Early Modern Japanese Literature and Culture

Harvard FAS

This course explores the literature of the Edo period, a time that saw the emergence of a dynamic market for popular literature, the rise of new dramatic forms such as kabuki and puppet theater, the heyday of comic linked verse and satirical poetry, striking innovations in travel writing and the essay, and radically new approaches to the literature of Japan’s past. Surveying a diverse range of prose, poetry, and drama, we will explore such relationships as those between text and image,…