Project MUSE®: Literary Imagination - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Literary Imagination.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 11 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: Literary ImaginationTWOProject MUSE®Literary Imagination1752-65661523-9012Latest articles in Literary Imagination. Feed provided by Project MUSE®“With the Soul of a Poet”: Lafcadio Hearn and G. S. Fraser on Japanese Volcanoes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986689
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Lafcadio Hearn’s role as a cultural mediator between Japan and the Anglophone world is now firmly established. His richly stylized prose, infused with Japanese folklore, landscapes, and spirituality, has long attracted international critical attention across the fields of literary and cultural studies.1 Yet comparatively little has been written about the reception of Hearn’s work in later English-language poetry, particularly his influence on twentieth-century poets who, like Hearn, were drawn to Japan not simply as a geographic setting but as an imaginative topos.2 One such figure is the Scottish poet and critic George Sutherland Fraser, whose engagement with Hearn has remained virtually unexamined. Fraser
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmall“With the Soul of a Poet”: Lafcadio Hearn and G. S. Fraser on Japanese Volcanoes2026-03-27text/htmlen-US“With the Soul of a Poet”: Lafcadio Hearn and G. S. Fraser on Japanese Volcanoes2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®609282026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Selections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: First Excerpt
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986690
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Sei Shōnagon served at the court of the Empress Teishi more than a thousand years ago, in an age when women dominated Japan’s literary world. The Pillow Book includes diary entries about Sei’s time in Teishi’s service, short essays on a wide variety of topics, and dozens of lists in which she catalogues her likes, her dislikes, and her observations of the world around her.As the first and perhaps never-again-equaled example of the Japanese essay form known as the zuihitsu, The Pillow Book stands as one of Japan’s enduring literary classics, rivalled in its influence only by the great novel The Tale of Genji, written by Sei’s acquaintance Murasaki Shikibu, also a lady-in-waiting, at the court of Teishi’s successor
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: First Excerpt2026-03-27text/htmlen-USSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: First Excerpt2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®116762026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Genji’s Ghosts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986692
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The eleventh-century Japanese masterpiece The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) features a number of what one might call “literal” ghosts: characters who die leaving some unfinished business in the world and come back to take care of it.1 Genji’s father, the Kiritsubo Emperor, who dies in Chapter Ten, appears as a ghost in Chapter Thirteen to admonish his successor to bring Genji back from exile.2 In Chapter Thirty-Six, a young man named Kashiwagi has an affair with one of Genji’s wives and subsequently dies, consumed by shame and dread. He later returns as a ghost to make sure his cherished flute is passed to the secret son that resulted from this adulterous affair.3 And, of course, in the world of The Tale of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallGenji’s Ghosts2026-03-27text/htmlen-USGenji’s Ghosts2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®926212026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Selected Tanka and Free Form Poems by Yosano Akiko
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986693
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A word on the translations: for the free form poems, my lineation and punctuation follows that of the original. For the tanka, however, I translate into whatever number of lines feels right for the particular poem, and indents sometimes vary as well. Similarities to the calligraphic practices of Japanese tanka poets, who unselfconsciously brush their tanka in a tremendous variety of lines and patterns, are intentional, and the next iteration will, hopefully, have more.Texts are based on Itsumi Kumi, ed., Tekkan Akiko Zenshū, Bensei shuppan, Vol. 3 (2002), Vol. 4 (2003), Vol. 5 (2003), Vol. 9 (2004), abbreviated as TAZ. Page references are, in the order of their appearance: 3:288, 3:291, 3:300, 3:305, 3:308, 3:316
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallSelected Tanka and Free Form Poems by Yosano Akiko2026-03-27text/htmlen-USSelected Tanka and Free Form Poems by Yosano Akiko2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®151252026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Sounding W. B. Yeats’s “Cuchulain Comforted”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986694
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For the most part, what critical attention “Cuchulain Comforted” has received has arisen from its position as outlier, as oddity. Uniquely for Yeats, it was written in terza rima, thereby earning itself a place in the chapter entitled “Rare Forms” in Helen Vendler’s study of his poetic structures; and, as we will see, it also possesses other formal features unique or unusual in Yeats’s oeuvre.1 Stranger still, all these innovations occurred in what was almost the last poem he wrote, composed as he lay dying in midwinter of 1939—Seamus Heaney called it “one of the greatest ever death-bed utterances.”2 Yeats himself recognised the poem’s distinctiveness in a letter, describing it—with reference to his previous
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallSounding W. B. Yeats’s “Cuchulain Comforted”2026-03-27text/htmlen-USSounding W. B. Yeats’s “Cuchulain Comforted”2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®444032026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Selections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Second Excerpt
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986695
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Things People Do That Other People Copy:Yawns.Having children.***Things to Be Wary Of:People with a bad reputation.That said, at least with such people you know where you stand. It’s the people everyone says good things about that you really have to watch out for.Travel by boat. I remember crossing the Inland Sea as a girl on the way to Suō Province where my father was sent to serve as governor. It was a bright sunny day and the surface of the sea gleamed smooth as a sheet of pale green silk stretched tight on the fulling block. The other girls and I wore our short skirts and helped the young men pump the oars while we all sang one song after another. We couldn’t have felt safer on the water. But then, just as I
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Second Excerpt2026-03-27text/htmlen-USSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Second Excerpt2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®142772026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Distant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986696
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For centuries, when Japanese poets sought to reflect on the seemingly inexhaustible energies that sustained their verse practice, they have sometimes turned to look out, whether in imagination or (far more rarely) with their own eyes, over Waka Bay (Waka no ura), a pliable poetic place name (utamakura) whose name suggests the “Bay of Japanese Poetry” (waka). The real Waka Bay is a picturesque salt marsh located down the coastline from modern Osaka, but over centuries of poetic practice the physical landscape became entangled with an idealized site for the exercise of the literary imagination. Poems written on, about, and near Waka Bay invariably look inward even as they “look across” (miwatasu) the vast landscape;
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallDistant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric2026-03-27text/htmlen-USDistant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®1339162026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Two Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986697
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It is said that the Jesuit missionary Urugan, a man of extraordinary vision, was able to perceive things hidden from the mortal eye. His followers, devout and resolute in their faith, held steadfastly to the belief that Urugan, through his piercing blue gaze, could behold the demons who ascended from the infernal depths of Hell to afflict humanity. For those who gathered to worship God at Nanban Temple, this belief was not mere superstition, but an article of ironclad faith. They regarded Urugan’s revelations as divine truths, surpassed only, perhaps, by the words of scripture.One account, written by a historian of the period whose name has been lost to history, tells of a dialogue between Urugan and Lord Oda
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallTwo Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa2026-03-27text/htmlen-USTwo Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®112012026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Selections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Third Excerpt
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986698
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One day, when I was speaking with some other ladies-in-waiting in her Majesty’s presence, it must have been something she said that led me to make the following confession. “Sometimes, when life seems nothing but a string of annoying and infuriating things and even the fires of hell seem preferable to another hour on earth, there is nothing like the crisp whiteness of ordinary writing paper to restore my spirits. A good quality brush, some white cardboard squares for writing poems, and some sturdy mulberry paper is all I need to go on living for a while longer. And if, to top it all off, I’m lucky enough to have a new straw mat to sit on while I write, one that’s finely and thickly woven, its border embroidered in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Third Excerpt2026-03-27text/htmlen-USSelections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon: Third Excerpt2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®92832026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986699
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Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927), born in Tokyo, Japan, was the author of more than 350 works of fiction and non-fiction, including Rashōmon, The Spider’s Thread, Hell Screen, Kappa, and In a Grove. Japan’s premier literary award for emerging writers, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.Janine Beichman is the author of several books on Japanese poets, including Embracing the Firebird, a biography of Yosano Akiko. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the PEN Heim Translation Fund, and is a winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. She has participated in poetry workshops with Maxine
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2026-03-27text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®61182026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27Letter from the Editor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986700
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The Japan issue of Literary Imagination came about by happenstance, or thanks to the zeitgeist; it was inspired by its editor’s perception, formed in casual conversation and by discussion online and in the press, that Japanese literature has returned to public awareness, having escaped the domain of specialists and imprinted itself on the consciousness of the age.For the most part, this interest has concentrated on what might be called Japanese modernism. Besides the ubiquitous Mishima (a perennial object of fascination, now cherished afresh by various niche online subcultures), his near-antitype, the nominally left-wing Osamu Dazai, has himself become the object of online cult, fed by new translations and reissues
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/888/image/coversmallLetter from the Editor2026-03-27text/htmlen-USLetter from the Editor2026-03-272026TWOProject MUSE®65802026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-03-27