"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 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. This text 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."--BOOK JACKET.