Work, yeah, work...
Apr. 10th, 2002 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
litheraSo a few things... Jamie, you might get to test out your David Bowie as a talent vampire theory. He and Moby have apparently teamed up for projects this summer, so... maybe you can gather enough evidence for a working thesis.
Now, on to what I've been thinking about:
I was watching lots and lots of my Lodoss Wars DVDs (thank you again Sean) and there is this second half of the show with super deformed characters and it's general sillniess. They have this thing for puns or more specifically word play. King Kashue does it and he teaches Parn and later Asharam gets in on it. (I haven't seen it all, so I don't know who else might...) For some reason this caught my attention. Not the punning, mind you, as its most plays on how the words sound very similar in Japanese, but why it seemed so important. There was an emphasis placed on one's skill at this sort of thing.
So, I was reading the introduction to Murasaki Shikibu's diary (she wrote the Tale of Genji) and read something that I had partially known, but lost somewhere in the depth of time. Japanese poetry, especially tanka (short poems) are intricate works of art. They are typically 5/7/5/7/7/ and done in one continuous line of 31 syllables, also pretty to just look at if one likes calligraphy. In the Heian period if you were at court you were expected to be able to whip these up at the drop of a hat. There was lots of wordplay, intertextual references, inversion and other linguisitc tricks, that make reading them in English absurd at times, but cast many, many meanings to them in Japanese. They also typically occur in pairs - the first a witty comment on something and the second a witty response.
It was a small click, but a click nonetheless. I drew the connection between the two. Sure, it's transformed, but it explained to me why there seemed to be so much emphasis put on the word play. It wasn't just puns, but intertextuality.
Look at me, I've discovered some strange thesis for someone.
Anyway, one of these day's I must get my hands on a copy of Sei Shonagon's Makura no soshi (Pillow Book). I'd really like to read it, I never have money when I find a copy and the library's copies always seem to be checked out or missing. I've also discovered these ladies had more contemporaries whose work survived. I'd like to read it as well.
Now, on to what I've been thinking about:
I was watching lots and lots of my Lodoss Wars DVDs (thank you again Sean) and there is this second half of the show with super deformed characters and it's general sillniess. They have this thing for puns or more specifically word play. King Kashue does it and he teaches Parn and later Asharam gets in on it. (I haven't seen it all, so I don't know who else might...) For some reason this caught my attention. Not the punning, mind you, as its most plays on how the words sound very similar in Japanese, but why it seemed so important. There was an emphasis placed on one's skill at this sort of thing.
So, I was reading the introduction to Murasaki Shikibu's diary (she wrote the Tale of Genji) and read something that I had partially known, but lost somewhere in the depth of time. Japanese poetry, especially tanka (short poems) are intricate works of art. They are typically 5/7/5/7/7/ and done in one continuous line of 31 syllables, also pretty to just look at if one likes calligraphy. In the Heian period if you were at court you were expected to be able to whip these up at the drop of a hat. There was lots of wordplay, intertextual references, inversion and other linguisitc tricks, that make reading them in English absurd at times, but cast many, many meanings to them in Japanese. They also typically occur in pairs - the first a witty comment on something and the second a witty response.
It was a small click, but a click nonetheless. I drew the connection between the two. Sure, it's transformed, but it explained to me why there seemed to be so much emphasis put on the word play. It wasn't just puns, but intertextuality.
Look at me, I've discovered some strange thesis for someone.
Anyway, one of these day's I must get my hands on a copy of Sei Shonagon's Makura no soshi (Pillow Book). I'd really like to read it, I never have money when I find a copy and the library's copies always seem to be checked out or missing. I've also discovered these ladies had more contemporaries whose work survived. I'd like to read it as well.
