Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
East Asian Languages and Literatures
First Advisor
Kamens, Edward
Abstract
This dissertation examines Heian period kayō “songs'' and their textual medium, fuhon, vernacular “songbooks.” Kayō and fuhon constitute a corpus of vernacular songs as well as a body of texts that inscribe popular banquet and ritual court songs produced at the height of vernacular literary production in the Heian period (ca. 9—13 c.). Historically, fuhon have been regarded as peripheral to the contemporaneous literary milieu, predominantly overlooked as reflections of aural performance. I argue that this view misconstrues fuhon as texts composed orally, instead of as oral texts. Drawing upon an analysis of extant manuscripts and commentaries, I show that fuhon served as source texts for a variety of vernacular prose and poetic texts, including public and private anthologies, handbooks for poetic diction, and various literary compendia, underscoring their dynamic role in vernacular literary production at the time. The first part of this dissertation looks at kayō, the songs preserved in Heian period fuhon. Tracing the reception of fuhon as a repertoire of court songs to its modern reconceptualization as min’yō “folk songs” by early modern scholars, I argue that enduring notions of the rustic and primordial oral songs, in contrast to the refined waka poetic tradition came to define the corpus. Notions of kayō’s orality further distanced kayō from their physical texts, eroding the textuality of fuhon. Reconceptualizing fuhon as a genre of vernacular text, I explore the tripartite relationship between performance, textual representations of performance, and literary production, focusing on novel conceptions of reading and writing practices. The second half of the dissertation explores the notion of fuhon as literary intertexts of anthologies and prose works that include or reference kayō variants. I argue that fuhon were furthermore utilized in literature to connect performance events such as seasonal banquets within individual poetic compositions in texts like the Kokin wakashū and Kokin waka rokujō. The presence of interlinear commentaries, references to song variants from diverse texts, and inconsistent or missing musical notation, as well as the context of their production suggests that fuhon served primarily as textual projects. I argue that fuhon should be more aptly considered as commentaries or informal compilations designed predominantly for preservation and perusal, rather than performance-oriented compositions. Through a close study of Kokin wakashū and fuhon variants, chapter 2 show how the graphic arrangement, vocabulary, syntax, and grammar, in addition to the elimination of musical elements, were modified to reflect the requisites and aesthetics of the textual genre in which they were being inscribed. Chapter 3 concludes with an examination of the earliest extant fuhon manuscript, the Kinkafu “Scores for Zither Songs” (late 9—10 c.), revealing a complex series of intertextual, inter-melodic, and inter-genre relationships with songs from early court music repertoires that were included in the Kojiki “Record of Ancient Matters” (ca. 712) and Nihon shoki “Chronicles of Japan” (ca. 720). By interrogating the literary canon through the lens of fuhon and poetic inscription, this dissertation also critically examines the concept of the literary canon, arguing that canonical status has been reserved for standard written versions of the songs, overlooking those in songbooks with musical notation. Reevaluating fuhon as literary constructs sheds light on the broader implications of what is deemed canonical in Heian period literature. By repositioning songbooks as literary constructions, this study offers a fresh perspective on the complex interrelation of orality, literacy, and the literary canon in Heian period Japan.
Recommended Citation
Scanlon, James, "Reading Sonority: Heian Songbooks and the Japanese Poetic Tradition" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1368.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1368
