World Within Walls - Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867 (Paperback, Revised)

The Tokagowa family ruled Japan in public peace and worldly isolation for over 250 years, from 1600 to 1867. During this whole time, Japanese writers inhabited a "world within walls," and Donald Keene, Professor of Japanese at Columbia, has written an encyclopedic history of their achievements - the first of three volumes on Japanese literature. With a sharp eye on the fate of literary forms and with abundant examples, Keene shows that, although isolated, Japanese writers were not timid and succeeded in shaking or exhausting most of their artistic traditions well before the cultural revolution that began in 1867. He traces Haikai poetry from its origins in humorous plebian verse to its classic but inert perfection, and waku poetry from a graceful, naturalistic form to a mode of private self-expression. He follows fiction from the witty proto-realism of the great novelist Saikaku to the whimsical, popular tales composed by almost every writer by 1850. And he describes the popular drama, which supplanted the aristocratic No theatre, as it develops into a vivid and affecting portrayal of social life which provoked government suppression in 1866. Readers unfamiliar with Japanese literature may find their comprehension taxed by the mountainous detail, but the handy glossary can help them arrive at the threshold of modern Japan prepared to enter its very different, unwalled world, which Keene will open in volume II. With masterly erudition and discernment, he has written here what is certain to be the standard guide to the literature of Tokagowa Japan. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Tokugawa family held the shogunate from 1603 to 1867, ruling Japan and keeping the island nation isolated from the rest of the world for more than 250 years. Donald Keene looks within the "walls" of isolation and meticulously chronicles the period's vast literary output, providing both lay readers and scholars with the definitive history of premodern Japanese literature.

"World Within Walls" spans the age in which Japanese literature began to reach a popular audience -- as opposed to the elite aristocratic readers to whom it had previously been confined. Keene comprehensively treats each of the new, popular genres that arose, including haiku, Kabuki, and the witty, urbane prose of the newly ascendant merchant class.

General

Imprint:	Columbia University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	October 1999
First published:	October 1999
Authors:	Donald Keene
Dimensions:	234 x 154 x 29mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	606
Edition:	Revised
ISBN-13:	978-0-231-11467-7
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century
LSN:	0-231-11467-2
Barcode:	9780231114677

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