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Abstract
This introductory chapter seeks to contextualize Sheldon Pollock’s seminal ideas about “cosmopolitan and vernacular” in history in a comparative global perspective that goes beyond just traditional East Asian literary cultures. To that end, it begins with a discussion of some of the pesky yet important terminological questions relevant to studying the language, writing, and literary culture in traditional “East Asia,” and argues against certain features of “sphere-speak” and “Sino-speak” (especially the term “Sinosphere”) before taking up working definitions of “cosmopolis,” “vernacular,” and offering a defense of the term “Sinographic Cosmopolis” as against just “Sinographic Sphere.” The remainder of the chapter attempts a comprehensive survey of the reception of Sheldon Pollock’s ideas across a variety of translocal cultures, beginning with South (and Southeast) and the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ that he famously christened, before moving on to Latinitas, the Persianate Cosmopolis, and the Babylonian Cosmopolis, all by way of prefacing an overview and critique of recent work on the histories of vernacularization and comparative literary culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of recent research in comparative and world literature that engages with Sheldon Pollock’s work and also provides brief synopses of the other chapters in the volume.
Abstract
This article examines an early-twentieth-century attempt to create a non-Latin phonographic script for the Vietnamese language. This alternative writing system, called “New Characters for the Nation’s Sounds,” or Quốc Âm Tân Tự, was created in rejection of the two major forms of written Vietnamese current in the early twentieth century: the Latin-based alphabet known as Quốc Ngữ, and the Sinograph-based morphosyllabary known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that the author of this alternative script was motivated by fears that participation in a broader cosmopolitan system would obliterate the Vietnamese language, and its perceived connection to a cosmological order first articulated by the classical East Asian sages. The mechanics of the script reveal the author’s hopes for the Vietnamese language as a repository for Vietnamese culture, while its preface expresses the fears that motivated the author to create it. The entire text thus provides a snapshot for the language ethics of late colonial Vietnam, as intellectuals wrestled with what they hoped Western civilization might teach them, alongside what they feared it might destroy.
Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between official historical works and popular works of historical fiction produced in the early Edo period. It examines passages from the biographical text Toyotomi Hideyoshi fu