Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan

<p>In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose.\nIn the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.</p>

Literature & Fiction

Moretti, Laura

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

This book is the indispensable guide to the history of architecture in Venice, encompassing the city's fascinating variety of buildings from ancient times to the present day. Completely updated, this edition of Deborah Howard's classic volume, first published in 1980, is filled with splendid new illustrations. Howard writes in a highly accessible style, inviting those who visit Venice in person, armchair travelers, and all students of Venetian art and architecture to look more closely at the unique architecture of one of the world's most beautiful cities. Believed to have been founded by refugees at the fall of the Roman Empire, Venice became a semi-independent outpost of Byzantium and eventually an independent republic. The city flourished for centuries as a trading center between east and west, and its visual traditions were continually enriched by the exposure to outside influences. When the long-lasting republic fell to Napoleon in 1797, many attempts at modernization followed. Howard traces the entire evolution of Venice's architecture, placing special emphasis on the political, social, and economic framework that supported it. She highlights the achievements of such individual architects as Sansovino, Palladio, Longhena, Massari, and Selva. Throughout the book, the author stresses the visual qualities of the buildings themselves, enhancing our appreciation of individual structures built in Venice and providing a spectacular view of the city that inspired their creation.

The Architectural History of Venice (revised and enlarged edition)

Arts & Photography

Howard, Deborah

Architecture

Yale University Press

<p>While composers of sacred music in 16th-century Venice were devising increasingly complex choral polyphony, Venetian architects began to develop new configurations of sacred space. This fascinating book explores the direct relationship between architectural design and sacred music in Renaissance Venice. Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti combine historical research into the architectural and liturgical traditions of a dozen Venetian churches with the results of a parallel series of scientific surveys and live choral experiments of the acoustic properties of the chosen buildings.</p>

Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics

Music

In Recasting the Past: An Early Modern Tales of Ise for Children Laura Moretti recreates in image and text the unresearched 1766 picture-book Ise f ry: Utagaruta no hajimari (The Fashionable Ise: The Origins of Utagaruta). The introduction analyses Utagaruta through a discussion of the textual scholarship relating to chapbooks and kusaz shi. It also contextualizes this work to shed new light on the reception history of the canonical Tales of Ise and to position Utagaruta within the realm of children s literature. This is followed by the full transcription and translation of Utagaruta, with annotations to each image. Learned and visually rich, Moretti s study permits the reader to enjoy the inventiveness and beauty of early modern Japanese literature."

Recasting the Past: An Early Modern Tales of Ise for Children

Teen & Young Adult

BRILL

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Books by Moretti, Laura