Lecture: The Study of Taiwan Literature and “Kanbumyaku” in East Asia(2020/09/22)

With Sheng Hao-Wei(盛浩偉)—currently an editor at Acropolis—we start off the Taiwan Literature Alumni Series!

This talk focuses on Saitō Mareshi(齋藤希史)’s Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature(「漢文脈」在近代：中國清末與日本明治重疊的文學圈), translated by Sheng Hao-Wei(盛浩偉). Sheng has pointed out, Taiwan literature has been seeking ways of connecting to global contexts. One of the important questions among is: how did classical Taiwan literature establish relations with the outer world? Sheng argued that Kanbunmyaku—often translated as “Literary Sinitic Context”—might provide us with an answer. Literary researchers are usually quite susceptible to the process of the transformation of a literary genre. Yet, it is the complex hidden in that process that is sometimes problematically neglected.