The relationship between texts and the field of cultural heritage remains ill-defined. Although scholarship has long recognized the importance of textual practices in mediating cultural identity and memory, the emphasis heritage studies places on authentic, material traces downplays the unique impact of their creative transmission and appropriation. Focusing on the afterlives of written artifacts and the re-use of their textual contents, primarily within East Asia, Textual Heritage highlights how textual practices offer a lens for understanding questions of canonization, embodiment, and circulation. Through case studies ranging from Japanese court music to digital editions, this volume advances a theory of "humanistic heritage studies" that better understands the overlap between literary and heritage studies.

Autorentext

Edoardo Gerlini is Associate Professor of classical Japanese language and literature at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His recent publications include: "Textual Heritage Embodied: Entanglements of Tangible and Intangible in the Aoi no ue utaibon of the Hosho School of Noh" (Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture, 2022) and "Textual Heritage and Digital Archives - The Case of the Hyakugo Archive in Kyoto" (Open Research Europe, 2023). He is also co-editor of the volume, Koten wa isan ka? (Bensei, 2021).