Mono no Aware (‘Pathos of Things’) and the Literary Portrait of Kiritsubo in "The Tale of Genji"
Mono no Aware (‘Pathos of Things’) and the Literary Portrait of Kiritsubo in "The Tale of Genji"

Author(s): Iwona Kordzińska-Nawrocka
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Other Language Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Murasaki Shikibu; The Tale of Genji; Genji monogatari; mono no aware; Kiritsubo; monogatari; literary portrait
Summary/Abstract: The research purpose of this text is to reconstruct the literary portrait of Kiritsubo, one of the female characters in "The Tale of Genji", a work in the genre of courtly narratives (ōchō monogatari) written by Murasaki Shikibu in 1008. Kiritsubo is an episodic character and her role in the work’s plot is limited to the first chapter, which may be why there is relatively little research devoted to her. The construction of Kiritsubo’s literary portrait is influenced by mono no aware (‘pathos of things’), an aesthetic category representing the Japanese world of beauty. The category itself can be analyzed from many different points of view, but here the author has limited her analysis to showing its role in the portrayal and construction of Kiritsubo’s character. It was mono no aware understood as aesthetic and emotional beauty that enabled Murasaki Shikibu to maintain her descriptions of Kiritsubo while conveying an atmosphere of subtle elegance and contributed to her perception as someone who evoked both awe and compassion.

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