Crossing the bridge

"Crossing the Bridge is a collection of essays that compares similar women writers of medieval Europe and Heian Japan. This study not only provides essential information on women and writing but, more important, it explores meaningful connections between two cultures. In both cultures, a combination of tensions involving language and genre created an opportunity for women writers. Taken together, the essays in this collection suggest the similar, and also strikingly dissimilar, strategies of women working within medieval courtly cultures to mitigate traditional patriarchal constraints. Many…