published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

abstract / English / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

Ariake no Wakare was thought to be a lost tale, but its unique manuscript was rediscovered in the early 1950s. Thirteenth-century references and internal evidence suggest a date of composition in the 1190s by an author in Teika's circle, and attest to Ariake's prominence in the thirteenth-century prose fiction canon. Thematically, it is virtually a 'summa' of previous monogatari themes woven together with remarkable dexterity and often startling originality. The term giko monogatari, 'pseudo-classical tales,' widely used to describe such late Heian and Kamakura period tales, and the associated style term gikobun, turn out to be Meiji era coinages with originally much wider and less pejorative connotations - a change perhaps related to contemporary language debates that valorized vernacular writing styles. The use of respect language and narrative asides, and the interaction between the narration and the plot, evokes a narrator with a distinct point of view, and suggest she may be the lady-in-waiting Jiju, making the text more explicitly autobiographical, and perhaps accounting for aspects of the narrative structure. Statistical information about Ariake, and analysis of respect language and certain fields of the lexicon reveal that Ariake is linguistically much closer to the Genji than are the few other giko monogatari for which information is available, but there are also a few very marked differences. Similar analysis of other giko monogatari would clarify whether these differences are characteristic of the subgenre or peculiar to Ariake no Wakare. Ariake no Wakare critiques male behaviour in courtship and marriage, and explores female-to-male crossdressing; the male gaze (kaimami); incestuous sexual abuse; both male and female same-sex and same-gender love; spirit possession in a context of marriage, pregnancy, and rival female desires, and other instances of the conspicuously gendered supernatural; and the gendered significance of genealogy. The treatment of gender roles and sexuality focuses on the interaction of performance skill and innate ability or inclination, and presents the mysterious beauty of the ambiguously gendered and liminally human, while genealogy is celebrated as privileged female knowledge. The text simultaneously invites and resists modern modes of reading. Rather than merely imitative, Ariake's treatment of familiar elements with changed contexts and interpretations produces both nostalgia and novelty.

No description available.

Ariake no Wakare was thought to be a lost tale, but its unique manuscript was rediscovered in the early 1950s. Thirteenth-century references and internal evidence suggest a date of composition in the 1190s by an author in Teika's circle, and attest to Ariake's prominence in the thirteenth-century prose fiction canon. Thematically, it is virtually a 'summa' of previous monogatari themes woven together with remarkable dexterity and often startling originality. The term giko monogatari, 'pseudo-classical tales,' widely used to describe such late Heian and Kamakura period tales, and the associated style term gikobun, turn out to be Meiji era coinages with originally much wider and less pejorative connotations - a change perhaps related to contemporary language debates that valorized vernacular writing styles. The use of respect language and narrative asides, and the interaction between the narration and the plot, evokes a narrator with a distinct point of view, and suggest she may be the lady-in-waiting Jiju, making the text more explicitly autobiographical, and perhaps accounting for aspects of the narrative structure. Statistical information about Ariake, and analysis of respect language and certain fields of the lexicon reveal that Ariake is linguistically much closer to the Genji than are the few other giko monogatari for which information is available, but there are also a few very marked differences. Similar analysis of other giko monogatari would clarify whether these differences are characteristic of the subgenre or peculiar to Ariake no Wakare. Ariake no Wakare critiques male behaviour in courtship and marriage, and explores female-to-male crossdressing; the male gaze (kaimami); incestuous sexual abuse; both male and female same-sex and same-gender love; spirit possession in a context of marriage, pregnancy, and rival female desires, and other instances of the conspicuously gendered supernatural; and the gendered significance of genealogy. The treatment of gender roles and sexuality focuses on the interaction of performance skill and innate ability or inclination, and presents the mysterious beauty of the ambiguously gendered and liminally human, while genealogy is celebrated as privileged female knowledge. The text simultaneously invites and resists modern modes of reading. Rather than merely imitative, Ariake's treatment of familiar elements with changed contexts and interpretations produces both nostalgia and novelty. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

published_or_final_version / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis investigates the way the national identity of Sardinia was perceived in travel literature – and more particularly the way writing about travel experiences contributed to shape identity, both of the visited place and of its inhabitants. The thesis draws from different sources (travelogues, belles lettres, history books); the work reflects therefore a rather eclectic panorama. For obvious reasons the research field has been circumscribed in time and space, but , but aims at drawing general conclusions, i.e. assessing whether national identities are the result of an endogenous process, or rather are influenced by exogenous elaborations. As regards geographical delimitation we restricted our inquiry to the island of Sardinia for two main reasons: i) it is isolated not only geographically but also culturally and has never been a conventional destination along the Grand Tour routes; ii) up to the first half of the twentieth century the island had a reputation for being an “unknown” or “forgotten” land. As regards time, the choice was to concentrate on modern times, that is approximately between the second half of the 18th and the first half of the 20th century. Thereafter, the coming of the post-industrial society, mass tourism, faster means of transport, the standardizing effect of globalization changed the idea of travelling, leading some to argue that the birth of post-modern tourism implied the end of travel, or at least a totally new attitude towards travel, that has been defined post-modern. When D.H. Lawrence wrote that Sardinia had “no history, no date, no race, no offering” he was drawing from a consolidated image of the island as an unknown land rather than on its millenary history. The Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda challenged this idea in the first quarter of the 20th century by countering the codes elaborated in the island – namely the language code, the common law and the rustic life and passions – to the civilized way of life of industrialized European societies. The thesis concludes that the making of the identity of Sardinia was the result of the interaction between these two views.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-195).