Recasting the Past: An Early Modern Tales of Ise for Children
In
Recasting the Past: An Early Modern Tales of Ise for Children Laura Moretti recreates in image and text the unresearched 1766 picture-book
Ise fūryū: Utagaruta no hajimari (The Fashionable Ise: The Origins of Utagaruta). The introduction analyses
Utagaruta through a discussion of the textual scholarship relating to chapbooks and
kusazōshi. It also contextualizes this work to shed new light on the reception history of the canonical
Tales of Ise and to position
Utagaruta within the realm of children’s literature. This is followed by the full transcription and translation of
Utagaruta, with annotations to each image. Learned and visually rich, Moretti’s study permits the reader to enjoy the inventiveness and beauty of early modern Japanese literature.
Laura Moretti, PhD (2003), is Lecturer in Pre-modern Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge. She has published numerous articles on Japanese literature in English and Japanese with a research focus on early modern popular prose.
Undergraduate, graduate students and specialists concerned with early modern Japanese literature and the reception of
The Tales of Ise. All interested in textual scholarship, book history and children’s literature in general.