Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.

Over the course of the “Genji monogatari” (“The Tale of Genji,” c. 1008) narrative, roughly fifty characters die. The eponymous hero’s arc starts with the passing of his mother and ends as he himself succumbs to grief at being parted from his beloved Murasaki; the subsequent ten chapters of the text are likewise marked by successive personal losses. However, while the “Genji’s” plot is consistently catalyzed through encounters with death, it would be a mistake to say that the tale is about death: instead, it is the highly aestheticized scenes of grief experienced privately and communally by its characters in the aftermath (and sometimes even in the anticipation) of their loved ones’ passing that motivate much of the action and narrative development. My dissertation project aims to analyze the intrinsic affective qualities of “Genji monogatari’s” portrayals of death and mourning. Although the text showcases Murasaki Shikibu’s skillful interweaving of Heian spiritual beliefs, social rituals, and funerary practices with classical literary tropes and the preexisting traditions in elegiac poetry, it also represents a significant departure and innovation vis-à-vis earlier and contemporary depictions of death. For one, it resurrects and reinvents the depiction of the corpse which all but disappeared from courtly literature, and expands the narrated experience of bereavement from the point of view of an isolated principal mourner to that of a larger emotional/affective community. What’s more, the narrative patterns and images it establishes early on continue to evolve over the span of the text itself. The “Genji’s” hallmark death scenes foreground the exquisite bodies of the dying or already dead—and almost exclusively female—subjects, laid out unobstructed to the discerning gaze of the male protagonists. As I will show through a thorough exploration of the poetic vocabulary and affective narrative structuring in situations dealing with grief and sorrow in these scenes, this has the effect of narratively minimizing the moment of death as a descriptive event and instead heralding an affective mode of storytelling that creates communal bonds between the bereaved characters, the narrator(s), and the readers. That said, as the plot progresses, subtle subversive changes start to emerge: the women in the first part of the tale, who remained beautiful but voiceless after frequently meeting sudden ends, give way to characters who anticipate and eventually even will their demise, and whose richer interiority offers insights on their mortality that can counterpoint the ensuing objectifying consumption of their bodies. This development consequently not only brings into question the larger meaning of death retrospectively throughout the entire text, but also allows us to glean Murasaki Shikibu’s own intratextual theorization on the affective and narrative functions of death, in addition to its wider literary potential.

O budismo, como o xintoísmo, é um dos alicerces religiosos da sociedade japonesa. Sua grande propagação no Japão dependeu muito da importação e enorme produção de imagens budistas que não se restringem apenas a representações do buda histórico. Por aproximadamente treze séculos, o estilo das estátuas búdicas passou por transformações que buscavam um estilo próprio japonês, atingindo o seu auge no período Heian (794~1185). Este trabalho é uma apresentação dessas transformações estilísticas e segue uma metodologia que visa a cercar o objeto \"escultura budista japonesa\" em todos os seus ângulos, a saber, abrangendo templos, técnicas e materiais, sua relação com a história do Japão, as doutrinas budista e xintoísta e a categoria das imagens. / Buddhism is one of the religious pillars of Japanese society together with Shintoism. The large Buddhist propagation on Japan depended very much on the importation and the big production of Buddhist statues which were not only representations of the historic Buddha. For about thirteen centuries, the statues style suffered changes that searched for a proper Japanese style and attained its peak on Heian period. This work is a presentation of those stylistics changes and follows a methodology that intends to approach the object \"Japanese Buddhist sculpture\" from all angles, which is to say, it comprehends temples, techniques and raw materials, its relation with Japanese history, Buddhist and Shintoist preachings and image categories.

Considerada ainda na antiguidade como a \"ancestral de todas as narrativas monogatari\", Taketori monogatari é a obra mais antiga de seu gênero. Escrita provavelmente entre os séculos IX e X, a narrativa conta a trajetória da personagem Kaguyahime, desde que foi encontrada pelo personagem que dá título à obra até a ocasião em que é levada de volta para o mundo de onde veio. Os acontecimentos que se desenrolam a partir da corte amorosa empreendida por cinco pretendentes que desejam se casar com ela ocupam considerável espaço na narrativa. Esse arco é considerado pelos estudiosos japoneses como exclusivo de Taketori monogatari, não constando em nenhum outro registro anterior da lenda. A partir desta hipótese e amparados pelo trabalho de Roland Barthes, propusemos uma reflexão sobre a construção do discurso pretensamente amoroso nessa parte em que se acredita vislumbrar o ineditismo da obra. / Regarded as \"the ancestor of all monogatari narratives\" since Classical Japan, Taketori monogatari is the most ancient piece of work in monogatari genre. Written probably between the 9th and 10th centuries, the narrative tells the story of Kaguyahime, from the moment she was found by the character whose name is in the title of the narrative until she is taken back to her homeland. The episodes starred by the five noble men who wish to marry her occupy the most of the narrative and are thought, by the Japanese scholars, to be exclusively Taketori monogatari author\'s creation. Considering the Japanese scholars\' view and supported by Roland Barthes\'s treatise on amorous discourse, we aimed to expose the way the discourse spoken by Kaguyahime and her suitors is built in those supposedly romantic episodes.

Considerada ainda na antiguidade como a \"ancestral de todas as narrativas monogatari\", Taketori monogatari é a obra mais antiga de seu gênero. Escrita provavelmente entre os séculos IX e X, a narrativa conta a trajetória da personagem Kaguyahime, desde que foi encontrada pelo personagem que dá título à obra até a ocasião em que é levada de volta para o mundo de onde veio. Os acontecimentos que se desenrolam a partir da corte amorosa empreendida por cinco pretendentes que desejam se casar com ela ocupam considerável espaço na narrativa. Esse arco é considerado pelos estudiosos japoneses como exclusivo de Taketori monogatari, não constando em nenhum outro registro anterior da lenda. A partir desta hipótese e amparados pelo trabalho de Roland Barthes, propusemos uma reflexão sobre a construção do discurso pretensamente amoroso nessa parte em que se acredita vislumbrar o ineditismo da obra. / Regarded as \"the ancestor of all monogatari narratives\" since Classical Japan, Taketori monogatari is the most ancient piece of work in monogatari genre. Written probably between the 9th and 10th centuries, the narrative tells the story of Kaguyahime, from the moment she was found by the character whose name is in the title of the narrative until she is taken back to her homeland. The episodes starred by the five noble men who wish to marry her occupy the most of the narrative and are thought, by the Japanese scholars, to be exclusively Taketori monogatari author\'s creation. Considering the Japanese scholars\' view and supported by Roland Barthes\'s treatise on amorous discourse, we aimed to expose the way the discourse spoken by Kaguyahime and her suitors is built in those supposedly romantic episodes.

O budismo, como o xintoísmo, é um dos alicerces religiosos da sociedade japonesa. Sua grande propagação no Japão dependeu muito da importação e enorme produção de imagens budistas que não se restringem apenas a representações do buda histórico. Por aproximadamente treze séculos, o estilo das estátuas búdicas passou por transformações que buscavam um estilo próprio japonês, atingindo o seu auge no período Heian (794~1185). Este trabalho é uma apresentação dessas transformações estilísticas e segue uma metodologia que visa a cercar o objeto \"escultura budista japonesa\" em todos os seus ângulos, a saber, abrangendo templos, técnicas e materiais, sua relação com a história do Japão, as doutrinas budista e xintoísta e a categoria das imagens. / Buddhism is one of the religious pillars of Japanese society together with Shintoism. The large Buddhist propagation on Japan depended very much on the importation and the big production of Buddhist statues which were not only representations of the historic Buddha. For about thirteen centuries, the statues style suffered changes that searched for a proper Japanese style and attained its peak on Heian period. This work is a presentation of those stylistics changes and follows a methodology that intends to approach the object \"Japanese Buddhist sculpture\" from all angles, which is to say, it comprehends temples, techniques and raw materials, its relation with Japanese history, Buddhist and Shintoist preachings and image categories.

The dominant part of the research on the “Yûgao” (The Twilight Beauty) story of the Japanese eleventh-century classic the Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) is philological and often excludes a general literary analysis. This story has also been related to Japanese and Chinese literary influences, thereby placing the text in its literary context. The present study is an attempt to relate it more to theories to which it has hitherto been unrelated and thereby formulate a descriptive stylistics in a decontextual perspective. This aim also includes a look at how the theories confronted with the “Yûgao” story may be affected. First I introduce the problematics of context versus decontext by means of a survey of metapoetical texts about the monogatari (tale, narrative) genre with special regard to the Genji Monogatari. Next I analyze the characters and the setting, primarily using a narratological method. This is followed by an analysis of the story’s themes and motives. Chapter 5 looks at compositional elements, while the starting-point for the succeeding chapter is the interpretation of the “Yûgao” story as more or less a fairytale, and thus not as advanced  a narrative as the latter part of the work. I shall, in contrast, argue that there are quite a few aspects of this story that do not fit into the model of the folktale. In Chapter 7 decontextualization as a concept turns from the story as such to address another concept, namely metaphor. Here the meaning of metaphor is expanded in order to include concepts that are not necessarily seen as such. Subsequently, I investigate the symbolic system surrounding the moonflower (yûgao) image. Lastly, the concept of decontext is taken a step further to survey how the genre of the Genji Monogatari has been transformed in the process of translation into the Tale of Genji. The main conclusion is that the “Yûgao” story combines tragic themes with comic motifs to build a symbolic narrative with characters hovering between roles.