Research Catalog

Title

Navigating narratives : Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary as history and fiction / Gustav Heldt.

Author

Heldt, Gustav

Publication

• Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center, 2024.
• ©2024

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Ki, Tsurayuki, -945 or 946.

Description

xvi, 401 pages : illustration; 24 cm.

Summary

"Drawing on both contemporaneous historical sources and modern literary criticism, Navigating Narratives offers unique insights into Heian Japan through a close reading of one of its most enigmatic and consequential texts. Named after the province once governed by its creator, Ki no Tsurayuki (d. 946), Tosa nikki (The Tosa Diary) purports to be the record of a voyage kept by an anonymous woman in the entourage of an ex-governor returning to the capital. This split between fictional narrator and historical author has usually led readers to place the diary in narratives privileging one of those two figures, with the result that Tosa nikki has been valued primarily as either the first Heian woman's memoir or the last aesthetic manifesto of a man whose writings shaped the Japanese poetic tradition for centuries afterward. Navigating Narratives attempts to steer away from the anachronistic assumptions and author-centric readings informing these accounts. By focusing instead on the diary's reception as a parody by its earliest readers, the book argues that it merits attention for the discursive practices, representational conventions, and non-elite social contexts it illuminates as the world's first short novelistic work of fiction."--

Series Statement

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 470

Uniform Title

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 470.

Subject

• Ki, Tsurayuki, -945 or 946
• Ki, Tsurayuki, -945 or 946 > Criticism and interpretation
• Tosa nikki (Ki, Tsurayuki)
• 794-1185
• Japanese diaries > Heian period, 794-1185 > History and criticism
• Japanese literature > Heian period, 794-1185 > History and criticism
• Japanese diaries > Heian period
• Japanese literature > Heian period
• Criticism and interpretation
• Japanese diaries
• Japanese literature

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Language (note)

• English; text of Tosa nikki in Japanese and English translation.

Contents

Part I. Diaristic Divergences -- Parody as Prologue -- Bitter Regrets -- Part II. Between History and Fiction -- Shipside Songs -- Liquid Landscapes -- Part III. More Than a Poem -- Narihira's Poem-Tellings -- Nakamaro's Cosmopolitanisms -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Tosa nikki : Translation and Text -- Appendix 2. Tsurayuki's Chronology.

Call Number

JFE 24-1384

ISBN

• 9780674295827
• 067429582X

LCCN

2023037233

OCLC

1396725687

Author

Heldt, Gustav, author.

Title

Navigating narratives : Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary as history and fiction / Gustav Heldt.

Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center, 2024.

Copyright Date

©2024

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 470

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 470.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Language

English; text of Tosa nikki in Japanese and English translation.

Chronological Term

794-1185

Added Author

Container of (expression): Ki, Tsurayuki, -945 or 946. Tosa nikki.

Container of (expression): Ki, Tsurayuki, -945 or 946. Tosa nikki. English (Heldt)

Research Call Number

JFE 24-1384