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


Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century
Title : Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0231114419
ISBN-10 : 9780231114417
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 1265
Publication : Published October 6, 1999

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 Sh�nagon to Zeami's N� plays--allow students, lay readers, and scholars a new understanding and enjoyment of this great literature.

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

  • Maria

    If you want to learn about Japanese literature, this book (and the rest of Keene's history) is a great place to start. It's like sitting down with your favorite professor over tea and having him tell you about his favorite works. Keene's natural prose is backed up with good scholarship and a lot of references, so if you want to continue in a line of study, it's very easy to branch out. Highly recommended.

  • Toros

    Thorough in its range of texts and the detail it pays them, this is the ultimate reference material for early Japanese lit. Thanks to the combination of a fascinating subject matter and Keene's natural prose, it's also wonderful rainy day reading material. I very highly recommend it.

  • Persephone Abbott

    It’s simply amazing what you think you must read when you are 29. Which was about when I bought this 1300 pager. I even fully intended to read the next volume. And twenty years later I finally get around to reading it, because I don’t want to pack it and move it again to a new house. Obviously a volume of great importance when learning about Japanese literature without being able to read Japanese. Not quite the page turner I had hoped for, I much rather just read the literature, albeit in translation, than a description of the literature but no matter, I did enjoy this read.

  • F B

    Best literature anthology ever made, reads like a book, makes you want to read the follow up.

  • Nora

    Unentbehrlich, wenn man sich einen Überblick über einen berühmten Text der Vormoderne verschaffen will. Gelegentlich sind die Einschätzungen von Keene über den Wert der Literatur geprägt entweder von westlichen Maßstäben oder den gängigen Meinungen japanischer Literaturwissenschaft. Wenn man über diese Einschätzungen hinweglesen kann: großartige Leistung, phantastisches Buch.