Book Review
The Tale of Genji (1100)
by Murasaki Shikibu
Replaced: Metamorphoses by Ovid (Review 2015)
The Tale of Genji is a 1500 page proto-novel, written by a woman, Murasaki Shikibu, AKA Lady Murasaki around the turn of the millenium in Japan. The Genji of the title is a royal prince, not in direct line for the throne, who is renowned for his beauty and the type of skills which were highly valued in feudal Japan: He can write a mean hand at calligraphy, is a master of the ceremonial dance, and can play instruments and sing. He is also a connoisseur of women, something along the lines of a don juan without the vicious cuckolding. Apparently, the social structure of Japan left many aristocratic single women, and there were no religious or social prohibitions of a wealthy, aristocratic man enjoying the company of many women more or less at the same time.
The Tale of Genji is a startling riposte to the conventional idea of the novel developing exclusively in western Europe in the 18th century. Here, in Japan, in 1100 A.D., a woman wrote a book that, if not exactly a novel, is certainly novel-like enough to merit inclusion in any history of that literary genre. Unfortunately, The Tale of Genji is not particularly accessible to a casual reader- not only is it 1500 pages, but nearly 500 pages of that length is arguably a sequel with a different author, about the children of Genji. I stopped reading after Genji died, because, for all it's obvious literary merit, much of The Tale of Genji is repetitive and there is little to nothing EXCEPT endless details about love affairs, calligraphy, poetry, etc. In fact, I think the closest western analogy would be the chivalric romances of the late middle ages in France, Spain and England. Those chivalric tales are another underrepresented proto-novel genre that is emphasized in the 2008 first revision of the 1001 Books project.
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