Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recorded in the eighth-century texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki, changed in meaning and significance between 800 and 1800 CE. Generations of Japanese scholars and students have turned to these two texts and their creation myths to understand what it means to be Japanese and where Japan fits into the world order.
As the shape and scale of the world explained by these myths changed, these myths evolved in turn. Over the course of the millennium covered in this study, Japan transforms from the center of a proud empire to a millet seed at the edge of the Buddhist world, from the last vestige of China’s glorious Zhou Dynasty to an archipelago on a spherical globe. Analyzing historical records, poetry, fiction, religious writings, military epics, political treatises, and textual commentary, Matthieu Felt identifies the geographical, cosmological, epistemological, and semiotic changes that led to new adaptations of Japanese myths. Felt demonstrates that the meanings of Japanese antiquity and of Japan’s most ancient texts were—and are—a work in progress, a collective effort of writers and thinkers over the past 1,300 years.
Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.
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Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
Lijun Zhang and Ziying You, "Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice" (Indiana UP, 2020)
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
Charlene Makley, "The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China" (Cornell UP, 2018)
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019)
Eleanor Parker, "Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
Oren Harman, "Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World" (FSG, 2018)
Tim Frandy, "Inari Sami Folklore: Stories from Aanaar" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019)
S. Ingram, W. G. Mullins, and T. Richardson, "Implied Nowhere: Absence in Folklore Studies" (UP of Mississippi, 2019)
M. D. Foster and J. A. Tolbert, "The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World" (Utah State UP, 2015)
Emily Wilcox, "Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy" (U California Press, 2018)
Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018)
Susan Lepselter, "The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, and UFOs in the American Uncanny" (U Michigan Press, 2016)
Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017)
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
Alexander Langlands, "Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts" (Norton, 2017)
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