Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Medieval History
Episode: Matthieu Felt, "Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Description: Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recorded in the eighth-century texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki, changed in meaning and significance between 800 and 1800 CE. Generations of Japanese scholars and students have turned to these two texts and their creation myths to understand what it means to be Japanese and where Japan fits into the world order.As the shape and scale of the world explained by these myths changed, these myths evolved in turn. Over the course of the millennium covered in this stud...