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The medieval Buddhist poet-monk Tonna (1289–1372) was regarded as the leading poet of his day and a prominent scholar and critic. Despite his commoner status, he was assigned the task of acting as compiler for an imperial anthology of poetry and counted a number of prominent courtiers among his students and patrons. And yet his works, which remained required reading for virtually all serious poets in Japan for five hundred years after his death, have until recently received little scholarly attention in either Japan or the West. This anthology contains translations of 134 of Tonna's uta (the classical poetic form) and 16 linked verse couplets (renga) from his Grass Hut Collection and selections from a work of prose criticism, From a Frog at the Bottom of a Well, along with an introduction and explanatory notes, a glossary of important names and places, and a list of sources for the poems.
Price: $32.00
Pages: 208
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Series: Translations from the Asian Classics
Publication Date:
21 November 2002
ISBN: 9780231125536
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Asian / Japanese, LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian / Japanese
These translations seem beautifully precise and their number gives us the clearest profile yet of the neglected poet.
Steven D. Carter is professor of Japanese and chair of the department of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of California at Irvine. He is the author of Unforgotten Dreams, Waiting for the Wind, and The Road to Komatsubara, and editor of Traditional Japanese Poetry.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Poems
From A Frog at the Bottom of a Well: Selections
Glossary of Important Names and Places
Sources of the Poems
Index of First Lines