EA 116 Week 3a Outline
I. "In-Universe" versus "Real World" analysis: wikipedia article
A." Articles about fiction, like all Wikipedia articles, should use the real world as their primary frame of reference."
1. This means that you use primary (original) and secondary (scholarly) sources to try to understand the plot/events and character motivations in relation to their historical context. This is why we use analysis questions to think about author/patron, audience, goal or purpose/benefit, genre, narrative necessity, political and religious context etc.
B. On Wikipedia (and in our class) you do not use an "in-universe" analysis: "An in-universe perspective describes the narrative (or a fictional element of the narrative, such as characters, places, groups, and lore) from the vantage of characters within the fictional universe, treating it as if it were real and ignoring real-world context and sourced analysis."
1. An "in-universe" analysis should also apply to "historical" people (eg. Sugawara no Michizane) where tales and legends acrue to the person, or where an attribution to them is likely to be fictional.
a. For example, here is an in-universe analysis of oracle (#1) related to Taira no Masakado, given by the Hachiman deity through a shamaness:
"Fifty years after his death, Michizane's angry spirit (goryô) was still angry at the court, and so he decided to help Masakado overthrow the ruling emperor by drafting the proclamation that Masakado should be the Emperor of the East."
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR TOMORROW: get a chance to practice this. You will need to have listened to the online lecture on real life/historical exorcisms in the Heian period.
II. Fictional Accounts of Mononoke and Pacification Rituals
(NOTE AGAIN: I already discussed non-fictional accounts in online lecture)
A. Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari)
1. Author: Murasaki Shikibu (lady-in-waiting to Empress Shôshi/Akiko, the daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga)
Note: Murasaki Shikibu is her pen name; we do not know her personal name. Her pen name comes from a character in the book, Murasaki, who becomes Genji's favorite wife. Do not confuse them!
2. Patron: Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1028)
3. Audience:
a. Class (very elite: maybe 10,000 people total)
In this context, "middle class" is provincial governor class, "working class" is attendants, servants, artisans.
b. Religious beliefs: shamanism/Onmyôdô, Esoterica Buddhism, angry ghosts
4. Purpose:
5. Benefit:
6. Genre:
7. Narrative/plot necessity:
8. Historical context (political, economic, religious, social)q
B. What are Heian period fictional accounts of ghosts and rituals mainly about (i.e. religious and political context)?
1. Issue related to polygyny/polygamy (men able to marry multiple wives):
2. Why would this be the focus?
3. What does Murasaki Shikibu think about the relationship of male guilt and female possession?
[from Murasaki Shikibu's poetry collection]
A poem written about a painting on a screen:
Someone had drawn on a scroll the unpleasant form of a woman possessed by an evil spirit. Behind the possessed woman, a priest was restraining the husband's former wife, who had appeared as a demon. The husband was trying to subdue the evil spirit by reading a sutra.
In his anguish
He has blamed it on his dead wife,
But is it not
The demon in his own heart?
III. Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari)
A. Who is Rokujô? (Also, see this chart.) A daughter of a former high ranking Minister of the Left. Rokujô was married to the Crown Prince (Genji's uncle, his father's older brother) at 16 and bore him a daughter (Akikonomu). Her father died prematurely, so the Crown Prince lost his political backing and was deposed. He died soon afterward leaving Rokujô a widow at age 20. Genji's father then became emperor with the backing of his father-in-law (Minister of the Right). At the start of "Heartvine" chapter Rokujô is about 29-30 years old with a young daughter 13-14 years old.
Note: Although it is only retroactively clear it was Rokujô, the living spirit of Rokujô has already killed one of Genji's mistresses, Yugao, in chapter 4 ("Evening Faces").
1. Why is the affair between Genji and Rokujô problematic?
a.
b.
c.
1) Who are two possible angry ghosts attacking Genji's wife, Aoi?
a)
b)
2. Why is the affair not going well?
a. Age
b. Gossip
1) Emperor to Genji (p. 147): "The Crown Prince was so very fond of her," he said to Genji, in open displeasure. "It is sad that you should have made light of her, as if she were an ordinary woman. I think of the high priestess [Rokujo's daughter] as one of my own children, and you should be good to her mother [Rokujo], for my sake and for the sake of the dead prince. It does you no good to abandon yourself to these affairs quite as the impulse takes you."
Continues: "You should treat any woman with tact and courtesy, and be sure that you cause her no embarrassment. You should never have a woman angry with you."
b. Personality: What is Rokujô like as a person?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5) dominant character trait?
3. Position of Heian women as represented in Tale of Genji
a. Some economic independence (women can inherit property in this period)
b. But dependent on men to act for them in economic matters because high-ranking women are kept secluded behind curtains of state
1. Enforced seclusion means they are always waiting for men to visit.
B. Who is Aoi (AKA "Heartvine" or Aoi no Ue)?
1. Older than Genji (they married when she was 16 and he was 12-- not uncommon at the time for first "political" marriages)
2. What is she like?
a.
b.
3. Why might she be vulnerable to possession?
a.
C. What precipitates Rokujô's attack on Aoi no Ue?
1. The "carriage incident" (pp. 148-53) [image] that takes place at the Kamo Shrine parade celebrating the installation of a new priestess, in which Genji will be featured prominently
a. Aoi no Ue has been urged by her ladies in waiting to attend the parade, although she's uncomfortably pregnant; at the last minute decides to go.
b. Rokujô decides to attend "incognito" and finds a place for her carriage with a good view of parade
c. Aoi no Ue's men recognize her rival, and get into a fight with Rojujô's attendants, roughly pushing her carrriage back where Genji will not see her. He passes by, giving a gracious acknowledgment of his wife, but doesn't see Rokujô.
2. . Rokujô's immediate response (pp. 150-51)?
a. “Quite aside from her natural distress at the insult, she was filled with the bitterest chagrin that, having refrained from display, she had been recognized. The stools for her carriage shafts had been broken and the shafts propped on the hubs of perfectly strange carriages, a most undignified sight. It was no good asking herself why she had come…."
b. After Genji passes without acknowledging her:
“…the Rokujo lady was in misery. She had been utterly defeated…She was ashamed of her tears. Yet she thought of how sorry she would have been if she had not seen that handsome figure set off to such advantage by the crowds.”
2. Result
a. Before:
b. Now:
3. Genji's response?
(p. 153) “Genji presently heard the story of the competing carriages. He was sorry for the Rokujô lady and angry with his wife. It was a sad fact that, so deliberate and fastidious, she lacked ordinary compassion. There was indeed a tart, forbidding quality about her. She refused to see, though it was probably an unconscious refusal, that ladies who were to each other as she was to the Rokujô lady should behave with charity and forbearance. It was under her influence that the men in her service threw themselves so violently about. Genji sometimes felt uncomfortable before the proud dignity of the Rokujô lady, and he could imagine her rage and humiliation now.”
a. Who does he blame?
b. Does he feel guilty?
c. Who do you think is to blame?
d. Why doesn't his visit to Rokujô help?
4. Rokujo's response (later)
(p. 156) "For the Rokujô lady the pain was unrelieved. She knew that she could expect no lessening of his coldness, and yet to steel herself and go off to Ise with her daughter -- she would be lonely, she knew, and people would laugh at her. They would laugh just as heartily if she stayed in the city. Her thoughts were as the fisherman's bob at Ise. Her very soul seemed to jump wildly about, and at last she fell physically ill."
D. Initial exorcism scene (p. 156-157):
p. 156: “At Sanjô, Genji's wife [Aoi] seemed to be in the grip of a malign spirit.”
1. Is there a narrative connection between Rokujô's thoughts and Aoi's illness?
Immediately prior to above line (p. 156):
"[Rokujo's] anger and sorrow increased. Her hope of relief from this agony of indecision had sent her to the River of Lustration, and there she had been subjected to violence."
1) Note: "River of Lustration": a water purification ceremony at Kamo River that is the focus of the Kamo parade, so here refers to the Kamo parade incident. This reference was also used earlier in a poem she composed just after the incident (p. 151):
A distant glimpse of the River of Lustration
His coldness is the measure of my sorrow.
2. Description:
(p. 157) "His marriage had not been happy, but his wife was important to him and now she was carrying his child. He had prayers read in his Sanjô rooms. Several malign spirits were transferred to the medium and identified themselves, but there was one who quite refused to move. Though it did not cause great pain, it refused to leave her for so much as an instant. Theres was something very sinister about a spirit that eluded the powers of the most skilled exorcists. The Sanjô people went over the list of Genji's ladies one by one. Among them al, it came to be whispered, only the Rokujô lady and the lady at Nijô seemed to have been singled out for special attentions, and no doubt they were jealous. The exorcists were asked about the possiblity, but they gave no very informative answers. Of the spirits that did announce themselves, none seemed to feel any deep enmity toward the lady. Their behavior seemed random and purposeless. There was the spirit of her dead nurse, for instance, and there were spirits that had been with the family for generations and had take advantage of her weakness.
The confusion and worry continued. The lady would sometimes weep in loud wailing sobs, and sometimes be tormented by nausea and shortness of breath."
a. What is typical about this initial exorcism scene?
1) form of possession at this point?
b. What is different?
c. Who do people suspect? Why?
1) The lady at Nijô: Murasaki (young girl that Genji has recently taken into his household, and who will become his favorite wife)
2) Rokujô
3) mentioned earlier: Rokujô's father
d. Who is actually possessing her? How do we know this?
3.
Rokujô's point of view (pp. 160, 163)
"The malign spirit was more insistent and Aoi was in great distress. Unpleasant rumors reached the Rokujô lady, to the effect that it might be her spirit or that of her father, the late minister (that is possessing Aoi). Though she had felt sorry enough for herself, she had not wished ill to anyone, and might it be that the soul of one so lost in sad thoughts went wandering off by itself? She had, over the years, known the full range of sorrows, but never before had she felt so utterly miserable. There had been no release since the other lady had so insulted her, indeed behaved as if she didn't exist."
a. Description of her dream vision (p. 160)
“More than once she had the same dream: in the beautifully appointed apartments of a lady who seemed to be a rival she would push and shake the lady, and flail at her blindly and savagely. It was too terrible. Sometimes in a daze she would ask herself if her soul had indeed gone wandering off.”
b. Is she conscious of what she's doing?
“She would be notorious. It was common enough for the spirits of the angry dead [goryô] to linger on in this world. She had thought them hateful, and it was her own lot to set a hateful example while she lived.”
c. What kind of tama is this?
E. Labor Exorcism of Aoi (pp. 161-65)
Aoi: "Stop for a moment please. I want to speak to General Genji."
....
Narrator/Genji: Usually so haughty and forbidding, she now gazed up at him with languid eyes that were presently filled with tears. How could he fail to be moved? This violent weeping, he thought, would be for her parents, soon to be left behind, and perhaps, at this last leave-taking, for him too.
....
Aoi: "No, no. I was hurting so, I asked them to stop for a while. I had not dreamed that I would come to you like this. It is true: a troubled soul will sometimes go wandering off." The voice was gentle and affectionate:
Bind the hem of my robe, to keep it within,
The grieving soul that has wandered through the skies
Narrator/Genji: It was not Aoi's voice, nor was the manner hers. Extraordinary--and then he knew it was the voice of the Rokujo lady. He was aghast. He had dismissed the talk as vulgar and ignorant fabrication, and here before his eyes he had proof that such things did actually happen. He was horrified and repelled.
Genji: "You may say so. But I don't know who you are. Identify yourself."
Narrator: It was indeed she. "Aghast"-- is there no stronger word?
F. How does Rokujô kill Aoi? (pp. 164-65)
G. Preview of coming attractions:
In the second chapter I had you read, "The Sacred Tree," Genji sleeps with Rokujô for the last time, just before her departure with her daughter for the Ise Shrine, where her daughter Akikonomu will be the Ise Priestess. Rokujô dies not long after returning from Ise (chapter 14), and on her deathbed entrusts her estate and her daughter to Genji's care. (Genji later marries Rokujô's daughter to the crown prince, his own illicit son.)
But this is not the last time we see Rokujô in the book -- after death she remains an angry spirit who overtly attacks Genji's wife Murasaki (causing possession illness) and is understood to have attacked Genji's new young wife, the Third Princess (Onna Sannomiya), causing her unstable, impulsive behavior (she has an affair with Kashiwagi, the son of Genji's best friend, and ends up pregnant by him). After Genji finds out about the affair, the Third Princess ends up taking the tonsure and Kashiwagi wastes away from guilt/possession illness.
G. Overview of the exorcism scene: To think about for discussion questions
What is Murasaki Shikibu's goal here? Does she care about Buddhism? Why doesn't she make the exorcism successful and Rokujô pacified?
1. Why would the author make changes from the more typical "real-life" exorcisms that we read about?
a. changes include
1)
2)
3)
b. In terms of plot? (Narrative necessity)
1) Marriage politics later in the book: Genji becomes guardian of Rokujô's daughter Akikonomu, and marries her to his own (illicit) son the Crown Prince. So can't let Rokujô's reputation be destroyed, or he couldn't use her daughter for marriage politics.
c. Does possession accomplish anything positive for the women who are possessed and the women who are possessing?
1) Yes:
a)
b)
2) No:
3) Who does Rokujô speak for? Why might the author not want to pacify her?
Discussion questions
We will return to the story of Rokujo, Aoi, and Genji in just a few weeks with two Noh plays, Aoi no Ue and Nonomiya (Shrine in the Fields), loosely based on the two chapters we read for today.
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