World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867

Review
"A work... that is not only exhaustive but always readable and often amusing." -- New York Times Book Review


New York Times Book Review
A work . . . that is not only exhaustive but always readable and often amusing.


Review
A work . . . that is not only exhaustive but always readable and often amusing.


Book Description
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.


About the Author
Donald Keene is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. He is the author of a multivolume history of Japanese literature, of which World Within Walls is the second part, and more than thirty other books, including many translations from Japanese literature. He has received numerous honors in both the United States and Japan, and is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

Keene (Japanese literature, Columbia U.) provides both scholars and lay readers a history of the vast literary production during the 250 years in which the Tokugawa shoguns kept Japan isolated from the rest of the world. Literature began to reach a popular audience during that period, he says, and generated new genres such as haiku, kabuki, and witty urbane prose of the ascendent middle class. He has added a second paragraph to the 1978 original published by Holt, Reinhart, and Winston. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices