Unbinding the Pillow Book - the Many Lives of a Japanese Classic

An eleventh-century classic, __The Pillow Book__ of Sei Shōnagon is frequently paired with __The Tale of Genji__ as one of the most important works in the Japanese canon. Yet it has also been marginalized within Japanese literature for reasons including the gender of its author, the work’s complex textual history, and its thematic and stylistic depth. In __Unbinding The Pillow Book__, Gergana Ivanova offers a reception history of __The Pillow Book__ and its author from the seventeenth century to the present that shows how various ideologies have influenced the text and shaped interactions among its different versions. Ivanova examines how and why __The Pillow Book__ has been read over the centuries, placing it in the multiple contexts in which it has been rewritten, including women’s education, literary scholarship, popular culture, “pleasure quarters,” and the formation of the modern nation-state. Drawing on scholarly commentaries, erotic parodies, instruction manuals for women, high school textbooks, and comic books, she considers its outsized role in ideas about Japanese women writers. Ultimately, Ivanova argues for engaging the work’s plurality in order to achieve a clearer understanding of __The Pillow Book__ and the importance it has held for generations of readers, rather than limiting it to a definitive version or singular meaning. The first book-length study in English of the reception history of Sei Shōnagon, __Unbinding The Pillow Book__ sheds new light on the construction of gender and sexuality, how women’s writing has been used to create readerships, and why ancient texts continue to play vibrant roles in contemporary cultural production. Gergana Ivanova explores how The Pillow Book and its author have been read from the seventeenth century to the present. She shows how various ideologies have influenced the text and shaped interactions among its different versions, in the first book-length study in English of the reception history of Sei Shonagon.