Brill's Japanese Studies Library81- Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan

A bold new way of looking at literary antiquity. This book presents the thriving of classical Japanese poetry (waka) in courtly Japan as the collective achievement of a large cast of actors in different roles—poets, powerful patrons, a large and enthusiastic audience—all of whom were essential to waka’s success. Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Persiani’s book offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka’s rise. Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka.