Tibetan Literary Genres
We are currently working with multiple scholars on creating an outline of Tibetan literary genres, each item of which will be linked to a detailed description. In addition to working on this large nested hierarchical guide to Tibetan genres, we have published a Web version of Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by José Cabezón and Roger Jackson (through the generous permission of Snow Lion Publications). This work provides an initial core of rich essays on specific genres, to which we are now seeking additional contributions. In addition, we are filming exemplars of oral commentaries on these different genres by Tibetan scholars. These commentaries are then being translated, and directly connected to the literary texts using our QuillDriver-Savant software suite.
Ultimately, we then plan to use the hierarchy of literary genres as a front end to navigate short summaries, extended essays, textual excerpts, translations, and audio or video versions of oral commentaries on each genre.
Status: We currently have a provisional scheme for the different types of literary genres in the Literary Genres Encyclopedia. We have already published an e-version of Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre and its relatively simple set of genres as the first release of the project. Finally, we are currently editing and transcribing audio-video titles of oral commentaries. People are invited to view the titles, though we have not yet made available e-versions of the corresponding texts or transcripts.
• Provisional Genre List (authorized access only) • Current Audio-Video Collections