Discovery and influence across boundaries: a comparative approach to The Tale of Genji

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Creative Arts and English, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria.

Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji, was written a millennium ago by a Japanese court lady known as Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 or 978 – c. 1014 or 1031). Genji is the most popular and widely-read epic in the Japanese literary canon. It has become such an iconic literary and cultural phenomenon in Japan that it has been revered as expressing the essence of Japanese aesthetics and identity. My thesis intends to fully explore Murasaki Shikibu’s dialogic engagement with her Chinese precursors to show an itinerary of literary influences which transcend national boundaries, as well as those of gender and class. An idea I hold fast to is that Murasaki Shikibu’s appeal to readers, what she tries to reveal to her readers, is not merely a closed set of domestic aristocratic love romances. The writing practice of Murasaki Shikibu is not simply a matter of borrowing from literary sources; it is a writing that goes beyond indigenous aesthetics thereby expands the possibilities for literary creation. My approach also enables researchers of Genji to trace tangible evidence of influence as a thread that connects traditional Japanese studies of Genji with contemporary literary theories. I call for the kind of comparative approach to the study of Genji that will promote the Genji as itself an influence on the history of world literature.