Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji

by Richard Bowring

Book Overview

Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, written in Japan in the early eleventh century, is acknowledged to be one of Japan's greatest literary achievements, and sometimes thought of as the world's first novel. It is also one of the earliest major works to be written by a woman. This introduction to the Genji sketches the cultural background, offers detailed analysis of the text, discusses matters of language and style and ends by tracing the history...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521539757
• ISBN13: 9780521539753
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 122 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.9" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Genealogical chart of characters

I must state at the outset: I have not read this book. Thus, I truly have no right to award any stars, so in good conscience I could not award 5 stars although I would very much like to have -- solely on the basis of the Genealogical Chart of characters the book contains. Those of you who have read even three -- No! even two -- chapters of a "full" translation of "The Tale of Genji," which this is not, must have resorted to making notes and lists of the characters, their various "names" and titles, and their relationships to other charcters. I certainly did, and I started doing so while still in Chapter 1. It was harrowing work ("Is this the same man as X, but in a different job?", "Does Y have a sister, or just another name?", etc)and prevented me from fully attending to the story itself. So thank you, Prof Bowring, for this book which I will use, much as a raw Parisian tourist uses his/her tightly grasped guide to the Metro, when I return to my copy of Genji.

Covers everything with supreme efficiency

Don't be deceived by the bland cover and the fact that it is part of a series into thinking there's anything half-hearted about this book. Concise and vigorous, it covers all aspects of Genji, including the relative merits of the main English translations, in only 100 pages. A fabulous tour d'horizon.