The Renewal of Song

‘Literature begins. . . in lexically meaningless sounds and comes into being as lyric. . . The primacy of lyric in the emergence of literature confirms its role as the originative or foundation genre. . . [this] explains why that genre is especially important to consideration of literary rupture, endurance and renovation’—Earl Miner. With this bold bid for the primacy of lyric, Miner inaugurates an unusual volume which traverses the globe in its study of this vital cultural form. Lyric sustains by renewal. Some renewal comes from within, when a culture surges ahead, some again when a culture clashes with another culture. This book narrates both. The impulse for this volume comes from a telling insight that ‘in issues of what has come to be known as Orientalism, the truly important subject is not the guilt of imperialists and their counterparts but the literatures ruptured. . . restriction of attention to guilty imperialism, eurocentricism and Orientalism still makes the west the subject. . . It is time to attend to other writers, other language, other canons and other conceptions of literature. . . we need to relocate the centre of interest to the scene of offence and to know the pre-colonial literatures ruptured by European incursion.’ Distinctive for its variety of approach, this volume features a truly international and multicultural authorship, and encompasses an extraordinary range of lyric conception and practise—Chinese, Greek, Indian, Japanese and Korean. Earl Miner is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a past president of the International Comparative Literature Association. Founder chairman of the Committee on Intercultural Studies, he has taught, amongst other places, at Williams College, and UCLA. He has been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government for his promotion of Japanese culture. Amiya Dev was Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University and vice-chancellor of Vidyasagar University. He is vice-president of the International Comparative Literature Association, and has played a key role in developing the principal texts of Comparative Literature in India.