Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Japanese Literature cover art

Japanese Literature

By: Alan Tansman
Narrated by: Derek Shoales
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £8.99

Buy Now for £8.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Unveiling the Divine Feminine with Angela Voss cover art
Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry cover art
Encounter cover art
Simply Dirac cover art
The Men in My Life cover art
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict cover art
The Curtain cover art
Testaments Betrayed cover art
Asian Journals cover art
Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know cover art
The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature cover art
The Elizabethan Mind cover art
Where the Stress Falls cover art
I Am a Cat cover art
The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis cover art
Under the Sign of Saturn cover art

Summary

With a history stretching back nearly 1,500 years, written works originating from Japan encompass a vast range of forms and genres. Since the eighth century, poetry and the non-philosophical lyric voice have occupied a central position in Japanese cultural life. The art of narrative would soon follow, blossoming in the eleventh century with one of the world's great literary masterpieces, Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. Japanese literature later developed other genres no less important than poetry and narrative, among them the diary, the free-flowing essay, drama, the picture book, and the literary treatise.

While intensely attentive to its own tradition, Japanese literature has also embraced the outside world, particularly the influence of China. Beyond this, Japan boasts a powerful literary culture, made up of cultivated reading publics, both aristocratic and bourgeois, literary salons, specialized presses, authoritative judges of talent who cultivated and celebrated particular writers and styles, and a canon consisting of classics. A succinct introduction to one of the most dynamic and diverse world literatures, this Very Short Introduction traces the rich history of Japanese literature from its beginnings over a millennium ago to the present day.

©2023 Oxford University Press (P)2023 Tantor

What listeners say about Japanese Literature

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.