Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century

Front Cover
Columbia University Press, 1999 - Education - 1265 pages
Donald Keene employs his prodigious wealth of knowledge, critical insight, and narrative aplomb to guide readers through the first nine hundred years of Japanese literature--a period that not only defined the unique properties of Japanese prosody and prose but also produced some of its greatest works. Covering courtly fiction, Buddhist writings, war tales, diaries, poems, and more, Seeds in the Heart explores a vast and variegated treasury of writings. Detailed textual examinations of classic texts--from the Kojiki to The Tale of Genji, from The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon to Zeami's Nô plays--allow students, lay readers, and scholars a new understanding and enjoyment of this great literature.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
THE MIDDLE AGES
5
EARLY AND HEIAN LITERATURE
31
The Kojiki
33
Writings in Chinese or the Nara Period
62
The Manyōshu
85
Poetry and Prose in Chinese of the Early Heian Period
181
The Transition from the Manyōshū to the Kokinshū
218
Tales of Warfare
613
The Age of the Shin Kokinshū
643
Waka Poetry of the Kamakura and Muromachi Periods
699
Buddhist Writings of the Kamakura Period
749
Courtly Fiction of the Kamakura Period
789
Diaries of the Kamakura Period
825
Essays in Idleness
852
Medieval War Tales
868

The Kokinshū
245
Late Heian Collections of Waka Poetry
277
Late Heian Poetry and Prose in Chinese
341
Heian Diaries
358
The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon
412
The Beginnings of Fiction
433
The Tale of Genji
477
Courtly Fiction After The Tale of Genji
515
Mirrors of History
551
Tale Literature
568
Introduction
609
Renga
921
Diaries and Other Prose of the Muromachi Period
971
Nō and Kyōgen as Literature
999
Literature of the Five Mountains
1062
OtogiZōshi
1092
The Late Sixteenth Century
1129
Glossary
1176
Selected List of Translations into English
1184
Index
1189
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Donald Keene is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. He is the author of a multivolume history of Japanese literature, of which Seeds in the Heart is the first part, and at least thirty other books, including many translations from Japanese literature. He has received numerous honors in both the United States and Japan, and is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

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