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Back to Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan by The University of Tokyo

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727 ratings

About the Course

In their ambition to capture “real life,” Japanese painters, poets, novelists and photographers of the nineteenth century collaborated in ways seldom explored by their European contemporaries. This course offers learners the chance to encounter and appreciate behavior, moral standards and some of the material conditions surrounding Japanese artists in the nineteenth century, in order to renew our assumptions about what artistic “realism” is and what it meant. Learners will walk away with a clear understanding of how society and the individual were conceived of and represented in early modern Japan. Unlike contemporary western art forms, which acknowledge their common debt as “sister arts” but remain divided by genre and discourse, Japanese visual and literary culture tended to combine, producing literary texts inspired by visual images, and visual images which would then be inscribed with poems and prose. Noticing and being able to interpret this indivisibility of visual/literary cultures is essential in understanding the social and psychological values embedded within the beauty of Japanese art....

Top reviews

JA

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i loved it! it was very detailed in terms of historical literature and photographic culture and the narrator really explained everything very well.

MK

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Robert Cambell is clearly knowledgeable and very motivated to share his knowledge to others. Sometimes he deviates from his main topic and that makes it difficult to keep track of his main point.

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226 - 230 of 230 Reviews for Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan

By Kellan M

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Mar 31, 2020

Very interesting subject for those interested in art of the world.

By Vivek S

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Aug 13, 2020

A nice course on the literary prowess of 19th century Japan.

By Mihika R

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Aug 31, 2022

I enjoyed it a lot

By 阮梦曲

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Apr 24, 2023

The course material is excellent, but I would appreciate more resources to further explore the continuation of the 19th and 20th century spirit in contemporary Japanese works. Although the content covered in the course is informative, it seems somewhat limited in scope.

Also, would it be possible to provide the Japanese text? I would like access to reading materials in Japanese that include terms such as 'kimono' with their corresponding hiragana and katakana notation.

By Caroline H

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Jan 24, 2018

It was a surprise to see a course on this topic. At first I found the central premise fascinating, but would have preferred more conciseness in the lectures and a wider variety of assessment tasks. For instance, why not have students analyse some images themselves?