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    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"
    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"
    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"
    Ebook59 pages35 minutes

    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Epics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Epics for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535839921
    A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"

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      A Study Guide for Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji" - Gale

      10

      The Tale of Genji

      Lady Murasaki Shikibu

      C. 1000

      Introduction

      Murasaki Shikibu's long novel The Tale of Genji probes the psychological, romantic, and political workings of mid-Heian Japan. The novel earned Murasaki Shikibu notoriety even in the early eleventh century, some six hundred years before the printing press made it available to a wider audience. Individuals in the royal court, which served as the subject of the novel, sought out chapters. According to legend, ladies-in-waiting and courtiers even pilfered unrevised copies. Some thousand years later, the novel continues to delight an enthusiastic audience. Stamps, scrolls, comic books, museums, shower gels, movies, parades, puppet plays, CDs—all show that Murasaki Shikibu and her creation have achieved national treasure status in Japan and drawn global admiration.

      The tale spreads across four generations and is accented with poetry and romance and a heightened awareness to the fleeting quality of life. Murasaki Shikibu's tale explores a complex web of human and spiritual relationships, which makes the novel easily understandable to the modern reader. Many scholars consider The Tale of Genji to be the world's first great novel.

      Readers through the ages have especially admired the depiction of the Heian court society's aesthetic sense. Beauty—in flesh, flowers, sunsets, and musical notes—moved and influenced that society. The title character, Genji, flourishes in this atmosphere. He is a master of speech, poetry, music, manners, and dress.

      The Tale of Genji has had a pervasive influence on later Japanese and worldwide art. It has inspired Noh theater, waka poetry, scroll paintings, pop music, and dances. It has had an especially profound influence on Japanese literature. Court fiction for hundreds of years afterward openly modeled itself after The Tale of Genji. Modern writers, including Kawabata Yasunari in his 1968 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, still cite this novel as a great influence. Among several editions that appeared in the early 2000s is the 2010 paperback edition of Arthur Waley's popular translation, which was published in the Tuttle Classics in Japanese series.

      Author Biography

      Murasaki Shikibu wrote the long novel The Tale of Genji, a diary, a collection of short lyric poems, and assorted poems found only in anthologies commissioned by royalty. Otherwise, very little is known for certain about her life because Heian Japanese custom deemed it bad manners to record the names of well-born ladies. Much of her biography is gleaned from Murasaki Shikibu Diary and a set of autobiographical poems she left behind. She may have been born as early as 973, but possibly as many as five years later. She died some time between 1013 and 1031. Scholars believe that Murasaki Shikibu died around her fortieth year.

      Murasaki Shikibu was born in Kyoto. Her father, Fujiwara Tametoki, was a member of a minor branch of the nation's most powerful family and held a post in the Board of Rites. Murasaki, which literally means violet, probably refers to a character in the author's own novel. Before she began writing The Tale of Genji, Murasaki seemed to have been known as To Shikibu.

      Murasaki Shikibu's mother died when she was still a child. Her father was a well-known scholar, and other ancestors were accomplished poets. Murasaki Shikibu profited from her family's artistic and scholastic pedigree. She learned all the feminine arts that would have been expected of her, but, contrary to custom, she was educated alongside her brother and developed a command of Chinese and Japanese literature as well as Buddhist writings.

      Murasaki Shikibu married at about the age of twenty, but her husband died a year later. She had one daughter. Murasaki Shikibu probably began writing The Tale of Genji before 1005, when she was appointed lady-in-waiting to Shoshi, the consort of Emperor Ichijo.

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