Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the use of poetry, poem excerpts and poetic vocabulary in Makura no sōshi to create multi-layered expressions in the prose text. The focus will be an analysis of the section 'After the Regent had departed this life'.

Paper long abstract:

It is well-known that the creation of multi-layered expressions is a major feature of the composition of Japanese waka poetry. This is done mainly through techniques such as allusive variation and kakekotoba, and the use of pre-existing poetic vocabulary, all of which serve to incorporate the world of prior poetry, and the imagery conveyed by the earlier vocabulary, into the newly composed poem.

Prose works, too, create multi-layered worlds through a similar incorporation of poems, excerpts from poems, and poetic vocabulary into their texts. As there is no limit to the length of prose texts, however, it is possible to use a variety of poetic material in a single scene. This creates a multi-layered world for the scene, which possesses a mulitplicity of irreconcilable images, as if diffused through shards of glass, rather than coalescing around a single image, as would be the case in a waka poem.

There is already a significant amount of research on this type of usage of poetry in Genji monogatari, but in many respects this aspect of Makura no sōshi has yet to be investigated.

This paper will attempt to fill this gap by examining how the quality of the prose in Makura no sōshi is changed and made multi-layered through an examination of the poetic vocabulary, poems and excerpts used in one specific passage, 'After the Regent had departed this life' (136). This scene describes how the grass in the Empress' garden has been left to grow wild, and when asked about it, Teishi replies through Lady Saishō that this is because she 'wishes to see the dew upon it'. While the situation itself is desolate, it possesses an elegant air provided by the combination of a number of pre-existing expressions from Man'yōshū, Kokinshū and Gosenshū which are referenced in the course of the prose text.