Position:
Associate Professor of Japanese; Fellow of The Queen's College
Faculty / College Address:
Oriental Institute / The Queen's College
Email:
jennifer.guest@orinst.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests:
Early to medieval Japanese literature, particularly kanbun; the reception of Chinese texts and knowledge in Japan; literary primers and commentaries; comparative perspectives on literary education, manuscript culture, and the transmission of classical languages; literacy studies; gender and women's literature; humour and wordplay in premodern Japanese literature
Current Projects:
- an article on the concepts of literacy, storytelling, and poetic language developed in medieval commentaries on the poetry anthology Wakan rōeishū (Japanese and Chinese-style Chanting Collection)
- an article on creative uses of kanbun knowledge in Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book
- a monograph examining Heian and medieval kanbun education (primers, commentaries, and their creative literary adaptations) with reference to questions of literacy, literary language, and cultural contact
Courses Taught:
- Classical Japanese language
- Classical Japanese literature (various subject and text options)
- participating lecturer in Premodern East Asia survey course
Recent Publications:
- Jieun Kiaer, Jennifer Guest, and Xiaofan Amy Li, Translation and Literature in East Asia: Between Visibility and Invisibility (Routledge, 2019)
- “Waka de kanbun o egakidasu – Nihon shoki, Mōgyū ni taisuru chūshakuteki waka no igi” (Portraying kanbun with waka: the significance of commentarial waka poems on the Nihon shoki and Mengqiu), in Kōno Kimiko, Wiebke Denecke et al. eds., Nihon -bun-gakushi, vol. 1: ‘Bun’ no kankyō – ‘bungaku’ izen (Benseisha Press, 2015)
- “Shingafu ryakui to Tō Mōgyū – “Shin gafu” no setsuwateki sokumen (Condensed Meaning of the New Ballads and Tang Child`s Treasury: Anecdotal Aspects of Bai Juyi`s “New Ballads”)", in Kōno Kimiko and Wiebke Denecke eds., Nihon ni okeru "bun" to "bungaku" (Benseisha Press, 2013)
