Any review of Wiebke Denecke's recent Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons must begin by celebrating the unique and groundbreaking contribution this book makes to cross-cultural studies. While the path of Sino-Hellenic comparison is by now comparatively well-trodden (by such authors as Stephen Shankman, Steven Durrant, Hyun Jin Kim, Zhou Yiqun, and myself, among others), and while comparisons between the empires of Rome and Han China have also been undertaken (notably in a collection of essays edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, as well as, in a very different way, in the scholarship of Tamara Chin), to my knowledge no one has previously attempted to write a book-length study comparing the reception of Greek literature in Rome with the reception of Chinese literature in Japan. The relationship of the two younger cultures to the older, “reference cultures” of Greece and China offers an intriguing field of comparison, built around systems and flows rather than around textual objects.

Given increasing interest in the comparative study of East and West, and in a world literature that more genuinely encompasses non-Western traditions, this publication is also undoubtedly timely. It is difficult to imagine, moreover, who other than Denecke could have undertaken this project, which calls for proficiency in four premodern languages, from three distinct language families, as well as for a breadth of familiarity and a sophistication of literary analysis within those four literatures. Comparative books such as these can, perhaps, intimidate the casual reader, familiar perhaps with one of the cultures studied, but not with them all. It would be a pity if Denecke's book were not widely read by Latinists and Japanologists, independently of a comparative interest in the other culture: the book has much to say to specialists on either side, whether through insightful close readings of texts, or through meta-disciplinary reflections on what (Western) Classicists and specialists in premodern East Asia can learn from each other. It is Denecke's conviction (one I profoundly share) that we are stronger as specialists when we absorb theoretical and methodological lessons from other specialties, and this book is an outstanding exemplar of how to do just that.

Denecke proceeds through what she terms a method of “catachresis,” of the borrowing of concepts from one culture for use in studying another, rather than what she calls the method of “ellipsis,” interrogating (necessarily futilely) why one culture lacks things commonly found in another (in one of the most frequent iterations of such a method, why early China does not have epic or metaphysics, for example). After a brief introduction and an opening chapter that reflects on the similarities and differences between the Japanese reception of China and the Roman reception of Greece, her book is organized into chapters exploring a series of themes through the lens of a major text or texts from each culture. These chapters (on the belatedness of literary culture as well as on literary ornamentation, city-building, capital cities, exile, satire, and “synoptic texts”) juxtapose Latin and Japanese texts in often unexpected ways: the chapter on “synoptic texts” (that is, on texts which themselves reflect on both the reference culture and the receiving culture), for example, confronts Plutarch's Parallel Lives (biographies of great Greek and Roman statesmen, written in pairs, with comparative essays evaluating the respective merits of both men) with the Newly Selected Collection of Myriad Leaves (Shinsen man'yōshū 新選万葉集), an anthology pairing waka poems with Sino-Japanese quatrains, compiled from 893 to 913 CE. The texts differ enormously in genre, style, audience, and function, yet their juxtaposition yields interesting insights into the ways in which such synoptic texts work (and suggest, to this reader at least, that Denecke's book itself might productively be understood as a synoptic text).

In selecting texts for comparison, Denecke is guided by several impulses: the desire to find texts that focus on the central theme of each chapter; a desire to represent a wide range of canonical and non-canonical texts; and even, in the case of Japan, a desire to rebalance the relative lack of attention received by Sino-Japanese, or kambun, texts in the larger scholarly tradition. Many of the comparisons are inspired and illuminating: that between the Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon and Roman love elegy, for example, or that between the exilic poetry of Ovid and of Sugawara no Michizane. At other times, the comparisons may seem a little strained: the comparison between The Sino-Japanese Poems on the Tale of Shining Genji and Martianus Capella's The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, for example—two not very well-known texts whose comparison therefore requires considerable setup. It might have been interesting to see how the book would have worked if some chapters had avoided the strict insistence on comparison; focusing, for example, on a theme found only, or predominantly, in one tradition. It might also have been interesting to see a more concerted focus on some major texts (such as Genji itself) that are felt frequently at the margins of Denecke's book, but are never discussed fully. All of the chapters offer illuminating insights into Japanese and Roman cultures individually and comparatively; not all seem to fit equally well the central thesis of the book, around the reception of reference cultures in those traditions. All of which is to say that this is an exciting and promising investigation of a topic in which interest is long overdue: it deserves to be read widely in a variety of disciplines, and to inspire further study in the area.