Tales of Times Now Past

Tales of Times Now Past PDF Author: Marian Ury
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520038646
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description

Tales of Times Now Past

Tales of Times Now Past PDF Author: Marian Ury
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520038646
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


Tales of Times Now Past

Tales of Times Now Past PDF Author: Marian Ury
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472902113
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Tales of Times Now Past is a translation of 62 outstanding tales freshly selected from Konjaku monogatari shu, a Japanese anthology dating from the early twelfth century. The original work, unique in world literature, contains more than one thousand systematically arranged tales from India, China, and Japan. It is the most important example of a genre of collections of brief tales which, because of their informality and unpretentious style, were neglected by Japanese critics until recent years but which are now acknowledged to be among the most significant prose literature of premodern Japan. “Konjaku” in particular has aroused the enthusiasm of such leading 20th-century writers as Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. The stories, with sources in both traditional lore and contemporary gossip, cover an astonishing range—homiletic, sentimental, terrifying, practical-minded, humorous, ribald. Their topics include the life of the Buddha, descriptions of Heaven and Hell, feats of warriors, craftsmen, and musicians, unsuspected vice, virtue, and ingenuity, and the ways and wiles of bandits, ogres, and proverbially greedy provincial governors, to name just a few. Composed perhaps a century after the refined, allusive, aristocratic Tale of Genji, Konjaku represents a masculine outlook and comparatively plebeian social orientation, standing in piquant contrast to the earlier masterpiece. The unknown compiler was interested less in exploring psychological subtleties than in presenting vivid portraits of human foibles and eccentricities. The stories in the present selection have been chosen to provide an idea of the scope and structure of the book as a whole, and also for their appeal to the modern reader. And the translation is based on the premise that the most faithful rendering is also the liveliest.

Traditional Japanese Literature

Traditional Japanese Literature PDF Author: Haruo Shirane
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231136976
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1292

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Book Description
Traditional Japanese Literature features a rich array of works dating from the very beginnings of the Japanese written language through the noted age of aristocratic court life into the period of warrior culture. The anthology contains new translations of such canonical texts as The Tales of the Heike and generous selections from Man'yoshu, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, and Kokinshu. It includes a stunning range of folk literature, war epics, poetry, and n? drama, and an impressive collection of dramatic, poetic, and fictional works from both elite and popular cultures. Also represented are religious and secular anecdotes, literary criticism, essays, and works written in Chinese by Japanese writers. Arranged by chronology and genre, the readings are carefully introduced and placed into a larger political, cultural, and literary context, and the extensive bibliographies offer further study. Intended as a companion to Columbia University Press's Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900, Traditional Japanese Literature significantly deepens our understanding of Japanese literature as well as of ancient, classical, and medieval Japanese culture.

Japanese Tales from Times Past

Japanese Tales from Times Past PDF Author:
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462917216
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This collection of translated tales is from the most famous work in all of Japanese classical literature--the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. This collection of traditional Japanese folklore is akin to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer or Dante's Inferno--powerfully entertaining tales that reveal striking aspects of the cultural psychology, fantasy, and creativity of medieval Japan--tales that still resonate with modern Japanese readers today. The ninety stories in this book are filled with keen psychological insights, wry sarcasm, and scarcely veiled criticisms of the clergy, nobles, and peasants alike--suggesting that there are, among all classes and peoples, similar failings of pride, vanity, superstition and greed--as well as aspirations toward higher moral goals. This is the largest collection in English of the Konjaku Monogatari Shu tales ever published in one volume. It presents the low life and the high life, the humble and the devout, the profane flirting, farting and fornicating of everyday men and women, as well as their yearning for the wisdom, transcendence and compassion that are all part and parcel of our shared humanity. Stories Include: The Grave of Chopsticks Robbers Come to a Temple and Steal Its Bell The Woman Fish Peddler at the Guardhouse Fish are Turned into the Lotus Sutra A Dragon is Caught by a Tengu Goblin The Monk Tojo Predicts the Fall of Shujaku Gate Wasps Attack a Spider in Revenge

Poems of the Five Mountains

Poems of the Five Mountains PDF Author: Marian Ury
Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
ISBN: 0472038370
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This second, revised edition of a pioneering volume, long out of print, presents translations of Japanese Zen poems on sorrow, old age, homesickness, the seasons, the ravages of time, solitude, the scenic beauty of the landscape of Japan, and monastic life. Composed by Japanese Zen monks who lived from the last quarter of the thirteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century, these poems represent a portion of the best of the writing called in Japanese gozan bungaku, “literature of the five mountains.” “Five mountains” or “five monasteries” refers to the system by which the Zen monasteries were hierarchically ordered and governed. For the monks in the monasteries, poetry functioned as a means not only of expressing religious convictions and personal feelings but also of communicating with others in a civilized and courteous fashion. Effacing barriers of time and space, the practice of Chinese poetry also made it possible for Japanese authors to feel at one with their Chinese counterparts and the great poets of antiquity. This was a time when Zen as an institution was being established and contact with the Chinese mainland becoming increasingly frequent—ten of the sixteen poets represented here visited China. Marian Ury has provided a short but substantial introduction to the Chinese poetry of Japanese gozan monasteries, and her translations of the poetry are masterful. Poems of the Five Mountains is an important work for anyone interested in Japanese literature, Chinese literature, East Asian Religion, and Zen Buddhism.

A Tale for the Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being PDF Author: Ruth Ozeki
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101606258
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 621

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Book Description
A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness Finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.” In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

True Tales of Old-time Kansas

True Tales of Old-time Kansas PDF Author: David Dary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
'Rollicking, adventurous, touching. Whether the reader invests only a few minutes at a time or finishes the book at one sitting, he is in for a lot of fun.' - American West'Fascinating tales set down succinctly and excitingly. There are stories of lost treasure and sudden riches, of outlaws and sheriffs, of massacres and heroics.' - Kansas City Times'A fun book. Where else but in the frontier West were such stories really lived?' - Richard Bartlett, author of Great Surveys of the American West and The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier

Tales of Heichū

Tales of Heichū PDF Author: Susan Downing Videen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684172756
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this book Susan traces the vicissitudes of Heichu's literary history. She translates the complete Heian Tales of Heichu, along with the subsequent setdsuwa stories, fabliaux, and modern fiction in which he appears.

Miracles of Book and Body

Miracles of Book and Body PDF Author: Charlotte Eubanks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520947894
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Miracles of Book and Body is the first book to explore the intersection of two key genres of sacred literature in medieval Japan: sutras, or sacred Buddhist texts, and setsuwa, or "explanatory tales," used in sermons and collected in written compilations. For most of East Asia, Buddhist sutras were written in classical Chinese and inaccessible to many devotees. How, then, did such devotees access these texts? Charlotte D. Eubanks argues that the medieval genre of "explanatory tales" illuminates the link between human body (devotee) and sacred text (sutra). Her highly original approach to understanding Buddhist textuality focuses on the sensual aspects of religious experience and also looks beyond Japan to explore pre-modern book history, practices of preaching, miracles of reading, and the Mahayana Buddhist "cult of the book."

Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan

Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan PDF Author: S. Horton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230607144
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
A study of the surprising functions of Buddhist statues, which helped disseminate Buddhist beliefs among the populace in Tenth- and Eleventh-century Japan. Using ethnographic data drawn from present-day fieldwork and marshalling ancient textual evidence, Horton reveals the historical origins and development of modern Japanese beliefs and practices.