Altri umanesimi: ritorno ai classici e centralità dei sentimenti umani nel Settecento giapponese

This study aims at discussing how and in what measure some prominent authors of Japanese narrative prose (gesaku) addressed two different yet intertwined tendencies of the intellectual history of the eighteenth century: firstly, a rediscovery of the Japanese classical canon, not only as a source of information about the past, but also as a mirror of present times; and, secondly, the centrality of the discourse on human feelings and emotions in literature. These cultural elements were brought to public attention from different perspectives, in urban and provincial poetic circles, in para-philosophical teachings for the laypeople, such as the shingaku (Studies of the heart) schools, and, among intellectuals, within Confucian studies and kokugaku (National learning) schools. By comparing the literary production and some metaliterary assertions of figures spanning from the scientist-writers Hiraga Gennai (1728-1780) and Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) to Santō Kyōden (1761-1816), elements of a so-called humanism, in the broadest
sense, will be assessed and discussed in order to highlight common features and conflicting rhetorics.