabic literature. 18
In his study on the modern literature of Oman, Fi al-adab al-'Umani
("On Omani Literature"), the Egyptian author and literary scholar Yüsuf
ash-Shärünl observes that ever since Rifä' Räfi' at-TahtäwI's appointment
as Imam and spiritual advisor for a mission of forty students delegated by
Muhammad 'All to study in Paris in 1826, and his subsequent publication
of Takhlis al-ibrlz fi talkhls Barls, in which he gave his impressions of the
history and societal organisation of France, modern Arabic literature has
been galvanised by encounters and confrontations between East and West.
At-Tahtäwi became director of a translation school—Madrasat al-alsun
16 Cf. Bo Holmberg, "Transculturating the Epic: The Arab Awakening and the Translation
of the Iliad " in vol. 3:1.
17 On the subject of adab, consult Bo Holmberg in "Adab and Arabic Literature" in vol. 1.
18 Eros Baldissera, "The Modern Short Story in the Sultanate of Oman," Proceedings of the
14th Congress of the Union Europeene des arabisants et islamisants, Part Two, Buda-
pest, 29th August-3rd September 1988, Fodor, A. (ed.), (Budapest: Csoma de Koros,
Soc., 1995), p. 89.
246 Gail Ramsay
(the School of Languages), established by Muhammad 'All in 1835 and de-

signed to train translators, government officials and school administrators.
This institution played a crucial role in the channelling of Western litera-
ture and ideas to the sphere of Arabic readership which was expanding at
this time. Scores of non-fictional as well as fictional works were translated
into Arabic during the ensuing decades. Keiko Kockum notes in her article
in volume 3:1, entitled "The Role of Western Literature in the Formation
of the Modern Japanese Novel," that numerous French, English and Rus-
sian works of fiction were translated from their original languages and pre-
sented to the Japanese readers in their own language during the course of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 19 This was similar to what took
place in the Arabic literary arena of this time. In the Arab world, following
in the footsteps of at-TahtäwI, other writers such as 'Ali Mubarak, Täha
Husayn, Tawfiq al-Haklm, Yahiyä Haqqi, Suhayl Idrls, at-Tayyib Sälih
and others, became exponents of this East-West cross-current and made it
a focal subject in a number of their works. 20
When modern literature began to emerge in the UAE in the 1970s, that
is in the oil-era, it could immediately benefit from the experiences of mod-
ern Arabic literature that had appeared since the beginning of the twentieth
century as well as literature from Europe and the Americas. 21 Beside the
classical Western and Russian works ranging from Shakespeare, Daniel
Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Jules Verne and Francois Fenelon to Tolstoy, Push-
kin, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky that had been translated to Arabic approxi-
mately a century earlier, modern works of fiction were readily available in
English for some well-educated Gulf nationals. There are other important
differences between the conditions surrounding the early modern Arabic
literature and that of the Gulf as it is emerging today. Emirati and Omani
nationals of the present generation are receiving a high-standard free edu-
cation and the older generation who never benefited in this respect from
the social re-organisation that came with the oil, are encouraged to attend
special classes to suit their educational needs. 22 When Arabic fiction began
19 Keiko Kockum, "The Role of Western Literature in the Formation of the Modern Japa-
nese Novel" in vol. 3.1.
20 Yüsuf ash-Shärünl, Fl al-adab al-'Umanl ("On Omani Literature") (Cairo: Markaz
al-'Arabiyya, 2000), pp. 128, 170.
21 Milkäwl, p. 17 and Abü Shu'ayr, p. 97.
22 Mouza Ghubash, "Social Development in the United Arab Emirates" in Edmund
Ghareeb and Ibrahim Al Abed (eds.), Perspectives on the United Arab Emirates, (Lon-
don: Trident Press, 1997), p. 279. Consult The Oman Information Handbook, Oman '99,
Ministry of Information, Sultanate of Oman, p. 208.
to appear at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centu-
ries, only a small elite who had been educated in foreign schools could
read and appreciate this literature. Furthermore, prestigious literary maga-
zines and journals concerned with arts and humanities as well as social sci-
ences such as Nizwä Magazine in Oman, Bayän al-Kutub, the weekly liter-
ary supplement of al-Bayän daily newspaper in Dubai, and Shu'ün Ada-
biyya and Derasat, published under the auspices of Ittihäd kuttäb wa-'uda-
bä' al-Imärät (Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union) in ash-Shäriqa
(Sharjah), regularly publish reviews of and studies on Arabic and Western
literature, as well as on works by mainstream Arab and Western intellec-
tuals.
When speaking about Oman, it is usually proposed that this country was
held back from modernisation until 23 July, 1970. This was the date when
the then 30-year-old Qaboos ibn Said overthrew his father, Said ibn
Taimur, whose conservatism and isolationism had hampered the country's
development in all major areas: economic, educational, infrastructural, po-
litical and technological. The modern literature emerging in the Sultanate
of Oman must be viewed from the perspective that only after 1970 did Sul-
tan Qaboos introduce modern schooling, that in 1986 the country's first
university, Sultan Qaboos University, opened and that in 1987, the Faculty
of Arts was established. 23
The alacrity with which Gulf nationals are establishing themselves in a
modernised, industrialised society has encouraged a spirit of pioneering
and of capturing new frontiers in the various fields of administration, cul-
ture and sciences which constitute modern society. In this context we may
recall Benedict Anderson's analysis of "imagined communities" with re-
spect to the current literary situation in the UAE and Oman and the role
which literature, media and other texts may play in "conjuring up" a gen-
eral concept of metropolitan, industrialised Gulf society. 24
Both the UAE and Oman are presently endeavouring with great energy
to fashion a cultural heritage in their national quest for self-definition in the
post-/neocolonial era in an increasingly globalised world. This project of
constructing a modern national identity and culture includes encouraging
23 Carol J. Riphenburg, Oman: Political Development in a Changing World (Westport,

Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1998), pp. 45, 14.
24 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, [1983]
1999), pp. 26-27; and Spectres of Comparisons: Nationalism Southeast Asia and the
World (London and New York: Verso, 1998), p. 33.
248 Gail Ramsay
the production of local literature. 25 In the UAE potential writers who wish
to publish their works are sometimes provided with funding for such a
project by the state through one of the large national and semi-private cul-
tural establishments such as the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, or the
Cultural and Scientific Association in Dubai, private institutions such as
Sultan Bin Ali Owais Cultural Foundation and the Juma Al Majid Centre
for Culture and Heritage in Dubai, or one of the leading magazines. For in-
stance, since the mid-1980s the Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union lo-
cated in the emirate of ash-Shäriqa, has organised short story competitions
and literary colloquiums to "encourage and direct" prospective young Emi-
rati and Arab writers to develop their skills with the object of shaping and
edifying the culture and literature of the region. 26 The Union regularly pub-
lishes literary journals and magazines containing scholarly articles by re-
searchers in the field of literature as well as fictional works and literary
studies by local writers. An important cultural institution is Sultan Bin Ali
Al Owais Cultural Foundation which awards prestigious prizes every year
to Arab writers in the literary fields of prose and poetry as well as in liter-
ary studies and social sciences. 27
Like institutions in the UAE, albeit not offering economic sponsoring to
the same degree, Omani institutions take an interest in encouraging cul-
tural activities which might create incentives for the youth to co-operate in
the quest to form an indigenous, contemporary culture. In Oman the cost of
the majority of publications is defrayed by the writers themselves and their
works will appear in Omani bookshops in proportion to their popularity
and the writer's personal avenues and means for distributing his or her
work. Various forums for literary achievements create a fertile environ-
25 Muhammad 'Abd Alläh al-Mutawwa', "al- c Ummäla al-wäfida: diräsa süsiyülüjiyya

li-l-qissa al-qaslra fl al-Imärät" ("The Guest Workers: A Sociological Study of the Short
Story in the Emirates"), Abhäth al-multaqä ath-thänl li-l-kitäbät al-qisasiyya wa-r-
riwä'iyya fi dawlat al-Imärät al-'arabiyya al-muttahida, 15-18 uktübir—tishrln al-
awwal, 1989 ("Proceedings of the Second Colloquium for Short Story and Novelistic
Writing in the United Arab Emirates, 15-18 October, 1989"), vol. I (2000) (ash-Shäriqa:
Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 1992), pp. 61-82, esp. 77.
26 12 Qissa qaslra, al-qisas al-fä'iza fi musäbaqat al-qissa al-qasira li-ittihäd kuttäb
wa-udabä' al-Imärät ("12 Prize-Winning Stories") (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and
Literates' Union 1989), p. 5.
27 The prize constitutes an honorary stipend bestowed on five or more Arab writers and
intellectuals for their accomplishment in the following fields: (1) Poetry, (2) The short
story, the novel and drama, (3) Literary studies and criticism, (4) The humanities and
futuristic studies and (5) The prize for cultural and scientific accomplishment. The
amount divided equally over these five fields totalled USD 500,000 according to the
foundation's financial statements for 2002-03.
ment for intellectual activities, all of which serve to build the national iden-
tity. The above-mentioned magazine, Nizwä, is such a forum for literary
creativity as are the three daily papers, 'Uman, al-Watan and Al-Shablba in
whose literary and cultural pages local writers are able to publish their
works. The Cultural Club at Sultan Qaboos University and the Literary So-
ciety (al-Muntadä al-adabl) founded at the Sultan's specific request, func-
tion as meeting points for young intellectuals. 28
A problem hampering literary production in the Gulf is the fact that pro-
cedures for publishing and distribution are only in their initial stages. Au-
thors would benefit if printing establishments and publishers worked close-
ly with them. After all, a working co-operation between authors, editors,
proof-readers, publishers, printers and distributors is vital for the produc-
tion of any literature. Most persons familiar with Arabic writing would
agree that this is no less important for the production of Arabic literature,
especially taking into account the diglossic situation in the Arab world, a
reality with which every Arab writer has to come to terms. The problem of
diglossia, designating the gap that exists between the literary and spoken
forms of the language, is a far greater problem in Arabic than it is in Euro-
pean languages. Stefan G. Meyer suggests that "the gap between Arab
novelists and the reading public has been ... stubbornly enduring, and may
even be widening." 29 In short, organisational improvements facilitating the
procedures for publication would be beneficial to the development of a
modern, indigenous Emirati and Omani literature in which both male and
female authors play their roles.
The corpus upon which this study is based has as far as possible been se-
lected on the basis of its relevance to the illumination of the processes of
muthäqafa, or literary intercultural exchange, entailing the coalescence be-
tween the traditional Arabic literary heritage and modern Arabic literature
as well as foreign elements of style and genre resulting in new literary
forms in the Gulf. 30 It should, however, also be stressed that owing to the
lack of an efficient system for distribution, as explained above, travels to
the region are usually necessary in order to acquire literature by local
writers in the UAE and Oman. The interested party has to rely on the co-
operation of various literary and cultural institutions and on the Gulf au-
thors themselves in order to obtain their works. Only very few works from
28 Baldissera, p. 93. For further information about literary and cultural institutions in
Oman, see Michalak-Pikulska, Modern Poetry, pp. 12-19.
29 Meyer, p. 5.
30 The term muthäqafa is employed by Abü Shu'ayr, pp. 43^14.
250 Gail Ramsay
this region are available in Europe or even in the Arab world outside the
country of origin. An element of randomness has therefore been imposs-
ible to avoid. Due to the difficulties in obtaining most of the works which
will be studied in this article, their contents will in some instances be pre-
sented with a liberality that would have been uncalled for had they been
readily available to most readers.
The writers and the texts

Shähanda (1974) is usually presented as the first novel in the UAE, while
'Abd Alläh Saqr Ahmad's al-Khashaba ("The Stock"), published for the
first time in 1975, is regarded as this country's first short story collection. 31
The short story anthology Kullu-nä, kullu-nä, kullu-nä nuhibbu al-bahr
("All of us, All of us, All of us Love the Sea"), first published in 1985, may
be regarded as a starting point for short story writing and literary criticism
in the UAE. It includes 26 short stories written in the 1970s and the 1980s
by authors from the region, nine of whom are women. A follow-up volume
of Kullu-nä, kullu-nä, kullu-nä nuhibbu al-bahr, entitled Nashid as-sähil,
safir al-barr ("Song of the Sea-Shore, Whistling of Dry Land") was pub-
lished in 2001. 32 This work contains 20 short stories, nine of which are by
women and half of which are represented in the earlier collection.
It is worth noting that the earliest short story in Kullu-nä, kullu-nä,
kullu-nä nuhibbu al-bahr, entitled "ar-Rahll" ("Departure"), from 1970, is
written by the the woman author Shaykha an-Näkhi. 33 Muhammad al-Murr
(Mohammed Al Murr) from Dubai is the most prolific of the Emirati au-
31 In the "Muqaddima" ("Foreword") of the 1999 edition (Second impression) of

al-Khashaba, this information is given by 'Abd Allah Saqr Ahmad. This should be com-
pared with Thäbit Milkäwi's suggestion that this work first appeared in 1974. Consult
Milkäwi, p. 118.
32 Kullu-nä, kullu-nä, kullu-nä nuhibbu al-bahr ("All of us, All of us, All of us Love the
Sea") (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 1985, Second impression
1992) and Nashid as-sähil, safir al-barr ("Song of the Sea-Shore, Whistling of Dry
Land") (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 2001).
33 Shaykha an-Näkhi is one of the editors of the women's literary journal Ashri'a, pub-
lished under the auspices of Räbitat adlbät al-Imärät bi-andiyat al-fatayät (League of
Women Writers in the Women's Club) in ash-Shäriqa (Sharjah).
A number of the woman writers included in Kullu-nä, kullu-nä, kullu-nä nuhibbu
al-bahr, such as Shaykha an-Näkhi, Maryam Jum'a Faraj, Salmä Matar Sayf, Zabiya
Khamls (Dhabiya Khamis), Laylä Ahmad and Su'äd al-'Urayml, have published inde-
pendent short story collections and Sara Al-Nawaf is preparing a collection for publica-
tion including some 25 to 28 short stories, as reported to me during interviews in Dubai
Municipal Library, 6 April, 1999 and 13 March, 2002. Since 1985, short story collec-
thors today. He has published 150 short stories of which more than 40 have
been translated into English. 34 The Emirati short story writers, a selection
of whose short stories will be the object of further discussion in this article
are Salmä Matar Sayf (in "Magic, Myth and Modernity") and Maryam
Jum'a Faraj (in "Making Strange and Brief') and 'Abd al-Hamid Ahmad
(in "Magic, Myth and Modernity").
On the subject of modern literature in Oman, Eros Baldissera informs us
that in 1981 "the very first fictional works written by the hand of an Oma-
ni" were published posthumously. They were written by c Abd Allah bin
Muhammad at-Tä'i who lived from 1927 to 1973. Sayf ar-Rahbl (Saif Al
Rahbi) is editor-in-chief of Nizwä and is a highly esteemed poet and com-
mentator on literature and cultural affairs in the Arab world. His short story
collection al-Jabal al-akhdar ("The Green Mountain") (1983) is believed
to be one of the earliest fictional prose works in the country. 35 According to
tions by other Emirati woman authors such as Fätima Muhammad, Bäsima Yünus and
Asmä' az-Zar'üm have appeared.
As far as novel writing is concerned, the number of novelists in the UAE is small. The
most well-known are Räshid 'Abd Alläh, Hasan al-Harbl, 'All Abu ar-RTsh, Than! as-
Suwaydl, Karlm Ma'tüq, Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qäsiml, Hassa Jum'a al-Ka'bl, 'Abd
Alläh an-Näwirl, Mäni' Sa'Id al-'Utayba, Muhammad 'Ubayd Ghubäsh, Umniyät Sälim
and Maysün Saqr. Consult Fätima Khalifa Ahmad, Nash'at ar-riwäya wa-tatawwuru-hä
fl dawlat al-Imärät al-'Arabiyya al- Muttahida f i al-fatra min 1972 hattä 2000 AD ("The
Emergence of the Novel and its Development in the United Arab Emirates from 1972 to
2000") (Abu Dhabi: Cultural Foundation, 2003). For a complete bibliography of modern
Emirati works of literature consult Ahmad Muhammad 'Ubayd (ed.), Kashshäf al-adab
al-Imärätl al-mu'äsir 1954-2001 ("Bibliography of Modern Emirati Literature"), rev.
and expanded ed. 2002, n. p.
34 Two anthologies of short stories by Muhammad Al Murr, from Dubai, are available in
English: Dubai Tales, trans. Peter Clark (London & Boston: Forest Books) 1991 and The
Wink of the Mona-Lisa, trans. Jack Briggs (London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi: Motivate Pub-
lishing) 1994.
35 A new generation of Omani writers born between the 1950s and 1970s include the
woman writers Tahira bint 'Abd al-Khäliq Najaf 'All al-Lawätl (Tähira bint 'Abd al-
Khäliq al-Lawäti), Badriyya al-Wahaybl, Bushrä Khalfan Wahaybi and Khawla Hamdän
and male writers such as Muhammad bin Sayf ar-Rahbl, 'All al-Ma'man, Sulaymän
al-Ma'mari, Yünus al-Akhzaml, Yahiyä bin Saläm al-Mundhari and Näsir al-Munjl.
Consult Michalak-Pikulska who writes: "The mid 1990s sees (sic) an eruption of young
talents. Amongst (sic) whom recognition and prominent places were achieved by:
Muhammad Sayf ar-Rahbi, Khälid Mansür al-FärisI, Sälim at-Twayya, Khalifa bin
Sultän al-'Abrl, 'Abd Alläh Hablb, 'All bin Sa'id as-Sawäfi, Muhammad al-Yahiyä'i,
Sälim al-Humaydl, Numayr bin Sälim as-Sa'id and Sulaymän al-Ma'man." Michalak-
Pikulska, Modern Poetry, p. 267. Of the body of male Omani writers 'Abd Alläh at-Tä'i,
Saud Al Mudhaffar and 'All al-Ma'marl have published novels. According to the Egyp-
tian poet and former editor at Nizwä Ashraf Abü al-YazId, the novel which "realized the
birth of the real Omani novel" is at-Tawäf haythu al-jamr ("Treading Around the Em-
bers"), by the woman author Badriyya ash-Shihhl, 1999. See al-YazId, "Sürat al-bPa
252 Gail Ramsay
Baldissera, an important trio of writers of modern prose literature in Oman

are: Sa'üd al-Muzaffar (Saud Al Mudhaffar), born in Sohar in 1951 or in
Muscat in 1953;36 Ahmad Biläl, born in Barkä in 1951; and Hamad bin
Rashld bin Räshid (Hamad Räshid), born in Muscat in I960. 37 To these we
may add Muhammad al-Yahiyä'i, reporter for the cultural supplement of
Jarldat 'Umän (an Omani daily newspaper) who with his two short story
collections Kharzat al-Mashl ("Pearl Walk") (1995) and Yawma nafadat
Khazlna al-Ghubär 'an Manämati-hä ("The Day Khazlna Shook the Dust
off her Nightgown") (1998) belongs to the vanguard of accomplished
young Omani writers. 38 In this article we will analyse a selection of short
stories by the Omani authors Badriyya al-Wahaybl in "Magic, Myth and
Modernity," and Hamad Räshid and Muhammad al-Yahiyä'I in "Making
Strange and Brief."
Some of the above-mentioned authors from the UAE and Oman have
contributed to the short story anthologies Aswätu-hunna: qisas min
al-Khalij ("Their Female Voices: Stories from the G u l f ' ) and Aswätu-
hum: qisas min al-Khalij ("Their Male Voices: Stories from the G u l f ' )
both from 1998. These volumes include collections of short stories by male
and female authors from the entire Gulf region, including Kuwait and Sau-
di Arabia. Works such as Kullunä... published in the UAE by the Emirates
Writers' and Literates' Union and Zaghärld as-sahll ("The Joyful Trilling
of the Horse's Neigh") by Hamad Räshid, which was published by Jarldat
'Umän publishing house in Oman in 1990, have not gained wide circula-
tion outside their respective countries. The anthologies Aswätu-hunna and
Aswätu-hum, mentioned above, were however published by an establish-
ment in Beirut. They can be purchased in bookstores around the Arab
world and contain works by not only Emirati and Omani authors but also
by writers from the other Gulf states. The same is true for the anthology
Mukhtärät al-qisas al-qaslrafi 18 balad 'Arabl ("Selection of Short Stories
al-'Umäniyya wa-shukhüs min lahm wa-dam al-wäqi 1 !" ("Depicting the Omani Environ-
ment and Real Characters of Flesh and Blood") in al-Quds al-'Arabl, 1999 (No. 3126),
May 12, n. p.
36 ash-Shärünl gives Sohar, 1951, as the place and year of birth for Sa'üd al-Muzaffar
(Saud Al Mudhaffar) (62) while Baldissera gives Muscat, 1953 (94). Michalak-Pikulska
agrees with Baldissera on the year without specifying the place (Modern Poetry, p. 176).
A Master's thesis on the Omani novel focusing on Sa'üd al-Muzaffar's novels has been
presented at the University of Venice by Salvador Dolores (2000).
37 Baldissera, p. 93. Cf. Ahmad Darwlsh, Madkhal ilä diräsat al-adab fi 'Umän ("Entry to
the Study of Literature in Oman") (Cairo: Dar al-usra, 1992).
38 Michalak-Pikulska refers to these same titles as "The Talisman" and "The Day Khazlna
Beat the Dust from her Dreams" ( M o d e r n Poetry, p. 297).
from 18 Arab Countries"), which was published in Cairo in 1993. More-

over, this last work includes works by writers from most Arab countries.
Placing works by relatively unknown authors from the UAE and Oman
side-by-side with well-known writers such as Laylä al-'Uthmän from Ku-
wait, at-Tayyib Sälih from Sudan or Emile Habiby from Israel, and offer-
ing them a wide base of circulation, gives their works a new and broader
platform. In other words, although just a trickle of this literature is reaching
the Western literary arena, literature from the UAE and Oman is presently
becoming a feature to be reckoned with on the Arabic literary scene.
Magic, Myth and Modernity
The short span of time in which the transition from a thousand-year-old

Bedouin society to a modernised, urbanised, high-tech society has taken
place in the UAE and Oman is a factor which constitutes the point of de-
parture for our discussion on what Abü Shu'ayr identifies as magical real-
ism in the UAE. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, late President of the
UAE, sets and defines this perspective:
Our true legacy combines purity of the past with marvellous ambitions for
the future for our generation which never ceases to strive to embrace both
past and present. 39
There is no question that the immense changes that have taken place in
Gulf society during roughly three decades, from the early 1970s to the be-
ginning of the twenty-first century, have left an impression on the litera-
ture. Pressing questions underlying many texts pertain to feelings of uncer-
tainty and insecurity about the organisation of life in modernised Gulf so-
ciety. The oil wealth has brought with it material security for Gulf state na-
tionals but has blurred the delimitations of cultural identity. This has been
expressed by the Emirati author 'Abd al-Hamid Ahmad, two of whose
short stories will be analysed in this section:
This unscheduled economic leap violently transported society from a stage
of underdevelopment to a diametrically divergent stage of modernity in
form, but non-modernity in essence and content. 40
39 As quoted by 'Abd Allah 'Abd ar-Rahmän in al-lmärät f i dhäkirat abnä'ihä: al-hayät

al-ijtimä'iyya ("The Emirates in the Memory of her Children: Social Life") (Dubai: Nad-
wat ath-Thaqäfa wa-l-'Ulüm (The Cultural and Scientific Association, 1998), p. 15.
40 ash-Shärüni, p. 153.
254 Gail Ramsay
Scholars from the UAE such as Muhammad c Abd Allah al-Mutawwa'

(Muhammad al-Mutawwa 1 ) and Diyä' as-Siddlql maintain that problems
arising from people's confusion about how to apply traditional norms in
their new and modernised society often are expressed in short stories in the
UAE. According to Muhammad al-Mutawwa':
There have arisen from it [the change from a tribal society to a society of a
nation state] a large number of problems whether on the social, political or
economic plane. All of these circumstances make the individual struggle
with himself about the values from before the oil and those of the new
society ... short story writers in the Emirates express this hidden inward
struggle between the old values and those of the new society in their short
stories.41
This pressure to move rapidly from old systems of organisation to new

ones, from traditional lifestyles to modern, industrialised ways of life has
influenced the region's literature. Abü Shu'ayr speaks of an "allergy to mo-
dernity"—hassäsiyyat al-hadätha with regard to a trend in Arabic litera-
ture since the 1970s. Followers of this trend are, according to him, writers
such as Egyptian Idwär al-Kharrät, Syrian Zakarlya Tämir and Sudanese
at-Tayyib Sälih. 42 Abü Shu'ayr concludes that many of the Emirati writers
share this tendency of an "allergic reaction" to modernity. His point is un-
derscored by the findings of sociologist Bryan S. Turner who has observed
that "[t]he pressing awareness of cultural globalism has brought with it a
necessary consciousness of regional opposition, fundamentalist faith and
anti-modernism." 43
As far as literature is concerned, this allergy has resulted in an effort to re-
shape the classical Western literary romantic and realist schools and a search
for an Arabic literary style and tradition independent of those from the West.
Especially influential in this quest according to Abü Shu'ayr, is Latin Ameri-
can magical realism and the works of Gabriel Garcia Märquez. 44
Abü Shu'ayr maintains that there exists an Emirati style which gathers
inspiration from the Latin American narrative forms of the late twentieth
41 Muhammad ! Abd Allah al-Mutawwa 1 , "Malämih at-taghayyur al-ijtimä'I ft al-qissa

al-qaslra" ("Traces of Social Change in the Short Story") in Nadwat al-'arab fl al-Khalij
al-'Arabi, 10-14 yanä'ir ("The Association for Literature in the Arab Gulf, January 10-
14, 1988"), vol. 1 (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 1990), pp. 174-
175.
42 Abü Shu'ayr, pp. 43-44.
43 Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism (London, New York:
44 Abü Shu'ayr, pp. 44^15.
century and combines modern European and North American trends with
indigenous Gulf elements. Garcia Märquez's novel A Hundred Years of
Solitude, translated into Arabic as Mi'at 'äm min al-'azla, has been pivotal
in the shaping of modern Arabic prose literature, especially that of the
UAE, he concludes. Abü Shu'ayr also maintains that this novel is woven
with threads plucked from A Thousand and One Nights, referring to the se-
quence where Aureliano Segundo is amused by strange and marvellous
stories in a book about flying carpets and a magic lamp which would make
one's wishes come true. Hence, he proposes, an intercultural and inter-
textual exchange takes place in that A Hundred Years of Solitude echoes A
Thousand and One Nights and that a number of Arabic Gulf texts, some of
which we will examine more closely below, show the influence of the
magical realist narrative style of A Hundred Years of Solitude.45 It is there-
fore in the vein of magical realism—al-wäqi'iyya as-sihriyya as epitomised
in Garcia Märquez's novel that a specifically Emirati literary style is
emerging, according to Abü Shu'ayr. He proposes that among the most
prominent exponents of Gulf magical realism are a number of short stories
by c Abd al-Hamld Ahmad and Salmä Matar Sayf, both from the UAE. 46
Folk-tale imagery, popular beliefs in magic powers and superstitions set in
the context of modern settings make up the backbone of their texts. We
will presently find that the magic and supernatural are treated as valid
knowledge, not as exotic folklore and that such features inject momentum
and meaning into the plots of the stories that will be discussed below. All
of this is in keeping with what we usually consider as essential to magical
realism. 47
In "Global Heroes and Local Characters in Short Stories from the
United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman," I have analysed 'Abd
al-Hamid Ahmad's short story "Nasama hawä' tä'isha" ("The Breeze of a
Fickle Wind") (1992), Salmä Matar Sayf's short story "ath-Thu'bän"
("The Snake") (1991) and Muhammad al-Yahiyä'1's short story "Sabäh"
(Sabäh being the name of the protagonist) (1998), from Arjun Appa-
durai's perspective of "locality as lived experience in a globalized ...
world." Of special interest in this article was the impact of globalisation
on local imaginative resources. It was observed that rapid processes of
45 Abü Shu'ayr, pp. 45^16.

46 Abü Shu'ayr, p. 49. Salmä Matar Sayf's short story "ath-Thu'bän" has been analysed by
Ramsay ("Styles of Expression," pp. 379-82).
47 Consult William Rowe, "Magical Realism" in Verity Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Latin
American Literature, 1997, p. 506.
256 Gail Ramsay
modernisation and globalisation may produce literary modes in which

elements of modern and traditional literary expression blend in short
stories from the UAE and Oman. 48
In this article we will examine Salmä Matar Sayf's story "ath-Thu'bän"
("The Snake"), included in her collection Häjar, 'Abd al-Harmd Ahmad's
two short stories "Nasama hawä' tä'isha" ("The Breeze of a Fickle Wind")
and "Kharrüfa" ("A Fairy-Tale") both of which belong to his collection
c
Alä häfat an-nahär ("On the Brink of Daylight") (1992), and the short
story "at-Tuffaha" ("The Apple") (2000) by the Omani woman writer
Badriyya al-Wahaybl against the theoretical backdrop of magical realism
in the Gulf as presented above. 49
In "ath-Thu'bän," the protagonist becomes entangled in a quarrel with a
person who relates that he is married to a jinniyya, that is a female jinn.
Abü Shu'ayr's opinion is that "ath-Thu'bän" is an exponent of magic real-
ism in the Gulf in that it "avoids a direct treatment of reality" and "presents
reality through a world of wonders which resists logic and the laws of na-
ture." 50 We will have little difficulty in agreeing with Abü Shu'ayr on this
last proposal. Reminiscent of the stories of A Thousand and One Nights, is
that it is the indeterminate no man's land between the world of the jinn and
humans, between sanity and madness, clarity of mind and miscalculation,
power and feebleness that constitutes the mesh of this story.
The protagonist of "ath-Thu'bän" finds himself in an institution where the
"windows are firmly locked" with a cup of coffee in front of himself, puffing
on a ciggarette. He is in a state of bewilderment and devastation. Later, the
walls of the room having dissolved, crying and sobbing, he becomes aware
of a man by his side, "the caretaker" of the garden in which he is sitting, he is
informed. The garden caretaker tells him about the miserable life he used to
live until he met the jinniyya to whom he is now happily married. 51 The pro-
48 Gail Ramsay, "Global Heroes and Local Characters in Short Stories from the United
Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman," Stefan Wild, Paul Starkey, Boutros Hallaq
(eds.), Proceedings of 5th EMTAR (European Meeting of Teachers of Arabic Literature)
Colloquium, Bonn, 6 - 9 June, 2001 (forthcoming). See Appadurai, 1998, p. 52.
49 Salmä Matar Sayf's story "ath-Thu'bän" and Badriyya al-Wahaybi's "at-Tuffaha" have
been analysed and defined as magical realist stories in Ramsay, "Styles of Expression,"
pp. 371-390.
50 Abu Shu'ayr, p. 42.
51 Tord Olsson has observed that "marriages" between jinns and humans are considered as
part of the realities of life within some contemporary societies and religious contexts in
"De rituella falten i Gwanyebugu" ("Ritual Fields in Gwanyebugu"), Catharina Raud-
vere (ed.), Svensk religionshistorisk ärsskrift (Svenska samfundet for religionshistorisk
forskning, 2000), pp. 49-51.
tagonist's incredulity at this piece of information evokes feelings of doubt

and anger in the garden caretaker. The caretaker's lack of judgment and
prattling causes his wife's displeasure and the risk of her abandoning him.
In desperation he acts rashly and tries to knock down the protagonist who
subsequently flees. Hearing the sobs of the caretaker who laments the an-
ticipated loss of his wife, the protagonist disappears hissing among the
trees, making his abode in holes in the ground; the reader is given the feel-
ing that he has been changed into a snake—thu'bän.
That the paths of jinns and humans cross is nothing new to Arabic liter-
ary tradition. In the tale "The Merchant and the Genie," in A Thousand and
One Nights, one of three brothers marries a seemingly poor girl dressed in
rags who turns out to be a female jinn who in the end rescues her husband
from death. 52 The adventure-loving goldsmith Hasan from Basra, also mar-
ries the beautiful daughter of the powerful jinn king. These jinniyyas illus-
trate two opposites of human male-female relationships. In the "Merchant
and the Genie" the jinniyya takes the initiative, arousing the merchant's
feelings of chivalry and later his love and affection. She repays him for
caring for her by rescuing him from drowning in the sea and avenging him.
As is the case in Salmä Matar Sayf's story, the jinniyya arrives as a sav-
iour, rescuing the male character of the garden caretaker from an unbear-
able situation, maybe even death. In the story about Hasan, it is he who by
cunning and force takes control over the powerful jinniyya princess with
whom he has fallen in love. In both "ath-Thu'bän" and "Hasan the Gold-
smith" it is the miscalculation or stupidity on the part of the male character
that causes a breach in the male-female relationship. Hasan cannot resist
leaving his wife and two sons in order to visit the charming fairy sisters in
their far-off castle and foolishly lets his mother guard his wife's costume of
plumage, in which she eventually flees. In Salmä Matar Sayf's story, the
male character just as foolishly divulges the details of his relationship with
his jinniyya wife to the protagonist. This arouses her anger and results in
her withdrawal from him. This is not to say that both "wives" do not love
their husbands. However, there seem to be certain rules guiding the male
(human)-female (jinn) relationships in these stories, the traditional
folk-tales as well as the modern stories; there are attributes which the male
characters must uphold in order to secure their spouses' love and devotion.
52 The story of the Merchant and the Genie referred to in this article as it appears in Alf
laylä wa-laylä, (Alf Layla wa Layla, A Thousand and One Nights, Mille et Une Nuits),
vol. 1, intra. Dr. Afif Nayef Hatoum (Beirut: Dar Sader Publ., 1999), pp. 13-18.
258 Gail Ramsay
These attributes can be characterised in words such as "fidelity," "integri-

ty" and "discretion" with respect to "ath-Thu'bän" and "Hasan the Gold-
smith." However, the exact degree to which these virtues are necessary to
win the devotion of the spouses is difficult to estimate indeed. In the end
Hasan redeems his wife and the two are happily reunited while the garden
caretaker in Salmä Matar Sayf's "ath-Thu'bän" is left sobbing and bewil-
dered, alone among the trees.
As I have explained elsewhere, the institution in which the protagonist
in "ath-Thu'bän" finds himself smoking and bewildered, in which there is
"a properly made bed, fruit and all kinds of foods and means of relaxa-
tion," a tidy garden and a gardener, may fit into most global, urban set-
tings. 53 In other words, the protagonist, who is situated in a global context,
is confronted with intertextually recycled Arabic folk-tale themes and
characters in the textual domain; he turns into a snake and his companion is
married to a jinniyya.
'Abd al-Hamld Ahmad's stories "Kharrüfa" and "Nasama hawä' tä'isha"
also typify the Gulf magical realist style under discussion here. 54 The pro-
tagonist of "Kharrüfa" is a legendary character named Muhammad Sälih
who resembles the folk tale stereotype of the wise sage. The story about
this character is told within another story in a story cycle manner. The
grandmother of a contemporary Emirati family wakes up in a state of
shock from a nightmare in which she witnesses Muhammad Sälih being hit
by a car in a horrible car accident. She sees his skull rolling over the street,
splitting into fragments and his blood splattered over the asphalt pavement
and concrete buildings. She asks her grandson to go to the mosque imme-
diately to see if Muhammad Sälih is there. The child has no idea who this
person is and here Muhammad Sälih's story unfolds. He is the mythical
character of a legend which has circulated for generations in Jumayra, to-
day an upmarket suburb of Dubai situated on the coast of the Gulf. The
story relates that Muhammad Sälih in days long past lived in a corner of
the mosque, and was pious and endowed with mysterious powers. He
could cure illnesses, foretell the weather and possessed other remarkable
abilities. Rumour has it that while on a visit in Oman he is changed into a
53 Ramsay, "Styles of Expression," p. 380 and "Global Heroes" (forthcoming).

54 Abü Shu'ayr refers to three stories by 'Abd al-Hamld Ahmad as exponents of a Gulf
magical realist style: "Kharrüfa" ("A Fairy-Tale"), "Nasama hawä' tä'isha" ("The Breeze
of a Fickle Wind") and "Ghawäya" ("Temptation"), pp. 58-59. These three stories are
included in c Abd al-Hamld Ahmad's short story collection 'Alä häfat an-nahär ("On the
Brink of Daylight"), (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 1992).
cow by a relative with whom he has a quarrel. 55 As time passes the charac-
ter of Muhammad Sälih becomes increasingly esoteric. Nevertheless,
everything told about him is regarded as true. This is why the old woman
asks her grandson to hurry to the mosque after her terrible dream. The little
boy however has never heard of Muhammad Sälih and neither have the
children of that time, "... but anyone among them who wants to see the
man, ... might find him in that same mosque." 56
This formulaic ending of the story enhances the reader's sense of
story-telling. Besides the theme of marriages between humans and jinns,
changing humans into animals is a literary device commonly appearing in
A Thousand and One Nights. It is an equally uncomplicated operation to be
changed from a human into an animal as the reverse in the world of A
Thousand and One Nights. And this is also the case with regard to Muham-
mad Sälih in "Kharrüfa," for he returns from Oman as his true self.
The second story by ! Abd al-Hamid Ahmad with which we are con-
cerned here, "Nasama hawä' tä'isha," also evolves in cycles with one story
leading to the other and the names of the characters constitute marks of dis-
tinction for their bearers. The protagonist is Nähil bin Räjil al-'Arl (the first
name means emaciated or thin and the last naked) who is also referred to
by his kunya (agnomen) Abü Jä'i', meaning "father of a hungry one." His
wife's name is Mashüqa (meaning "crushed"). They are poor, their chil-
dren are hungry and the family hardly ever tastes meat. An evening gust
brings the scent of grilled meat to Nähil's nostrils. He decides that it is time
that the family has a meal of meat. He goes to the butcher who scorns him
and laughs at him when he realises that Nähil has no idea of the price of
meat. That is how long ago it is since he has bought meat, the reader may
presume. While standing in front of the guffawing butcher, Nähil, en-
chanted by the smell of fresh meat and blood, reaches out and touches the
butcher's knife. Next his fingers are cut off, then his hands and soon all
that is left of Nähil is a pile of limbs and blood on the butcher's floor.
Nähil's flesh is placed prominently in the shop; the intestines and the head,
which is as small as a "thousand-year old turtle's head," go into the rubbish
bin. 57 Another story evolves when a black cockroach emerges from the box
and makes its way across the butcher's floor. It leaves the shop and pro-
55 Cf. Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega's contribution in this volume in which he analyzes Miguel

Angel Asturias' novel Men of Maize where the postman, Nicho Aquino, is changed into
a coyote during his journey to the capital with the mail.
56 'Abd al-Hamid Ahmad, p. 23.
57 Ahmad, p. 33.
260 Gail Ramsay
ceeds out into the streets where it meets its death in a cloud of poisonous
vapour produced by maintenance men spraying insecticides.
Elements that we recognise from the traditional folktale in "Nasama
hawä' tä'isha" are the use of stereotypes such as Nähil, who represents the
poor and ill-fated type, and the butcher, who epitomises the evil and ugly
type. Furthermore, the transformation of Nähil and the surprising and bi-
zarre series of events that occur in the plot remind us of stories in A Thou-
sand and One Nights. In fact, in the tale of "The Merchant and the Genie,"
the old man who is changed into a dog roams around the streets until he
comes to a butcher's shop. 58 There he begins chewing the bones he finds
lying on the floor. The butcher's power over man and beast seems to lie in
the fact that he possesses meat, a commodity that both Nähil and the bewil-
dered dog relish. Both find shelter in his shop, to Nähil's detriment and the
dog's gain.
"Neopatriarchal society, as 'modernized,' is essentially schizophrenic,
for beneath the immediately encountered modern appearance there exists
another latent reality," suggests Hisham Sharabi. 59 Neopatriarchy entails,
among other things, growing up and obtaining an education in a techno-
logically advanced and modernised society, which outwardly conforms to
the standards and developments of the industrialised world. At the same
time, people's lives are governed to a greater or lesser degree, by the norms
of traditional tribal and patriarchal society, a situation applicable to Emirati
and Omani societies today. The Emirati author c Abd al-Hamid Ahmad, two
of whose works have been discussed above, expressed concern regarding
this situation in an interview, saying that "the problem is that people have
adopted western ways, but only superficially." 60 His short stories
"Kharrüfa" and "Nasama hawä 1 tä'isha" underscore the ambivalence of a
society impressed by pre-oil Gulf ways of life interlocked with the rapid
process of modernisation under the pressure of an overwhelming invasion
of oil-era globalisation. All of this makes people uncertain about how to
live in and cope with contemporary Gulf society. 61
The grandmother, as an icon of the pre-oil generation living in the
present, has a nightmare in which Muhammad Sälih, likewise a relic from
the old era, is crushed and his powers are lost. She and the representatives
of her generation are exposed as being frightened, lost and bewildered.
58 The Merchant and the Genie in Alflaylä wa-laylä, 1999 (vol. 1), pp. 13-18.
59 Sharabi, p. 23.
60 Interview at al-Bayän Press (Dubai daily newspaper), Dubai, April 1, 1999.
61 Ramsay, "Global Heroes" (forthcoming), pp. 311-24.
These sensations are induced by the situation where the old and familiar
props of life have been pulled away from beneath their feet in a day and
age without such persons as Muhammad Sälih. His talents and powers,
representing prerequisites for survival in the pre-oil era, so vital for every-
day life in bygone days, are no longer of use. He cannot even survive in the
new era. As for the grandson, he is not acquainted with Muhammad Sälih
or the likes of him: they have all vanished.
This reasoning in terms of neopatriarchal society is also in line with Abü
Shu'ayr's proposal that the story about Nähil, besides being an example of
a magic realist style in the UAE, also conveys a sense of misplacement in a
modernised world in which the arrangements of life have run out of control
for many ordinary people. The point is that the pace of life has left Nähil
and his family lagging behind in ignorance and poverty in a world that has
undergone vast changes at a tremendous speed. Nähil is unable to cope
with the new ways of life. He cannot handle money. He loses the few
dirhams he has made and keeps in his pocket to buy meat with. When he
arrives at the butcher's, he has no idea what the price of meat is. The
butcher even asks him if he has been dead and come back to life again
when Nähil asks him if the cost of meat is five dirhams a kilo. What he is
well aware of, though, is that once in times long past, he has eaten meat
and longs for it again. But Nähil is out of place, a thousand years behind
his time; he is as old as the pre-Islamic traditions that remain the founda-
tion of societal organisation in neopatriarchal society. 62 (Remember, his
head resembles a "thousand-year-old turtle's head"!). Nähil is even unable
to survive in the shape of a cockroach in the modern metropolis. We can-
not but agree with Abü Shu'ayr that the protagonist of this story appears
lost and strange in his environment and that magical and marvellous events
impinge on his existence.
The stories which we have discussed above were written by Emirati au-
thors at the beginning of the 1990s. Nearly a decade later, the Omani
woman author Badriyya al-Wahaybl, published her story "at-Tuffäha," in
Jandat cUmän, on 8 June, 2000. This story also exposes a mingling of tra-
ditional beliefs with "everyday down-to-earth" business and treats them as
essential to the development of "life's affairs," all of which may be in
keeping with a magical realist style. The crucial problem in the life of the
female protagonist is that, due to the fact that she has an incurable disease,
her sisters and girlfriends get married while she does not. The apple re-
62 Abü Shu'ayr, pp. 58-59 and Sharabi, p. 59.

262 Gail Ramsay
ferred to in the story "is the first sin in the life of Eve," which we may in-
terpret as the "apple of sexual temptation." The natural sensation of sexual
desire frightens the protagonist to a very high degree. Believing her daugh-
ter to be possessed by a jinn her mother brings her to a religious ceremony
during which her zayrän (spirits or demons) are to be expelled. In the end
this ceremony turns out to be of no avail, for the protagonist is neither
cured nor relieved of her zayrän.63
A similarity between Badriyya al-Wahaybl's short story "at-Tuffäha" on
the one hand, and 'Abd al-Hamid Ahmad's story "Kharrüfa" and Salmä
Matar Sayf's "ath-Thu'bän," on the other, are the events of Häjj Sälih.
When a violent storm blows across Häjj Sälih's yard, he is swept away
leaving no trace behind. Several years later rumour has it that he is alive
and well and has married a jinniyya. He has also been endowed with the
gift of making himself invisible. The cycle of events for Muhammad Sälih
and the Häjj Sälih are: firstly, natural human existence and presence; sec-
ondly, disappearance, the first to Oman and the latter in a windstorm; and
thirdly, reappearance as esoteric (mythic) figures. A point of similarity be-
tween "ath-Thu'bän" and "at-Tuffäha" is that of union between human and
jinn.
Although magical realism is predominantly associated with Latin-
American fiction, the four short stories that we have discussed above indi-
cate the existence of a literary style in the UAE and Oman which recycles
traditional folk-tale imagery, myth and popular superstitions in a warp of
contemporary backdrops, all of which is held in place by a realist attitude
and modern frame of genre. 64 This points towards the relevancy of Abü
Shu'ayr's findings with regard to a literary style which he calls a magical
realist Emirati style. It may be worthwhile reminding ourselves that the
writers of the UAE and Oman have lived through great social and histori-
cal transformations in a short space of time. During roughly thirty years
these countries have indeed passed an enormous number of societal
changes through technology, industrialisation and urbanisation. Awareness
of this "change of society" (tahawwul al- mujtama') surfaces in discussions
on culture and literature in the UAE whether in the form of articles in the
63 For a description of the practice of spiritual possession among women in the Gulf consult
Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books,
1993), pp. 47-49. Cf. Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zär
Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 166-167.
64 David Lodge refers to novels by Milan Kundera, Günter Grass and Salman Rushdie as
magical realist in The Art of Fiction (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 114.
cultural pages, on television or in scholarly publications. This literary style

comes across as an expression of people's feelings that due to the current
social reality and the overwhelming changes which have come with the
rapid process of industrialisation, cannot be adequately described in terms
of traditional realism. As Fawziyya Rashld, woman author from the Gulf
state of Bahrain, revealed when speaking about her compatriots—readers
and writers alike—commenting on her novel Tahawwulät al-färis
al-ghanbfl al-biläd al-'äriba ("The Metamorphoses of a Strange Knight in
Arabising Lands"): "We live in both the past and the present. Both are in-
side us and this is what I want to express in my novel." 65
In short, the point is not that of linking one specific story from A Thou-
sand and One Nights with any particular short story from the UAE or
Oman, but rather, to focus on the fact that both corpora may employ tools
from the same caches, namely that of the magical world of folk-tales and
myth. This coincides with Genette's observation that a hypertext may be a
transformation and/or imitation of previous works, singular or multiple. 66 It
also underscores Culler's point on intertextuality as "less a name for a
work's relation to particular prior texts than a designation of its participa-
tion in the discursive space of a culture." 67
It becomes clear that the stories discussed are marked by al-wäqi'iyya
as-sihriyya—magical realism—signifying the treatment of myths, legends
and superstitions as realities of life and juxtaposing such features with
modern perceptions of events, rendering in them a cultural and literary
blend. 68 A magical Gulf style reinforces the idea that the influence of indig-
enous folklore, A Thousand and One Nights and myth, all play an impor-
tant role in the process of the consolidation of a modern literature in both
the UAE and Oman.
Making Strange and Brief
Abü Shu'ayr regards Maryam Jum'a Faraj as one of the foremost exponents
of Gulf magical realism. 69 In her stories the plot often disintegrates into se-
quences of fragmentary pictures and scenes. They incorporate experimen-
65 Interview in Manama, Ramada Hotel, Bani Otbah Av., and Candles Cafe, 22 Oct., 2001.
66 Genette, p. 381.
67 Culler, p. 103.
68 Cf. Rowe, pp. 506-507.
69 Abü Shu'ayr, p. 49.
264 Gail Ramsay
tal, "avant-garde" elements such as indirect and inexplicit language, a

vagueness of the sequential chronology and open denouements, all of
which have been pointed out by Abu Shu'ay r.70 According to Abü Shu'ayr,
this is also true of Su'äd al-'Uraymi, another pioneering woman author in
the UAE. "Su'äd al-'Uraymi draws strange pictures for us in her collection
Tuful... as if making these pictures into intruments of expression instead
of words," he suggests. 71 To these women authors can be added their com-
patriot, 'All Abü ar-Rlsh, whose short novelistic works Näfidhat al-junün
("The Window of Madness") (1994) and Tai as-sanam ("The Hill of
Idols") (1995) use similar literary techniques.
The literary style under discussion here constitutes the expression of a
modernist narrative trend in Arabic literature. I have proposed elsewhere
that this is a reflection of the fact that contemporary national Gulf identity
is shaped to a considerable degree by the ambivalence between striving af-
ter modernisation and at the same time retaining traditions and reacting to
Western influence, globalisation and neocolonialism. 72
When asked about what she thinks distinguishes Omani authors from
other authors, Tähira bint c Abd al-Khäliq al-Lawäti, herself a short-story
writer from Oman, suggested that "a poetic spirit dominates the authors." 73
This remark underlines a salient trait of the linguistic style in a large
number of the short stories in the region. This style makes use of poetic ex-
pressions, rhetorical ornaments, figures of speech and similes, all of which
are distinguishing marks of eloquence. Poetry and eloquence are immense-
ly appreciated and enjoyed in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere in the
Arab world and Arabic-speaking communities. In the UAE and Oman the
popular esteem for poetic expression is linked to the tradition of listening
to and reciting poetry, which in itself is familiar to people, while writing
prose fiction, although rapidly gaining popularity is a novelty in compari-
son. The required idiom in Arabic poetry is the prestigious "high" Arabic
language, usually referred to as either Classical (al-fushä) or Modern
Standard (al-mu'äsira) Arabic. 74 As Bo Holmberg explains in his article
70 AbüShu'ayr, p. 109.
71 Abü Shu'ayr, p. 65.
72 Ramsay, "Styles of Expression," pp. 374, 388.
73 Written response to the question: "What distinguishes the Omani writer from other
writers?," received by the present author on 11 June, 2000.
74 C.A. Ferguson's research on this Arabic koine showed that: "In all the defining lan-
guages the speakers regard Η [high variety of the language] as superior to L [low variety
of the same language] in a number of respects." Ferguson, "Diglossia," Word, 15:2
(1959), pp. 3 2 5 ^ 0 .
"Transculturating the Epic: The Arab Awakening and the Translation of

the Iliad": "This desire to write in faultless Arabic has to be understood in
the context of the diglossic situation prevailing in the Arab world." 75 In
other words, transferring a high and poetic language to a prose text, may in
itself to some readers and writers constitute a sign of linguistic competence
and thus be felt to increase the value of the text.
Roger Allen has suggested that the term for "novel" in Arabic is riwäya,
for "novella" novella/uqsüsa and "short story" qissa qasira or simply qissa
without the use of the specifying adjective qasira (short). 76 Ibrahim Taha,
to whom we have referred in the introductory section of this article, sug-
gests that we add a genre definition to modern Arabic literature—al-qissa
al-qaslra jiddan or al-uqsüsa al- qasira, "the modern Arabic very short
story." 77 We will henceforth refer to this story as "the very short story."
Taha emphasises the poetic aspects of this genre.
In the Arab world the general interaction among existing genres has pro-
duced inter-generic activity between the short story and poetry. The out-
come has been the gradual creation of the very short story as an intermedi-
ary genre, which inherits its characteristics from both poetry and fiction.78
The characteristics typical of lyrics mark the very short story: indirect and
implicit language, ambiguity and multiple meanings, the avoidance of di-
rect messages but hints in one direction or another, and the shortness of the
text. Metaphors are used extensively throughout the text and the texts are
usually brief, the shortest story presented by Taha consisting of a single
phrase. 79 Another aspect of such a story is that it may be marked by de-
familiarisation or "making strange," as referred to by the Russian Formal-
ists. Instead of finding direct and well-defined messages in the text, the
75 Holmberg. An exception to this is, for example, when it is the question of contemporary
Bedouin vernacular poetry, so-called nabati poetry. See Clive Holes, "The Dispute of
Coffee and Tea: A Debate-Poem from the Gulf," J. R. Smart (ed.), Tradition and Moder-
nity in Arabic Language and Literature (London: Curzon, 1996), pp. 302-315.
76 Roger Allen, "The Novella in Arabic: a Study in Fictional Genres," Int. J. Middle East
Studies 18 (1986) (Cambridge Univ. Press), pp. 473^184 and "Narrative Genres and No-
menclature: A Comparative Study," Journal of Arabic Literature (JAL) vol. XIII, Part 3
(1992), pp. 208-214.
77 Taha, pp. 59-84. In a series of lectures on "the modern Arabic very short story," at Upp-
sala University, Dept. of Linguistics and Philology, 9, 16, 23 and 30 September 2004,
Taha suggested the following system of genre classification for Arabic literature: (1)
"novel"—ar-riwäya", (2) "novella"—al-qissa at-tawlla or an-nüfilä\ (3) "short story"—
al-uqsüsa\ and (3) "the very short story"—al-uqsüsa al-qasira.
78 Taha, p. 75.
79 Taha, pp. 60, 65, 59-84.
266 Gail Ramsay
reader is obliged to imagine much of the textual reality. 80 A number of

these techniques are mirrored in works by Maryam Jum c a Faraj and Su'äd
al-'Urayml from the UAE, and Khawla Hamdän and 'All al-Ma'marl from
Oman. Such features may at times make the reading process difficult,
something that we will become aware of presently.
It seems reasonable then, to identify three factors that combine to create
a fruitful ground for a modernist Arabic short story, which may qualify as
Taha's "modern Arabic very short story," in the UAE and Oman: firstly,
poetry and rhetoric as an integrated part of cultural expression; secondly
the reaction to Western dominance and globalisation; and thirdly, the di-
glossic situation which prompts the use of an elevated and prestigious ra-
ther than a commonplace idiom.
"Sälih al-Mubärak" is a short story from Maryam Jum'a Faraj's story
collection Fayrüz published in 1988, and has been commended by Abü
Shu'ayr for its close-knit language and dense plot. 81 Here the protagonist
Sälih al-Mubärak is lethally ill and stretched out on a hospital bed. 82 As is
the case with 'Abd al-Hamld Ahmad's story "Nasama hawä' tä'isha," the
name of the character seems to carry an ironic meaning. "Sälih
al-Mubärak," in diametric opposition to the situation illustrated in the text,
means approximately "the healthy of the blessed."
Sälih al-Mubärak himself, though, is lying half-dead on a bed, smelling
his own putrid odour; "He wraps his arms which are marked by the evil
disease around his face, he lets his head rest on them, he smells his own
odor." 83 These lines depict the stage on which Faraj sets out to tell a story
which in a few words tells about the past and the present, the hopes and
disillusions of the characters, their poverty and a prophecy. Between the
last words of the sentence ending "he smells his own odor" and the follow-
ing sentence, "That embryo which will grow two strong arms and two stur-
dy legs," 84 Badr 'Abd al-Malik proposes that the reader must imagine a
backtracking in time in order to make sense of these phrases. His inter-
80 Taha, pp. 66-67.

81 Badr 'Abd al-Malik proposes that the author "takes command of the reins of the art of the
short story and its techniques," in this story in al-Qissa al-qasira wa-s-sawt an-nisä'lfl
dawlat al-Imärät al-'arabiyya al-muttahida ("The Short Story and the Feminine Voice in
the United Arab Emirates") (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates' Union, 1995),
p. 133.
82 Maryam Jum'a Faraj, "Sälih al-Mubärak" in Fayrüz (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and
Literates' Union, 1988), pp. 53-58.
83 Faraj, "Sälih", p. 55.
84 Faraj, "Sälih", p. 55.
pretation is that this is the memory of the protagonist as an embryo and

memories of his birth that is evoked when he inhales an odour that reminds
him of the time of his birth. 85
After this experience, the protagonist hears a voice speaking of his
present condition, asking whether he has died yet. In this sequence an allu-
sion is made to both past and present, 'Abd al-Malik suggests. 86 The pro-
tagonist's wife Hamäma Bint 'Ubayd says: "In these times man is not born
twice." This may hint at his present near death state and the incurability of
his disease. 87 In other words, he will not be reborn, that is, be cured. Next
he speaks of himself before he was born, or so the reader must interpret the
consecutive lines: " a dervish spoke to my father and dervishes do not lie.
He said: Between such and such a year Sälih al-Mubärak will come forth.
He will lift the pain from the people." 88 Here the protagonist proceeds to il-
lustrate a scene from his birth as manifested in a dream. Thereafter the
reader comes across a phrase which we assume pertains to the present situ-
ation: "He heard a distant voice begin to call him: 'His right thigh will be
amputated, his right eye, and given to the dogs." 89 In this way the reader is
wafted between the past and the present; questions on the protagonist's
birth and prophetic mission hinting at the past, disease and cure allude to
the present.
"Sälih al-Mubärak" is obscure due to "vagueness of the chronological,
causal, and logical relation between the sentences delivered in one se-
quence." 90 The reader must rely heavily on his or her intuition in order to
make sense of the story. In other words, the text reflects feelings and sensa-
tions rather than clarity of plot and logical sequences. The same is true of
"al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün" ("The Ghäfa-Tree and the Mad One"). 91 This title
evokes legend and metaphor, Majnün being the hero in the traditional folk-
tale "Majnün Laylä" ("The One Mad(ly in Love) with Laylä") and the hero
85 'Abd al-Malik, p. 82.

86 <Abd al-Malik, p. 129.
87 Faraj, "Sälih", 1988, p. 55.
88 Faraj, "Sälih", 1988, p. 55.
89 Faraj, "Sälih", 1988, p. 56. This reads as follows in the original: "Sami'a sawtan ba'Idan
akhadha yunädl-hi: 'Sa-tubtaru fakhdha-hu al-yumnä, 'ayna-hu al-yumnä watuqaddamu
li-1-kiläb.'"
90 Taha, p. 75.
91 Faraj, "al-Ghäfa" in MS' ("Water") (ash-Shäriqa: Emirates Writers' and Literates'
Union, 1994), pp. 61-68; entitled "al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün" ("The Acacia and the Mad
One") in Aswätu-hunna: qisas min al-Khallj, 1998, pp. 77-83. The author mentions that
the ghäfa is a "strong desert tree" in a footnote. The ghäfighäfa in the singular) is a type
of acacia.
268 Gail Ramsay
of numerous ancient Arabic, Turkish and Persian romances which cele-

brate his unfulfilled love for Laylä. In accordance with Culler's formula
for intertextual presuppositions, the title directs the imagination of the
reader onto a specific track, that of romance involving passion and tragedy.
Al-Ghäfa, a young woman from the Harfüsh tribe, whom the reader per-
ceives as al-Majnün's young bride-to-be and a newcomer in the village, is
introduced to the reader as resembling an acacia. The story begins with the
following statement: "She resembles an acacia." Next follows a description
of her: she is small yet appears strong and a scent of jasmine emanates
from her, her skin is taut over her bones and her hair is long and unkempt.
She is also described as being "of a rigid face, an acacia woman!." 92 In
other words, figuratively speaking she is an acacia, as strong and slender as
the desert tree. Majnün watches her as she arrives in the village and the
reader understands that he is instantly bedazzled by her.
The character of Majnün can be interpreted as the village idiot, his name
meaning "mad" or "lunatic." But he could also be the courageous hero of
the traditional tale who, out of love and chivalry for Laylä is prepared to
sacrifice all, even his life and well-being in order to gain her.
It makes sense to suggest that the repeated references to al-Ghäfa's scent
of jasmine is a metaphor for her sexual attraction, in her capacity of a
young woman coming into bloom. The nocturnal scene in the moonlight in
which "the shining water was poured over her naked shoulders and she
submersed her finger into one of her body's hiding places and inhaled the
jasmine scent of wedding," seems to speak metaphorically of her union
with Majnün, or so the reader must assume. 93 For the next morning she
throws herself on the doorstep of his house crying and her brother-in-law
speaks: "If only you had waited until al-Ghäfa had grown up." 94 And in a
following scene she is in labour assisted by the other village women.
Al-Ghäfa bears a boy. She is frightened when she sees Majnün wet his
knife, imagining that she will find the limbs of the infant under the bed and
that she will hear the voices of unwanted guests saying: "We don't want
this woman!" These sequences seem to speak of the villagers' contempt for
her. Is it because she is from another tribe, we wonder, or because she has
given birth to her child out of wedlock, thus deviating from the traditional
moral codes and brought shame and dishonour on herself and her kin? But
92 Faraj, "al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün", p. 77.

in the end Majnün embraces her, and once more "the scent of jasmine is
diffused, darkness settles and the child laughs." 95
In the final scene the opening lines are idyllic enough, describing how
al-Ghäfa tells her child the "tales and stories of the Bedouin," that is the
popular chivalry romances of the early Islamic age about Abü Zayd
al-Hiläll and 'Antara al-'Absi and 'Abla. But in the final lines:
The child becomes exhilarated and thrusts his body into the dark shadows,
something like the running horse, running with the story. He catches it [the
horse in the story? the present author's question] and as far as the eye can
see he stretches out challenging al-Majnün, demanding a duel with him. 96
The telling of traditional tales of the early Islamic heroes and their quests
points to feelings of security, well-being and comfort on the part of mother
and child. A flag of warning is raised when "the child becomes exhilar-
ated" (a sign of rebellion?), bursts forward "like the running horse" (falling
in line with the new and rapidly changing ways of life?) and challenges his
father (who is backward and has not caught up with the new times?). With
these suggestions this author leaves it up to the reader to interpret the meta-
phorical and symbolical meanings of scenes and utterances in "al-Ghäfa
wa-1-Majnün."
We are brought to conclude that a metaphorical language, enigma and
making strange or what David Lodge has termed "originality," constitute
Faraj's style in the stories we have studied here. 97 Requesting the reader to
imagine what is going on by filling in gaps and expecting him or her to join
dislocated sequences of the text and make sense of its metaphors are part of
this author's technique. Simultaneously, the reader is guided by elements
of intertextuality which prompt his or her imagination. All of this points to-
wards the relevance of Taha's suggestion of a meeting point between the
prestigious tradition of lyrics and an avant-garde linguistic expression
comprising an "inter-generic activity." The stories by Faraj which have
been discussed here are not extremely short though. "Sälih al-Mubärak"
runs to roughly three pages in small script and "al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün" is

96 Faraj, "al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün", p. 83. The translation given here is but one possible in-
terpretation. The passage reads as follows in Arabic: "Wa-käna at-tiflu yantashl wa-yulqi
bi-jasadi-hi fi kathäfat az-zill, shay'an ka-l-khayl yarkudu fa-yarkudu warä' al-hikäya
wa-yumsiku bi-hi wa 'alä marmä al-basar yatamaddadu mutahaddiyan al-Majnün, täli-
ban mubärazata-hu." This same wording appears in both editions of this story—in Mä\
1994, p. 68 and Aswätu-hunna: qisas min al-Khallj, 1998, p. 83.
97 Lodge, 1992, p. 55.
270 Gail Ramsay
presented on seven and a half pages in medium script in pocket-size vol-

umes. Nonetheless both are marked by several of the modernist features
mentioned by Taha. This brings us to conclude that traditional poetic as-
pects of Arabic literature and a Western modernist literary technique of de-
familiarisation merge in the framework of Faraj's modern Arabic short
stories.
Baldissera writes that the Omani author Hamad Räshid is "a specialist in
the uqsüsa, intended as a very brief short story packed with significance
and charm." 98 We may well find that Räshid's uqsüsa is best described as a
quick sketch of one single scene, one fleeting notion or one particular sen-
sation, stretching over approximately one and a half to two pages. One of
Räshid's shortest stories is "Jurh" ("A Wound") which is told in 247
words." Even the script of the text in his stories projects a sense of the cur-
sory and the brief. The complete text is presented in a large italic script
with ample space between the lines. While Baldissera names Räshid's
stories aqäsls (plural for uqsüsa), Taha's classification of "the modern
Arabic very short story," may be considered at least as applicable.
In Räshid's prize-winning story "'Azzän," ('Azzän being the name of the
story's protagonist) from 1984, 'Azzän sets out with the other men from his
mountain tribe to avert an attack by the Portuguese. The historical context
of this story, we may presume, is that Oman was made part of the Portu-
guese seafaring empire from 1507 to 1650.
The drizzling rain took on the form of vapor in the shape of a mirage. Hail-
stones fell here and there over an area of the Jabal Akhdar. A touch of win-
ter, pomegranate bushes cowering next to each other, getting warmth from
the breath of the bypassers, a bitterly cold day, singular of its kind. 100
These are the opening, stanzaic lines of the story. The scene where the
story takes place is illustrated with impressionistic strokes of the pen. The
interpretation of the lines is ambiguous because of the poetic, multilayered
meaning of the lexical units that have been employed, something which is
difficult to render satisfactorily in translation. For example, "a touch of
98 Baldissera, p. 99.
99 Hamad bin Rashld bin Räshid, Zagärid as-sahJl ("The Joyful Trilling of the Horse's
Neigh") (Ruwl: Dar Jarldat 'Umän li-s-sihäfa wa-n-nashr, 1990), pp. 26-27.
100 bin Räshid's "'Azzän" is the prize-winning story of the 1984 National Short Story and
Poetry Contest for Youth in the Sultanate of Oman and is included in Zagärid as-sahil,
pp. 21-3. These introductory lines of the story read as follows in Arabic: "Radhädh
al-matar akhadha shakl bukhär 'alä hay'at saräb .. habbät al-barad tatasäqatu hunä
wa-hunäk 'alä ihdä manatiq al-Jabal al-Akhdar .. shitä' läfih .. shujayrät ar-rummän
tankamishu 'alä ba'di-hä, tatadaffa'u bi-anfäs al-märra .. yawm qäris fand min naw'i-hä."
winter" lexically also holds the meaning "a scorching/burning winter."

However, since we learn that hailstones are falling and "the pomegranate
bushes" are "cowering next to each other" on a "bitterly cold day," the
reader is satisfied that it is not related to anything involving heat. 101
The gist of the story is told in the original in eight lines of a total of 38,
as follows:
'Azzän is at the rear of the riders because of his youth. He bade his mother
farewell with feelings of sorrow and joy, with sorrow at separation from her
and joy at setting out to fight the enemy. He is a young man in the prime of
his life. His features reveal that he belongs to the men of the mountain. His
has been seized by tranquillity and sorrow since his father's istishhäd
[death in combat, the present author's remark] in a struggle with Portuguese
invaders. He has left childhood in order to learn how to gird up his izär per-
fectly [learn how to prepare himself swiftly for a battle or foray by girding
up his long wrap properly, the present author's remark]. [...] Umm 'Azzän
['Azzän's mother, the present author's remark] bids him farewell caressing
the roundness of her stomach, the last memory of her husband, the shahld
[person killed in action, the present author's remark]. 102
These words call to our attention the protagonist's youth, his valour, and
his mind, which is set on avenging his father, and inform us that his mother
is expecting a child. Very little additional information is given regarding
the characters in the story, another characteristic of the very short story. 103
This technique, paralipsis, defined by Taha as "the substraction of data
concerning the characters," such as their social status, identities and pro-
fessions, turns the story into a "more general and non-local entity, which is
not grounded in a specific or well-defined reality." 104 Of course, we do
learn that the scene is set in "an area of the Jabal Akhdar." With this excep-
tion though the geographical positioning of the story is vague. Another as-
pect of paralipsis which also is part of the literary style of this story is a
"lack of data pertaining to textual complexity." 105 In other words, the story
101 A considerable number of short stories from Oman, indeed the Gulf region as a whole,
are written in a poetic (modernist) style: Sayf Al Rahbi's "al-Intifä' al-baklr," al-Jabal
al-akhdar ("The Green Mountain") in Aswätu-hum: qisas min al-khallj, 1998, pp. 171-
172; Sulaymän al-Ma'marl's "'Ala man adä'ü asmä'a- hum fa-l-nul'in al-bukä'" ("Let Us
Proclaim Crying Over Those Who Have Lost Their Names") in Rubba-mä li-anna-hu
rajul mahzum ("Maybe Because he is a Defeated Man") 2000, pp. 9-18; and 'All
al-Ma'marl's "Lu'bat al-mä', matähat ar-raml" ("Water-Game, Sand-Labyrinth") in
Aswätu-hum: qisas min al-khallj, pp. 201-208. To mention a few from Oman.
102 bin Räshid, Zagärid, pp. 21-22.
103 Taha, p. 63.
104 Taha, p. 63.
105 Taha, p. 63.
272 Gail Ramsay
is told with a restricted number of words and the linguistic style does not
emerge as convoluted. Rather the text is constructed of a series of glimpses
of the past and the present, and scenes are described in a minimalist
fashion, leaving it up the reader to fill in the gaps. The final words of the
story are no less evocative than the passages that we have read above and
perhaps are even more lyrical.
The shrill sound of bullets persists. Death has become a purpose. A stray
bullet settles in 'Azzän's shining forehead. The disc of the sun rises high.
'Azzän endures the intoxication of death while his mother in the mountain
endures the pain of delivery. 106
These closing lines of the story emphasise another aspect of the very short
story—the technique of summary, defined by Taha as creating a story with
"very short and detached sentences.'" 07 Each short, impressionistic lexical
unit in the passage above directs the reader's attention in a new direction
and each one is replete with new information: the reverberating sound of
bullet-shots indicates the intensity of the battle; martyrdom (istishhäd) be-
comes the ultimate goal due to the faint hope of survival, the reader pre-
sumes; 'Azzän's istishhäd; the time of the day; "Azzän's rapture at the
point of his heroic death; and finally, the simultaneous birth of his brother
at home "in the mountain."
Although a number of comments could be made about the poetic and
rhetorical character of these phrases, it may suffice here to allude to the
multiple meaning of the lexical unit "shrill sound." The Arabic for this de-
scription is zaghärld, a word which refers to the "shrill, long-drawn sounds
(as a manifestation of joy by Arab women)," to cite Hans Wehr. 108 In other
words, the alarming clattering of bullets aiming to kill the enemy seem to
be a metaphoric pointer towards the anticipated emotions of joy and satis-
faction as a result of revenge and the heroic istishhäd, as well as the birth
of a new family member.
Räshid's story "'Azzän" is brief. It is told over less than two and a half
pages, totalling 312 words in large script with ample room between the
lines, in a pocket-size volume. It is marked by the use of a poetic and meta-
106 bin Räshid, p. 23. These final lines of the story are rendered as follows in Arabic:
"ZaghärTd ar-rasäs tatawäsalu .. al-mawt yusbihu ghäya .. rasasa ghädira tastaqirru fl
jabhat 'Azzän an-näsi'a .. 'Azzän yu'änl sakarät al-mawt bayna-mä ummu-hu fi al-jabal
tu'änl min äläm al-makhäd."
107 Taha, p. 64.
108 Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, third impression, J. Milton Cowan
(ed.), (New York: Ithaca 1976), p. 378.
phorical diction and stanzaic phrases which are compressed by the employ-
ment of paralipsis, summary and detachment. These techniques assist in
shortening the text and demand "an active partnership between the reader
and the text in the construction of the meaning of the text," as suggested by
Taha. 109
Räshid's compatriot, Muhammad al-Yahiyä'I, is also an exponent of a
modernist, condensed style. As with the stories of the Emirati author 'Abd
al-Hamld Ahmad, whom we discussed in the section "Magic, Myth and
Modernity," strong emphasis is placed on the difficulties of coping with
modern, industrialised and metropolitan ways of life. In a subtle and con-
densed style, al-Yahiyä'I expresses criticism of the modern societal ar-
rangements which have made people abruptly leave their traditional and
more tranquil ways of life. In a few words he focuses on factors which in-
jure people who are defenseless in the face of the changes which have
evolved in the industrialised societies of the late 1900s in the Gulf.
In his first collection of short stories from, Kharzat al-mashl ("Pearl
Walk") (1995), this critical note has already been struck and simultaneous-
ly the condensed style is also evident. 110 In "Dhahaba ba c Idan" ("He Went
Far Away"), from this collection, in less than one-and-a-half pages in small
to medium-sized script, he tells the story of 'Abd Alläh Mubarak, who ear-
ly one morning is struck dead by a bullet in his isolated living quarters in a
shoddy building in a valley outside the city. He has chosen to move from
the city because he fears that he will be unable to cope with the new times
and their ways. He is afraid that the city "with its people, colors and
changes" will "corrupt his soul." This man feels depressed and crushed
among the successful individuals he sees around him.
He used to say t h a t . . . were he to stay for long his soul would become cor-
rupt and debased. He was worried that his soul would fall into the swamp of
doubt and self-deception 111
The precise nature of the evils that the protagonist has experienced and
fears will befall him again, are left for the reader to ponder. The story in-
forms us esoterically that "[h] is life began with the utmost losses. It was a
sum of defeats and a series of frustrations...." 112 Michalak-Pikulska sug-
gests that this story is about
109 Taha, p. 68.

110 Muhammad al-Yahiyä'I, Kharzat al-mashl ("Pearl Walk") (Cairo: Dar Sharqiyyät
li-n-nashr wa-t-tawzl 1 ) 1995.
111 al-Yahiyä'I, "Dhahaba ba'idan" ("He Went Far Away") in Kharzat al-mashl (1995), p. 9.
112 al-Yahiyä'I, "Dhahaba ba'idan", 1995, p. 10.
274 Gail Ramsay
a man lost in quick social transformations... His hermitage—the dilapi-

dated nissen hut—is identifiable with life's collapse. It symbolizes life con-
structed without solid foundations 113
In the end we are left to surmise whether the "swamp of deception" in

which the protagonist is worried that he will be trapped figuratively points
to his feelings of estrangement in an environment which has undergone too
many changes too fast. The irony of the story is that it is the "temptation"
of the rustic life in the country that leads to his death, rather than the temp-
tations of the city.
The man went far away giving in to the temptation of the countryside which
flung him far away one day, at noon. It was a shot from a hunting rifle ...
one morning when nobody had expected violence, that crushed his head. 114
In one-and-a-half pages al-Yahiyä'I tells the story "'Aynän ba'ad fawät

al-'awän" ("Two Eyes, Too Late") also from Kharzat al-mashl, of an elder-
ly, blind man who every month comes from the distant Jabal al-Akhdar re-
gion to the capital to collect his social security payment from the Ministry
of Social Affairs. But the pace of the city is too fast for this man. The scene
depicted below tells how the story's protagonist calls his dog to help him
cross the street. On this particular day the dog arrives too late to assist him.
The man strolls through the glass doors into the street where heavy traffic
is moving at high speed. The lights have changed. The man is hit by a car
and dies instantly. The gist of this story is caught in the following lines:
The man was in a hurry and he was a stone's throw from the street after
having crossed the green stretch between the Ministry and the street and
having trampled on it. In exactly the opposite direction, where the bloated
white building of the national bank was crouching, a dog was sluggishly
descending the marble steps, in the direction of the wide fast street, when a
car, in a twinkle of an eye, passed and crushed the bones of the man, whose
feet had tripped, and he died. On the opposite side the dog died from the
horror of what he saw.115
113 Michalak-Pikulska, Modern Poetry, p. 299.

114 al-Yahiyä'I, "Dhahaba ba'Idan" (1995), p. 10.
115 al-Yahiyä'I, "'Aynän ba'ad fawät al-awän" ("Two Eyes, Too Late") in Kharzat al-mashl,
pp. 13-14; entitled "Sharp Eyes too Late" by Michalak-Pikulska, Modern Poetry, p. 298.
The Arabic text reads as follows: Wa-käna ar-rajul 'alä marmä hajar min ash-shäri' ba'da
mä ijtäza al-khadra bayn al-wizära wa-sh-shäri' wa-däsa c alay-hä. FI al-wijha al-muqäbi-
la tamäman haythu yajthumu al-mabnä al-abiyad al-mutarahhil li-l-bank ad-duwall käna
kalb yahbutu mutabäti'an ad-darajät ar-rukhämiyya bi-t-tijäh ash-shäri' al-wäsi' as-sarl'
'inda-mä inqadat sayyära fi lamh al-basar 'izäm ar-rajul alladhl zallat qadamä-hu
wa-mäta. Wa-mäta fi al-jiha al-muqäbila al-kalb min hawl mä ra'ä.
As was the case with Räshid's stories, very little additional information is
given. al-Yahiyä'i describes the movements of the characters by employing
the technique of paralipsis. Near the end of the story we learn that the
elderly man comes from a distant village in the Jabal al-Akhdar region to
the capital to collect his social security payment from the Ministry of So-
cial Affairs. Nevertheless, with the exception of this detail, no explicit
facts are disclosed uncovering any specifically Arab or other regional as-
pect. Regarding this technical aspect of the very short story and its expres-
sion, Taha has strikingly remarked: "The only Arab aspect in the text is the
Arabic language in which it is written." 116 As was the case with the protag-
onist in the Emirati woman writer Salmä Matar Sayf's short story "ath-
Thu'bän," which we analysed in the context of Gulf magical realism above,
the protagonist in al-Yahiyä'1's story finds himself in the environment of
the global metropolis. In other words, were it not for the reference to his
abode in the Jabal al-Akhdar region, he may well have been walking to-
wards his sad fate in almost any metropolitan environment in the world.
We may conclude with Michalak-Pikulska who points out that the
"economically constructed narrative and the stylistic brevity" of the works
by al-Yahiyä'i under discussion here, "strengthen the gloomy, tragic and
virtual absurdity of their atmosphere." 117 In the closing section beginning
with "[...] a car, in a twinkle of an eye, passed and crushed the bones of the
man, whose feet had tripped, and he died" and ending with "On the oppo-
site side the dog died from the horror of what he saw," summary and de-
tachedness are distinct features. From these lines the reader pictures how a
car swishes by with great speed colliding with the old man and killing him
instantly. Next, the reader's attention is directed towards the man's dog,
which was supposed to have assisted him in crossing the street. On this day
though the dog does not attend to his master on time. He saunters down the
front steps, is made aware of the impending danger, is not able to prevent
his master from his sad fate and as a result he himself dies of shock.
The Gulf stories which have been discussed in this section encompass
traditionally favoured Arabic literary elements of style such as poetry and
rhetoric, resulting in modernist literary expressions. They underline the ob-
servations of Samir el-Yussef and Stefan G. Meyer; both referred to in the
introductory section of this article, on a traditional preference for form
over content in reaction to Western-style realism and the use of modernist
116 Taha, p. 63.

117 Michalak-Pikulska, Modern Poetry, p. 298.
276 Gail Ramsay
Arabic styles. Despite Taha's observation that "making strange has great
potential for restricting the number of words used in the text," 118 we noted
that Maryam Jum'a Faraj's stories were not extremely short. They were
however marked by modernist features such as defamiliarisation, figura-
tive speech and open endings. We found that Räshid's and al-Yahiyä'i's
stories revealed other aspects of "the modern Arabic very short story,"
such as avoiding detailed description and making use of poetic techniques
such as indirect and implicit language.
All of these stories, whether inclined towards the strange or the brief,
call for the reader to imagine underlying meanings and fill in textual gaps
and sequential breaches.
New Literature in the Gulf—Conclusions
In this article we have identified literary cross-currents and meeting-points

in modern literature in the making in the UAE and Oman. There is no
question that the immense changes that have taken place in the societies of
these countries during roughly three decades (1970-2000) have left an im-
pression on the literature. Adjusting to the global, urbanised life of the
metropolis and new information technology in the service of intercultural
exchange or "al-muthäqafa," as expressed by Abü Shu'ayr, are issues
which have occasioned scepticism towards modernity and globalisation. In
UAE and Omani literature this sentiment has given rise to an effort to
shake off some of the vestiges of traditional Western realism as well as to
comment on the rapid transformation that has violently overturned pre-oil
society.
Three short stories from the UAE, Salmä Matar Sayf's short story "ath-
Thu'bän" and <Abd al-Hamid Ahmad's "Kharrüfa" and "Nasama hawä>
tä'isha," and one short story from Oman, Badriyya al-Wahaybl's "at-
Tuffäha," exemplified Gulf writers' attempts at coming to grips with post-
colonial/neocolonial and neopatriarchal society by employing folklore,
magic and myth. We found that intertextual features in the form of themes
and characters from the traditional Arabic literary sources, woven into the
mould of the realistic modern short story, crystallised into what Abü
Shu'ayr labelled magical Gulf realism. Traditional, indigenous cultural ex-
pressions and new and modern arrangements of life have given rise to a lit-
118 Taha, p. 67.

erary meeting point and resulted in a modern form of Gulf literary repre-
sentation in which magic and myth are juxtaposed with realistic percep-
tions of events.
Experimentation and originality through defamiliarisation and finding
support in a traditional Arabic literary poetic spirit were other possibilities
for Emirati and Omani writers in the search for independent Gulf styles.
Two short stories from the UAE by Maryam Jum'a Faraj, "Sälih al-
Mubärak" and "al-Ghäfa wa-1-Majnün" exemplified such an experimental
mode of writing which employs textual gaps, metaphors, double meaning
and originality. Some of these techniques, as well as other features of
poetic expression such as summary, paralipsis and detachedness, were also
shown to influence the linguistic style of three short stories by Hamad
Räshid and Muhammad al-Yahiyä'I from Oman. These last techniques es-
pecially resulted in brevity and were instrumental in forming a condensed
Gulf story, a genre which Taha proposed be named "the modern Arabic
very short story." We also found the opposite to be true: in order to write
such a very short story, the poetic technique is required. In other words, a
traditional Arabic poetic mode employed in the framework of a short story
may result in a condensed story in the Gulf. Both the experimental stories
and the very short stories seem inclined towards the traditional Arabic lit-
erary preference of form over content. The content may centre on the past
as in Räshid's story "'Azzän," which dealt with the Portuguese era on the
coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It may also be grounded in the present so-
ciety as was the case with al-Yahiyä'I's stories.
What remains clear is that much of the modern literary creativity in the
Gulf, as exemplified here in works from the UAE and Oman, is marked by
an ambivalence between old and new, tradition and modernity and indig-
enous and foreign, all of which have been prevalent forces throughout the
shaping of modern Arabic literature.
ROBERTA MICALLEF
Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Turkish

Children's Literature: Victims or Heroes?
The 1990s saw a dramatic increase in the number of books and articles pub-
lished about Turkish identity. 1 In this paper I will examine two contradictory
and yet parallel depictions of Turks evident in contemporary Turkish chil-
dren's literature: the Turk as victim and the Turk as conqueror. The literary
text, writes Pierre Macherey, the French Marxist critic, "is not created by an
intention (objective or subjective); it is produced under determinate condi-
tions." 2 These two antithetical depictions of the Turk are the results of global
economic trends and the New World Order. Since the 1960s many Turks
have immigrated to Western Europe and Scandinavia as guest workers, but,
rather than return home, many of them settled there. And since the 1960s, the
Turkish State has been petitioning to enter the European Union. The texts de-
picting the Turk in Europe as a victim are a product not only of the relations
between Europe and Turkey and the attempt by Turkey to enter the EU, but
also of an internal criticism of the Westernisation and modernisation project
launched by the Republican government which has been the state ideology
since the establishment of the republic in 1923.
Texts such as From Central Asia to the Gedikli Village: The Yörük's of
Honamli, History of Pre-Islamic Turkish Culture: According to Central
Asian Sources and Discoveries, The Heroic Epic of the Altai Turks: Alp
Manas emerging also in the 1990s accompanied a different type of cultural
encounter. They emerged alongside the New World Order founded upon
1 For example, Bozkurt Giiveng. Türk Kimligi (Turkish Identity), (Istanbul: Remzi
Kitabevi, 1996); Ceyhun Demirtafl. Ah §u Biz Karabiyikh Türkler (Oh We Black
Moustached Turks), (Istanbul: Sis (Jam Yayincilik, 1966); Nuri Bilgin. Cumhuriyet
Demokrasi ve Kimlik (Republic Democracy and Identity), (Istanbul: Baglam Yaymlari,
1997).
2 Ania Loomba. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. (London and New York: Routledge, 1998),
p. 36.
Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Turkish Children's Literature 279
the collapse of the Soviet Union. The independence of the Turkic states of
the former Soviet Union in 1991 rekindled a distant dream of a greater
Turkic world which had always been present in the political margins—in
the utterances of the extreme right wing—but which have now entered the
mainstream. Recounting a common Turkic heritage and the fraternity of
the Turkic states, these texts contributed to an attempt at creating a new,
wider "imagined community." However, relations between the Central
Asian states and Turkey have been complicated since their independence
in 1991. Nevertheless the interest in a Turkic culture and heritage con-
tinues to flourish in Central Asia and Anatolia. The list of books in publi-
cation in 1998-1999 3 by the Ministry of Culture publication office alone
contains several titles suggesting links between Central Asia and Anatolia:
From the Motherland to Anatolia (Halife Altay); Impressions From Cen-
tral Asian Turkish Architecture (Gözde Ramazanoglu); and My Memories
of the Turkish Lands (Fahrettin Erdogan).
Choice of Texts and Approach

Ergenekon Destam, a Turkish myth of origin and one of a series of comic
strips aimed at seven to fourteen-year-olds, published by the Ministry of
Culture, narrates the common origin of the Turkic peoples. This heroic tale
of survival reflects the Ministry's attempt to teach Turkish children about
Turkish identity. Published in 1991, the series foreshadowed the oncoming
onslaught of books about Turkish identity, both texts that question the
benefits of the Turkish presence in Western Europe and those linking the
Turks of Anatolia to Central Asia.
Qocuklar Vataninda Büyüsiin (Let the Children Grow Up in Their Home-
land) is a collection of short stories addressing the difficulties faced by the
children of "guest workers" in Germany. This particular collection was pub-
lished by the Turkish Literature Foundation 4 and won first prize among 130
books in a competition hosted by the foundation. The book is comprised of
3 http:/www.kultur.gov.tr/b-yayim-98.html
4 Türk Edebiyati Vakfi/The Turkish Literature Foundation was established in 1978 under
the leadership of Professor Ahmet Kabakli based on the Turkish Literature Association
(1970). In 1972 the Association began to publish the Turkish Literature Journal, thus en-
abling it to reach a larger audience. In 1978 the Foundation was established. It supports
publications, organises competitions and discussions and offers courses on Turkish lan-
guage, literature, Ottoman language etc.
280 Roberta Micallef
five stories: one with the same title as the collection, "Let the Children Grow
Up in Their Homeland," "When the Butterflies Fly," "The Child and the
Man," "When Anatolia was Becoming a Homeland" and "The Blackbirds."
The protagonist in each story is a young boy. With the exception of the
last story, the young boy is seen, or should be seen, as a good role model
by the adults. In the first two stories the child has access to simple truths
such as patriotism, as well as respect for nature and living creatures, which
have evaded the adults. In the third story a child, without saying a word,
leads a man, and with him his whole family, to a "different, and beautiful
world." 5 In "When Anatolia Was Becoming a Homeland," a grandfather
tells his grandson the story of the battle of Manzikert, and the arrival of the
Seljuk Turks and their colonisation of Anatolia. Through this tale he
teaches his grandson about the importance of unity. It was the unity among
different Turkish tribes which led to their victory over the Byzantine Em-
pire. "The Blackbirds" narrates the story of a lazy boy who learns about the
importance of hard work by watching the birds struggling with all their
might for their meal. I will discuss the first tale in detail but I will also refer
to the other stories in my discussion. Each text will be examined in its own
particular socio-political and historical context. I will do a classical close
reading of the texts, discussing everything from the choice of words to the
themes. Both in Ergenekon destam and Qocuklar Vataninda Büyüsün
either the author or the publisher has clearly established an objective for
the text. Thus I would also like to examine whether the text itself is faithful
to the stated goal or the dominant point of view.
The question of genre lends itself to a number of interesting questions.
The epic genre is flourishing in Turkey and the Turkic states of the former
Soviet Union. Each of these states (Kirgizistan, Kazakstan, Azerbeijan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) as well as the Republic of Turkey partici-
pated in celebrations of Turkic Epics. For example 1998 was the year of
"Dede Korkut." Turkey hosted international conferences on the Turkic
epics with participants from all of the Turkic republics. Bakhtin and
Lukäcs declared the epic the genre of the past, "an antiquated and outdated
form," although Lukäcs did envision a return of the epic. 6 They were ob-
5 O. Olcay Yazici. Qocuklar Vataninda Büyüsün. (Istanbul: Türk Edebiyati Vakfi, 1997),
p. 61.
6 György Lukäcs. The Theory of the Novel; a Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms
of Great Epic Literature. Translated from the German by Anna Bostock. (Cambridge,
Mass: M.I.T. Press, 1971), p. 61. Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Es-
says. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. (Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 1981), p. 3.
serving the formation of a New World Order and declared the novel to be
the genre of the new and modern world. Thus my question becomes: why
is the epic genre alive and well in the Turkic world, if indeed it should have
been ousted by the novel?
O. Olcay Yazici, the author of Let the Children Grow Up in their Home-
lands is calling for authenticity and a return to the homeland, and yet he is
doing so in a decidedly foreign genre. The author's message is delivered in
a Western genre. We will have to decide whether the form dilutes the con-
tent or strengthens it. My emphasis in deciphering these texts will be on the
works themselves, which will guide the discussion. Rather than following
a specific theoretical framework or model, I will discuss the texts with ref-
erence to relevant topics such as hybridity, authenticity and globalisation. I
will also argue that both texts are products of very specific cultural encoun-
ters. Therefore I will present a brief history of these encounters before be-
ginning the textual and theoretical analysis of the texts themselves.
Children's Literature
In 1968 Anne Pellowski wrote:

Books specifically for children are comparatively recent in Turkey, and
while there is not yet an extensive list of modern titles by native writers,
there have been a number of editions of most of the classics and other trans-
lations from Western literature. Of course, the epic and folk literature of
pre-republic days provides a rich storehouse for modern publishers to
exploit. So far, children's books have not done justice to the quality of this
literature. Most of the collections based on the Turkish classics have been in
cheap, unattractive editions, as has much of the entire productions of chil-
dren's books. 7
Although writers of Turkish children's literature and critics would like to

see further improvements in children's literature, they agree that the field
received a major boost in the 1970s. 8 Children's literature, like other fields,
was traumatised by the military coup of 1980 when, according to Cengiz,
half of the publishers were in prison. 9 Nevertheless, nineteen years after the
7 Anne Pellowski, The World of Children's Literature (New York and London: R.R.
Bowker Company, 1968), p. 268.
8 See Gülten Dayioglu and Giilsiim Cengiz, "Qocuklarimiza Sahip Qikmada 'Qocuk
Yazini' Qok Önemli ve Etkin Bir Ara9tir," Sanat Dergisi 36 (1981), pp. 35-36.
9 Erdogan, A, "Yargiyi Cocuga Birakmak Gerek," Cumhuriyet. June 11, 1999, p. 12.
coup, Turkish children and parents have a choice of many different types
and genres of literature. Imaginative books, educational books, pedagogic
books, books that deal with daily life, and books that offer escape from
daily life are available to parents and children. Thus my conclusions are
limited to my selection, which is based on cultural encounters in literature
and on literature that is the result of cultural encounters.
Because of global flows of capital and workers as well as political insta-
bility, there are large Turkish communities in Western European and Scan-
dinavian countries, particularly in Germany, France and Sweden. Qocuklar
Vataninda Büyüsün portrays one aspect of the encounter between Germany
and Turkey. It is only one of the possible responses to a complicated issue.
While Ergenekon Destani, a publication by the Ministry of Culture, is a re-
sponse to the flood of American and European popular-cultural products
which are a by-product of global markets, it is also a response to the New
World Order and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both texts emerged in
1991 as the question of identity was gaining momentum in Turkey. The
first text can be seen as an official point of view on the identity question
and the latter as an unofficial viewpoint. Also, the first text builds identity
on a positive note ("who we are") whereas at least in one of the tales in
Qocuklar Vataninda Biiyüsün identity is based on a negative note ("who
we are not").
The Turkish-European Cultural Encounter
The Turkish-European encounter dates back several centuries. In their ini-

tial encounters with Europe the Turks had the upper hand. Europe had been
the classical area of Ottoman expansion since the crossing of the Bospho-
rus in 1453. But when the armies of Süleyman the Magnificent reached the
gates of Vienna on 27 September 1529, the Ottomans had reached the line
beyond which the empire would not expand. 10 The first deliberate attempts
at a Westernising policy in the Ottoman Empire came in the early eight-
eenth century. 11 By the early nineteenth century the Empire had capitulated
and accepted the validity of the paradigm of modernity. 12 As the expansion
10 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press,
1968), p. 25.
11 Ibid., p. 45.
12 (âglar Keyder, "The Dilemma of Cultural Identity on the Margin of Europe," Review,
16:1 (1993), p. 19.
of Europe encroached upon the Empire and nationalism led to separatisms,

after a failed attempt at Ottomanism, Ottoman-Turkish intellectuals seized
upon Turkish nationalism.
For the already Europeanised Turkish intelligentsia of the Republic of
Turkey nationalism and secularism constituted the path to modernisation.
The post-imperialist Republic of Turkey managed to escape overt colonial-
ism. It was perhaps as a result of that escape and also their perception of
themselves as the equals of Europeans—after all, they were the successors
of a mighty empire— that the Turks, while nationalist in character, did not
reject the West. 13 Members of the intelligentsia argued for the absorption
of Western characteristics or entry into Western civilisation, while main-
taining a Turkish "core." Ziya Gökalp, "the engineer of Turkish national-
ism," 14 states in his book The Principles ofTurkism: "The mission of Turk-
ism is to seek out the Turkish culture that has remained only among the
people and graft onto it Western civilization in its entirety and in a viable
form." 15 Gökalp believed that the elite had civilisation and the people had
national culture and both sides had something to learn from each other. 16
This sentiment is confirmed below in the segment of a poem titled "Terak-
kinin S i m " ("The Secret of Progress") by Mehmet Äkif Ersoy, another im-
portant intellectual of the same era:
Absorb the art, the science of the West,

And speed your efforts to achieve those ends,
For without them, one can no longer live,
For art and science have no native land.
But bear in mind the warning that I give:
When reaching through the eras of reform,
Let your essential nature be your guide -
There's no hope of salvation otherwise 17
13 Ibid.
14 See Taha Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, 1876-1924. (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1985).
15 Ziya Gökalp, Principles ofTurkism, trans. Robert Devereux (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968),
p. 33.
16 Ibid., p. 34. Gökalp defines culture as national, civilisation as international. According to
him, culture is a harmonious whole of eight aspects: religious, moral, legal, intellectual,
aesthetic, economic, linguistic and technological. Civilisation is a mutually shared whole
of the social lives of many nations. Gökalp, pp. 22-32.
17 This translation of the poem can be found at the following website: http://
www.turkses.com/culture or in paper version in Mehmet Äkif Ersoy, "The Secret of
Progress," Nermin Menemencioglu (ed.) in collaboration with Fahir ίζ, The Penguin
Book of Turkish Verse (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1978).
Both Ersoy and Gökalp were speaking on a theoretical level, but the discus-
sion about encounters with the West also took place in more concrete terms.
For example, when discussing curriculum changes for schools, another im-
portant figure of the era, Cänib Ali, found encounters with the West to be
fruitful and productive. In an article discussing the education reform in 1927,
Cänib Ali [Yöntem] asks if Turkish children confronting Greek, Latin, Eng-
lish, German, French, and Italian literature in translation would not feel that
these literatures were superior to Turkish literature and thus feel that their
own nation's literature was inferior. Cänib Ali's conclusion is that as patriot-
ic Turkish literature came about after the encounter with the West and "as the
European nations don't have any difficulty inspiring one another without en-
croaching upon each other's national identity the encounter with Western lit-
erature is not to be feared." 18 The early years of the republic were optimis-
tic.19 Taner, a scholar of the late Ottoman period, describes the ambience of
the early republican years as follows: "the Kemalist period dislodged the
clouds of pessimism and brought a new excitement and spirit." 20 The lines
below from the speech Atatürk gave in honour of the tenth anniversary of the
republic in 1933 reflect the same optimism. In this speech Atatürk praises the
heroism behind the establishment of the republic, as well as the accomplish-
ments in its ten years of existence. 21
The lyrics to the march composed in honor of the same occasion also
echo these positive sentiments:
.. .We emerged with our heads held up high in ten years from every war;
In ten years we created 15 million youths of every age.
At our head a leader respected by the whole world;
We connected the motherland with iron webs from four centres 22
The Turks had fought a successful war of independence and escaped

overt colonisation, and the Westernised elite simply felt that they had to
18 Cänib Ali [Yöntem]: "Edebiyat Tedrisatinin Yeni Vechesi (Jocuklari Kozmopolit Yapar
mi?" reprinted in Mehmet Kaplan, inci Enginiin, Zeynep Kerman, Necat Birinci, Abdul-
lah Ugman (eds.), Atatilrk Devri Fikir Hayati Vol II. (Ankara: Kiiltiir Bakanligi
Yayinlari, 1981), pp. 135-139.
19 Patrick Balfour Kinross, Atatürk The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1964), p. 354. Patrick Kinross describes the meeting between the representa-
tives of the Turkish government and Allies as a "...conflict of psychology. The Allies
saw the Turks as a vanquished people; the Turks saw themselves as victors."
20 Timur Taner, Osmanli Kimligi (Ankara: imge Kitabevi, 1998), p. 24.
21 Atatürk, "Onuncu Yil Nutku" from Atatürk Kütüphanesi, http://anavatan.net/html/onun-
cu.html
22 "Onuncu Yil Mar§i," http:// anavatan.net/Atatürk/html/onmarsi.html
modernise the masses to become part of the European circle. An internal

confrontation occurred which was presented by the republicans as a con-
flict between modernity and tradition. 23 Seventy-five years after the es-
tablishment of the republic, the debate continues in similar terms. Taner
wrote in 1998:
We are in a crisis and we are living this as a cultural crisis, an identity crisis.
We have not yet managed to convince ourselves which civilization we
belong to or of our place in universal history. 24
In October 1999, an "infomercial" regarding Turkey and its hybrid identity

as both Western and Eastern, Europeanised but Muslim, was broadcast on
Euronews in conjunction with the Turkish application for European Union
candidate status. Turkish politicians of different political persuasions fre-
quently refer to the European nature of the Turkish character. 25 However,
by the 1990s, the Turkish modernisation project appeared to be in crisis.
There are several possible explanations for the rise in opposition to the
modernisation project. One possibility is the development of a constituen-
cy which is making statements about its own identity which may differ
from the government's vision. There are those who argue that Turkish
identity is a hybrid of different sorts: a Muslim-Turkish hybrid, rather than
an Eastern-Western hybrid. It is a widespread notion among Turks that
Turkey has often sided with Europe and the West in international affairs
without being sufficiently appreciated. 26 Another reason for the opposition
to the Westernisation project is linked to the internal economic and politi-
cal difficulties, perhaps best demonstrated by Turkey's three military
coups in its seventy-five years as a republic. Yet another possible explana-
tion for the crisis is the Turkish relationship with the European Union.
The need for affirmation by the West has been evident in Turkish litera-
ture since the inception of the Republic. Halide Edip Adivar's collection of
lectures titled Conflict of East and West in Turkey is one of many examples
dealing with this topic in the early years of the Republic. 27
Äsa Lundgren, a political scientist, only can on the basis of cultural af-
finity explain the preference for the candidacy of eleven Eastern European
23 Qaglar Keyder, "The Dilemma of Cultural Identity on the Margin of Europe," Review,
16:1 (1993), pp. 24-25.
24 Timur Taner, Osmanh Kimligi (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1998), p. 15.
25 Soli Özel, "Turkey is a European Country," Private View, 1:3(1997), p. 24.
26 Ibid.
27 Halide [Adivar] Edib, Conflict of East and West in Turkey, Jamia Millia Lecture Series,
1935.
and former Soviet republics over Turkey. All these states have lower
GDPs, higher unemployment, more farmers and just as much trouble with
human rights as Turkey. 28 Lundgren points out a curious development: the
political and economic progress Turkey made toward entry to the EU be-
tween 1960 and 1990 was matched by an increase in negative sentiments
towards Turkish accession to the Union. 29 Over the course of seventy years
Turkey travelled from being a proud, newly independent successor state of
an empire to the "benighted" 30 Other caught up in a double bind: no matter
how hard the colonised or the Orientals tried to be European, s/he was con-
demned to fail. Thus, although Turkey was never formally colonised, it
was treated as Europe's Other and to this extent Turkish literature does
bear some of the hallmarks of postcolonialism.
Let the Children Grow up in Their Homeland is very much a product of
its time, and yet the intentions of the publisher and author to nurture a
patriotic Turkish-Muslim identity are also obvious. Gellner suggests that
when faced with the economic and military superiority of outsiders one has
two choices: imitation or turning toward one's "own." 31 Yazici clearly re-
jects any attempt at imitation and urges Turkish children to return home, to
their "own." In Let the Children Grow Up in Their Homeland Yazici ar-
gues for an alternative to Westernisation and rejects hybridisation. 32 In
28 Äsa Lundgren, Europeisk Identitetspolitik: EU:s Demokratibistand till Polen och Turkiet
(Stockholm: Gotab Publisher, 1998), pp. 190-191.
29 Ibid., p. 189.
30 Kevin Robins, "Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe," Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay
(eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (London, Sage Publications, 1997), p. 62.
31 Ernest Gellner, "The Turkish Option in Comparative Perspective." Sibel Bozdogan and
Reijat Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Uni-
versity of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 235-236.
32 Plot Summary:
Ümit (Hope) has been living for the past eight years with his grandmother whom he
loves dearly. His parents and younger siblings live in Germany. Finally his mother de-
cides to bring him to Germany as well. He cannot wait to go. He cannot speak to his sib-
lings because they only speak German. He feels cut off from and inferior to his younger
siblings. He is looking forward to newer and better toys and improved living conditions
The grandmother has suffered a great deal. She gave birth to twelve children of whom
six died. The daughters got married and disappeared. The oldest son went off to Germa-
ny. A younger son is studying in a distant city. Two years ago she lost her husband and
was left alone. All she had left was Ümit. She talks to her cow about her sorrow. Even
the cow sympathises and starts to cry. In the meanwhile Ümit cannot wait to get to Ger-
many. He misses his grandmother but he thinks that he will see so many beautiful things
that he won't have the time to miss her. They get to Germany. He explores everything
and everything is foreign. He feels like a prisoner. He remembers what his grandmother
has told him: "every bird sings in its native land." In the end Ümit is begging God: Let
children grow up in their homeland. Do not let them experience exile. It ends with Ümit
returning to his home country and the grandmother having a hopeful dream.
Orientalism Said proposes that the study of the Orient promoted a binary
opposition between the familiar (West) and the other (the Orient). 33 In this
text Said criticises the ways in which the West constructed "the Orient," as
a set of inaccurate generalisations, which in turn came to be accepted as
"truth." Yazici's text in some ways is an inverted Orientalist text, perhaps
even Occidentalist. It too is built on assumptions which are not necessarily
accurate. It contributes to generalisations about the West. This text, how-
ever, lacks the power that the texts contributing to the construction of
Orientalism had. The protagonist is expecting to find riches in the form of
toys in Germany. He thinks he will have a better life but the material ob-
jects he acquires only highlight the emptiness of his life in Germany. Not
only is his life empty but he becomes a "nobody" in Germany. He does not
belong there. Even within his own nuclear family, he is an outsider. As
Ümit is walking around the German city, he thinks about how he and the
German children simply cannot understand each other. 34 Ümit says: "we
are locked up for each other." In Ümit's world hybridity is not an option.
Mimicry is not possible. One becomes what one mimics. Ümit's brothers,
who have grown up in Germany, cannot speak Turkish, and Ümit does not
speak German so the brothers are effectively cut off from each other. The
parents who can speak German and Turkish have either chosen not to, or
have been unable to, instill their own language and cultural values in their
children. The children born and raised in Germany, even if of Turkish
heritage, have lost their Turkish identity.
In The Intimate Enemy: Loss and. Recovery of Self Under Colonialism,
Nandy discusses the psychological impact of colonialism on both the colo-
niser and the colonised. In Said's description of Orientalist discourse,
Orientals were described as effeminate and yet still dangerous to "white"
women. In Nandy's text we see the legacy of colonialism on gender, as
well as the relationship between gender, class and race. Nandy's work,
which is based mostly on British colonialism in India, leads him to con-
clude that one of the legacies of colonialism in terms of gender is "hyper-
masculinity." 35 While Turkey may not have been overtly colonised, its
economy has been described as neocolonial and the power dynamics be-
tween the European Union and Turkey, or between the Turks in Europe
33 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

34 O. Olcay Yazici, ζocuklar Vatanmda Büyüsiin (Istanbul: Türk Edebiyati Vakfi, 1997),
p. 27.
35 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi,
Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 37-38.
and the European governments are certainly unbalanced. Nevertheless, not

only is this story lacking in hypermasculinity, there is hardly any adult
male presence. Nevertheless the absent father figure is a recurring motif in
Turkish literature. 36 If one examines the earliest Turkish novels, the nine-
teenth century Tanzimat novels, one notes that they too are marked by the
absence of strong father figures. This is not strange considering that both
then and now the Turkish state continues to struggle with its identity.
While both Ümit's father and paternal uncle are referred to in the text, they
are hardly of any significance; they barely utter any words. The father fig-
ure is also absent in the other stories and, if present, he is heavily criticised.
In the tale entitled "When the Butterflies Fly," the father figure is rich, in-
considerate, insensitive and disrespectful of nature and life. However, he is
portrayed as a victim of his circumstances. With the help and guidance of
the neighbour's son, the protagonist frees the butterflies that his father
keeps in a cage. A father figure in another story, "The Man and the Boy"
realises the emptiness of his life and the emptiness of the comforts pro-
vided by riches when he observes a boy who displays model behaviour.
These men have forgotten how to be "good people." They have lost their
way, and they are in need of the guidance that can only be provided by the
pure, innocent boys.
We come across only one boy who behaves in a less than exemplary
fashion. The protagonist of "The Blackbirds" is, however, simply mis-
guided. At the beginning of the tale he thinks that, as he is a believer, God
will provide him with all he needs. By the end of the tale, he has dis-
covered that "God takes care of those who take care of themselves." The
Turks who are in Turkey are also in danger of being misled, or confused or
losing their way but they have the possibility of finding it again. However,
the Turks who have given up their language in Western Europe are beyond
redemption. The cultural encounter in the last two tales is not one between
two foreign cultures but is an internal cultural encounter. The differences
between rich and poor, urban and rural, can be just as great as the differ-
ences between German and Turk. The gaps in material wealth can lead to
equivalent gaps in cultural values. By the end of this collection we are left
with the idea that the author is very much against Westernisation. The
reader is led to believe that the author would like the whole nation to reas-
36 See Roberta Micallef, "Gender in the Tanzimat Novel" in M.R. Ghanoonparvar and Fari-
doun Farrakh (eds.), In Transition: Essays on Culture and Identity in Middle Eastern So-
ciety (College Station: Texas A & Μ University Publication, 1994).
sess its values and sense of self. The phenomenon of the young having to
teach the old and the children having to guide adults is a symptom of how
development and Westernisation has inverted the moral order.
Jenny White, an anthropologist who has done extensive fieldwork on
Turkey, argues that in Turkey the state is seen as the father (baba) and the
land as mother {ana)?1 The German state apparatus is evident through
comments about the school and the teachers, and so is its power. The
teachers tell Ümit's mother not to speak Turkish at home so her children
will learn German. The German state is present and exerts authority. The
mother obeys without considering the consequences of her action. How
can the children maintain their Turkish language skills if they speak Turk-
ish neither at home nor at school?
It could be argued that it is the inability of the "father state" to take care
of its citizens which leads them to leave their country and travel to foreign
lands and live in the lands of gurbet (exile). Gurbet, a topic that is men-
tioned repeatedly in the story, is also a reference rich with nuances in Turk-
ish history as well as a topic of discussion among contemporary Turkish
intellectuals. Ümit's relationship to language and language problems, and
his desire to speak Turkish, will remind any reader familiar with Turkish
literature of "Eskici'V'Cobbler" by Refik Halit Karay. 38 "Eskici" is the
story of a boy who has been sent to Palestine to live with his relatives be-
cause he has lost both his parents. Although his relatives treat him well, he
misses his homeland and he cannot speak the language. Even when he be-
gins to understand the language, he refuses to speak it. His relatives cannot
even pronounce his name properly. In Palestine Hassan becomes Ghassan.
Like Ümit, Hasan feels that he is a prisoner and misses his homeland. A
cobbler is invited into the house to mend shoes and Hasan forgets himself
and speaks Turkish. The cobbler turns out to be Turkish. In both tales the
country of destination is likened to hell. In "Eskici" the boy describes
Palestine as a hell-hole, and Ümit describes his efforts at trying to walk
down the street in Germany without looking upon the colourful walls of
the sinful discos. What is different is that Hasan has ended up in Palestine
because his parents have died and the cobbler is there because he has bro-
ken the law and had to escape. Ümit's family, on the other hand, has, as the
grandmother puts it, been "fooled" by false dreams. They have gone will-
37 Jenny White, Money Makes Us Relatives (Austin, TX: University of Texas press, 1994),
pp. 66-67.
38 Refik H. Karay, Gurbet Hikayeleri (Istanbul: Seraih Lütfi Kitabevi, 1940), pp. 11-15.
ingly to Germany for a better life, but this better life puts them at risk of
cultural death.
According to Ania Loomba, women, on both sides of the colonial di-
vide, "demarcate both the innermost sanctums of race, culture and nation,
as well as the porous frontiers through which these are penetrated." 39 This
dual view of women explains some of the difficulties presented by the gen-
der constructions in this tale. Here we have an inverted triangle drama
where two women are fighting over the identity of a boy. In the Middle
East, a child is seen as the crucial generational link in the family unit, the
key to its continuation, the living person who ties the present to the past
and to the future. 40 The struggle in this text is between the child's mother
who wants him to come to Germany and his paternal grandmother who
wants him to stay in Turkey. The tension between the mother-in-law and
daughter-in-law is neither new nor unique to Turkey. While there is never
any overt hostility or even antagonism between the two women, the child
is left to struggle with the issue of choosing which woman he will stay
with. The grandmother represents authenticity, the Turkish feminine ideal:
the mother who sacrifices herself for her children, who does not speak and
does not burden her children even under great duress. The daughter-in-law
has been seduced not by a man but rather by false dreams and empty signi-
fiers. Ümit's mother is the only hybrid in the text and she has not only
bought into the false dreams but she also transmits the idea that this false
dream is superior to Turkishness. Women, however, are not the only ones
transmitting culture in this book. "When Anatolia Was Becoming a Home-
land," the tale about the conquest of Anatolia, shows a grandfather teach-
ing his grandson Turkish history. Although the topics war and conquest are
decidedly masculine, they are also about teamwork and unity in the face of
outsiders.
One aspect that this short story shares with postcolonial texts is that it
too is haunted by the figure of the "other woman." 41 Ümit's mother in-
cludes a German bride in a list of things she will get for her son if he moves
to Germany. A German bride has many implications: on the one hand, the
mother thinks that the German bride is superior to and more desirable than
a Turkish bride. She is an enticement. On the other hand, such a union
means certain cultural death Ümit's children will not be able to relate to his
39 Loomba, p. 159.
40 Elizabeth W. Fernea (ed.), Children in the Muslim Middle East (Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press, 1995), p. 4.
41 Loomba, p. 152.
beloved grandmother. It also implies the total disappearance of the ideal,

the Turkish family.
The only other female characters in the entire collection include two
mothers and a daughter. The mothers are loving and kind and dutiful. They
take good care of their households and their children, but it is the father
who must set the rules and lead them. We meet a traditional nuclear family
with two parents and a child in "The Man and the Child." The father in this
tale is led back to the right path by a boy who in turn leads his family back
to the right path. The father buys a comic magazine for his daughter, but
after watching this boy read serious literature, he decides that this comic
magazine is simply a waste of his money and his daughter's time. He ex-
plains this to his wife and daughter, who understand and accept his deci-
sion. In the absence of a strong father figure, the family disintegrates, but
here the reformed father is able to set his family straight.
While Let the Children Grow Up in Their Homeland includes some of
the tropes of postcolonial texts, it inverts others, perhaps reflecting
Turkey's odd situation when it comes to the colonial/postcolonial divide. 42
Given Turkey's particular history, locating it within the colonial/post-
colonial discourse requires care. However, the discourse itself is multi-
faceted and complicated in its own right. Thus my references to colonial/
postcolonial discourse here will be informed mainly by Bhabha and Loom-
ba's writings. In many colonial texts, such as A Passage to India, there is a
native character, a doctor, a lawyer or a prince, who is set apart from his
group either by education or social status. He is elevated from the masses
and thus can interact with the Europeans. He is different from his group
and this allies him, to a point, with the colonisers. The colonisers are also
different from the locals and this is what brings the two together. Ümit is
also different, but his difference increasingly separates him from those sur-
rounding him: he is psychologically separated from his parents; he is set
apart from his siblings by linguistic and cultural barriers; finally, he is re-
moved from German society not only by language, religion and culture but
also, most importantly by his desire to remain Turkish and his unwilling-
ness to assimilate or to accept the superiority of Germanness. Ümit's dif-
ference is one that divides the coloniser and the colonised. Of course, this
is also where class distinctions come into play. Ümit is from a village. He
42 Turkey was never a formal colony although its economy is described as a semi colonial
economy. In the global economy its position is not all that different from former colonies
in that it supplies raw materials and labor power, a power that follows the jobs to the
metropolises of the first world.
is not a cosmopolitan, educated, multicultural globe-trotter but simply a

rooted, thoroughly Turkish, Muslim boy who has remained loyal to his vil-
lage, country, religion and grandmother.
Religion and nature are the two subtexts that give this collection unity.
All the characters are Muslims and Turks. While they do not in anyway in-
cite animosity towards other religions, the characters know that they are
Muslims and behave as such. Islam is an important part of their identity.
Ümit misses the sounds of the call to prayer, the ezan. The protagonist in
"The Blackbirds" has misinterpreted what being a Muslim means, but he
works it out. Servet (treasure), the adult male figure in "When the Butter-
flies Fly," has forgotten how to behave appropriately. Nature and animals
are treated throughout the book as resources that must be treasured. Ani-
mals have a special ability to understand feelings and show empathy. In
"Qocuklar Vataninda Büyüsün" the grandmother shares her sorrows with
her cow who commiserates. The protagonist in "When the Butterflies Fly"
sees the plight of the imprisoned butterflies and rescues them. He is awed
by their beauty and can understand their horror at being imprisoned. We
have already discussed "the Blackbirds" who through example teach the
boy that he too must work for his food. In all these tales the boys and na-
ture share an organic understanding of a kind of truth. They have an inher-
ent goodness which seems to become corrupted as people leave the country
or the countryside or become wealthy and give in to the "good life."
In the final analysis, this tale is about the demise of the Turkish family
and the struggle and worry over the future of the child or the future of the
nation. Since the turn of the last century, childhood in Turkey has been
viewed not only within the traditional and religious frameworks but also
from a nationalist perspective. In the early years of the republic, the situa-
tion of children was seen as an integral part of nation-building and
progress, and discourse on children expressed the nationalist desire for
high fertility and an emphasis on child health and survival. Since the estab-
lishment of the republic, the future power ascribed to Turkey's children
has been a frequently voiced assumption. Special attention has been de-
voted to education, especially to that of girls. April 23, the date of the es-
tablishment of the republic in 1923, was officially proclaimed Qocuk
Bayrami/ ("Children's holiday") partly in recognition of the fact that chil-
dren will inherit the republic. 43
43 Akile Gürsoy, "Child Mortality and the Changing Discourse on Childhood in Turkey" in
Fernea. p. 199.
For a variety of reasons, the traditional Turkish family ideal is under

siege. The global economy, labour flows (both internal and external), and
modernisation are just a few of the elements putting stress on the Turkish
family. The Turkish cultural ideal in the past contained the same elements
found in the wider Middle-Eastern cultural ideal: the primacy of the group
over its individual members; the importance of children to continue and
maintain the group; values of honour, morality, religiosity, generosity,
hospitality, respect for parents, and responsibility for their care in old age;
and strong masculine and feminine identity and primacy of male over fe-
male in terms of authority; the division of labour by sex and age; the idea
of adab.44 The grandmother in the story has borne twelve children but she
is alone. She has lost six to death, the girls to marriage and the boys to
Istanbul (where she does not understand what they are doing) and one
other to Germany. Her middle son appears and disappears but does not
seem to have much of a presence. Labour migrates from the countryside to
the metropolis, be it Istanbul or Germany. Those in Germany literally do
not speak the grandmother's language. She never hears from those in Istan-
bul. Where are the children who will inherit the republic? Boys, however,
in strong contrast, dominate the remaining tales. If the adults follow the
children, they will return to a state of goodness which includes apprecia-
tion of the environment, empathy, and a good work ethic. They will live up
to the Turkish-Muslim ideal as presented in this collection.
The Authentic Turk
In the early fifteenth century, under Emir Timur, 45 Central Asia and Anato-
lia were briefly part of the same state. When Sultan Selim I captured the
caliphate in 1517,46 the Ottoman sultans claimed the title and used it until
the Turkish Republic abolished it on 3 March, 1924. Towards the collapse
of the empire, in the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Sultans began to em-
phasize their role as leaders of the entire Muslim community, and through
44 Fernea, p. 11.
45 Timur was a Turkic, Muslim conqueror who began his rise as leader of a small nomad
band. He first established his rule over the lands between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers
(Transoxania) in the 1360s. Then in the following three decades he established his con-
trol over lands from Mongolia to the Mediterranean. He died in 1405.
46 Also spelled calif from the Arabic Khalifah "successor." Ruler of the Muslim communi-
ty-
their titles of caliph of all Muslims, declared themselves the protectors of

Muslims living in the empires of Christian powers. Pan-Islamism was used
in particular as an ideology against the Russian empire to counterbalance
Russification and pan-Slavism. 47 Much evidence indicating the strong af-
filiation felt by the Turks of Anatolia for the Turks of Central Asia exists.
For example, on 7 February, 1899, the Ottoman commission for refugees
reported that a group of 20000 Kazaks from the Kuban region had received
the Tsar's permission to immigrate to Ottoman soil. 48 Moreover, Russian
Turkic intellectuals such as Yusuf Akchura and Ahmet Agaoglu, though
not from Central Asia, figured prominently in the Young Turk and Kemal-
ist periods. 49 These men, who had fled increasing Russian chauvinism,
were among the leading intellectuals participating in the ideological de-
bates in the twilight of the empire. Eventually, as the Ottoman Empire
bowed to the inevitability of Russian control over the Crimea, the Cauca-
sus and Central Asia, to the Ottomans the Muslims in the Russian Empire
became "Russians." They were not allowed to publish Qurans. Their
movements in Ottoman domains were restricted and even immigrants to
the Dar ul Islam were settled in precise locations and closely controlled. Is-
lam was no longer enough of a criterion for acceptance in Ottoman domin-
ions. 50
However, almost concurrently, in 1908 during the second constitutional
period following the repression of the Abdulhamit period, an explosion of
debate on all kinds of political and social questions took place. Pan-Turk-
ism, which favoured the idea of a new empire built on a union with Turkic
areas in Central Asia to replace the areas lost in the Near East, was one of
the ideologies offered and discussed as the basis of identification with (and
loyalty to) the future Ottoman state. 51 By 1924, however, the discussion
was over. The Republic of Turkey had been established and the Russians
were in control of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Atatürk made his stance
and the policy of the Turkish government clear when he declared that "we
all wish to see our Muslim brothers live free, beyond that we can give them
no help." In specific reference to a union of Turkic peoples he said: "I am
47 Selim Deringil, "The Ottoman Empire and Russian Muslims: Brothers or Rivals?" Cen-
tral Asian Survey 13:3 (1994), p. 410.
48 Ibid., p. 411.
49 Ibid., p. 412.
50 Ibid., pp. 414-415.
51 Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey A Modern History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris and Com-
pany, 1993), p. 132.
neither a believer in a league of all peoples of Islam, nor even in a league

of Turkish peoples... Away with dreams and shadows, they have cost us
dear in the past!" 52 Any notion of a larger Turkic entity was now firmly
limited to the imaginary.
When the Central Asian Turkic states declared their independence in
1991, it was taken for granted that these states would have a special associ-
ation with Turkey based on geographic proximity and shared linguistic,
cultural and historical roots. 53 Turkey wanted to increase cultural unity in
the Turkic world in order to benefit from the region's resources and to
serve as an intermediary between the region and the rest of the world, both
as a transit route for the region's resources and as the leader of the Turkic
world.54 At the same time, Turkish leaders frequently stated that the old
ideologies of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism were "the currents of a
buried past" and could not possibly serve as tools of Turkish foreign poli-
cy.55 However, the discourse that was utilised was imbued with a sense of a
natural familiarity, an organic closeness within the Turkic world.
Between 1990 and 1991 the Turkish Ministry of Culture published a se-
ries called the Resimli Qocuk /-/'/(Illustrated Children's Classics)
making use of the ancient "rich storehouse" and a relatively new medium:
comic strips. These books are neither particularly comic nor organised in
strips. However, each one of them is "a narrative consisting of several
frames at least in which verbal and visual elements combine most com-
monly through the device of attaching speech balloons to the pictures of
characters." 56 Thus they fulfil the criteria of The World Encyclopedia of
Comics. In these books the Ministry of Culture voices its point of view.
The Ministry issued a statement that the series was launched in order to
promote "the love and habit of reading in the seven to fourteen-year-old
group of children and to introduce them to the founding works, personali-
ties and events of Turkish national culture." 57 The Illustrated Children's
52 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk, vol. II (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaalari, 1934), pp. 6 - 7 .
Atatürk asserted that 'natural national boundaries' were those which could be defended
by bayonets. See Poulton, Hugh. Top Hat Gray Wolf and Crescent Turkish Nationalism
and the Turkish Republic (London, Hurst and Company, 1997), p. 93.
53 Charles Undeland and Nicholas Piatt, The Central Asian Republics Fragments of Empire
Magnets of Wealth (The Asia Society: New York, 1994), p. 104.
54 Ibid., p. 105.
55 Oral Sander, "Turkey and the Turkic World," Central Asian Survey 13:1(1994), p. 41.
56 Douglas Allen and Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Arabic Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging
Mass Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 2.
57 "Resimli Cocuk Romanian" Milli Kültür, 82: Mart (1991), p. 72.
Classics, according to the Ministry of Culture, is important because they

are a first of their kind in Turkey:
Until now in Turkey we have not appreciated the importance of illustrated
novels; and this has allowed foreign groups to dominate this arena. Thus the
Ministry of Culture in order to fill this empty space is offering an alterna-
tive project which is entirely ours.™
Ergenekon Destani in comic strip form 5 9 is an attempt to create links be-

tween a Central Asian Turkic tribe from the sixth century A.D., the
Göktürks, and the Turks of Anatolia today, and to define the "ideal" Turk-
ish man, woman, and child. The text uses the double coding made avail-
able by the comic-strip genre to present the original pre-hybrid, thoroughly
authentic Turk. The features, outfits and speech patterns of the characters
in these books are those assumed to resemble the sixth century Turks. The
characters are dark and Asiatic. The nation is a family and the ruler is a
benevolent father figure. The predominant characteristics that emerge as
Turkish are: skilled warrior, in harmony with nature and respectful of na-
ture; respect for the elderly; and love of children. In Part I, the wife, as the
right hand of the husband, serves her husband and his guest kimiz and yet
sits down to drink it with them and participates in their discussion. The
children, in this case boys, are (like their fathers) skilled hunters and war-
riors, and very brave. In this version they lose the battle only because the
enemy cheats.
In Part II the two cousins plan their escape. One frees the horses, the
other the women, and they then escape. All four are consummate horse-
riders. As there are only four characters in the first half of the Part II, we
get to know each character in more depth then any of the characters in the
Part I. The khan's son is a natural leader. The cousin is a natural second
man who comes up with good suggestions and provides steady support.
The ladies introduce elements of kindness and softness in their concern for
animals. They also allow the men to show their softer sides. In one scene
Nukuz's wife's horse slides off the mountainside and he saves and com-
forts her.
Women play an ambiguous role in this epic. The two women who es-
cape are willing to accept the new place in lieu of their old homeland,
which the men never do. One woman refers to their new place as "para-
58 Ibid.
59 Ergenekon Destani Part I Content and Form: Two booklets 20 by 28 cms each 44 pages
in length.
dise" and the other speaks of "a land that will not let us miss our old home-
land." Nevertheless, it is the mothers and grandmothers who really keep
the dream of the homeland alive. On one page we come across four differ-
ent examples of women singing lullabies about their former home, narrat-
ing tales, narrating epics or simply describing their former home to their
children.
Class differences are of no consequence in Ergenekon. When the Turks
are no longer comfortable in Ergenekon, they decide to return to their
homeland. It is the humble Turk, the simple ironsmith, who devises a way
out. He has no trouble speaking freely to the khan and the khan does not
hesitate to treat him like a brother. The khan states that because of "our an-
cestral skills in ironworks and the Turkish intellect we have found a way
out." And yet this is the first time we come across iron as a source of in-
come or a profession. Everybody has to work together to gather enough
coal and wood and to use it in the right way to melt the mountain. They
succeed. Börtecine and a grey wolf that suddenly appears out of nowhere
lead them out of Ergenekon.
The Turks return to their homeland and establish a state: The khan de-
clares that their wish (muradimiz) is to take revenge and to establish a
state. The friendly states send ambassadors and the unfriendly states
tremble in fear and try to come up with ways to destroy the Turkish state.
The emphasis on "state" is curious because in general this epic is inter-
preted as showing the importance of solidarity and group work. If the
Turks had not worked as a group, they could not have escaped from Er-
genekon but also, as in many folkloric works, in this tale the power struc-
ture is inverted. The commoner, the ironsmith, finds the way out, not the
khan and all of his wise men. This tale is also about empowering the aver-
age man.
Part II is very interesting in its lack of subtlety. The double coding, vis-
ual and verbal, allows for messages which were either left unsaid in other
versions of the epic or were not seen as part of the original epic to be made
explicit. The depiction of the Turk as Asiatic eliminates the peoples of
Anatolia, who are of different origins, as part of the nation. The last two
pages of this comic strip attempt to create what Anderson has called an
"imagined community." Said in Orientalism discusses the Western con-
struction of the Orient. In this case we have an attempt to construct another
type of imagined community by an Eastern group. Anderson specifically
links the rise of the nation to the rise of the novel. In this case we are re-
turning to the epic which Lukäcs anticipates in his writings. While we re-
main in print form, we are using a different and newer genre. But we are also
seeing the construction of an imagined community that is transnational.
While the imagined community in Ergenekon could all trace its roots to
four people, the concluding pages of this comic strip connect the commu-
nity that emerged from Ergenekon with the contemporary Anatolian Turks
as if they are all part of one unbroken cycle. On these pages the drawings
show strong signs of Turkish and Turkic nationalism. Atatürk's picture
dominates the page, which also includes the Turkish flag and a blue flag
with a grey wolf, and at the very bottom of the page there are depictions
that any school child would recognise as a scene from the Turkish war of
independence. There is no ambiguity in what this page is trying to convey.
In terms of imagery, the Turkish flag and the other flag are linked. Atatürk
continued the battle against the foreign enemies and defeated them. Is
Atatürk one in a line of many enlightened despotic leaders who knew what
was best for their people?
The flag with the wolf is problematic. The wolf plays an important role
in many Turkish epics. In fact there is even an epic called the grey wolf
epic, and some scholars consider Ergenekon to be a cycle of this epic. 60
Furthermore, both the Göktürks and the Uighur used flags with wolves'
60 On the cover we see animals grazing in the foreground; a mother and daughter churning
butter in the middle ground and finally a man on horse back gazing at the reader and in
the great distance more tents and people and animals in the distance looming majestical-
ly the mountain. The tale is Turks prepare for battle but are defeated through tricks and
treachery and enslaved. Their khan is murdered, one of the Turkish nation (millet) living
happily in an idyllic setting called Tanry Dagy (God Mountain). They are so prosperous
that not one Turk is poor or hungry. On the day of a major celebration a father and son go
hunting. Pipi, the son, is thrown off his horse and must walk home. He is deeply ashamed
that not only will he return empty handed but he has also lost his horse. But he receives a
second chance to prove himself. He comes across an enemy agent on horse-back speed-
ing through their lands. He startles the enemy's horse and engages him in battle. His fa-
ther arrives. They discover the enemy plan to attack their land and return home with their
slave. The son of the dead khan and his best friend escape with their wives and return to
their ruined. Ergenekon Destani Part II homeland. They find that some of their animals
have also returned so the two couples and animals go off to find a new homeland. The
enemy who is busy eating and drinking discovers that they have escaped. They follow
them to no avail. The two Turkish couples after a variety of hardship and adventure find
a paradise like land where they decide to settle. They name it Ergenekon. They live there
happily and multiply for hundreds of years. Once the population increases to an extent
that the land can no longer support them they decide to reclaim their old lands. They can-
not find a way out. Until a humble iron smith takes home some rocks and discovers that
he can melt them. Then he suggests that they melt down the mountain to create a pas-
sage. With a lot of hard work they succeed. They return to their old homeland which is
still uninhabited and reclaim it. The final page depicts Atatürk, the Turkish flag, the gray
wolf flag and the Turkish national anthem.
heads on them. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the

Bashkurt went to war with the Russians under a banner depicting a wolf's
head. The grey wolf also became the symbol of the extreme right-wing po-
litical party in the early 1980s led by Alparslan Türke§. It is linked with the
Turanists or those who dream of a greater Turkic state. This depiction can
be read in three different ways: simply as the flag of this particular Turkish
group; as an image evoking greater Turkish unity; or as an attempt to res-
cue a symbol of Turkish pride from right-wing chauvinists. The text on this
page first tells us about how the Turks established the Göktürk state and
that, at that time, it was as if the Turkish nation (Türk milleti) and the Turk-
ish homeland (Türk yurdu) swore to live for eternity and that this spirit re-
mains alive in the Turkish national anthem. A segment of the national an-
them emphasising the importance of living free is quoted to prove this point.
The Turkic epics have remained alive in Central Asia and the Republic
of Turkey. School children continue to read them. This renewed emphasis
on the epics came at a moment of great change with the collapse of the So-
viet Union and the emergence of five new independent Turkic republics.
The last time such an important change in borders and boundaries took
place in the region (1890-1924), the Russian and Ottoman Empires were
collapsing. New borders were being drawn and new political institutions
were emerging in the area. The Turkish intelligentsia then also turned to
Turkish folklore and epics to find the true Turk.
Turkish intellectuals declared that epic poetry is a form of history. Zeki
Velidi Togan, an eminent Turcologist and contemporary of Lukäcs and
Bakhtin, stated:
national dastans, rather than describing precise historical events, reflect a
nation's spirit and feelings. Dastans may or may not in their entirety be
based on historical events but the epic represents the significant events in
the past of a community and at the same time a presentation for general
entertainment.61
Thus the act of retelling, reclaiming and re-emphasising the epic is a means
of recapturing and (re)forming the past. 62 The last page of the comic pro-
61 In this epic a Turkish tribe is destroyed by the Chinese. The only survivor is a boy. They
cut off his foot and leave him to die but a female wolf adopts him, feeds him with her
milk when the Chinese return to see if he is dead she moves him to an area ringed by the
Altai mountains. This is one of the oldest motifs in Turkish epics. See Abdiilkadir inan,
Makaleler ve Incelemeler (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi 1968), p. 231.
62 Zeki Velidi Togan, quoted in H.B. Paksoy, Alpamysh Central Asian Identity Under Rus-
sian Ride (Hartford, CT: Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research,
1989), p. 30.
vides the reader with 25 lines of text about this epic. This page tells us
what an epic is and then gives us a summary of the Ergenekon epic. We are
told that this is an epic belonging to the pre-Islamic times and that these
epics are the tales of a nation's religious and national heroic adventures
that begin when a nation is established and sometimes continue throughout
history. The epics have great importance in terms of history, ideas and art,
illuminating history and acting as a source for ideas and for art. Thus, like
Togan, the Ministry is telling the reader that what is being presented is not
fiction but should be treated as a resource and history.
The revival of the epic form is perhaps an indication of a longing for the
days before the Turkic peoples realised that they might lose their identity.
In these epics the group as a body or an individual hero faces trials and
tribulations and is able to overcome them all. Central Asian poets and au-
thors described their preoccupation with the past as a search to discover
who they were. During the Soviet period either they were not allowed to
study their own history or the history they were taught was from a perspec-
tive that represented their own ancestors as bloodthirsty murderers. 63 Thus
it does not seem unnatural that they are looking for role models from their
own past.
What about the Republic of Turkey then? It is broadening the definition
of Turkish identity to include the Central Asians. Togan also wrote that in
epic poetry folk poets relate, in small pieces, a series of ventures from vari-
ous periods and an event that concerns the entire nation channels these
fragments into a focal point, forming an epic. 64 The Ministry of Culture is
appropriating a form normally used by folk poets, people Gramsci might
classify as organic intellectuals, and is retelling a tale which might normal-
ly be told to empower the common man, to show the strength of the group
over the individual but also the importance of every individual, even the
humblest, for the survival of the group. The Ministry is reshaping this tale
and presenting it in a style specifically geared toward children. On the one
hand this adds to the importance of the epic. It will be used to shape future
generations. On the other hand it detracts from the importance of the epic.
It is now reduced to children's literature. Nevertheless these moments of
great changes around the Turkic world are also accompanied by a renewed
focus on the epics even if not the creation of epics.
63 Roberta Micallef, The Role of Intellectuals and Literature In National Identity Construc-
tion: The Case of Uzbekistan (Diss. The University of Texas in Austin, 1997).
64 Velidi Togan, p. 30.
Contemporary reality does not feature in as an available object of repre-

sentation in the epic. The events and heroes receive their value and gran-
deur precisely through their association with the past, the source of all "au-
thentic reality and value." 65
Regardless of the form, however, the epic past is still the same past in
the comic strip rendition as it is in the epic recited by a folk poet which, ac-
cording to both Bakhtin and Lukäcs, is an antiquated and outdated mode.
However, a text or practice or event is not the issuing source of meaning,
but a site where the articulations of meaning—variable meanings—can
take place. Different meanings can be ascribed to the same text or practice
or event; meaning is always the potential site of conflict. 6 6 1 propose that
the same can be said of a genre. What may be an antiquated and outdated
mode in a European context can, in a Central Asian context, become a site
of resistance to colonialism and in the case of republican Turkey, resist-
ance to globalisation. According to Hasan Paksoy, a scholar of Central
Asian history, oral records, particularly the dastans were the final line of
defence against any attempts to dominate the Central Asians politically or
culturally. 67 And the epics themselves did become contested areas regu-
lated by law. At times they were considered unpatriotic and at times they
were used to inspire the Central Asians to fight an enemy they might share
with the rest of the Soviet Union, as happened during the second World
War.6*
For Republican Turkey in an era of fragmentation when different ethnic
groups are making themselves heard again, the epic is a way of reuniting
different strands of the community. A common Turkic origin serves as a
point of unity for all Turkic peoples whether secular or Islamist, Western-
ised or traditional. At the same time a common Turkic origin helps to sep-
arate the Turks from the other peoples of the Middle East, whether they
share the same religion or not.
Both these products are part of Turkish popular culture and reflect the
ongoing struggle and debate around the issue of Turkish identity. Do the
Turks belong primarily under the umbrella of Islam or do they belong pri-
marily under an umbrella of Turkic peoples? The answer to this question
65 Bakhtin, pp. 77-78.

66 John Storey, Cultural Studies and The Study of Popular Culture Theories and Methods
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. 4.
67 Η. B. Paksoy, Alpamysh Central Asian Identity Under Russian Rule (Hartford, CT: As-
sociation for the Advancement of Central Asian Research, 1989), pp. 1-2.
68 Micallef.
has important implications regarding both Turkish internal policies and

foreign policies. No statistics are available regarding the collection of short
stories and how well it sold in comparison with other books aimed at chil-
dren. The comic strip series did not do well. Depending on how well they
sold, the comic strips were going to be continued or discontinued. After
two years they were discontinued but this does not mean people did not ap-
preciate their message. The Turkish economy is in dire straits. People
simply may not have been able to afford books. The comic strips competed
with all sorts of other products aimed at children: videotapes, movies,
books, computer games, and so on. They may not have been able to com-
pete successfully with these other products. A new Minister of Culture
may not have approved of this series.
Both the texts examined in this piece are by-products of globalisation.
The first text refers to the Turks who have left their homeland or home
town and the second text is an attempt to (re)establish links among Turkic
peoples. Contemporary global technologies such as television, radio, the
print media, but above all the internet, have allowed us to stay in closer
contact than ever before. A group of people who define themselves as a
community can maintain their connections across the globe. People can
even exist physically in one setting where they may earn a living but exist
socially, culturally and psychologically in another context. With the help
of contemporary technology one is not as under as much pressure to as-
similate or integrate where one lives. Both the texts examined respond to
globalisation in a similar manner. According to these texts, hybridity is not
an option. Hybridity equals cultural extermination. The texts call for au-
thenticity and homogeneity. But the notion of who or what makes for a
homogeneous people and authentic traditions leaves some room for ma-
noeuvring. In the short story identity is linked strongly to geography, to
Anatolia, which is described as the homeland, and then to religion, lan-
guage and tradition. In the comic strips, however, a Turk is defined first by
language, then religion and traditions. A fixed geographic location, a
homeland, is important but as long as the group stays together; it is not cru-
cial. The group can survive temporary dislocation if it remains united and
if it maintains its traditions. The victim must have a homeland to return to
where he can be cured but the conqueror and nomad, while having a sacred
ancestral point of origin, must have an identity that allows for expansion or
movement.
STEFAN HELGESSON
Going Global: An Afterword.
The volumes gathered under the common title Literary History: Towards a
Global Perspective are the result of a Swedish research project called "Lit-
erature and Literary History in Global Contexts." As the project has run its
course, each of the concepts in these two titles—literature, literary history
and the global perspective—has generated its own cluster of semantic and
epistemological problems. Literature is key to the project as a whole, and
yet, as the contributions to volumes 1 and 2 demonstrate, it does not have a
singular meaning that travels easily between languages and historical peri-
ods. The ambition to write literary history has likewise required sustained
metatheoretical reflection on the ideological agendas and ready-made nar-
ratives that lie in wait for the historiographer. This aspect of the project has
been elaborated by Margareta Petersson and Per-Erik Ljung in volume 3:1.
Throughout these discussions the global perspective has surfaced, intermit-
tently, as the elusive yet definitive horizon for our scholarly endeavours.
However, the global perspective as such and its coupling with literature
has scarcely been interrogated, a shortcoming which the present afterword
aims to address, while at the same time offering some closing reflections
on volumes 3:1 and 3:2.
There was a crucial moment in the history of ideas when "literature" and
"world" were fused and a new semantic possibility in the word "literature"
was produced. I speak, of course, of the ageing Johann Wolfgang Goethe's
remarks in 1827 about Weltliteratur as "der geistige Raum, in dem die
Völker durch ihre Literaturen einander kennen, dulden, achten und ver-
stehen lernen und in gemeinsamer Bemühung zu höheren Stufen der
menschlichen Kultur emporzusteigen suchen." 1 The notion is famously
1 "the spiritual space in which nations, through their literatures, learn to know each other,
learn to respect, tolerate and understand each other and through a common effort bring
human culture to ever higher levels of refinement." Quoted in Lexikon der Weltliteratur
im 20. Jahrhundert: zweiter Band (Freiburg: Herder, 1961), p. 1236.
nebulous and has generated an unending debate about the referential locus
of "world literature." What is it? Where is it? Is it anything at all? One op-
tion is to read it historically as Goethe's response to a tension that had been
growing since the eighteenth century between a universalist, cosmopolitan
notion of "humanity" and the need to recognise cultural difference and his-
torical change. The term "world literature" enters the stage along with the
newly emerged (European) national literatures, and attempts to transcend
national differences while defending the integrity of literature. Whereas
national literature was assumed to express the irreducible spiritual essence
of a specific people and its language, world literature in Goethe's sense re-
ferred to those exceptional works within discrete national literatures that
spoke to "all" humanity and enabled nations to approach one another in a
spirit of understanding without relinquishing their particular identities.
World literature would hence facilitate proximity and the progression of a
unified humanity to constantly higher levels of cultural refinement, but
must not be taken to indicate a homogenisation of literature.
The German Lexikon der Weltliteratur, which is representative of a mid
twentieth-century understanding of world literature, elaborates on this and
sees the term as a distinctly modern concept, intimately tied to "[die]
Ursprüngen des neuzeitlichen Welt- und Lebensgefühl." 2 Whereas classi-
cism had maintained that literature must be true to a timeless ideal, the Eu-
ropean romantic "discovery" of cultural difference—not least the new
knowledge of Indian, Chinese and Persian cultures—made such a norma-
tive aesthetic untenable, the Lexikon argues. Literature, as well as lan-
guage, was now seen as a diverse phenomenon, subject to change. World
literature was meant to account for the historicity of literature, as well as
indicate a future trajectory for literary development. 3
Taking such a self-confidently teleological definition into account, it is
well worth asking if "world literature" does not simply reiterate the term
"literature." Why not scratch "world" and simply talk about literature,
wherever it may be found? Such a manoeuvre risks however ignoring that
"literature" is not a natural category, but is produced within cultural histo-
ries of exclusion, conflict and appropriation. Over the past two centuries,
2 "the origins of the modern sense of life and of the world." Ibid., p. 1235.
3 Added to this, there was also a more immediate political reason behind such a pluricul-
tural conception of literature: having evolved in the wake of the Napoleonic wars,
Goethe's notion was aimed at transcending the European experience of incessant divi-
sion and conflict. See also Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, vol. 1 (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1950), p. 221.
such diverse histories have quite obviously been influenced by the expan-
sion of western power and the global market, and recent theorisations of
literature as a world system (Moretti) or a global literary field (Casanova)
indicate, in their findings as well as their metalanguage, a continued domi-
nance of a western paradigm (which, admittedly, is undergoing continuous
change). 4 It is at the very least safe to say that certain culturally sedimented
notions of literature are more globally consequential than others. 5 The fus-
ing of "literature" and "world" therefore not only challenges normative
aesthetics, as the Lexikon would have it, but may potentially reconfigure
the semantic field(s) of the word "literature" as such. In the spirit of Paul
Ricoeur's definition of metaphor, it could be seen as an example of "se-
mantic impertinence," a linguistic innovation that responds "in a creative
fashion to a question presented by things" and offers "a new description of
the universe of representations." 6
This can work both ways, however. A contemporary intellectual need to
respond creatively to the question presented by literature is no doubt the
main reason why "world literature" has enjoyed such a spectacular revival
of late. 7 As Franco Moretti points out, "[a]lthough the term 'world litera-
ture' has been around for almost two centuries, we don't yet have a genu-
ine theory of the object—however loosely defined—to which it refers." 8
4 Pascale Casanova, La republique mondiale des lettres (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1999);
Franco Moretti, "Conjectures on World Literature," New Left Review 1 (2000), pp. 5 5 -
67.
5 For extended discussions of divergent notions of literature, see vol. 1.
6 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Robert Czerny (London: Routledge, 1978), p.
125.
7 Examples of current reconsiderations of "world literature" can be found in: Edward Said,
Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993); Homi Bhabha, The Loca-
tion of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Casanova; John Pizer, "Goethe's 'World Lit-
erature' Paradigm and Contemporary Cultural Globalization," Comparative Literature,
52:3 (2000), pp. 213-221; Moretti, "Conjectures"; Franco Moretti, "More Conjectures,"
New Left Review 20 (2003), pp. 73-81; PMLA (special issue), 116:1 (2001); Compara-
tive Literature (special issue), 53:4 (2001); Francesca Orsini, "India in the Mirror of
World Fiction," New Left Review 13 (2002), pp. 75-88; Efrain Kristal, "Considering
Coldly...," New Left Review 15 (2002), pp. 61-74; Jonathan Arac, "Anglo-Globalism?,"
New Left Review 16 (2002), pp. 35^15; David Damrosch, What Is World Literature?
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Gayatri Spivak, Death of a Discipline
(New York: Columbia UP, 2003); Shu-Mei Shih, "Global Literature and the Technolo-
gies of Recognition," PMLA, 119:1 (2004), pp. 16-30; Comparative Literature Studies
(special issue), 41:1 (2004); and last but not least, the collection of essays in Christopher
Prendergast (ed.), Debating World Literature (London: Verso, 2004).
8 Franco Moretti, "Evolution, world-systems, Weltliteratur," paper presented at the con-
ference "Studying Transcultural Literary History," Stockholm 4 - 6 November 2004.
Such a lack in an age of globalisation is indeed critical, and the reflections

below are motivated by the pressing responsibility to globalise literary
studies in a cogent and ethically viable manner. Having said so, the am-
biguity of the term "world literature" can, and does, produce not only a
widening of the literary field, but likewise a narrowing down, a westernisa-
tion perhaps, of the notion of literature. I therefore see no reason why the
term "world literature" should be an end unto itself. Its great benefit is that
it has opened up a global debate on literature, but the term as such needs
also to be continually interrogated. The debate needs to outgrow the term.
The very use of the word "world" is a key issue. Which world or rather
whose world are we talking about? If we accept that the notion of world lit-
erature emerged in contradistinction to the national(ist) definition of litera-
ture, this should also alert us to the fact that "the world" is as much of a
constructed framework as "the nation." Globality, or what Mary Louise
Pratt has dubbed "planetary consciousness," cannot be taken for granted,
but must be seen as a historical product of localised ideologies or
epistemes. 9 It is true that throughout human history a vast number of cos-
mologies have articulated an understanding of "the world," a relation to the
environment in which being unfolds itself, and that such an understanding
may well be projected as universally valid. However, just as with the term
"literature" it must be reasonable to make a distinction between more and
less consequential forms of such a universal outlook. The most consequential
forms of planetary consciousness, which are also the ones that shape the
present in which these words are written, have been furthered by religion
(Christianity and Islam), modern science, and capitalism. These have in turn
underwritten oppositional ethical and political versions of the global outlook,
such as Marxism, radical ecologist politics or the World Social Forum.
However, a planetary consciousness can never include the world and
everything in it. This is not only because planetary consciousness itself is
no consistent feature on the globe, but more particularly because, in order
to credibly span the globe, it must limit its focus. It may be axiomatically
suggested that the wider the field, the more restricted the unit of investiga-
tion or production or theocratic ambition must be—whether we speak of
the classification of flowers, return on capital, or the salvation of the soul.
This limitation is essentially what Erich Auerbach once referred to as the
Ansatzpunkt, a tangible and restricted point of departure that allows the
9 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London:
philologist to work through enormous swathes of material. 10 Even so,

while it is obvious what drives the global distribution of products such as
digital cameras or mobile phones, it still remains to explain the attraction
of globality within the humanities, within fields of academic inquiry that
are, to use Wilhelm Windelband's terms, idiographic rather than nomo-
thetic, and hence emphasise difference and change rather than universal
regularity. 11 R. Radhakrishnan has suggested that
the triumphalism of globality has to do with the fact that it seems to ema-
nate from reality itself even as it speaks persuasively for that reality. As a
fait accompli, globality presents itself both as reality and as a representation
of that reality, all within a unified temporality. It is as though the very
essence of reality were global, and, therefore, any attempt at interrogating
globality would be nothing short of discrediting reality itself. 12
Globality emerges here as a trope promising communion with the Real,

and the global study of literature is hardly immune from such rhetorical
temptations. Given that there does lie such an obvious appeal in "treating
the globe's imaginative texts in a comprehensive context," as John Pizer
has phrased it in defence of the world literature paradigm, 13 this very obvi-
ousness calls for vigilance. The "comprehensive context" would inevitably
function as both a telos and a structuring methodological principle, and one
needs therefore to be clear about one's purposes. This should not however
foreclose on the global study of literature. As Gayatri Spivak argues, if the
ambition to span an ever-wider field of knowledge is nurtured but simul-
taneuosly checked by one's vigilance against this ambition, interesting
things may happen. Insofar as literary studies understands its mission in
terms of a responsible encounter with otherness, 14 it will find that it always
10 Erich Auerbach, "Philology and Weltliteratur," trans. Maire and Edward Said, The Cen-
tennial Review, vol XIII, 1969, pp. 13-14. A recent example of a truly global study with
a distinct Ansatzpunkt is Mineke Schipper's Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet:
Women in Proverbs from around the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
11 "Idiographic" knowledge—which is the concern of the humanities and social sciences—
focuses on the singular, the specific, the non-repeatable, whereas "nomothetic" sciences
are intent on uncovering universal laws. Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 976.
12 R. Radhakrishnan, "Globalization, Desire, and the Politics of Representation," Com-
parative Literature, 53:4 (2001), p. 315.
13 Pizer, p. 213.
14 This is perhaps not a conventional definition of literary studies, but it is grounded in at
least three distinctive critical traditions: the hermeneutics of Gadamer, the postcolonial
theory of (among others) Spivak and Bhabha, and the ethical criticism that has emerged
in response to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, for example in Derek Attridge's
The Singularity of Literature (London: Routledge, 2004).
casts "one net of meaning after another" over a stubbornly irreducible ob-
ject of study. The quote, used by Spivak, is from J. M. Coetzee's Waiting
for the Barbarians and refers to the Magistrate's frustrated attempts to
comprehend the barbarian girl.15 For Spivak, it serves as a necessary re-
minder of the position of authority that inheres in the observer and in lan-
guage itself. After all, what is it that the Magistrate understands in his re-
construction of the barbarian girl's perspective if not his own gaze, his own
act of reconstructing her? But there is more to this moment in Coetzee's
novel than a simple inequity of power. If the undecidability of meaning is
properly recognised, then one must grant that there are also "alternative
possibilities of the meaning of the dominant self in the eyes of the bar-
barian other" that unsettle the dominant gaze. 16 Transferred to the context
of globalising literary studies, this would imply that an extension of the
epistemological horizon may affect the perspective from which the glo-
balising is undertaken so long as the irreducibility of alterity is acknowl-
edged.
With these general remarks in mind, it is time to consider the globalising
of literary studies in more practical terms. I shall propose four paradig-
matic options for imagining literature globally, namely, the archival,
canonical, formal and circulational approaches. It would be possible to im-
agine additional options, but these four cover two sets of opposing posi-
tions and hence describe a field of possibility, or scope of debate, that has
become apparent not only in the gradual unfolding of Literary History: To-
wards a Global Perspective but also in the wider debate on world litera-
ture.
In archival terms, world literature would simply reiterate the abstract
category of literature and hence signify "everything in the world that is lit-
erature." This would be predicated on a form of philosophical realism, that
is, an understanding that literature is simply out there, waiting to be cata-
logued by the diligent researcher. The archival approach would be maxi-
malist: everything, in every conceivable language and throughout human
history that is and has been regarded as literature would be included. The
term "world literature" would denote an enormous, unfathomable archive
which provides raw material for any number of aesthetic, linguistic, philo-
logical, philosophical and historical enterprises. This is, at first glance, the
most generous understanding of world literature. It is, however, also the
15 Spivak, Death, p. 22.

16 Ibid., p. 23.
least useful. If anyone were willing to become the Linnaeus of literature

and start to classify such an archive empirically, he or she would soon get
bogged down in interminable discussions about the minimal definition of
literature, let alone be overpowered by the sheer mass of material.
Let us consider a practical, everyday example. What must a librarian do
to bring order to the category of literature? First, he or she will need to
choose a cataloguing system. There is an abundance of such systems, but
the two globally dominant ones are the Library of Congress (LC) and
Dewey decimal classification systems. Let us therefore restrict ourselves to
these two. In LC-classification, "literature" falls under "P," in Dewey it is
gathered under "800." Ρ and 800 would then supposedly cover the entire,
global category of "literature." But these classifications branch out in
tree-like form, so as to accommodate ever finer distinctions. This means
that the very positioning of a title indicates whether it is more "central" or
"peripheral" to the general category of "literature." In the Dewey system
this becomes particularly clear, with works by the Englishman Charles
Dickens falling under 823.8 and the novels of the Mozambican Mia Couto
relegated to 869.89967903. Marcel Proust, the Frenchman, is to be found
at 843.91 and the Senegalese writer Mariama Bä at 828.9966903. In the
LC system, the arboretic structure is not quite so obvious. There Dickens is
catalogued under PR4567.A1 or PZ3.D55, Proust under PQ2631.R63,
Couto under PQ9939.C68 and Bä under PQ3989.2.B23. But although the
differences are slighter, there is a tendency even here to push non-Euro-
pean writers to lengthier, more marginal headings. (Not to mention that far
more copies of Proust and Dickens are available.) 17
Catalogues are a pragmatic necessity, I do not dispute that. What is
worth observing, however, is that even the supposedly objective exercise
of ordering a specific body of discursive material produces hierarchical
and exclusionary results. 18 It presupposes, quite simply, specific responses
to general questions: What makes literature literature? What literature is
more important than other literature? Which languages are the most impor-
tant languages? Must literature be written, or should orature be included on
equal terms?
17 For the Dewey examples, I have searched the catalogue of the University of KwaZulu-
Natal at http://library.lib.unp.ac.za/cgi-bin/urical7V7QPACMENU: for the LC posts, I
have searched the Library of Congress at http ://catalog.loc. go ν/.
18 Which is one the more trivial conclusions to be drawn from Foucault's historical critique
of European systems of knowledge. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Paris: Ed.
Gallimard, 1966).
These questions could then be challenged by another set of questions:

Who has the authority to discriminate between literature and non-litera-
ture? Should one define the meaning of literature in accordance with how
representatives of different languages define their own literature (what has
been called an "emic" perspective)? On what grounds, in that case, are
such representatives representative? Or, taking the opposite view, should
perhaps distance from a literary tradition be seen as a prerequisite for de-
fining literature (which would lead to an "etic" definition)? 19 Should Euro-
peans define the meaning of literature in China, and Chinese readers define
the European notion of literature—even if large tracts of emically defined
literature were excluded, or non-literature was included? (Franco Moretti
and David Damrosch, as I shall discuss below, defend "distant reading" as
the only feasible method for a study of literature with global ambitions, but
they do so within a distinctly circulational understanding of world litera-
ture.)
Even these sceptical questions merely serve to underline that the order-
ing of literature is not an innocent activity. One reason for this is that it ap-
plies a purportedly neutral, value-free approach to a field that is laden with
aesthetic, cultural and ideological values. Literature is never—and I say
"never" well aware of the impossibility of arriving at a conclusive defini-
tion—a neutral or singular term. Because of its linguistic nature, it is de-
pendent on the consciousness of readers in order for its potential modes of
being to be realised. It is, accordingly, entangled with historically change-
able economies of desire and signification. It can be buttressed by univer-
salising institutional discourses as well by discrete local traditions. It can
be a source of nationalist pride and identification as well as a channel for
cosmopolitan agency and defamiliarisation. At certain historical junctures
it can be a mode of power, at others, a mode of resistance. Hence, value
and authority tend to be involved in the claim that something is literature
and something else is not, irrespective of the rhetorical care taken to re-
main objective and disinterested. This applies in equal degree to the fre-
quent attempts to restrict literariness to exclusively aesthetic aspects of lan-
guage. Aesthetics is by definition a (necessarily unsettled) question of
19 "Emic" and "etic," derived from "phonemic" and "phonetic," were anthropological con-
cepts introduced in the 1950s to distinguish between the points of view of an insider and
an outsider. Or, more correctly, between an anthropologist's reconstruction of a cultural
group's self-understanding, and a supposedly universal, external analysis of that same
culture. Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer (eds.), Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural
Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 180ff.
values, and such a narrow focus excludes traditions that rather stress didac-
tic, rhetorical, ethical or spiritual aspects of what is certainly known as lit-
erature.
The canonical notion of global literature would accordingly seem more
attuned to the diversified cultural praxis of literature. 20 This is a well-estab-
lished minimalist approach: "world literature" has most often inferred a
world canon, a Great Tradition comprising only the best that has been writ-
ten and thought. 21 In effect, this world canon, when self-consciously articu-
lated as such, has consisted mostly of western literature, occasionally sup-
plemented with a smattering of, for example, Indian and Chinese works. 22
Harold Bloom's "greatest hits" list at the end of his The Western Canon
gives one some idea of what such a world canon has looked like. There,
Chinua Achebe and Ayi Kwei Armah are graciously allowed to enter
alongside the likes of Cervantes, Joyce and Dostoyevsky—as just about
the sole representatives from Africa. It must be said in Bloom's favour that
he is only making claims for precisely the western canon—and yet, the
panoptic privilege that he assumes differs very little from how advocates of
"world literature" in the west have proceeded. Occasionally all parts of the
world have been included, out of politeness or a desire to appropriate the
exotic Other, but western literature has dominated the list and somehow
been made to seem the most central and most advanced of all literatures. 23
Comparative literature, which can be said to have been the custodian of
Goethian world literature, has, accordingly, tended to compare influences
and cross-currents between European languages and within the western
canon: 24 Goethe in France; Shakespeare in Germany; Ibsen in England.
The circularity is obvious.
If one were to construct a more credible global canon than Bloom's, this
would need to be as multicentered a process as possible. Learning to know
a language and a literary tradition intimately—any tradition, even one's
20 It is worth observing that Rene Wellek has previously and persuasively identified the
polarity between what I call the archival and canonical approaches to world literature.
Rene Wellek, "The Name and Nature of Comparative Literature," in Discriminations:
Further Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 15.
21 Claudio Guillen, The Challenge of Comparative Literature (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1993), pp. 38ff.
22 The Swedish three-volume selection Världslitteraturen i urval (Stockholm: Bonniers,
1948-1953) is an ambitious example, highly typical of the mid-twentieth century.
23 According to John Pizer, the standard post-WWII use of "world literature" in the US was
exclusively focused on western literature. Pizer, p. 223.
24 This is how Gayatri Spivak understands the tradition of comparative literature. Spivak,
Death, pp. 1-23.
"own"—requires enormous investments of time and imaginative thinking.

The chances of adjudicating between the literatures of the world from any
single academic location, let alone from within a single subjectivity, are
slim. A world canon would instead need to be a dialogical product, rather
than the product of panoptic privilege. It would, in the process, also be-
come less stringent, less absolute in its claims for authority. This need not
be a drawback, on the contrary, but a world canon thus defined would be
called upon to negotiate between incommensurable criteria. For example,
whereas change and rupture ever since romanticism have been taken for
granted as defining features of literature in the west, this need not always
be the case in Arabic or Indian traditions, where continuity and timeless-
ness might be more significant criteria. 25
In practice, the selection of a world canon will always be incomplete and
dependent on a combination of current academic interests, political debates
and publishing trends, three fields that mutually affect and reinforce one
another. Out of this follow two conclusions: firstly, it is only in certain
times and places that world literature becomes interesting, and secondly,
the working definition of "the world" is in flux. As David Damrosch use-
fully demonstrates, there has been a significant shift from the Old World to
the whole world in the past fifteen years of canon formation. 26 Even Harold
Bloom's red herring of a list is, as Damrosch points out, an indication of
how much more inclusive the canon has become in the western hemi-
sphere. Forty years ago no African writer would have been admitted to the
club, and Bloom has allowed for many more women writers than would
have been the case in the 1950s. For corroboration we need only look to
anthologies such as The HarperCollins World Reader, the new Norton An-
thology or Harcourt Brace's World Literature and Thought, anthologies
with unprecedented global ambitions. 27
If we focus briefly on World Literature and Thought, we find that the se-
lections made by specialists range from Aztec to Persian to Japanese to
Latin to Chinese to English literature, and that the overriding organising
principle is chronological. Three volumes have, to my knowledge, been
25 Indeed, if we follow Dipesh Chakrabarty's carefully crafted argument in Provincializing

Europe (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), even the very notion of historical development
needs to be revised in the context of cultural traditions outside the west.
26 In the USA, certainly, but also in a country like Sweden, where one of the notable suc-
cesses in the literary field in the past ten years has been the emergence of Karavan, a
journal devoted to literature from Asia, Africa and South America.
27 Damrosch, p. 128; Donald Gochberg et al. (eds.), World Literature and Thought vols. I -
III (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996-2000).
published so far, The Ancient Worlds (up until 500 A.D.), The Middle Pe-
riods (500-1500 A. D.) and The Modern World to 1900. This method of
gathering disparate material under a more or less unified temporality is
perhaps the most straightforward editorial solution to an intractable prob-
lem, but it does seem peculiar when volume II is entitled The Middle Pe-
riods. Were not the European Middle Ages distinctly "high" periods in
South America, West Africa and the Arab world, to take a few significant
examples? The only "middle" thing about these epochs is their position
among the Harcourt anthologies! Then again, the plural phrasing may be
read as a recognition that a unified periodisation is unattainable.
In the preface, the editor explains that the anthology is modelled after
"Harcourt Brace's long-established, four-volume Classics of Western
Thought series"—thought, not literature—and that "[excellence has re-
mained the essential criterion of selection." 28 Given, then, that this consti-
tutes a significant modification of preceding notions of world literature, it
remains a highly restricted choice based on pragmatic criteria, with "excel-
lence" disguising less glamorous requirements such as overall geographi-
cal representativity and the availability of translations in English, the lan-
guage of global power. The inclusion of excerpts from "A Thousand and
One Nights" in Richard Burton's dated version from 1885 shows how de-
pendent the editors have been on existing translations—and the inclusion
of that particular work could, moreover, be read in terms of an orientalist
bias in the determination of "excellence," insofar as this collection of tales
has not traditionally been held in high regard in the Arabic world. At an-
other level, the "[u]nique [...] inclusion of many documents not usually
considered 'literary'" could be seen as a way to defuse rather than solve the
whole problem of literariness. 29 Here as well as in other contemporary an-
thologies of this kind, the tendency is to broaden rather than restrict the no-
tion of literature. This tells us something of the difficulties involved in at-
tempting to select a manageable world canon from as wide a field as poss-
ible: it entails a broadening of the understanding of what should be called
literature in the first place.
The archival and canonical approaches to the literature of the world are
often useful and necessary. We need libraries. Teachers are duty-bound to
determine for students which readings are more significant than others.
However, faced with the theoretical problems produced by the archival and
28 Ibid., vol. II, p. ix.

29 Ibid., p. x.
canonical understandings of world literature, the critic with a global ambi-

tion will want to foreground the constructedness and incompleteness of his
or her global approach, of the "nets of meaning" that he or she casts over
literature. Such reflexivity is better facilitated, I argue, by formal and cir-
culational approaches to the global question. Either one can stipulate for-
mal, heuristic classifications that are deliberately "empty" and offer points
of comparison between literatures that may be separated by time and lan-
guage as well as place, or one can go the historical route and investigate
specific instances of how literature enters into a transnational, translinguis-
tic, and transcultural circulation of ideas, works, and values.
It is certainly true that these approaches respond, in part, to the tendency
that literature is becoming more and more immanently global, "that indi-
vidual works are increasingly informed and constituted by social, political,
and even linguistic trends that are not limited to a single nation or re-
gion." 30 But it is perhaps even more important to recognise that these ap-
proaches themselves participate in the globalising of literature. Raising the
question of literature across times and cultures offers a perspective that is
not unaffected by the asker. This does not mean that the question is irrele-
vant, but rather that the posing of the question—as with any strong ques-
tion—reconfigures familiar fields of knowledge in unfamiliar ways.
In the formal approach, one would stipulate a restricted set of character-
istics that then enable a comparative reading of disparate literatures. An-
ders Pettersson's notion of "presentational discourse" is an attempt at con-
structing such a minimal working definition of literariness. 31 His concept
operates at an exceptionally ambitious level of what we may call focused
generality: strictly limited yet widely applicable. A marginally less ambi-
tious alternative would be to focus on those sub-categories of literariness
known as genres, but to do so in a distinctly stipulative manner, that is, by
suggesting generic modalities such as the epic or the proverb that do not re-
fer to historical genres (Todorov) or traditional genres (Pettersson), but are
rather forms of what Pettersson calls classificatory genres that tease out com-
monalities and meaningful differences among works that historically need
not have had anything to do with each other. Or rather than genres, one could
investigate what Northrop Frye once called "modes," structures of action and
feeling that are traceable through a number of genres and periods. 32
30 Pizer, p. 213.
31 Anders Pettersson, "Concepts of literature and transcultural literary history," vol. 1
32 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957).
The formal approach, as postulated, has a great deal in common with

structuralism as it was developed by Tzvetan Todorov, Roman Jakobson,
Claudio Guillen and others, as well as with Northrop Frye's archetypal
criticism. 33 Hence, it also runs the risk of duplicating the shortcomings of
structuralism—mainly its difficulty in accounting for how systems of dif-
ferences undergo change through time—unless it remains alert to its provi-
sionality and to the need that Pettersson mentions of interrogating the west-
ern understanding (post-1790) of literature, the vantage point of which was
the primary location for the literariness debate among structuralists. How-
ever, the bogey of structuralism deserves a reappraisal as well: in Post-
colonialism, Robert Young argues that it was the first school of cultural
analysis that dismantled the western hierarchy of cultures, and therefore
sets an apposite precedent for a formal analysis of literature on a global
scale. 34
The circulational understanding of world literature is more historically
orientated and less concerned with generalisable criteria. It does not as-
sume that world literature is a set canon or an enormous archive, but is fo-
cused instead on such (hugely different) works of literature that are trans-
ferred to localities, languages and interpretive communities at a remove
from their primary site of emergence. Such an approach places a heavy
emphasis on reception and translation as well as on the transformations of
literary evaluation in different times and places. It can be accused, as we
shall see, of being an excessively loose approach in terms of method, but in
its directedness towards singular and changeable historical moments it can
also supply a wealth of insights, both as regards specific (re)interpretations
of texts and historical knowledge of transcultural interactions. This is es-
sentially David Damrosch's project in What Is World Literature? In dis-
cussions of works as varied as Gilgamesh, the autobiography of Rigoberta
Menchu and Milorad Pavic's The Dictionary of the Khazars Damrosch ar-
gues that world literature is constantly created anew in the minds of readers
and through the work of translators and critics that transfer works of litera-
ture between contexts. He places in this way a premium on distance:
Someone who reads Swann 's Way and The Tale of Genji together is likely
to find them resonating in multiple and profound ways, engaging one
another at least as closely as a reader who is attentive to national traditions
will find Proust engaging with Balzac, or the Genji with The Tale of the
33 For a concise summary of the various strands of structuralism, see Jonathan Culler,
Structuralist Poetics (London: Routledge, 1975).
34 Robert Young, Postcolonialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 67, 383, 413.
Heike. World literature is fully in play once several foreign works begin to
resonate together. This provides a further solution to the comparatist's lurk-
ing panic: world literature is not an immense body of material that must
somehow, impossibly, be mastered; it is a mode of reading that can be
experienced intensively with a few works just as effectively as it can be
explored extensively with a large number. 35 (Italics in the original.)
Damrosch discriminates, then, between this mode of reading and the spe-
cialist's ever deeper excavation of an ever smaller field. Without discredit-
ing specialist knowledge, he makes a claim for the new and different
meaning that a work may acquire when removed from its culture of origin.
His term for this is "elliptical refraction," with reference to the dual centres
of the ellipse. A less scientistic image, he adds, would be the "pushmi-pul-
lyu" from the Doctor Dolittle books, an animal that moves in two direc-
tions at once, just as the distant reader of world literature will find him or
herself in a productively split location. 36
This is a workable conception of world literature. It could no doubt fa-
cilitate Spivak's "alternative possibilities of the meaning of the dominant
self in the eyes of the barbarian other." Damrosch defamiliarises familiar
works such as Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu through the applica-
tion of an unfamiliar perspective. He also, laudably, does the opposite by
placing less familiar works such as Mbwil a Mpang Ngal's Giambatista
Viko and the Aztec poems Cantares Mexicanas in the rather more familiar
context of academic literary debate and helps in this way to bring such lit-
erature into circulation. And he does all of this within the ambit of an ap-
parently conventional western training in literary studies—besides English,
he reads French, German and Spanish. For other languages, given that
translation is intrinsic to his notion of world literature, he works from
translations.
What Damrosch lacks is stringency. One has no sense that his eclectic
choice of texts has any internal coherence or necessity, save that of con-
vention (Proust) and his own predilections (Ngal). By explicitly rejecting
the demand for theoretical coherence, he could be accused of having re-
course to the simplicity of the canonical version of world literature without
admitting that he participates in the building of a new canon.
Somewhat more coherent examples of the circulational understanding of
literature would be wide-ranging postcolonial studies such as Edward
35 Damrosch, pp. 298-299.

36 Ibid., pp. 283-284.
Said's Culture and Imperialism and the "Literature" section in Gayatri Spi-
vak's A Critique of Postcolonial Reason?1 Although deliberately resisting
the call to narrativise literary history as a coherent whole, the theoretical
ambition to read literature contrapuntally (Said) and deconstructively (Spi-
vak) with a studied awareness of the west's history of global dominance
gives these works a focus that is lacking in Damrosch. A related and par-
ticularly evocative example is Elleke Boehmer's synoptic reflection on
Anglo-Saxon modernism and migrant postcolonials in Colonial and Post-
colonial Literature and her more recent Empire, the National, and the
Postcolonial, 1890-1920.38 These studies could well serve—for those not
content with the notion of distant reading—as a paradigm for the circula-
tional reading of literature. Boehmer works on literature in English, which
means that she reads intimately, from within her own language, and is
never unfamiliar with the contexts that she deals with. Instead of viewing
modernism simply as an expression of European malaise that eventually
spread across the globe, Boehmer regards the work of Eliot, Mansfield, D.
H. Lawrence, Raja Rao, Sol Plaatje and others as facets of global processes
in which the colonial other for the first time profoundly affected artistic de-
velopments in the metropolis. Similarly, latter-day migrant fiction is final
proof that "the earth-changing cultural metamorphoses which first began at
the time of colonization have impacted resoundingly on the West." 39
None of these studies is concerned with formal definitions of litera-
ture—the question of literature is deferred to a generalised notion of textu-
ality, whereas specific theoretical interventions are reserved for the cultural
interactions and inequities of colonial/postcolonial history. There is also,
however, the interesting option of combining aspects of the formal and cir-
culational approaches, as Franco Moretti does in his reflections on what he
calls the "world system" of literature. His concern is to find justifiable
models to describe the history of the novel and its global dissemination, the
assumption being—pace Wallerstein—that the world system of literature
is "one and unequal," and that the most representative history of the novel
is not the one described by Ian Watt, where the emergence of the bour-
geoisie in Europe intrinsically gives rise to the conditions of possibility of
37 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), Gayatri Spi-
vak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
38 Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Oxford: Opus, 1995); Boehmer,
Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial, 1890-1920: Resistance in Interaction (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
39 Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, p. 235.
the novel, but rather the Brazilian or Australian histories of rupture, cul-
tural conflict and transformation of inherited or imposed models. 40
The appealing coherence of Moretti's approach, which is presented as a
suggestion, comes at a cost. First of all, and once again, it is reliant on dis-
tant reading. For Moretti, however, this is more of a methodological neces-
sity than a pleasurable mode of defamiliarisation. Moretti's distant reader
consciously works on material about which he or she lacks first-hand
knowledge. Most of the world system theorist's information must, of ne-
cessity, come from the work of other researchers. This is not as peculiar as
it may seem: all forms of research are conducted in an ongoing dialogue
with colleagues and predecessors. That a single researcher is literally in-
capable of reading individual works of literature but needs to have them
mediated by other readers challenges long-standing traditions in compara-
tive literature, but does not of itself invalidate grand theorising. But there
are more serious drawbacks to Moretti's suggestion, at least if one's eyes
are on the prize of global literary studies. While avoiding the eclecticism of
Damrosch, he fences off vast tracts of literature that cannot fall under the
heading of the novel, or that predate the half millennium-old world system
postulated by Immanuel Wallerstein. In the latter respect, Moretti still
operates (although critically) within a Hegelian historicist paradigm that
narrativises modernity as the west in the world. 41
The four global approaches to literature that I have outlined deserve to
be discussed at greater length. My main point, however, should be clear: to
conceive of literature in a global context is no natural or neutral operation.
Rather, the meaning of the global perspective is produced, performed and
undermined in a force-field of contending needs and interests. The two
chief virtues of Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective might
therefore be, firstly, its internal heterogeneity and, secondly, its broad lin-
guistic scope, covering languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Pers-
ian, Sanskrit and Spanish. There are very few examples of distant reading
in these anthologies. Volumes 1 and 2—on literariness and genres—tend
towards the formal approach that I described above. How should one con-
40 Moretti, "Conjectures on World Literature"; Moretti, "More Conjectures"; Moretti,

"Graphs, Maps, Trees," New Left Review 24 (2003), pp. 67-93.
41 See Mignolo for a discussion of Hegel, literature and the colonial difference. Walter
Mignolo, "Rethinking the Colonial Model" in Linda Hutcheon and Mario Valdes, Re-
thinking Literary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 155-193. Spe-
cific critiques of Moretti's "Conjectures"-article are found in Orsini; Kristal; Arac; and
Shih.
ceive of the literary element in verbal expression in India, in African oral

contexts or in Europe? How does one compare the western novel with
Japanese monogataril Is it fruitful to distinguish between rhetoric and lit-
erature in Arabic writing? How can a contemporary reading practice en-
gage with the literariness of the oldest poetry from China? How does the
popular literature of China relate to elite notions of literature in China?
Volumes 3:1 and 3:2 are, on the other hand, focused on literature as a cir-
culational phenomenon—but with an emphasis on specialist knowledge of
numerous Asian languages. These volumes are, one might say, particularly
close to their objects of investigation—individual works of literature, even
material books—and can be described as a collection of case studies of in-
tercultural transactions and confrontations in literatures of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. The strain in attempting to fathom literature glo-
bally becomes perhaps even more evident here than in the preceding vol-
umes. In the present volume, attention flutters between genres—the crime
novel, poetry, children's books, theatre, short stories—as much as between
continents. Although devoted to imaginative literature in a broad sense, no
strict definition of literariness is at hand in these contributions. Rather,
what unifies them is a minimal sense of literary transformation occurring
under conditions of cultural diversity (sometimes adversity) and through
acts of appropriation.
In each essay, as already summarised by Margareta Petersson in the pre-
vious volume, there is also a preoccupation with how interactions with "the
west" have evolved. 42 This risks repeating the cliche of "the west and the
rest" and therefore requires qualification. Firstly, given the period in focus
in this volume, one would be hard pressed to ignore the global ascendancy
of western economic power and cultural authority. Secondly, and crucially,
no single "west" is being referred to in these essays. Marja Kaikkonen
shows how in early twentieth-century China, the western detective novel
was appropriated in attempts to further the cause of modernisation. In cur-
rent day Turkey, as demonstrated by Roberta Micallef, literary and graphic
narrative forms—in themselves hybridised—are employed to counter the
transformative effects of globalisation and (re)contruct a sense of national
belonging. In Christina Nygren's account of theatrical developments in
Japan, China and India, western forms of spoken theatre were used to very
different ends in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the con-
42 I refer the reader to the introduction to vol. 3:1 for a full presentation of all the articles in
these two volumes.
temporary literature of the Gulf, Gail Ramsay argues, rapid modernisation

has led writers to construct hybrid narratives drawing on Arab tradition as
well as the global genre of magical realism. In other words, the signifi-
cance of "the west" in these volumes covers not only americanised globali-
sation and colonial repression, but also includes its function as a repository
of differential literary forms in contexts as different from each other as
southern Africa and China. This means also that it is the fluid historical
processes of circulation, rather than any particular literary genre or cat-
egory, that forms the basis of volumes 3:1 and 3:2.
An achievement not to be overlooked is how Literary History: Towards
a Global Perspective not only investigates but also contributes, however
marginally, to the circulation of literature. By bringing together fields of
literary and linguistic knowledge that otherwise, in the normal academic
circuits, have little or nothing to do with each other, these volumes add to
world literature. It is, perhaps, only possible to achieve such a high degree
of interdisciplinary fluidity in relatively small and peripheral academic
sites such as Sweden.
There is, also, a set of local, historical factors which have been con-
ducive to the global studies carried out in these volumes. In the decades
following the Second World War, the formally neutral country of Sweden
emerged as an alternative voice within the west, exercising an inter-
nationalist conscience that defied Cold War Manicheism and challenged
the interests of other western powers in countries such as Vietnam, Algeria
and South Africa. This internationalism, despite having become increas-
ingly bureaucratised since the 1980s, is still buttressed by a confidence in
the possibility of using Sweden as a vantage point from which to make pro-
nouncements on the state of the world. A thorough analysis of this phe-
nomenon would need to take into account the public discourse on moderni-
ty in Sweden—according to which Sweden almost by default ranks among
the most advanced nations in the world—and the perceived freedom from
responsibility for European colonialism. A heavy emphasis on consensus
and objectivity, or what in Swedish in interestingly tangible terms is called
samförständ and saklighet (literally denoting "together-understanding" and
"focusing on the thing"), underlay the national policy of social engineering
and, at the international level, Sweden's moral investment in the United
Nations from 1948 onwards and its subsequent support for what became
defined as developing countries.
This internationalism has, moreover, an intradisciplinary aspect. Where-
as literary studies in Britain, France and Germany have focused on their re-
spective national languages, the academic study of literature in Scandina-

via has tended to combine a national and pan-European outlook on litera-
ture. What in other countries has been touted as the specialisation of com-
parative literature has long been the norm in literary studies in Sweden. At
many universities, doctoral students are still required to have reading com-
petence in English, French and German, besides Swedish. Although this
tradition suffers from the same eurocentrism that has skewed comparative
literature in the United States, it has also given the impression that the
study of literature is indeed, at least hypothetically, the study of the world's
literatures—an impression that has been strengthened by the Swedish
Academy's annual moment of glory when writers and critics around the
globe anxiously await the announcement of this year's winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature. 43
Any historical legacy is ambiguous at best, and Sweden's international-
ism is no exception. There is much to be said about the self-aggrandising
discourse of Sweden as a transparently modern—hence not ethnic or cul-
tural—society that is a "model" to the world. 44 However, in an age of ac-
celerating cultural fracture, in an era of polarisation between "Empire" and
"terrorists," at a historical juncture where the gap between the haves with
SUV's and the have-nots with HIV is so great as to seem insurmountable,
any ambition to thoroughly think the world together should be welcomed. I
do not reductively see Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective as a
product of "Swedishness"—that would be brazenly naive—but I would
perhaps suggest that our particular, complex location in the culture of liter-
ary research has contributed to making this project possible. The fact that I
write these words at a university in South Africa, as a post-doctoral re-
searcher funded by a Swedish research foundation, may seem ironic but
merely serves to underline how one's location within the Swedish aca-
demic system can in fact entail a specific version of internationalism.
Pietermaritzburg, January 2005 - Uppsala, May 2006
43 This can be compared with how the young Gayatri Spivak took comparative literature to
be, in principle, a study of all the world's literature. Spivak, Death, p. 5. The Nobel Prize
merits a separate discussion as a western "technology of recognition" with global reper-
cussions. See Shih, pp. 25-26.
44 For a critique of Swedish self-images, see Allan Pred, Even in Sweden (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2000).
Nelson Gonzalez-Ortega (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison) has

taught at universities in Canada, USA and Sweden. Currently, he is Associ-
ate Professor in Peninsular and Spanish American literature at University of
Oslo, Norway. He is a writer of fiction as well as the author of critical essays
such as Ypartirds al ocaso (Pijao Editores, 1986); Encuentros y choques cul-
turales: Suecia, Espana y Latinoamerica (Natur och Kultur, 1997); "Canon
in Garcia Märquez" (Tropelias 1998-99, Spain); and Relates magicos en
cuestion (Verveurt Iberoamericana Frankfurt-Madrid 2006).
Stefan Helgesson is a research fellow at the Department of Literature,

Uppsala University. He is the author of Writing in Crisis: Ethics and His-
tory in Gordimer, Ndebele and Coetzee (2004) and has published articles,
in Swedish and English, on postcolonial theory, Brazilian literature, and
lusophone and anglophone African literature. He is currently completing a
book on post-Second World War literature in South Africa, Mozambique
and Angola.
Marja Kaikkonen is Associate Professor of Chinese at Stockholm

University. Her research deals with modern Chinese popular culture/lit-
erature and the relationship between elite and popular cultures. Author of
Laughable Propaganda and "Stories and Legends: the Largest Contempo-
rary Popular Literature Journals" (in The Literary Field of Twentieth Cen-
tury China), she is currently writing a book on popular fiction, Heroes for
Billions.
Leif Lorentzon earned his PhD in the Department of Literature, Stock-

holm University. His main areas of research are oral and popular literature
in South and West Africa. He is the author of "An African Focus," A Study
of Ayi Kwei Armah's Narrative Africanization (1999) and numerous
articles in journals such as Research in African Literatures, Critique,
Matatu, and in Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-Ameri-
can Experience, 2nd ed.
Roberta Micallef is assistant Professor of Turkish at Boston University.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin in Compar-
ative Literature in 1997. She has published a number of articles on Turkish
literature in journals and anthologies, and is currently working on women's
prison writings. Dr. Micallef is actively involved in the American Associa-
tion of Teachers of Turkic languages.
Christina Nygren is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at Stockholm

University. She has published extensively on performing arts in Japan and
China. Ongoing research includes a project on Perspectives on Popular
Theatre and. Dance in Bengal (India and Bangladesh). Her most recent
monograph is Ghosts, Generals and Gorgeous Goddesses: Travelling
Theatre Troupes, Religious Festivals and Popular Entertainment in Con-
temporary Japan and China (2000).
Margareta Petersson is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Uni-

versity of Växjö, Sweden. Research interests in historiography and Indian
English literature. She is the author of Unending Metamorphoses. Myth,
Satire and Religion in Salman Rushdie's Novels, (Lund 1996), "Globaliza-
tion and Hybridity in Indian English Literature," The Atlantic Literary Re-
view (2001), "Grimus and the Alchemical Tradition," in Salman Rushdie:
New Critical Insights (New Delhi 2003).
Gail Ramsay is Associate Professor of Arabic at Uppsala University

where she teaches Arabic and lectures on Arabic literature. Since the mid-
1990s she has studied questions of culture and society in the modern litera-
ture of the small sheikhdoms of the Gulf region. She has published articles
in Swedish, English and Arabic on the literature which is taking form in
the region. Of special interest are styles in women's literature and the ef-
fects that the rapid changes which have taken place in these societies to-
gether with the pressures of globalisation have had on their literary expres-
sions.
Index
Abrahams, Peter, 8 Attridge, Derek, 307

al-Abri, Sultan, 251 Auerbach, Erich, 306, 307
Abruquah, Joseph, 9, 10, 12, 22, 25 Aurobindo, 110
Achebe, Chinua, 9, 17, 19, 20, 27, 31, Avila, Francisco de, 45, 46, 48, 53, 56,
311 61
Adams, R. E. W., 61 Awoonor, Kofi, 1, 9, 12, 22, 29, 30
Agaoglu, Ahmet, 294 Aydelotte, William O., 159
Agualusa, Jose Eduardo, 132 Azar, Michael, 131, 133
Ahmad, <Abd Allah Saqr, 250
Ahmad, 'Abd al-Hamld, 251, 253, 255, Bä, Manama, 309
258, 259, 260, 266 Bakhtin, Michail, 13, 24, 38, 42, 43, 47,
Ahmad, Aijaz, 115 57,82, 280, 299, 301
Ahmad, Fätima Khalifa, 251 Baidissera, Eros, 245, 249, 251, 252,
Ahmad, Laylä, 250 270
Ahmed, Syed Jamil, 224, 227, 228, 230, Balme, Christopher, 207, 208
231,232, 233,234 Balzac, Honore de, 98, 315
Ahsan, Nazmul, 228
Bandopadhaya, Annadaprasad, 231
Aidoo, Ama Ata, 1,12, 29, 30, 36
Banerjee, Sumanta, 228, 229, 231
Akchura, Yusuf, 294
Banyopadhaya, Krishnamohan, 227
al-Akhzaml, Yünus, 251
Banfield, Chris, 226, 234
Ali, Cänib, 284
Barba, Eugenio, 204, 206
Ali, Muhammad, 245, 246
Barber, Karin, 15, 37
Allah, Abd, 251
Barnard, Alan, 310
Allen, Douglas, 295
Basak, Gour Das, 230
Allen, Roger, 265
Basu, Manamohan, 231
Alvarado, Pedro de, 59
Anderson, Benedict, 125, 247, 297 Beecher Stowe, Harriet, 220
Angmor, Charles, 7, 17, 20, 30, 33 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 99
Appadurai, Arjun, 243, 255 Bender, Gerald, 125, 132
Arac, Jonathan, 305 Bengu, Sibusiso Mandlenkosi Emma-
nuel, 28, 29
Arguedas, Jose Maria, 41, 49-57, 62,
Berger, John, 104
65, 66, 76
Berman, Marshall, 138, 139
Armah, Ayi Kwei, 1, 2, 7, 13, 20, 22,
Bhabha, Homi K , 29, 37, 81, 82, 83,
27, 29, 30, 311
84, 95, 96, 101, 107, 123, 125, 127,
Arom, J. J. Criollo, 42
Ashcroft, Bill, 47, 72, 74 128, 130, 142, 148, 154, 155, 291,
Asturias, Miguel Angel, 41, 42, 62-69, 305, 307
Bhabhabuti, 228
75, 76, 77, 78, 259
Atatürk, Kemal, 284, 294, 295 Bharucha, Nilufer E„ 97, 98
Index 325
Bharucha, Rustom, 203, 205, 206, 207, Chen, Liting, 224

208, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233 Cheng, Xiaoqing, 173, 175, 176
Bhattacharya, Bidhayak, 233 Chinweizu, 126
Biläl, Ahmad, 252 Christaller, J. G., 4
Bilgin, Nuri, 278 Chungui, Wang, 165
Bingze, Liu, 165 Ci, Xi, 219
Biwu, Zhang, 174 Clifford, James, 142
Bixiang, Chen, 183 C o e , M . D.,61
Bj0rnson, Bj0rnsterne, 222 Coetzee, J. M „ 308
Blader, Susan, 167 Cohn, Bernard, 108, 109
Blay, Benibengor, 5, 6, 8, 30, 36 Columbus, Christopher, 40, 57, 70-72,
Bloom, Harold, 311,312 73
Blyton, Enid, 99 Confucius, 220
Boadi, Lawrence, 3 Conner, Alison W., 166
Bodde, Derk, 159 Conrad, Joseph, 77, 104, 127
Boddy, Janice, 262 Coppola, Carlo, 89
Boehmer, Elleke, 114, 317 Coryell, John Russell, 173
Boqun, Fan, 173 Couto, Mia, 309
Börner, Klaus, 90 Craig, Gordon, 207, 217
Borthwick, Sally, 174 Cruz, Viriato da, 135
Brahm, Otto, 217 Craveirinha, Jose, 120, 130, 134, 135,
Brandon, James R., 210, 226 136-143, 146, 151
Brantlinger, Patrick, 162 Culler, Jonathan, 43, 49, 242, 263, 268,
Brazell, Karen, 203 315
Brecht, Bertolt, 91 cultural encounters, 18, 39, 41, 83, 117,
Brook, Peter, 205, 207 134, 199, 202, 204, 208, 209, 240,
Burton, Richard, 313 242, 2 8 1 , 2 8 2
Busia, Dr., 10, 11
Damrosch, David, 305, 310, 312, 315,
Calinescu, Matei, 127, 128 316,318
Camöes, Luiz de, 135 Dan'an, Lu, 174
Canclini, N. Garcia, 42, 55 Dandin, 87
Carpentier, Alejo, 73 Dante Alighieri, 220
Casanova, Pascale, 305 Darwlsh, Ahmad, 252
Casely-Hayford, E., 4 Das, Harihara, 228
Castelo, Claudia, 131 Das, Kashiram, 232
Cawelti, John G., 160 Dathorne, O. R., 4
Cervantes, Miguel de, 311 Davis, A. R„ 220
Chabal, Patrick, 123, 152 Dayioglu, Gülten, 281
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 24, 25, 124, 128, Deleuze, Gilles, 154
206, 227, 312 Deringil, Selim, 294
Chandras, Bharat, 229 Dharwadker, Vinay, 96
Chapman, Michael, 123 Dickens, Charles, 86, 309
Charme, Stuart Z„ 85, 108, 111 Dill, Hans-Otto, 53, 65
Chatterjee, Partha, 109, 110, 111, 123 Dirlik, Arif, 115
Chatterjee, Sudipto, 203, 230 Djoleto, Amu, 7, 12, 19, 22, 28
Chatterji, Joya, 199 Dolby, William, 220, 221, 222, 224
Chekhov, Anton, 86, 218, 222, 246 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 125, 246, 311
326 Index
Doyle, Arthur Conan, 157 Ghosh, Amitav, 113

D u B o i s , W. Ε. B„ 128, 140 Ghosh, Girish, 232
Dumas, Alexandre, 220 Ghoshal, Tinkodi, 231
Duodu, Cameron, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, Ghubash, Mouza, 246
17, 2 5 , 2 6 Ghubäsh, Muhammad 'Ubayd, 251
During, Simon, 147 Ghulum, Abd Allah, 241
Dutta, Uptal, 234 Gilroy, Paul, 119, 128, 139, 140
Gikandi, Simon, 126, 128
Eberstein, Bernd, 222 globalisation, 80, 101, 102, 106, 281,
Edib, Halide, 285 302, 306
Ekwensi, Cyprian, 32 Gochberg, Donald, 312
Elman, Benjamin Α., 166 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 24, 25, 224,
Eliot, George, 25 303,304,311
Eliot, T. S„ 99, 118, 119, 127,317 Gökalp, Ziya, 283, 284
Erdogan, Α., 281 Gomes, Mauricio, 118, 119, 120, 135,
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 115 142
Ersoy, Mehmet Äkif, 283, 284 Gonzälez-Ortega, Nelson, 83, 96, 242
Esherick, Joseph, 219 Gorky, Maxim, 218
Gramsci, Antonio, 47, 81, 128, 300
Fang, Houshu, 183 Grass, Günter, 91, 262
Fanon, Frantz, 123, 146 Griffiths, Gareth, 47
Faraj, Maryam Jum'a, 250, 251, 263, Grotowsky, Jerzy, 206, 207
266, 267, 268, 269, 276, 277 Guattari, Felix, 154
Fans, Wendy B„ 69 Guha, Ranajit, 109
al-FärisI, Khälid Mansür, 251 Guillen, Claudio, 311, 315
Feinerman, J. V., 159 Gülsüm, Cengiz, 281
Fenelon, Francois, 246 Gürsoy, Akile, 292
Ferguson, C. Α., 264 Οϋνοης, Bozkurt, 278
Fernea, Elizabeth, 290 Guy, R. K„ 159
Finnegan, Ruth, 3
Fludernik, Monika, 29, 81, 82, 84, 107, Habermas, Jürgen, 139
113 Habib, Abd Allah, 251
Foucault, Michel, 309 Habiby, Emile, 253
Fox, Nicols, 162 Hagii, Kozo, 213
Freyre, Gilberto, 132 al-Haklm, Tawfiq, 246
Friedman, Jonathan, 114 Hamdan, Khawla, 251, 266
Frye, Northrop, 314, 315 Hampe-Martinez, Teodoro, 48
Fryer, John, 174 Han, Lao, 185
Fuguet, Α., 78 Hanan, Patrick, 163
al-Harbl, Hasan, 251
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 307 Harlow, Barbara, 43
Gakwandi, Shatto Arthur, 26, 27 Hansson, Anders, 169
Gandhi, Mahatma, 89, 110, 141 Haqql, Yahiyä, 246
Gao, Hua, 185 Harmuth, S., 53
Gates, Henry Louis, 148 Harrex, S. C„ 89, 108
Gellner, Ernest, 286 Hatoum, Afif Nayef, 257
Genette, Gerard, 27, 43, 49, 242, 263 Hauptmann, 218
Ghosh, Ajit Kumar, 226 Hay craft, Howard, 158, 173
Index 327
Helgesson, Stefan, 1, 26 Kaikkonen, Marja, 319

Herdeck, Donald E., 10 Kanaganayakam, Chelva, 90
Hennquez Urena, Pedro, 42, 70 Kane, Mohamadou, 14
Hijom, Gaspar, 65 Kan'ya, Morita, 214
Holes, Clive, 265 Kaoru, Osanai, 217
Holmberg, Bo, 4, 245, 264, 265 Karay, Refik Halit, 289
Hong, Shen, 223 Kawakami, Otojirö, 212
Horie-Webber, Α., 211 Kawatake, Shigetoshi, 211, 215, 217
Hu, Ben, 167 Kawatake, Yoshio, 212
Huang, Yonglin, 180 Keene, Donald, 211, 215
Huang, Zexin, 173 Keyder, gaglar, 282, 285
Hugo, Victor, 215 Khair, Tabish, 91, 112
al-Humaydi, Sälim, 251 Khamls, Zabiya, 250
Hung, Chang-tai, 224 al-Kharrät, Idwär, 254
Hung, Eva, 157, 173 Khilnani, Sunil, 87, 89, 95, 110, 111,
Husayn, Täha, 246 115
hybridity, 13, 29, 38, 39, 41, 42, 55, 56, Killam, D„ 11
80-85, 90, 93, 96, 101, 106, 107, Kinkley, Jeffrey C., 184
113, 114, 115, 116, 124, 129, 156, Kinross, Patrick Balfour, 284
202, 206, 235, 281, 285, 286, 287, Kockum, Keiko, 4, 13, 26, 216, 246
302 Komiya, Toyotaka, 213
Konadu, Asare, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13,
Ibsen, Henrik, 215, 216, 217, 222, 236, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32,
239, 311 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39
Ichikawa, Danjürö IX, 213, 217 Kortenaar, Neil ten, 108, 111
Idris, Suhayl, 246 Kristal, Efrain, 305
Ikiddeh, Ime, 6 Krittibas, 232
Inan, Abdülkadir, 299 Kundera, Milan, 262
Inoura, Yoshinobu, 212
intertextuality, 49, 56, 57, 62, 76, 245, Laing, B. Kojo, 19
263, 268, 269, 276 Landa, Diego de, 61
Iyengar, Κ. R. Srinivasa, 88, 109 Lang, George, 5, 22
Larsen, Stephan, 81, 82
Jacinto, Antonio, 135 Las Casas, Bartolome de, 62
Jahn, Jahnheinz, 1,9, 10 al-Lawätl, 'Abd al-Khäliq Najaf 'All,
Jakobson, Roman, 244, 315 251,264
JanMohamed, Abdul, 128 Lawrence, Bruce, 242
Jaques-Dalcroze, Emile, 217 Lawrence, D. H., 317
Jha, Rama, 110 Laye, Camara, 23
Jodrell, Richard, 227 Lazarus, Neil, 123, 124, 129
Johnson, David, 174 Lebedeff, Herasim, 227
Joyce, James, 127, 311 Leite, Ana Mafalda, 140
Julien, Eileen, 14, 15, 21, 39, 153 Leiter, Samuel L., 213
Junior, Benjamin Abdala, 121 Levinas, Emmanuel, 307
Junior, Rodrigues, 133 Lewis, Bernard, 282
Li, Xinmin, 183
al-Ka'bl, Hassa Jum'a, 251 Liang, Qichao, 174, 175
Kaemmel, Ernst, 158 Link, Jr., Ε. Perry, 160, 173
328 Index
Lisboa, Eugenio, 125 Michio, Nagai, 214

Liu, Xiang'an, 177 Mickson, Ε. K„ 6, 30, 36
Liu, Yangti, 173 Mignolo, Walter, 129, 133, 148, 318
Ljung, Per Erik, 115, 303 Milkäwl, Thäbit, 241, 246
Lodge, David, 244, 262, 269 mimicry, 29, 37,96, 155,287
Loomba, Ania, 82, 83, 84, 95, 111, 124, Mistry, Rohinton, 81, 91, 95, 97-100,
206, 208,242, 278, 290, 291 106
Lopez Alvarez, L., 64 Mitra, Dinabandhu, 230, 231, 232
Lu, Hanchao, 161, 195 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 208
Lu, Runxiang, 173 Moctezuma II, 70
Luan, Meijian, 174 modernisation, 144, 153, 162, 211, 214,
Lubman, Stanley B„ 184, 185 240, 264, 278, 283,285,319
Lukäcs, Georg, 24, 280, 297, 299, 301 modernity, 23, 25, 120, 121, 122, 124,
Lundgren, Äsa, 285, 286 126, 127, 128, 130, 134, 137, 138,
Luo, Jiali, 183 139, 140, 142, 143, 147, 148, 150,
152, 153, 156, 215, 253, 276, 282,
Macaulay, Thomas B„ 86, 95, 115 285, 320
Macauley, Melissa, 159 modernism, 55, 56, 57, 69, 76, 77, 118,
Macherey, Pierre, 278 119, 120, 125, 126, 127, 133, 134,
Mackerras, Colin, 219, 223 136, 140, 151, 155, 156, 238, 244,
Madhusudan Dutta, Michael, 229, 230, 270, 275,276,317
231,232 Modisane, Bloke, 8
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 216, 218 Mokuami, Kawatake, 215
magical realism, 66-69, 73, 74-79, 254, Moore-Gilbert, Bart, 107
255, 256, 262, 263 Moreno, C. Fernandez, 40
Makkl, at-Tähir Ahmad, 241
Moretti, Franco, 23, 24, 25, 77, 305,
al-Malik, Badr <Abd, 266, 267
310,317,318
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, 295
Mori, Mitsuya, 216
al-Ma'marl, 'All, 251, 266
Mori, Ögai, 216
al-Ma'mari, Sulaymän, 251, 271
Morris, Clarence, 159
Mamdani, Mahmood, 128, 131
Mphahlele, Ezekiel, 8
Mansfield, Katherine, 317
Mao, Zedong, 236 Mubarak, 'All, 246
Mudhaffar, Saud Al, 251
Märquez, Gabriel Garcia, 41, 43, 72-76,
Mudimbe, V. Y„ 130
77,78,91,254, 255
al-Mughni, Hay a, 262
Martin, Gerald, 63
Muhammad, Fati ma, 251
Marx, Karl, 115, 160
Masao, Miyoshi, 207 Mukherjee, Arun P., 89, 109
Ma'tüq, KarTm, 251 Mukherjee, Meenakshi, 86, 90, 111,
112, 114
Matusse, Gilberto, 122, 131, 133, 138,
140 Mukherjee, Sushil Kumar, 227, 228,
McDougall, Bonnie, S., 222 229, 233
Menchu, Rigoberta, 315 Mund, Subhendu Kumar, 86, 109
Mencius, 220 al-Mundhari, Saläm, 251
Meyer, Stefan G„ 244, 249, 275 al-Munjl, Näsir, 251
Micallef, Roberta, 161, 319 Munslow, Alun, 40, 203
Michalak-Pikulska, Barbara, 241, 249, al-Murr, Muhammad, 250, 251
251,273,274, 275 Musil, Robert, 127
Index 329
al-Mutawwa', Muhammad 'Abel Allah, Owais, Sultan Bin Ali Al, 247
248, 254 Özel, Soli, 285
al-Muzaffar, Sa'üd, 252
Paksoy, Hasan, 301
Nahyan, Sultan Al, 253 Palencia-Roth, Michael, 72
Naik, Μ. K„ 88 Palmer, Jerry, 160
Naipaul, V. S„ 155 Papastergiadis, Nikos, 80, 114, 116
an-Näkhl, Shaykha, 250 Paria, Taha, 283
Nandy, Ashis, 143, 287 Parry, Benita, 123
Narasimhaiah, 87, 89 Pavic, Milorad, 315
Narayan, Shyamala Α., 89 Pavis, Patrice, 204, 205, 206
Al-Nawaf, Sara, 250 Pawlak, Nina, 3
an-Näwirl, <Abd Alläh, 251 Pellowski, Anne, 281
New, William H„ 26 Peres, Phyllis, 122, 150, 152, 154
Newell, Stephanie, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 19, 26, Pessoa, Fernando, 127
32, 35, 37, 38 Petersson, Margareta, 13, 26, 42, 47,
Newitt, Malyn, 121, 131 79, 129, 303,319
Ngal, Mbwil a Mpang, 316 Pettersson, Anders, 314
NgügT wa Thiong'o, 15, 27 Picasso, Pablo, 99
Ngwaba, Francis, 23, 27 Pizer, John, 305, 307, 311
Plaatje, Sol, 317
Niranjan, Shiva, 88
Platt, Nicholas, 295
Nketia, J. Η. K„ 3
Poe, Edgar Allan, 173
Nkosi, Lewis, 7
popular culture, popular literature, 6, 8,
Nkrumah, Kwame, 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 26,
32, 35, 36, 37, 39, 160, 161, 162,
30 163,202, 231
Noa, Francisco, 122, 135, 137, 140 Porter, Dennis, 160
Nwapa, Flora, 35 Poulton, Hugh, 295
Nygren, Christina, 42, 161, 164, 180, Powell, Brian, 210
319 Pratt, Mary Louise, 2, 38, 83, 306
Pred, Allan, 321
Obeng, R. E„ 4 Prendergast, Christopher, 305
Obiechina, Emmanuel, 4, 5, 8, 15, 18, Priebe, Richard, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 20,
2 0 , 2 1 , 2 2 , 26 31, 33
Ofori, Henry, 11 Prince, Gerald, 16, 33
O'Gorman, E„ 72 Proust, Marcel, 309, 315, 316
Okpewho, Isidore, 23 Pushkin, Alexander 246
Oliveira, Märio Antonio F., 121, 135 Puzhai, He, 174
Olsson, Tord, 3, 256 Pyrhönen, Heta, 159
Omotoso, Kole, 14, 15
O'Neill, Eugene, 223 al-Qäsiml, Sultän bin Muhammad, 251
Onitsha literature, 4, 5, 6, 32 Queiros, Ega de, 125, 135
orality, oral literature 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, Quinlan, Maurice James, 162
90-92, 153, 193,309
Orsini, Francesca, 305 Rabassa, G., 41, 72
Ortolani, Benito, 218 Radhakrishnan, R., 307
Otto, S. Covacit, 68 Raha, Kironmay, 226, 231, 234
Ouyang, Yuqian, 220 ar-Rahbl, Sayf, 251, 271
330 Index
ar-Rahmän, ! Ahd Alläh <Abd, 253 Sayf, Salmä Matar, 250, 251, 255, 256,
Rao, Raja, 81, 85-89, 91, 92, 106, 107, 257, 258, 262, 275
110, 111, 112, 113, 114,317 Schechner, Richard, 204, 207
Rao, Ram Mohan, 110 Scheub, Harold, 13
Rama, Angel, 40, 43, 55, 78 Schild, Ulla, 10
Ramachandra, Ragini, 111 Schiller, Friedrich, 215
Ramsay, Gail, 79, 320 Schipper, Mineke, 22, 307
bin Räshid, Hamad bin Räshid, 252, Selormey, Francis, 9, 10, 11, 22
Sen, Satu, 233
270, 271,272, 273, 276, 277
Senanu, Κ. E., 7, 23, 27
Rashld, Fawziyya, 263
Sengupta, Sachindranath, 233
Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida, 174
Shakespeare, William, 4, 99, 135, 216,
Ray, Harimokan, 231
220, 227, 228, 230, 236, 237, 246,
Renan, Ernest, 130 311
Ribeiro, Darcy, 42
Sharabi, Hisham, 243, 260
Richardson, R. L., 228
Sharrad, Paul, 85, 111, 113
Richmond, Farley P., 230 ash-Shärünl, Yusuf, 246, 252, 253
Ricoeur, Paul, 305 Shi, Yukun, 167
Rimer, J. Thomas, 214 Shih, Shu-Mei, 305, 321
Riphenburg, Carol J., 247 ash-Shihhl, Badriyya, 251
ar-Rlsh, 'All Abü, 251, 264 Shimamura, M., 217
Robins, Kevin, 286 Shively, Donald H„ 210
Rollo, Maria Fernanda, 135 Shklovsky, Victor, 75
Rosas, Fernando, 135 Shu'ayr, ar-Rashld Abu, 243, 249, 253,
Rowe, William, 255, 263 255, 256, 258, 261, 262, 263, 264,
Rowe, R„ 11 276
Roy, Arundhati, 81, 101-106, 107, 115, as-Siddlql, Diya\ 254
116 Silone, Ignazio, 87, 89
Roy, Manmatha, 233 Sirajuddaula, Nawab, 227
Rushdie, Salman, 81, 89, 90-97, 101, Skvorecky, Josef, 158
102, 106, 111, 112, 114, 262 Smyth, Gerry, 85
Song, Anna, 173
Sahagun, Bernardino de, 62 Soyinka, Wole, 126
Spencer, Jonathan, 310
Said, Edward, 127, 130, 208, 209, 287,
Spivak, Gayatri, 81, 123, 128, 130, 242,
297, 305, 317
305, 307, 308, 311, 316, 317, 321
as-Sa'id, Numayr bin Sälim, 251
Storey, John, 301
Said, Qaboos ibn, 247
Storm, Carsten, 166
Salazar, Antonio Oliveira de, 131, 144
Strauss, Johann, 99
Sale, Kirkpatrick, 162
Strindberg, August, 216, 218, 222, 239
Sallm, Umniyät, 251
Sudö, Sadanori, 212
Sälih, at-Tayyib, 246, 253, 254
Suematsu, 212
Sander, Oral, 295 Suleiman, Susan R., 29
Santilli, Maria Aparecida, 122 Sun, Jilin, 174
Saqr, Maysün, 251 Sun, Liahong, 174
Sauter, Willmar, 200 surrealism, 54, 56, 64, 77
as-Sawäfi, 'All bin Sa'Id, 251 Sutherland, Efua, 7, 12
Sayers, Dorothy L., 158 as-Suwaydl, Thänl, 251
Index 331
Swanzy, Henry, 4, 7 Wagner, Richard, 216

Swift, Jonathan, 99, 246 al-WahaybT, Badriyya, 251, 252, 256,
Tagore, Prasanna Kumar, 228 261,262
Tagore, Rabindranath, 99, 110, 225, Wahaybl, Bushrä Khalfän, 251
234, 235 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 318
Taha, Ibrahim, 244, 265, 266, 267, 269, Walsh, William, 89
270, 2 7 1 , 2 7 5 , 2 7 6 Wang, Lixin, 174
at-Tahtäwi, Rifä< Räfi', 245, 246 Watt, Ian, 317
at-Tä'i <Abd Allah, 251 Wehr, Hans, 272
Taimur, Said ibn, 247 Wellek, Rene, 304, 311
Tämir, Zakariya, 254 Werbner, Pnina, 83, 114
Tarkaratna, Ramnarayan, 229 White, Jenny, 289
Taner, Timur, 284, 285 White, Lynn T„ 185
Teiwes, Frederick C., 183 Wilde, Oscar, 222
Terdiman, Richard, 43 Williams, Η. M„ 109
Tian, Han, 223 Williams, S. Wells, 165, 170
Tianzhi, Ren, 221 Windelband, Wilhelm, 307
Tiffin, Helen, 47 Wordsworth, William, 135
Timur, Emir, 293 world literature, 125, 303, 304, 305,
Todorov, Tzvetan, 72, 314, 315 306, 3 0 8 , 3 1 1 , 3 1 2 , 3 1 5 , 3 1 6
Togan, Zeki Velidi, 299, 200
Tolstoy, Leo, 99, 246 Xiao, Jiniin, 165
Torquemada, Juan de, 62
Touraine, Alain, 126, 127, 128 al-Yahiyä'I, Muhammad, 251, 252, 255,
Toyotaka, Komiya, 211 273, 274, 275, 276, 277
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Trigo, Salvato, 118, 126, 143, 144, 152, Yan, Xia, 224
153, 154 Yankah, Kwesi, 3, 83
Tsubouchi, Shöyö, 215, 216, 217 Yazici, O. Olcay, 280, 281, 286, 287
Turner, Brian S., 254 al-YazId, Ashraf Abu, 251
Turner, K. G„ 159 Ying, Α., 172
Tutuola, Arnos, 9, 17 Young, Robert, 315
at-Twayya, Sälim, 251 el-Youssef, Samir, 244
Yu, Cao, 224, 225
Ubayd, Ahmad Muhammad, 251 Yu, Yue, 167
Undeland, Charles, 295 Yuan, Jin, 160
al-'Urayml, Su'äd, 250, 264, 266 Yünus, Bäsima, 251
al-'Utayba, Sa'Id, 251 el-Yussef, Samir, 275
al-'Uthmän, Laylä, 253
Zamora, Louis Parkinson, 69
Verne, Jules, 246 az-Zafünl, Asmä\ 251
Vertovec, Steven, 115 Zea, L., 42
Vespucci, Amerigo, 72 Zhang, Xiasheng, 182
Vieira, Jose Luandino, 120, 130, 131, Zhao, Nanrong, 165, 191, 193
134, 135, 136, 143-155 Zimmerman, Μ., 43
Vivekananda, 110 Zumthor, Paul, 22
Voltaire, Frangois de, 220 Zürcher, Erik J., 294

Literary History: Towards A Global Perspective

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Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Literary history: towards a global perspective,

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

V O L U M E 1: NOTIONS OF LITERATURE ACROSS TIMES AND CULTURES

General Preface to the Series

Experiences of Orature in Sahelian West Africa 245

Notes on Contributors 291

V O L U M E 2 : LITERARY GENRES: A N INTERCULTURAL APPROACH

Notes on Contributors 307

V O L U M E 3 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE MODERN W O R L D 1

Per Erik Ljung

Notes on Contributors 199

V O L U M E 4 : LITERARY INTERACTIONS IN THE M O D E R N W O R L D 2

Going Global: An Afterword 303

Notes on Contributors 322

In politics, economics, communications and culture, the world is more of

cuses on encounters between literary cultures—and specifically on fault-

Introduction: Concepts of Literature and

Historical and Transcultural Literary Studies

emphasizing not least the aspect of power involved in cultural encounters

beginnings of the writing of literary history—the history of national Euro-

3 I am thinking of such works as Thomas Warton's three-volume history of English litera-

raturhistorie (The Literary History of the World, 1985-1993). 7 No com-

7 Hans Hertel (ed.), Verdens lilteraturhistorie appeared simultaneously in Danish, Swe-

space, would be scant or non-existent. Moreover, the implicit criteria for

9 The metaphor of literary-history writing as a kind of map-making is often used pejora-

and temporal boundaries. In this project, Swedish specialists in Sinology,

developed vocabulary for designating genres, but they cannot, as far as I

dards of cultural significance and style,' not in the sense of 'imaginative

tion serves to exclude oral literature, which it would nowadays be quite

Presentational Discourse and the

content; a description of something in the world is formulated and made

Let us characterize texts and utterances dominated by the ostensible ambi-

meant to be valuable in itself as a source of experience, not mainly intend-

This is no dirge, it's only outrage

singular in air, uncountable in hand,

Szymborska describes and evaluates a situation and its consequences.

32 Wislawa Szymborska, "The Birds Return" (1967), in Szymborska's Sounds, Feelings,

Searle refers to his contention that systems of representations are human

39 Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, p. 151.

42 Hutcheon, "Rethinking the National Model," p. 5.

Employing Concepts of Literature in

The expression "literary history" may refer to literary-historical reality it-

more precise is often needed. If we employ the word "literature" in our

ality left v a g u e and inconsistent. M o s t conspicuously, "literature" is tradi-

A f t e r a n u m b e r of analogous observations, K o n r a d g o e s on to argue that

47 This is a well-known feature of histories of literature. See, e.g., Rosenberg, "Literaturge-

ated by our modern western concept of literature. We use much more

If we are not prepared to use the concept of literature without modifica-

changes. In fact, I know of one such history: the French anthropologist

In current state-of-the-art literary-history writing it is common to empha-

Literature Across Times and Cultures

the concept of literature and concentrating especially on Karin Barber's

59 Idema and Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature, p. 9.

T w o of these essays concern Chinese literary culture. Martin Svens son

ry Writing: The Beginnings," Gunilla Lindberg-Wada describes how the

64 Miner is no doubt thinking of imaginative literature.

67 Cf„ however, note 14 above.

There is no predetermined pattern to which the seven essays conform. In

Becoming Literature: Views of Popular Fiction in