Glossing Practice

This volume is a forceful demand to reorient our tools of investigation into objects of critical inquiry. The assembled essays—which range across granular microanalysis of individual texts; comparative juxtaposition of disparate eras, literary traditions, and methodologies; and the inductive positing of universals—together make a compelling case for comparative glossing as a vital new field of cross-disciplinary relevance. -- Brian Steininger, Princeton University Glosses may be small and insignificant to the eye, but for premodern readers they were the all-important keys that gave the reader access to books containing essential cultural knowledge. The linguistic and cultural practice of glossing was once widespread in East Asia, South Asia, Europe and elsewhere, and in this indispensable book, glosses at last get their first cross-cultural treatment in a range of stimulating essays that bring to life the glosses attached to texts in classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Latin and other languages. Glosses came into their own when written texts were alien, challenging or just plain difficult, but the global reach of this practice has hardly ever been addressed. Anybody working on knowledge transfer in premodern societies needs to understand how glosses worked to facilitate comprehension and render knowledge transfer possible and the essays in this book furnish cutting-edge research on the uses and functions of glosses. -- Peter Kornicki, University of Cambridge What is a gloss? Our language to talk about glosses and our thinking about them is fuzzy. Words added around a text or in between the lines are a universal practice in writing cultures across times and places, but they serve a multitude of purposes and take on as many shapes. In this book, the concept is thoroughly scrutinized, dissected into single components: functionalities, characteristics and typologies. Only then the real effort of comparing can take off and bring us truly new insights. And with that, this book breaks fresh ground. -- Mariken Teeuwen, Huygens Institute; Leiden University [The] editors are to be congratulated for the rich selection of stimulating papers they have brought together in Glossing Practice: Comparative Perspectives. It is to be hoped that the present volume will foster interest in the study of glossing traditions worldwide, whether taken in isolation in a first step or seen from a comparative perspective. * East Asian Publishing and Society *