Research Catalog

Title

Flowering tales : women exorcising history in Heian Japan / Takeshi Watanabe.

Author

Watanabe, Takeshi, 1975-

Publication

• Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center ; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2020.
• ©2020

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 303 pages : illustrations (some color); 24 cm.

Summary

"Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough, but for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), the health of its eleventh-century community was at stake. Flowering Tales is the first extensive literary study of this historical tale that covers about a hundred-fifty years of births, deaths, and happenings of late Heian society, a golden age of court literature. Takeshi Watanabe contends that the blossoming of tale literature, marked by The Tale of Genji, inspired what he describes as Eiga's affective history: an exorcism of embittered spirits whose stories needed to be retold to ensure peace. Tracing narrative arcs of political marginalized personages, Watanabe shows how Eiga, adapting the discourse and strategies of The Tale of Genji, reconnected wayward ghosts into the community through figural genealogies that relied not on blood, but on literary resonances. These reverberations, highlighted through comparisons to contemporaneous accounts in courtiers' journals, echo through shared details in funerary practices, lack of political support, and characterization. Flowering Tales reanimates these voices to trouble conceptions of history: how it ought to be recounted, who got to record it, and why remembering mattered"--

Series Statement

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427

Uniform Title

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427.

Alternative Title

Women exorcising history in Heian Japan

Subject

• Eiga monogatari
• Historical fiction, Japanese > History and criticism
• Japanese fiction > Heian period, 794-1185 > History and criticism
• Women in literature
• Courts and courtiers in literature
• Historical fiction, Japanese
• Japanese fiction > Heian period

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction -- 1. The Genealogy of Eiga monogatari -- 2. The Buried Mothers of the Middle Regent's House -- 3. The Other Empress: Seishi and the Figural Genealogy -- 4. Fathers and Daughters as Spirit Possessions -- 5. The Sequel: Matching Change with Continuity -- Epilogue: The Sacred Mirror -- Glossary of Personages and Their Genealogies by Chapter.

Call Number

JFE 20-3316

ISBN

• 9780674244405
• 0674244400

LCCN

• 2019044016
• 40029637763

OCLC

1114423499

Author

Watanabe, Takeshi, 1975- author.

Title

Flowering tales : women exorcising history in Heian Japan / Takeshi Watanabe.

Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center ; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2020.

Copyright Date

©2020

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40029637763

Research Call Number

JFE 20-3316