Questions tagged [murasaki-shikibu]
Questions about the works of the Japanese novelist and poet Murasaki Shikibu (紫 式部) and her life as a writer. She is best known as the author of 'The Tale of Genji' (源氏物語, Genji monogatari). Use this tag with the tag [japanese-literature].
8
questions
2
votes
0answers
89 views
Need help in appreciating the significance of The Tale of Genji
While spending one complete year each on the study of Japanese and Chinese literature (in translation), it was a pleasure to experience the cultural differences among the Western body of writings and ...
3
votes
0answers
20 views
What is the nature of the differences between the Kawachi-bon and the Aobyoshi-bon lines of the Tale of Genji manuscripts?
The original manuscripts of The Tale of Genji no longer exist. Royall Tyler writes in the introduction to his translation (Penguin 2003, page xviiii) that by the 13th century, the manuscripts of the ...
4
votes
0answers
40 views
Buddhist interpretation of The Tale of Genji
The search for literary sources has been inspired largely by the
difficulty scholars have experienced in imagining that a work of the
magnitude of The Tale of Genji could have been created without ...
3
votes
0answers
30 views
What exactly does Murasaki Shikibu say about The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter?
Donald Keene comments:
[Murasaki Shikibu] dismissed as old-fashioned the kind of unreality present in The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter—the birth of a little girl inside a stalk of bamboo, or Kaguyahime’...
3
votes
0answers
38 views
Why did Waley choose to transcribe the titles of some chapters as opposed to translating them in The Tale of Genji?
Arthur Waley seems to be a champion, practitioner, and repeat offender of domesticating translation. This Q&A tells us his translation of Journey to the West significantly abridges the original ...
2
votes
0answers
24 views
Where in the Tale of Genji does it say Genji's affair offends Amaterasu?
From Doris Bargen, The Search for Things Past in the Genji monogatari:
The beginning of the Genji, as established by literary tradition, is
indeed deceptively matter-of-fact about events of grave ...
2
votes
0answers
26 views
What manuscript or manuscripts was the first printed edition of the Tale of Genji based on?
The original manuscript of the 11th-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji has been lost. According to the Wikipedia article Textual tradition of The Tale of Genji, "the number of manuscript ...
4
votes
1answer
585 views
Which English translation of The Tale of Genji is the most accurate yet readable?
The Tale of Genji was originally written in an archaic form of Japanese, and has been translated both into modern Japanese and into English multiple times. Wikipedia says "The first English ...
