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- Convenors:
-
Susan Klein
(UC Irvine)
William Bodiford (UCLA )
Hiroshi Araki (International Research Center for Japanese Studies)
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- Stream:
- Pre-modern Literature
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 1, Auditório 1
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore the function of dream visions in the Heian and Muromachi periods in specific literary, political, and religious settings, including tale literature (Genji monogatari), religious dreams, and dream vision Noh.
Long Abstract:
Dream visions are experienced in nearly every culture around the world, appearing thematically in religious and literary texts, visual and performing arts. The concrete ways in which dreams are represented varies considerably across cultures, yet scholarship on dream vision phenomena in Western art and literature tends to take the Western case as universal. The papers in this panel will explore how dream visions in the Heian and Muromachi periods functioned in specific literary, political, and religious settings, an exploration we hope can be used be used to think productively against the grain of current Western scholarship on dream culture. Hiroshi Araki will discuss guilt-generated dream visions in Genji monogatari as a thematic and plot structuring device with comparative reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet; William Bodiford will examine the dream/reality nexus to show how religious dream visions connected to the Dream Kings of the Buddhist sutras attained real world instrumental power in medieval culture; and Susan Blakeley Klein will discuss examples of dream vision Noh (mugen nō) as allegories embedded with hidden political and religious ideology. The three papers intersect in their common interest in how dream visions were effectively deployed in the medieval period to legitimate political and religious ideology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
How are dreams depicted in Heian period texts, what can we extrapolate from those representations to understand how dreams were functioning culturally within Heian society, and how does this compare cross-culturally? I will use as a case study several examples of dream phenomena in Genji monogatari.
Paper long abstract:
Various kinds of "dream visions" can be seen in nearly every culture around the world, appearing thematically in images, literature and the performing arts. The concrete ways in which dreams are represented varies considerably across cultures, yet scholarship on dream vision phenomena in Western art and literature tends to take the Western case as universal. The general questions that I wish to investigate in this paper are: how are dreams represented in Heian period texts, what can we extrapolate from those representations to understand how dreams were functioning culturally within Heian society, and how does this compare cross-culturally? To do so, I will begin by briefly reviewing the historical development of the representation of dreams in Japanese classical texts. I will then turn to an analysis of several examples of dream phenomena as narrated in Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), focusing on a group of interrelated dreams that are centered both structurally and thematically around a sense of guilt felt by the dreamer. Specifically, I will be examining the dreams experienced by the characters Hikaru Genji and Kashiwagi after they commit adultery and get their illicit lovers pregnant, and dreams in which the deceased Emperor Kiritsubo appears to his two sons, Emperor Suzaku and Hikaru Genji, to indicate his displeasure about their misdeeds. How do these "guilt dreams" function to propel the plot in ways that might be similar or different from, say, Hamlet's dream vision of his father in the opening scene of Hamlet? How do they work to legitimate both Genji's political downfall, and his political comeback from exile? In making this argument I intend to demonstrate certain distinctive characteristics of how dreams functioned within Heian period Japanese culture, which can then be used be used to think productively against the grain of current scholarship on dream culture in premodern Western literature.
Paper short abstract:
Examination of the cultural, religious, and literary frameworks that animated dream narratives in medieval Japan (ca. 13th to 16th centuries), specifically the Buddhist dream kings, Japanese gods, and the poetics of their orcales.
Paper long abstract:
I will examine the cultural, religious, and literary frameworks that animated dream narratives in medieval Japan (ca. 13th to 16th centuries) and the ways that these frameworks helped provide them with the power of reality. Medieval literature testifies to the power of dreamworlds, which could guide daily events, predict the future, explain the inexplicable, and frequently served to legitimate political power and religious authority. Paradoxically the unreality of dreamworlds served to expose this world as equally unreal. The unreality of the unreal then provides a lens to focus attention on dream visions of the really real. The dream kings of Buddhist scriptures provided access to these visions which in turn enabled direct communication with dream gods of Japan whose oracles confirmed the reality of these visions. Poetic language, both in Japanese (waka) and Chinese (kanshi), rich with imagery that blurs the boundaries of the real and unreal worlds, allowed dreams to be shared, communicated, and cemented into the world. These kinds of frameworks all reinforced one another in ways that allowed dreams to exert power.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines several dream vision Noh plays based on Heian period tales such as Ise Monogatari or Genji monogatari, to show how they might be seen as allegorical rewritings of a lost classical past, rewritings that would have nevertheless resonated ideologically for their Muromachi audience.
Paper long abstract:
In "dream vision" (mugen) Noh, a ghost appears to a traveling priest in a dream and reenacts the memory that keeps it attached to this world; it does so in order to obtain assistance in achieving enlightenment and release from that attachment. Dream vision plays, especially those composed by Kanze Zeami and Konparu Zenchiku, are generally considered to be the finest embodiment of the aesthetic of yūgen (ineffable beauty) and as such resistant to allegorical and/or historical analysis. This paper will examine examples of Noh plays that incorporate stories from Heian period court culture such as Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise) and Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji), to show how they might be seen as allegorical rewritings of a lost classical past, rewritings that would have nevertheless resonated ideologically for their audience. On the one hand, this allegorical rewriting can be seen as an attempt to nostalgically recuperate Heian culture for the Muromachi present. That nostalgia is ambivalent, however; dream vision Noh can also be seen as the Muromachi attempt to cut loose from a Heian past that has held it culturally in thrall. One might argue that the dynamics of enlightenment in Noh equals the abolishment of memory: enlightenment creates a resolution (however temporary) of allegorical attachment to the past in favor of non-allegorical detachment. At the end of the play, the court culture that might have been threatening to the power of the shogunate is exorcised; although like all forms of the repressed, it will return again and again.