Submerged Literature in China

The present essay is divided into two parts: in the first part I introduce the notion of writing in traditional China along with its linguistic and cultural significance, showing the particular relationship between orality and literacy and the absolute predominance of written culture as the authoritative expression of the culture of the literati; in the second, I focus on funerary inscriptions and their role as ‘submerged’ literature in a very literal sense of the word, as well as on their ‘emergence’ as both literary pieces and refined artifacts in the world of the living. By so doing, not only do I attempt to present the value of non-official documentation in the study of traditional China, but I also aim to assess the unique role of epigraphic data as the reflection of a wider cultural world that is not thoroughly attested in traditional historiography and literature.