Welcome to the portion of this website devoted to HEIAN WOMEN'S MEMOIRS for the Society for Asian Arts Lecture Fall 2005 Lecture Series

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The entire lecture series reading schedule is:

SEGMENT ONE -- JAPANESE POETRY
Session One (Oct 2): Poetry Reader 1-19
Session Two (Oct 9): Poetry Reader 20–end

SEGMENT TWO -- MEMOIRS BY ARISTOCRATIC WOMEN OF HEIAN JAPAN

Session Three (Oct 16): Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (entire)

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. Translated by Ivan Morris. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231073372. (***Note: The older editions of this book published by Penguin Press have exactly the same text but the page numbers differ.)

Session Four (Oct 23): Nijo's Confessions of Lady Nijo (entire)

Confessions of Lady Nijo. Translated by Karen Brazell. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804709300

SEGMENT THREE -- NOH DRAMA

Session Five (Oct 30): the plays 'Takasago,' 'Atsumori,' 'Kinuta' and 'Matsukaze'

Japanese No Dramas. Translated by Royall Tyler. Penguin Classics.
ISBN 0140445390

Session Six (Nov 13--note there is no class Nov 6): the plays 'Sekidera Komachi,' 'Funa Benkei' and 'Yamamba'

same source as above

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Handouts for Segment Two - Heian Women's Memoirs

Session Three: Sheet providing titles, authors, dates and English translation citations for the major Heian period memoirs

Session Three (*Warning: this is a somewhat large JPEG file--400K): Panel giving basic biographical information on Sei Shônagon, author of Pillow Book