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Hesiod's view on women in aristocracy
Hesiod's view on women in aristocracy
Tale of genji cultural significance
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World History
The Tale of Genji
The Tale of Genji, not only had a huge impact on Japanese literature, it is considered to be the first novel ever written in the world. Japanese literature was limited to poetry, fairytales, and memoirs until the birth of this remarkable work. The tale revolves around prince Genji’s life and his love adventures in an important period in Japanese history. Its complicated plot focuses on the significance of the Heian period and portrays in detail the life of the upper society in the Heian court. A court lady named Muraski Shikibu who had first hand experience of Heian society and Japanese aristocracy having served the empress wrote this literary work. She managed to pull the reader deep in to her world of women’s aristocratic lifestyle that reveals the patriarchal and hierarchal nature of Heian society by showing that the obedient nature of women was valued and that communication barriers were enforced on them for their status. Women struggle to break these barriers throughout the tale and attempt to escape the aesthetic lifestyle of the aristocratic world through Buddhism. The Tale of Genji portrays women’s’ lifestyles that revolved around society’s obsession with ranking and the idea of an ideal woman dealing with this type of aristocratic lifestyle although some scholars argued that women viewed this lifestyle as their own and were not oppressed by these expectations.
This tale portrays court ladies’ lifestyles in the Heian aristocracy. Women during this time period lived a life lacking privacy and were hidden psychologically and physically in a world within which indicates that the aristocratic society was patriarchal. They were not allowed to communicate with anyone but their family, husban...
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...Muraski Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. New York: 1993.
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• McCULLOUGH, WILLIAM H. "Japanese Marriage Institutions in The Heian Period." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. : 103-167.http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2718385.pdf?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true (accessed ).
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• Murase, Miyeko. The Tale of Genji Legends and Paintings. New York: George Braziller Inc, 2001.
• Puette, Wiliiam. The Tale of Genji . Japan: Tuttle Publishing, 2003.
Mahin, Michael J. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper: "An Intertextual Comparison of the "Conventional" Connotations of Marriage and Propriety." Domestic Goddesses (1999). Web. 29 June 2015.
Riichi, Yokomitsu. Shanghai. Michigan: The Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan , 2001.
Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, set in the Heian Period, gives a good idea of what the model Heian man and Heian woman should look like. Genji himself is like a physical embodiment of male perfection, while a large portion of the Broom Tree chapter outlines the ideal of a woman—that it is men who decide what constitutes a perfect woman, and the fact that even they cannot come to decide which traits are the best, and whether anyone can realistically possess all of those traits shows that the function of women in the eyes of men of that period was largely to cater to their husbands and households. Broken down, there are similarities and differences between the standard for Heian men and women, and the Tale of Genji provides excellent examples of characters who fit into their respective gender roles.
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.
Robson, Ruthann. "The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History: Marriage." Houghton Mifflin Study Center. 19 Nov. 2005. http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wh_022200_marriage.htm.
The Tale of Heike." Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600. Ed. Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. 736-39. Print.
Thompson, James C. "Marriage in Ancient Athens." Womenintheancientworld.com. N.p., July 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. .
Today marriage is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the relationship between a husband and a wife or a similar relationship between people of the same sex. For the purposes of this paper, it will focus on marriage between a man and a woman and how marriage is differently defined between the American and Chinese cultures. This paper will discuss the cultural differences found between the American and Chinese culture with emphasis on age and mate-selection. The cultural differences between American and Chinese culture related to marriage practices shows that Americans value individualism and Chinese historically value collectivism.
Web. 10 Sep. 2011. . “Marriage.” Judaism 101: Marriage. Web.
Roberts, Jeremy. Japanese Mythology A to Z (Mythology a to Z). New York: Facts on File, 2004.
Schoenberg Nara, A surprising new look at arranged marriages, August 22, 2012, Tribune Newspapers, retrieved from: http://articles.chicagotribune.com
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
Huijnk, W., Verkuyten, M., & Coenders, M. (2013). Family relations and the attitude towards ethnic minorities as close kin by marriage. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(11), 1890-1909.
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church. (n.d.). academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Retrieved July 30, 2010, from http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2023218
Deal, William E. 2006. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Facts on File, Inc., 2006. eBook