The Tale of Genji A Visual Companion

EB: Princeton University Press. Very Good. 2018. Hardcover. Hardcover. 4to. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 2018. 288 pgs. Illustrated throughout. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in cloth with titles present to the spine. Boards lightly rubbed and worn. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid. An illustrated guide to one of the most enduring masterworks of world literature Written in the eleventh century by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji is a masterpiece of prose and poetry that is widely considered the world’s first novel. Melissa McCormick provides a unique companion to Murasaki’s tale that combines discussions of all fifty-four of its chapters with paintings and calligraphy from the Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums, the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist. In this book, the album’s colorful painting and calligraphy leaves are fully reproduced for the first time, followed by McCormick’s insightful essays that analyze the Genji story and the album’s unique combinations of word and image. This stunning compendium also includes English translations and Japanese transcriptions of the album’s calligraphy, enabling a holistic experience of the work for readers today. In an introduction to the volume, McCormick tells the fascinating stories of the individuals who created the Genji Album in the sixteenth century, from the famous court painter who executed the paintings and the aristocrats who brushed the calligraphy to the work’s warrior patrons and the poet-scholars who acted as their intermediaries. EB; 10.2 X 7.3 X 0.9 inches; 288 pages .