"Crossing the Bridge" is a collection of essays which compares strikingly similar women writers of Medieval Europe and Heian Japan. This study not only provides information on women and writing, but more importantly, it explores meaningful connections between these 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 of the works and authors examined in the book focus on the courtly aspects of medieval European and Heian culture in which art, literature, and, love are the highest pursuits. For both, living is itself art. "Crossing the Bridge" supplies instructors and students of world literature, women's studies, and medieval literature with essential, useful analysis in an area that previously has been the territory of specialists.

Preface by: T. Takamiya