Commentary – A Text – A Gesture

A Workshop on Commentarial Traditions in China and Japan
Dec. 15-16 2022 and March 16-17 2023 Strasbourg( France)

FR EN

Introduction

Despite its centrality and its impact in a historical perspective, commentary is usually considered as a tool for deciphering great works or as thin trace of intellectual activity. It is reduced to an ancillary status and denied that of a text per se.

In order to enrich our understanding of the commentarial tradition in China and Japan, the eleven contributors to this workshop invite to consider commentary as textual material and to analyze its linguistic, stylistic and rhetorical dimensions. Participants mostly engaged in the field of pre-modern literature will shed light on the textual aspects of commentary, and they will do so in order to better elucidate its relation to an original text.

The contributions will more particularly tackle the type of bond with base text that specific commentaries assert through a series of device. Whereas secondary in time and importance, and by essence open to other and new proposals, commentary altogether stages itself in a position of authority. It even happens that rhetorical gestures bring commentary to proclaim itself as taking control over the original text, whereas the absorption of base text within a commentary points to the creation of a new text, with its stylistic feature along with a hollow missing text. All this potential carried by commentary leans in its economy. It is thus necessary to reveal some of the characteristics of commentary and to look for its grammar. Cases of auto-commentary further question the status that commentary designs for itself, i.e. as text proper or appendix. Such questions will be addressed through a number of case studies chosen in the Chinese, Japanese and Western traditions. They will shed light on both the continuum and the differences between commenting, translating and rewriting.

Because our attention shifts from patrimonial texts to commentaries, the corpus under study will not be limited to a unique part of traditional bibliographies. However, in order to delineate characteristics from most ancient commentaries, a few examples on so-called philosophical and historical commentaries will be analyzed. Also, as a means to complement previous contributions on commentaries of the masters (zi 子) – one might think of foundational works by Anne Cheng or Rudolf Wagner – this project will more specifically focus on what we conventionally call « literature » (e.g. shi 詩, ci 詞, fu 賦 and xiaoshuo 小說).

This project aims at bringing up general – if not theoretical – ideas and questions in relation to the commentary, its textuality, its position within the textual realm and its gestures toward other texts. As such, it will be enriched by contributions from specialists of commentaries and paratexts in the West. It will also benefit from a diachronic perspective by including case studies from all periods of history.

The workshop will be held in English.

It will be open to up to twelve participants in addition to its ten contributors. Advance registration through this website is required. It is free of charge and possible from October 25th to December 4th 2022 for the December Session, and from January 5th to March 5th 2023 for the March Session. Six spots will be set aside for doctoral candidates for the first two weeks of registration.

The workshop, organized by Marie Bizais-Lillig, will take place at the University of Strasbourg on December 15th and 16th 2022 and March 16th and 17th 2023.

Contributors (in alphabetical order)

Bizais-Lillig Marie (Associate Professor, University of Strasbourg, France)

Imbach Jessica (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Kraushaar Frank (Professor, University of Latvia, Latvia)

Lesigne-Audoly Evelyne (Associate Professor, University of Strasbourg, France)

Lomova Olga (Professor, Charles University, Czech Republic)

Nicoll-Johnson Evan (Assistant Lecturer, University of Alberta, Canada)

Schimmelpfennig Michael (Senior Lecturer, Australian National University, Australia)

Svensson Martin (Senior Lecturer, University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

Tian Xiaofei (Professor, Harvard University, United States of America)

Vieillard-Baron Michel (Professor, Inalco, France)