Kokinshu - Helen Craig McCullough (essay date 1985)
Helen Craig McCullough (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "Kokinshu as Literary Entity" in Brocade by Night: "Kokin Wakashu" and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 421-93.
[In the following excerpt taken from her important critical work on the Kokinshu, McCullough reviews all the books that comprise the anthology, particularly their topics, transitions, and arrangement.]
Introduction
Tsurayuki and his colleagues undoubtedly viewed their imperial commission as a mandate to advance beyond the modest accomplishments of their immediate predecessors, the compilers of Kudai waka and Shinsen man-'yōshū. As we have seen, they brought together far more poems by far more authors, covered a wider range of topics and themes, and worked diligently to achieve a better balance between the Chinese and Japanese poetic traditions in order to establish the waka as the...
[The entire page is 27852 words long]
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