For example, The Tale of Genji was written in the middle of the Heian era when a lot of different literary experimentation was going on, and it took time for it to be recognized.
Really? My impression had been that Genji was recognized almost immediately as one of the great works of Heian literature, based on the profusion of manuscripts prepared in Shikibu’s time, the countless imitators, the testimony of the Sarashina Nikki, the commentaries prepared not too long afterwards, and in particular, the very high regard of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the most important literary figures for centuries (I may be biased, since I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Teika), who worked on the manuscript.
I don’t think Teika’s work is great evidence since that’s about 150 years after Genji is written. The rest of your arguments though I think are strong: there’s way too much contemporaneous recognition of Genji to use it as an example of what I wanted it to do.
I was hoping I’d have some example from non-Western literature, I may now need to update to this sort of thing being a Western phenomenon.
Really? My impression had been that Genji was recognized almost immediately as one of the great works of Heian literature, based on the profusion of manuscripts prepared in Shikibu’s time, the countless imitators, the testimony of the Sarashina Nikki, the commentaries prepared not too long afterwards, and in particular, the very high regard of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the most important literary figures for centuries (I may be biased, since I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Teika), who worked on the manuscript.
I don’t think Teika’s work is great evidence since that’s about 150 years after Genji is written. The rest of your arguments though I think are strong: there’s way too much contemporaneous recognition of Genji to use it as an example of what I wanted it to do.
I was hoping I’d have some example from non-Western literature, I may now need to update to this sort of thing being a Western phenomenon.