| The Tale of Saigyo: Volume 25 Contributor(s): McKinney, Meredith (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0939512831 ISBN-13: 9780939512836 Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies OUR PRICE: $14.80 Product Type: Paperback Published: January 1998 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Asian - General - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - General - History | Europe - Medieval |
| Dewey: 895.632 |
| LCCN: 97-25714 |
| Series: Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies |
| Physical Information: 0.4" H x 5.9" W x 9.1" (0.35 lbs) 104 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Medieval (500-1453) |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Tale of Saigyo is a poetic biography of the late Heian poet Saigyo (1118-90), one of the most loved and respected poets in Japanese literary history. Its anonymous author followed the venerable poem-tale tradition by using 128 of Saigyo's finest and best-known poems and weaving around them facts and legends about the poet. The result is a biographical journey through his life. Saigyo moves from the life of a brilliant and favored young poet at the Heian imperial court, through a Buddhist awakening that leads him to cast off his worldly life and family ties and to transform himself into a wandering monk in search of salvation, through the vicissitudes of his long hard life on the road, to a final apotheosis as Buddhist saint in his famous death. While The Tale of Saigyo is on one level the story of the making of a Buddhist saint, it is also a biography of the trials and sorrows of an idealized poetic sensibility during a tempestuous time that saw the death of the Heian period, the Genpei Wars, and the beginning of the turbulent Kamakura period. The moving portrait of the wandering poet-monk that emerges through this tale crystallized the image of Saigyo and is felt in such later literary figures as Basho, who acknowledged Saigyo as his model and master. |