Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, East Asian Languages and Literatures

Classical literature does not live purely within the confines of its own pages, but lives on through its many afterlives, whether those are adaptations, parodies, allusions, etc., which become part of the history of the work and influence how readers interact with the text. At the present moment, manga about or containing classical literature are studied mainly as derivative adaptations or pedagogical tools rather than as texts in their own right contributing to the afterlife of the source text. Few scholars specialize in both classical literature and manga or comics, and as a result, there are very few studies that treat both the literary and visual aspects of the text with equal attention. Therefore, texts like Chihayafuru, a manga which incorporates classical Japanese poetry into its plot, have been overlooked despite their potential to contribute to the continuing legacy of the source text while also creating a separate and unique narrative. I aim to address this gap by providing a case study applying the techniques of close reading from classical literature and multimodal (visual and linguistic) analysis from comics studies to Chihayafuru; by combining the two, I examine the interplay of word and image and how it affects the reading of the manga itself as well as the interpretation of the source text. My findings indicate that through manga, poetry interpretation can be accessed through multiple modes, often working in tandem, and education about classical poetry is attainable without explicit instruction or even an educational aim. Readers do not learn only when they are cognizant of being taught, and indeed the ways in which Chihayafuru educates readers encourage an emotional connection to classical poetry over an academic one. Further, manga like Chihayafuru provide an important function that many other approaches to interpreting and engaging with classical literature do not: it provides a model for how readers can and should interact with the source tex (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Naomi Fukumori (Advisor); Charles Quinn (Committee Member); Frederick Aldama (Committee Member); Shelley Quinn (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Literature