Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

An assessments of a few key san’itsu monogatari (“scattered and lost tales”) as they appear in Mumyōzōshi (The Untitled Book, ca. 1200) in order to shed light on the attitudes and mindsets of avid readers of fiction in the years following the composition of The Tale of Genji (ca. 1010).

Paper long abstract

My presentation is an outgrowth of my forthcoming fully annotated English translation of Mumyōzōshi (The Untitled Book), an early thirteenth-century work of literary criticism that offers assessments of The Tale of Genji (ca. 1010) and several other monogatari that were in currency at the time. Composed around the year 1200 by the woman known as Shunzei’s Daughter (ca. 1171-ca.1252), Mumyōzōshi has been hailed as the first work of literary (prose) criticism in the Japanese tradition, in part for its pioneering critique of several popular tales and its role in recognizing certain texts, including The Tale of Genji, as part of an emerging classical canon. Furthermore, as a repository of information on so-called “scattered and lost tales” (san’itsu monogatari), Mumyōzōshi is invaluable in identifying not only what monogatari were being read at the time, but also what contemporary readers found praiseworthy and objectionable about them. These tales were familiar to readers in the centuries after The Tale of Genji was written, and evidence suggests they continued to be read throughout much of the medieval period, into the fifteenth century. Most, however, are relatively unknown today. For many of these scattered and lost works, all that remain of them are their titles, sometimes brief descriptions in later works, including in Mumyōzōshi, and one or more poems, often with little or no context. Taken together, they are significant in that they help us reconstruct the literary field at the time and provide a valuable window into the mindset of those readers. What readers thought about what they were reading is necessarily influenced by what else they were reading, and the fact that we, as modern readers, tend to ignore this fact leaves us with substantial blind spots in any attempt to interpret the texts that do remain to us today. My presentation will focus on key poems and scenes from a few select “scattered and lost tales” and analyze some of the critical terminology the women readers in Mumyōzōshi use in their assessment of those tales.