This course examines canonical literary works written in classical and sinitic Japanese (bungo and kanbun), including poetry, narrative, and theatre, produced from the Nara Period to the Edo Period (roughly 8th to 19th Centuries), with an emphasis on rhetoric, media, performance, reception history, canon formation and gender relations. Themes include: orality and literacy; masculine and feminine discourses; image and text; poetry and narrative; (auto)biography and fiction; intertextuality and authorship; the supernatural and realistic; establishment and resistance; and the centre and periphery. All readings will be in English.