![]() ![]() While schooling meant the continental classics for men, who employed a form of Chinese to write poetry and record important matters, women of the aristocracy wrote largely in the vernacular, using a simplified syllabic writing system. The courtly Heian period was known for its women writers. ![]() The Pillow Book fits the literal sense of essay, reading like a series of trials in various styles and subjects, and evokes the essayistic feeling of close and unpredictable contact with the authorial world.įrom these pages we know what was considered unthinkable, vulgar, precious, and sane in her milieu. It was not until then that the essayist Ban Kōkei labeled it zuihitsu, the Japanese transcription of a Chinese word that means “following the brush,” the equivalent of “essay” in Japanese. ![]() Sei Shōnagon’s Makura no sōshi (The Pillow Book) is a hybrid work whose combination of narrative sketches, desultory reflections, and categorical lists was held in generic limbo, known by its author and title or simply as “book” from the time of its composition in the late 10th century to 1774. United architects – essays table of content all sites Sei Shōnagon ![]()
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