Annotator and Translator Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji in classical Japanese, a language quite different from modern English. Besides their linguistic differences, conventionally people wrote classical Japanese vertically, and did not have modern punctuations nor modern concepts of paragraph. Therefore, translators face not only the task of choosing the appropriate words to convey the ambiguity of Murasaki Shikibu’s language, but also the task of separating the text into paragraphs and supplementing punctuations. The two translations I am going to talk about in this paper, Tyler’s translation and Seidensticker’s translation, approach these two issues differently and therefore offer two ways to interpret and to experience the text. …show more content…
In the opening sentence of Chapter Eight, while Tyler specifies the time as “a little past the twentieth of the second month” (Tyler, 152), Seidensticker simply states “toward the end of the Second Month.” Furthermore, while Tyler does not translate the site of the party and retains the original name “Shishinden,” Seidensticker translates the name as the Grand Hall. I am not going to argue which one is more authentic, because authenticity is not a clear-cut concept and is often subject to personal preference. What I want to point out here is that, Seidensticker’s decision not to retain the extra detail of the time and the original name of the palace exemplify his attitude towards translation: he does not only translate The Tale of Genji, he also rewrites it to make it more accessible to modern readers. In this way, readers of these two translations are going to have two different conception of time and space about the story. On the one hand, readers of Tyler’s translation may feel a little distanced by the name of the place Shishinden which has a meaning in its own, but does not mean much to readers without prior exposure to Japanese language. On the other hand, readers of Seidensticker’s translation may feel more at ease and …show more content…
In Seidensticker’s translation, after reporting the Empress’s poem, the narrator “How then did it go the rounds and presently reach me?” However, in Tyler’s translation, the narrator is not very present: “One wonders how anyone could have passed on words meant only for herself” (Tyler, 154). Such interjection makes Seidensticker’s narrator more personal, and the novel more accessible. Seidensticker’s narrator is present somewhere else. Although both narrators in Seidensticker’s and Tyler’s translations are omniscient narrators, the one in Seidensticker’s translation is more willing to disclose information to readers. For instance, after the first party ends, the narrator observes that “these ruminations of his no doubt confirmed his interest in her, but still, when he thought of her, he could not help admiring how superbly inaccessible she was in comparison” (Tyler, 156). There are two “her” here. Since the second her is italicized while the first is not, the narrator tempts readers to think that these two “her” refer to two different women. From the context, readers may arrive at the conclusion that the second her refers to Fujitsubo. In contrast, in Seidensticker’s translation, the narrator discloses Genji’s secret thoughts to readers without any suspension: Genji “thought too of Fujitsubo’s pavilion, and how much more mysterious and inaccessible it was, indeed how uniquely so.”
The passages given from the Edwards' 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'; and the opening sentence of the Declaration both include many points such as the tone, diction, and syntax. The points shown throughout each sentence aims for the intent of obtaining the attention of the audience. The way each sentence is arranged with its own syntax can very well appeal to listeners, depending on its structure and imagery.
It is the reader and his or her interpretive community who attempts to impose a unified reading on a given text. Such readers may, and probably will, claim that the unity they find is in the text, but this claim is only a mask for the creative process actually going on. Even the most carefully designed text can not be unified; only the reader's attempted taming of it. Therefore, an attempt to use seams and shifts in the biblical text to discover its textual precursors is based on a fundamentally faulty assumption that one might recover a stage of the text that lacked such fractures (Carr 23-4).
By comparing and contrasting these texts we are able to get a better understanding
Throughout history artists have used art as a means to reflect the on goings of the society surrounding them. Many times, novels serve as primary sources in the future for students to reflect on past history. Students can successfully use novels as a source of understanding past events. Different sentiments and points of views within novels serve as the information one may use to reflect on these events. Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro successfully encapsulates much of what has been discussed in class, parallels with the events in Japan at the time the novel takes place, and serves as a social commentary to describe these events in Japan at the time of the Mejeii Restoration and beyond. Therefore, Kokoro successfully serves as a primary source students may use to enable them to understand institutions like conflicting views Whites by the Japanese, the role of women, and the population’s analysis of the Emperor.
Gatten, Aileen. "Review: Criticism and the Genji." The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 22.1 (1988): 84. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
21 Oct. 2013. Lecture. The. Peterson, Eugene H. The Message, Remix: The Bible in Contemporary Language.
N.T Wright (2008) stated that “When we read the scriptures as Christians, we read it precisely as people of the new covenant and of the new creation” (p.281). In this statement, the author reveals a paradigm of scriptural interpretation that exists for him as a Christian, theologian, and profession and Bishop. When one surveys the entirety of modern Christendom, one finds a variety of methods and perspectives on biblical interpretation, and indeed on the how one defines the meaning in the parables of Jesus. Capon (2002) and Snodgrass (2008) offer differing perspectives on how one should approach the scriptures and how the true sense of meaning should be extracted. This paper will serve as a brief examination of the methodologies presented by these two authors. Let us begin, with an
Description and narrative are the chief modes of this poem. Nevertheless, at critical moments the actual utterance of the anonymous characters is invited in ("Yes, sir,/ all the way to Boston"). The binder of these varied procedures is the speak...
The Heian period(794-1185), the so-called golden age of Japanese culture, produced some of the finest works of Japanese literature.1 The most well known work from this period, the Genji Monogatari, is considered to be the “oldest novel still recognized today as a major masterpiece.”2 It can also be said that the Genji Monogatari is proof of the ingenuity of the Japanese in assimilating Chinese culture and politics. As a monogatari, a style of narrative with poems interspersed within it, the characters and settings frequently allude to Chinese poems and stories. In addition to displaying the poetic prowess that the Japanese had attained by this time period, the Genji Monogatari also demonstrates how politics and gender ideals were adopted from the Chinese.
For this assignment I read The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon translated and edited by Ivan Morris. Sei Shonagon’s story takes place over one thousand years ago around the end of the 10th century and very beginning of the 11th century. Her entries are located mostly in the Imperial Palace during her time as a lady in waiting to Empress Teishi and then Empress Sadako in Heian, Japan. The first version of the book was completed in 1002 and has been rewritten or translated several times since then. Her pillow book consists of 185 sections that include cultural references, various lists and poems and diary entries about things that have happened to or around her.
Chiappa, J N. "The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari)." J. Noel Chiappa. Ed. J N.
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
Matsuo Basho radically redefined the three-line, 17-syllable haiku poetic form from an entertaining pastime in 16th-century Japan to a major literary genre in the 17th century. An early Basho haiku provides an example of his meticulous and sensitive approach in selecting and arranging words and images to produce highly evocative allusions:
Primo Levi: From a letter to the translator of the German version, reproduced in The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 174.
Faith, Reason and Theology. Armand Maurer,translator. Mediæval Sources in Translation, vol. 32. Pontifical Institute of Mediæval Studies, Toronto : 1987.