East Asian Lang & Literature 360 - TOPC: GENJI SCROLLS

This course focuses on the most revered work in the classical Japanese canon, The Tale of Genji (ca. 1010), written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting who served at the imperial court. Its importance in world literature is due in part to its sophisticated prose and rich psychological portraits, for which it has been lauded “the world’s first novel.” In addition to close reading of the tale in translation, we examine such topics as narrative perspective, gendered authorship and readership, sources of intertextuality, the poetics of voyeurism, and representations of gender from diverse critical perspectives. Attention is also given to the text’s special relationship to visual culture, focusing on readers’ reception and visual representation of the tale in the 12th-century Genji Scrolls. All readings are in English translation.