著者

KOMOVA Ekaterina

出版者

人間文化研究機構 国文学研究資料館

雑誌

第43回 国際日本文学研究集会会議録 = PROCEEDINGS OF THE 43rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE (ISSN:03877280)

巻号頁・発行日

no.43, pp.1-16, 2020-03-26

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Frequently cited as the world’s first psychological novel, Genji monogatari (c. 1008) has been widely praised for its uncanny ability to relate its characters’ emotions in so real a manner so as to stir the audience’s feelings as if the experiences were their own―and yet, virtually no studies have hitherto touched upon this subject at length. The presentation in question seeks to explore the manner in which the text produces affective reactions in both its characters and readers and fosters emotional communities between them, focusing on the death scenes of Yûgao and Lady Murasaki in particular. Generally-speaking, “affect” denotes the emotional, psychological or even physical response of a group of individuals such as readers, listeners or participants to a highly emotional situation, stimulus or work; “affect studies” examines the various ways that this emotional response is expressed and communicated within a specific community. A group of individuals that shares a set of similar emotional responses due to their common values or preferences in turn forms an “emotional community.” The death scenes in Genji monogatari provide an especially fertile ground for this type of analysis considering that they rarely center around the deaths themselves, and focus instead on their effect on the surrounding characters and the overall narrative development, often with the use of highly specific language and imagery. The following presentation will examine the way in which the Genji narrative constructs its emotional scenes―namely those dealing with the deaths of Yûgao and Lady Murasaki―through the use of language, poetry, landscape, and narrative in order to create situations in which its characters and its readers respond in highly emotional ways. I believe that Genji’s innovative incorporation of poetic diction (kago) and citations (hikiuta) into prose had the effect of increasing the affective impact of the prose and expanding the associative scope of the poetry (waka). As such, I hope to analyze the relationship between the use of particular types of poetic and seasonal imagery in Genji and their capacity to elicit specific types of affective responses.