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Textual Heritage - (Explorations in Heritage Studies) by Edoardo Gerlini & Andrea Giolai (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- The relationship between texts and the field of cultural heritage remains ill-defined.
- About the Author: Andrea Giolai is Assistant Professor of Ethnography and Performing Arts of Japan at Leiden University.
- 336 Pages
- Social Science, Anthropology
- Series Name: Explorations in Heritage Studies
Description
Book Synopsis
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 Japanese linked verse, this volume advances a theory of "humanistic heritage studies" that better understands the overlap between literary and heritage studies.
Review Quotes
"This is potentially a groundbreaking publication as it is the first sustained attempt to promote the idea of 'textual heritage' as a separate category of heritage. It has long been felt that texts and their immense importance for cultural identities and long-term cultural memory have been left out of heritage studies as they do not belong to tangible nor intangible heritage as defined and practised by UNESCO." - Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark
About the Author
Andrea Giolai is Assistant Professor of Ethnography and Performing Arts of Japan at Leiden University. His ethnographic research focuses on Japanese courtly and ceremonial music (Gagaku), the reconstruction of ancient musical materials, and the relation between sound, loss, and environmental change. His research has been published in journals like Asian Anthropology (2019) and the Journal of Religion in Japan (2020), and in the edited collections, including the Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions (2021), Gagaku. The Cultural Impact of Japanese Ceremonial Music (De Gruyter 2025), and The Oxford Handbook of Ecomusicology (forthcoming).