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

Author: Donald Keene Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Culture: Japan Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780805043648 9780231114417 0805043640 0231114419

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 Shonagon to Zeami's No plays--allow students, lay readers, and scholars a new understanding and enjoyment of this great literature.