Life And Literature

This volume contains a third selection from the lectures which Lafcadio Hearn delivered at the University of Tokyo between 1896 and 1902. An account of these lectures and of the remarkable student notes in which they were preserved, is given in the Introductions to the first selection, Interpretations of Literature, 1915, and to the second selection, Appreciations of Poetry, 1916. It should be said again, for the information of those who may read this present volume without acquaintance with the others, that Lafcadio Hearn lectured very slowly, choosing simple words and constructions, in order to make the foreign language as easy as possible to his Japanese students; and some of his students managed to take down many of his lectures word for word. From their notes the only record we have of Lafcadio Hearn the teacher the present volume, like its predecessors, is selected. It is unnecessary to speak again of the service Lafcadio Hearn rendered to the West by his interpretations of Japan, nor of the service he rendered to the East in these lectures on Western literature. The editor would call attention once more, however, to the extraordinary quality of these lectures simply as literary criticism. Had they been addressed to an American audience, they would not have suggested, as they now do, the lonely and romantic adventure of Western culture in the Japanese classroom; but they would still have deserved our attention as one of the finest illustrations certainly the illustration on the largest scale in English of that kind of criticism which tries to interpret rather than to pass sentence.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest