The “Classics” as World Heritage?

h 15.45- 16.45 open talk: The “Classics” as World Heritage? Issues and Potentialities of “Textual Heritage” in East Asia and beyond

Speaker: Dr. Edoardo Gerlini, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow, Dept. of Asian and North African Studies / Waseda University
Respondent: Prof. Paolo Mastandrea, Dept. of Humanities
Moderatore:, Prof. Lorenzo Calvelli, Dept. of Humanities

What does it mean to apply the concept of “cultural heritage” to literary texts, especially to premodern texts? How is it possible to create the value of a literary work inside the theoretical framework of international organizations such as UNESCO or ICOMOS? What are the differences between masterpieces of World Literature and cultural items listed as World Heritage? What perspective of research could be imagined through a dialogue between the so-called “critical heritage studies” and more “traditional” disciplines having the text as principal object of investigation, like philology or history, but also those concerned with the “management” of the past, like archaeology or architecture?

Taking as a case-study the literary meta-discourse in Japan between the 8th and 10th centuries, this talk will show how the reuse and creative appropriation of “the past” – namely
the creation of the “Classics” and of literary canons – can be considered a perfect example of heritage making, a cultural process necessary and useful to the negotiation and consolidation of local, national and transregional identities, not only in the contemporary context, but also in a diachronic perspective of a “history of heritage” that is waiting to be written.

h 17.00: Textual heritage and the future of the Humanities in the XXI century: strategies and European projects
Meeting reserved to researchers and professors

09/16/2019