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Unreal Houses: Character, Gender, and Genealogy in the Tale of Genji
Contributor(s): Sarra, Edith (Author)
ISBN: 0674244435     ISBN-13: 9780674244436
Publisher: Harvard University Press
OUR PRICE:   $67.32  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: April 2020
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Asian - Japanese
- Literary Criticism | Subjects & Themes - Women
- Literary Criticism | Medieval
Dewey: 895.631
LCCN: 2019043584
Series: Harvard East Asian Monographs
Physical Information: 1.3" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.45 lbs) 360 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Japanese
- Sex & Gender - Feminine
- Chronological Period - Medieval (500-1453)
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

The Tale of Genji (ca. 1008), by noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, is known for its sophisticated renderings of fictional characters' minds and its critical perspectives on the lives of the aristocracy of eleventh-century Japan. Unreal Houses radically rethinks the Genji by focusing on the figure of the house. Edith Sarra examines the narrative's fictionalized images of aristocratic mansions and its representation of the people who inhabit them, exploring how key characters in the Genji think about houses in both the architectural and genealogical sense of the word.

Through close readings of the Genji and other Heian narratives, Unreal Houses elucidates the literary fabrication of social, architectural, and affective spaces and shows how the figure of the house contributes to the structuring of narrative sequences and the expression of relational nuances among fictional characters. Combining literary analysis with the history of gender, marriage, and the built environment, Sarra opens new perspectives on the architectonics of the Genji and the feminine milieu that midwifed what some have called the world's first novel.

Contributor Bio(s): Sarra, Edith: - Edith Sarra is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Adjunct Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University Bloomington.