Donald Keene Center Special Lecture Series: Heian Love: Domestic and Imported

April 28, 2005

Donald Keene Center Special Lecture Series
Heian Love: Domestic and Imported
Robert Borgen, Professor of History, University of California-Davis
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

Murasaki Shikibu would have us believe that, in Heian times, professors were a stodgy lot. Some of their literary output in Chinese, however, reveals that they could enjoy playful, albeit learned, erotic diversions. More remarkably, they chose to include such compositions in their anthologies of literary exemplars. This talk will introduce one example of Heian erotic writing in Chinese and attempt to place it in the context of both Chinese and Japanese literary traditions.