The Tale of Genji Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 136 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Tale of Genji.

The Tale of Genji Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 136 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Tale of Genji.
This section contains 2,192 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Tale of Genji Study Guide

In the following essay, Evans examines the reasons why Murasaki Shikibu's thousand-year-old novel remains so accessible and appealing.

Image a white-faced, black-toothed woman. Painted eyebrows crest either side of her forehead. Her hair falls down to the floor. She hides behind a screen, just the ornate sleeves of her robe in plain view. On the other side, a carefully-scented man. At home waits his wife, and his other wife, a couple of concubines, a pseudo-adopted daughter who someday will be his lover. But for now—as he sends off a love haiku via messenger—his passion swells for this woman whose koto he heard as he sat under the cherry blossoms.

Ever since the first installment of Arthur Waley's English translation appeared in 1925, critics of Mirasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji have remarked on its seeming modernity. Even today, readers find the novel far...

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This section contains 2,192 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Tale of Genji Study Guide
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The Tale of Genji from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.