Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146582
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists have become recognizable cultural icons through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to each vibrant performance genre, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing.
Wondrous Brutal Fictions
Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146582
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists have become recognizable cultural icons through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to each vibrant performance genre, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231146582
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists have become recognizable cultural icons through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to each vibrant performance genre, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing.
Wondrous Brutal Fictions
Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518331
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Wondrous Brutal Fictions presents eight seminal works from the seventeenth-century Japanese sekkyo and ko-joruri puppet theaters, many translated into English for the first time. Both poignant and disturbing, they range from stories of cruelty and brutality to tales of love, charity, and outstanding filial devotion, representing the best of early Edo-period literary and performance traditions and acting as important precursors to the Bunraku and Kabuki styles of theater. As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists are cultural icons, recognizable through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to these vibrant performance genres, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing in their spread. He also details six major sekkyo chanters and their playbooks, filling a crucial scholarly gap in early Edo-period theater. More than fifty reproductions of mostly seventeenth-century woodblock illustrations offer rich, visual foundations for the critical introduction and translated tales. Ideal for students and scholars of medieval and early modern Japanese literature, theater, and Buddhism, this collection provides an unprecedented encounter with popular Buddhist drama and its far-reaching impact on literature and culture.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518331
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Wondrous Brutal Fictions presents eight seminal works from the seventeenth-century Japanese sekkyo and ko-joruri puppet theaters, many translated into English for the first time. Both poignant and disturbing, they range from stories of cruelty and brutality to tales of love, charity, and outstanding filial devotion, representing the best of early Edo-period literary and performance traditions and acting as important precursors to the Bunraku and Kabuki styles of theater. As works of Buddhist fiction, these texts relate the histories and miracles of particular buddhas, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Many of their protagonists are cultural icons, recognizable through their representation in later works of Japanese drama, fiction, and film. The collection includes such sekkyo "sermon-ballad" classics as Sansho Dayu, Karukaya, and Oguri, as well as the "old joruri" plays Goo-no-hime and Amida's Riven Breast. R. Keller Kimbrough provides a critical introduction to these vibrant performance genres, emphasizing the role of seventeenth-century publishing in their spread. He also details six major sekkyo chanters and their playbooks, filling a crucial scholarly gap in early Edo-period theater. More than fifty reproductions of mostly seventeenth-century woodblock illustrations offer rich, visual foundations for the critical introduction and translated tales. Ideal for students and scholars of medieval and early modern Japanese literature, theater, and Buddhism, this collection provides an unprecedented encounter with popular Buddhist drama and its far-reaching impact on literature and culture.
Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku
Author: David J. Gundry
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004344314
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
The first monograph published in English on Ihara Saikaku’s fiction, David J. Gundry’s lucid, compelling study examines the tension reflected in key works by Edo-period Japan’s leading writer of ‘floating world’ literature between the official societal hierarchy dictated by the Tokugawa shogunate’s hereditary status-group system and the era’s de facto, fluid, wealth-based social hierarchy. The book’s nuanced, theoretically engaged explorations of Saikaku’s narratives’ uses of irony and parody demonstrate how these often function to undermine their own narrators' intermittent moralizing. Gundry also analyzes these texts’ depiction of the fleeting pleasures of love, sex, wealth and consumerism as Buddhistic object lessons in the illusory nature of phenomenal reality, the mastery of which leads to a sort of enlightenment.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004344314
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
The first monograph published in English on Ihara Saikaku’s fiction, David J. Gundry’s lucid, compelling study examines the tension reflected in key works by Edo-period Japan’s leading writer of ‘floating world’ literature between the official societal hierarchy dictated by the Tokugawa shogunate’s hereditary status-group system and the era’s de facto, fluid, wealth-based social hierarchy. The book’s nuanced, theoretically engaged explorations of Saikaku’s narratives’ uses of irony and parody demonstrate how these often function to undermine their own narrators' intermittent moralizing. Gundry also analyzes these texts’ depiction of the fleeting pleasures of love, sex, wealth and consumerism as Buddhistic object lessons in the illusory nature of phenomenal reality, the mastery of which leads to a sort of enlightenment.
Goze
Author: Gerald Groemer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190499818
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the countryside as professional singers. An integral part of rural musical culture, the goze sang unique narratives of their own making and a significant repertory of popular ballads and short songs. Goze activities peaked in the nineteenth century, and some women continued to tour well into the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze lived until 2005. In Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan, Gerald Groemer examines the way of life, institutions, and songs of these itinerant performers. Groemer shows that the solidarity and success goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze's desire for a degree of social and economic autonomy with the audience's wish to mitigate the cultural deprivation it so often experienced. Goze recognized audiences as a stimulus for developing repertories and careers; the public in turn recognized goze as masterful artisans who acted as powerful agents of widespread cultural development. As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190499818
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the countryside as professional singers. An integral part of rural musical culture, the goze sang unique narratives of their own making and a significant repertory of popular ballads and short songs. Goze activities peaked in the nineteenth century, and some women continued to tour well into the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze lived until 2005. In Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan, Gerald Groemer examines the way of life, institutions, and songs of these itinerant performers. Groemer shows that the solidarity and success goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze's desire for a degree of social and economic autonomy with the audience's wish to mitigate the cultural deprivation it so often experienced. Goze recognized audiences as a stimulus for developing repertories and careers; the public in turn recognized goze as masterful artisans who acted as powerful agents of widespread cultural development. As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.
Buddhisms in Asia
Author: Nicholas S. Brasovan
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438475853
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Book Description
A guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. Over its long history, Buddhism has never been a simple monolithic phenomenon, but rather a complex living tradition—or better, a family of traditions—continually shaped by and shaping a vast array of social, economic, political, literary, and aesthetic contexts across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Written by undergraduate educators, Buddhisms in Asia offers a guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. It introduces fundamental yet often underrepresented Buddhist texts, concepts, and material in their historical contexts; presents the major “ecologies” of Buddhist belief, practice, and cultural expression; and provides methodological insights regarding how best to infuse Buddhist content into undergraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences. The text aims to represent “Buddhisms” by approaching the subject from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, including art history, anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and pedagogy. “I teach an introductory course on Buddhism on a regular basis, and every single chapter of this book gave me ideas for materials I could incorporate, new modules I might develop, and/or better ways I might organize and present existing content to students. I think that the book will be particularly useful to educators in Asian studies who are not themselves specialized in areas of Buddhism or religion. The collection gives them the information on Buddhist philosophy, doctrine, and practice that they would need to better incorporate the role of Buddhism into classes on Asian culture, history, society, and politics.” — Leah Kalmanson, coeditor of Buddhist Responses to Globalization
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438475853
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Book Description
A guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. Over its long history, Buddhism has never been a simple monolithic phenomenon, but rather a complex living tradition—or better, a family of traditions—continually shaped by and shaping a vast array of social, economic, political, literary, and aesthetic contexts across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Written by undergraduate educators, Buddhisms in Asia offers a guide to Buddhism’s rich variety of traditions and cultural expressions for educators who would like to include Buddhism in their undergraduate courses. It introduces fundamental yet often underrepresented Buddhist texts, concepts, and material in their historical contexts; presents the major “ecologies” of Buddhist belief, practice, and cultural expression; and provides methodological insights regarding how best to infuse Buddhist content into undergraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences. The text aims to represent “Buddhisms” by approaching the subject from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, including art history, anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and pedagogy. “I teach an introductory course on Buddhism on a regular basis, and every single chapter of this book gave me ideas for materials I could incorporate, new modules I might develop, and/or better ways I might organize and present existing content to students. I think that the book will be particularly useful to educators in Asian studies who are not themselves specialized in areas of Buddhism or religion. The collection gives them the information on Buddhist philosophy, doctrine, and practice that they would need to better incorporate the role of Buddhism into classes on Asian culture, history, society, and politics.” — Leah Kalmanson, coeditor of Buddhist Responses to Globalization
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Author: Junot Díaz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594483299
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594483299
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess
Author: Roberta Strippoli
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004356320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess explores the story of the dancers Giō and Hotoke, which first appeared in the fourteenth-century narrative Tale of the Heike. The story of the two love rivals is one of loss, female solidarity, and Buddhist salvation. Since its first appearance, it has inspired a stream of fiction, theatrical plays, and visual art works. These heroines have become the subjects of lavishly illustrated hand scrolls, ghosts on the noh stage, and Buddhist and Shinto goddesses. Physical monuments have been built to honor their memories; they are emblems of local pride and centerpieces of shared identity. Two beloved characters in the Japanese literary imagination, Giō and Hotoke are also models that have instructed generations of women on how to survive in a male-dominated world.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004356320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess explores the story of the dancers Giō and Hotoke, which first appeared in the fourteenth-century narrative Tale of the Heike. The story of the two love rivals is one of loss, female solidarity, and Buddhist salvation. Since its first appearance, it has inspired a stream of fiction, theatrical plays, and visual art works. These heroines have become the subjects of lavishly illustrated hand scrolls, ghosts on the noh stage, and Buddhist and Shinto goddesses. Physical monuments have been built to honor their memories; they are emblems of local pride and centerpieces of shared identity. Two beloved characters in the Japanese literary imagination, Giō and Hotoke are also models that have instructed generations of women on how to survive in a male-dominated world.
Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds
Author: Keller Kimbrough
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545509
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds is a collection of twenty-five medieval Japanese tales of border crossings and the fantastic, featuring demons, samurai, talking animals, amorous plants, and journeys to supernatural realms. The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan. These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative—court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples––joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, “Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds,” “Buddhist Tales,” and “Interspecies Affairs.” Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545509
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds is a collection of twenty-five medieval Japanese tales of border crossings and the fantastic, featuring demons, samurai, talking animals, amorous plants, and journeys to supernatural realms. The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan. These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative—court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples––joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, “Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds,” “Buddhist Tales,” and “Interspecies Affairs.” Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.
The Tokugawa World
Author: Gary P. Leupp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000427331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1199
Book Description
With over 60 contributions, The Tokugawa World presents the latest scholarship on early modern Japan from an international team of specialists in a volume that is unmatched in its breadth and scope. In its early modern period, under the Tokugawa shoguns, Japan was a world apart. For over two centuries the shogun’s subjects were forbidden to travel abroad and few outsiders were admitted. Yet in this period, Japan evolved as a nascent capitalist society that could rapidly adjust to its incorporation into the world system after its forced "opening" in the 1850s. The Tokugawa World demonstrates how Japan’s early modern society took shape and evolved: a world of low and high cultures, comic books and Confucian academies, soba restaurants and imperial music recitals, rigid enforcement of social hierarchy yet also ongoing resistance to class oppression. A world of outcasts, puppeteers, herbal doctors, samurai officials, businesswomen, scientists, scholars, blind lutenists, peasant rebels, tea-masters, sumo wrestlers, and wage workers. Covering a variety of features of the Tokugawa world including the physical landscape, economy, art and literature, religion and thought, and education and science, this volume is essential reading for all students and scholars of early modern Japan.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000427331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1199
Book Description
With over 60 contributions, The Tokugawa World presents the latest scholarship on early modern Japan from an international team of specialists in a volume that is unmatched in its breadth and scope. In its early modern period, under the Tokugawa shoguns, Japan was a world apart. For over two centuries the shogun’s subjects were forbidden to travel abroad and few outsiders were admitted. Yet in this period, Japan evolved as a nascent capitalist society that could rapidly adjust to its incorporation into the world system after its forced "opening" in the 1850s. The Tokugawa World demonstrates how Japan’s early modern society took shape and evolved: a world of low and high cultures, comic books and Confucian academies, soba restaurants and imperial music recitals, rigid enforcement of social hierarchy yet also ongoing resistance to class oppression. A world of outcasts, puppeteers, herbal doctors, samurai officials, businesswomen, scientists, scholars, blind lutenists, peasant rebels, tea-masters, sumo wrestlers, and wage workers. Covering a variety of features of the Tokugawa world including the physical landscape, economy, art and literature, religion and thought, and education and science, this volume is essential reading for all students and scholars of early modern Japan.
Pleasure in Profit
Author: Laura Moretti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023155205X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose. In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023155205X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose. In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.