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1
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- Or, the Aesthetic Temptations of Eleventh-Century Japan: Pillow Book,
52-125
- (October 15, 2002)
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2
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- Density of literary reference, of personal implication
- But this play of internal reference doesn’t seem to be about anything
serious
- The life of Homer’s gods?
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3
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- Section 149: “There are times when the world so exasperates me that I
feel I cannot go on living in it for another moment and I want to
disappear for good. But then, if I happen to obtain some nice white
paper, Michinoku paper, or white decorated paper, I decide I can put up
with things as they are a little longer.”
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4
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- Trivial?
- What the people in this world value
- The power plays of the powerless?
- Envy
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5
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- Aesthetic standards applied to daily life
- Section 14, “Hateful Things”
- The arbiter of elegance?
- “as in a novel”
- Sections 52 (Tadanobu’s visit), 86 (the square cakes)
- Romances and novels
- Genre confusions in the Pillow Book: sections 177, 179, 180, 181, 182–
descriptions or fictions?
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6
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- What are the ideals of this text?
- Meticulousness of the descriptions: beauty is infinitely specifiable
- Lingering over details: details make all the difference
- Openness and closedness of definitions
- Beauty in relation to what other values?
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7
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- Sei Shōnagon as unusual woman
- The exception and the rule
- Being seen; being recognized; being loved
- Our role
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Notes
