Japanese Program, Division of Languages and Literature, and Dean of the College Present
Constructing a Literary Identity:
Lady Ise and the Possibilities for Self-Expression in Classical Japanese Poetry
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Olin Humanities, Room 202
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Phuong Ngo, Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese,
Bard College
Classical Japanese poetry (waka), often considered to be the master genre of premodern Japanese literature, reached its first pinnacle during the early 10th century in Japan, when it regularly featured in the daily life of the court aristocrat as a form of elevated dialogue. Despite its limitations, waka, which was composed in the vernacular Japanese language, offered a unique opportunity for female poets to explore the possibilities for self-expression that used to be the privilege of male authors who wrote in classical Chinese. In this talk, I present my research on the pioneer female poet Lady Ise (ca. 875-938), demonstrating the strategies employed by her to navigate the highly predetermined and, in fact, contested terrain of waka, where the voices of past authors are a constant presence that simultaneously enrich and threaten to overwhelm the creation of new voices. I maintain that waka presents a particularly rich area of exploration due to its multivalence, straddling the boundary of gender and genre, thereby facilitating the female poet’s construction of her own space within the literary, social, and political landscape and allowing for a new mode of imagining and narrating the self.Bard College
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 202