Origins of The Companion Library: An Anthology of Medieval Japanese Stories

1971 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-610
Author(s):  
Barbara Ruch

Around 1700, the Osaka publisher Shibukawa seiemon collected and printed twenty-three medieval short stories and put them on sale labelled Otogi bunko, or The Companion Library. Shibukawa's sales techniques, aimed at selling his anthology to female readers, led later scholars to view these stories anachronistically as women's literature from the Muromachi period. Evidence from medieval diaries, however, makes it clear that these stories were not originally written for women. To date close to five hundred of these largely anonymous stories have emerged to form a substantial medieval genre. Although present scholarship tends to seek authorship of the stories through analysis of social classes depicted in them, it is submitted that the more fruitful approach is rather through analysis of textual origins in pre-Muromachi literary traditions: Heian novel, Kamakura military epic, religious narrative, or oral folktale; and that the most important source proves to be the religious narrative tradition, where textual comparison reveals clearly some Muromachi stories are derivations from such works as Shintō shū. Medieval jongleurs and missionaries such as biwa hōshi, etoki hōshi, and Kumano bikuni played a crucial role in spreading medieval tales, popularizing the picture scroll and book, and contributing to the development of the short story genre.

Author(s):  
Yomaira C. Figueroa

Junot Díaz is a Dominican American award-winning fiction writer and essayist. For over twenty years his work has helped to map and remap Latinx, Caribbean, and American literary and cultural studies. Since his collection of short stories, Drown, debuted in 1996, Díaz has become a leading literary figure in Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and diaspora studies. His voice is critically linked to the legacy of Latinx Caribbean literary poetics reaching back to the 1960s (including Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets, 1967). Díaz’s work is likewise transnational and diasporic, often reflecting the lived experiences of working-class immigrant populations of color in northeastern urban centers. Within a broader scope, Díaz’s writing is tied to feminist African American and Chicana literary traditions, with Díaz citing the influence of writers such as Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros in his writing practice. His 2007 award-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, earned him a Pulitzer Prize in fiction and catapulted him into literary superstardom. Díaz followed that success with his 2012 collection of short stories, This Is How You Lose Her, which was a finalist for both the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. In 2012, Díaz was conferred the MacArthur Fellows Program Award, commonly known as the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and in 2017, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2019, he was the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the fiction editor at the renowned literary magazine the Boston Review. Over the course of his professional writing career, Díaz has published numerous nonfiction essays and political commentaries, and coauthored opinion editorials on immigration and reflections on Caribbean and US politics. His short story “Monstro,” published in 2012, further rooted Díaz in the genres of science fiction and Afrofuturism. “Monstro” was understood to be a teaser for a now discarded novel of the same name. The simultaneous publication of the English-language Islandborn and Spanish-language Lola in 2018 represented the author’s first foray into the genre of children’s literature. Like much of Díaz’s literary oeuvre, the children’s books chronicle the experiences and memories of Afro-Dominicans in the diaspora through the perspective of a child narrator. Díaz is one of the founders of Voices of Our Nation (VONA), a summer creative writing workshop for writers of color where he helps aspiring writers to workshop their fiction. Díaz’s fiction and nonfiction writings have catalyzed work in literary, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx studies, prompting renewed discourses on literary representations of masculinity, gender, sexuality, intimacy, sexual violence, dictatorship, immigration, disability, Dominican history, race and anti-blackness, anti-Haitianism, decolonization and radical politics, and diaspora and belonging.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Demétrio Alves Paz ◽  
Mithiele Da Silva Scarton

O presente trabalho, relacionado ao estudo desenvolvido pelo projeto de pesquisa intitulado Mulheres fortes: O conto africano de língua portuguesa de autoria feminina (PROBIC/FAPERGS), tem por objetivo analisar a condição feminina presente em nove contos da obra Mornas eram as noites, de autoria da escritora cabo-verdiana Dina Salústio. A partir da leitura de obras críticas de especialistas nas literaturas africanas de língua portuguesa, como Maria Aparecida Santilli (2007), Manuel Ferreira (1987), Pires Laranjeira (1995) e Simone Caputo Gomes (2006; 2013), assim como em artigos publicados em revistas acadêmicas, revisamos a fortuna crítica da autora com o intuito de conhecer seus temas. Nas nove narrativas, observamos que há figuras femininas diferenciadas, representando um amplo apanhado de todas as classes sociais e de diferentes idades. A grande maioria das histórias é narrada em primeira pessoa, o que aproxima o leitor da condição feminina e também funciona como uma espécie de pedido de cumplicidade por parte das narradoras para sentir-se parte desse emaranhado de sentimentos e situações em que elas se encontram.Palavras-chave: Literatura de autoria feminina. Conto. Literatura cabo-verdiana. Dina Salústio. Condição feminina.ABSTRACTThis article, related to the study developed in the research project Strong Women: African short stories written by women writers (PROBIC/FAPERGS), aims to to analyze the women’s condition in 9 (nine) short stories in Warm were the nights, by the Cape Verdean writer Dina Salústio. From the reading of critical works by scholars of African Literature in Portuguese Language such as Maria Aparecida Santilli (2007), Manuel Ferreira (1987), Pires Laranjeira (1995) e Simone Caputo Gomes (2006, 2013), as well as articles in academic journals, we revised the critical works about the author to get a better knowledge of her themes. In the nine narratives, we noted that there are differentiated feminine figures, representing a broad view of all social classes and different ages. The majority of stories were narrated in the first person, which connect the reader to the women’s condition as well as it works as a kind of asking for partnership by the narrators to feel part of this connection of feelings and situations in which the characters are involved. Keywords: Women’s writing. Short story. Cape Verdean Literature. Dina Salústio. Women’s condition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
Ruth Abou Rached

Eminent Iraqi writer Daizy Al-Amir passed away in Houston, USA in November 2018. Born in Alexandria in 1935, she was a prolific short-story writer who wrote and travelled across many countries and continents throughout the course of her life. Daizy Al-Amir’s legacy to Arab and women’s literature, particularly in Beirut, are many-faceted. This article pays tribute to two important aspects of Daizy Al-Amir’s work: her literary works published with the highly influential literary journal Al-Ādāb from the 1960s and her short stories about women in the Arab world that were published in Arabic‐English translation.


Author(s):  
L. V. Holomidova ◽  

The article deals with the analysis of the artistic technique of short stories by Robert Musil, an Austrian writer, through the prism of combining literary traditions of German – language short stories and the author’s innovation. In the scope of theoretical study of novel characteristics such short stories as „The Perfecting of Love”, „The Temptation of Quiet Veronica”, „Grigia”, „The Portuguese Lady”, „Tonka” from the collection of works „Unions” and „Three Women” help to point out the author’s definition in regard to the theory of modernist short story that is shown in Robert Musil’s essay „Short story as a problem”. Thus, the ways of realization of the theoretical bases of the literary tradition of the Austrian short story in combination with the consistent content formality of the author’s experimentalism are observed and highlighted. Its specific way of reproducing and combining the theoretical basis of the short story as a classical epic genre with individual authorial terms: „another state”, “possibility of suggestion, association and influence of mood”, „single case” and „commercial article” is shown. At the same time, the individual author’s synthesis of logic, psychologism and art is emphasized. A number of extensions of genre features of the poetics of R. Muzil’s short stories are outlined, and thus the exclusivity of the short story is pointed out as one of the most important forms of short prose of the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX century. It is concluded that this phenomenon is distinguished not as a complete break from traditional narrative structure of German short story, but as a specific opportunity to examine and analyse modern human consciousness.


Author(s):  
Novi Diah Haryanti

Abstract: This study aims to look at narrative patterns in the collection of short stories "Karaban Snow Dance" (TSK). From the fifteen short stories, the researchers took five main stories, namely the Karaban Snow Dance (Tarian Salju Karaban), The Fall of a Leaf (Gugurnya Sehelai Daun),  Canting Kinanti Song (Tembang Canting Kinanti), Jagoan Men Arrived (Lelaki Jagoan Tiba), and Origami Pigeon (Merpati Origami). Of the five short stories, environmental themes and honesty appear most often. The place setting depicted shows the environment that is close to the author or according to the author's origin. The main characters in the four short stories are children, only one short story Male Hero Tiban (Lelaki Jagoan Tiban/LJK) who uses adult takoh as the main character. The child leaders in LJK only appear in the past stories of the main characters. The five short stories do not show a picture of whole parents (father and mother). The warm relationship between mother and child appears clearly, in contrast to the father-child relationship that is almost negligent. The five short stories also represent how children become heroes for their family, friends, and environment.Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat pola narasi pada kumpulan cerpen Tarian Salju Karaban (TSK). Dari limabelas cerpen yang ada, peneliti mengambil lima cerpen utama yakni “Tarian Salju Karaban”, “Gugurnya Sehelai Daun”, “Tembang Canting Kinanti”, “Lelaki Jagoan Tiba”, dan “Merpati Origami”. Kelima cerpen menampilkan tema lingkungan dan kejujuran. Latar tempat yang digambarkan memperlihatkan lingkuangan yang dekat dengan penulis atau sesuai dengan asal usul penulis. Tokoh utama dalam keempat cerpen tersebut ialah anak-anak, hanya satu cerpen “Lelaki Jagoan Tiban” (LJK) yang menggunakan takoh dewasa sebagai tokoh utama. Tokoh anak dalam LJK hanya muncul dalam cerita masa lalu tokoh utama. Kelima cerpen tersebut tidak memperlihatkan gambaran orangtua utuh (ayah dan ibu). Relasi yang hangat antara ibu dan anak muncul dengan jelas, berbeda dengan relasi bapak-anak yang nyaris alpa. Kelima  cerpen tersebut juga merepresentasikan bagaimana anak-anak menjadi pahlawan bagi keluarga, sahabat, dan lingkungannya.  


Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
Faith Mkwesha

This interview was conducted on 16 May 2009 at Le Quartier Francais in Franschhoek, Cape Town, South Africa. Petina Gappah is the third generation of Zimbabwean writers writing from the diaspora. She was born in 1971 in Zambia, and grew up in Zimbabwe during the transitional moment from colonial Rhodesia to independence. She has law degrees from the University of Zimbabwe, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Graz. She writes in English and also draws on Shona, her first language. She has published a short story collection An Elegy for Easterly (2009), first novel The Book of Memory (2015), and another collection of short stories, Rotten Row (2016).  Gappah’s collection of short stories An Elegy for Easterly (2009) was awarded The Guardian First Book Award in 2009, and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the richest prize for the short story form. Gappah was working on her novel The Book of Memory at the time of this interview.


Author(s):  
Oksana Galchuk

The theme of illegitimacy Guy de Maupassant evolved in his works this article perceives as one of the factors of the author’s concept of a person and the plane of intersection of the most typical motifs of his short stories. The study of the author’s concept of a person through the prism of polivariability of the motif of a bastard is relevant in today’s revision of traditional values, transformation of the usual social institutions and search for identities, etc. The purpose of the study is to give a definition to the existence specifics of the bastard motif in the Maupassant’s short stories by using historical and literary, comparative, structural methods of analysis as dominant. To do this, I analyze the content, variability and the role of this motive in the formation of the Maupassant’s concept of a person, the author’s innovations in its interpretation from the point of view of literary diachrony. Maupassant interprets the bastard motif in the social, psychological and metaphorical-symbolic sense. For the short stories with the presentation of this motif, I suggest the typology based on the role of it in the structure of the work and the ideological and thematic content: the short stories with a motif-fragment, the ones with the bastard’s leitmotif and the group where the bastard motif becomes a central theme. The Maupassant’s interpretation of the bastard motif combines the general tendencies of its existence in the world’s literary tradition and individual reading. The latter is the result of the author’s understanding of the relevant for the era issues: the transformation of the family model, the interest in the theory of heredity, the strengthening of atheistic sentiments, the growth of frustration in the system of traditional social and moral values etc. This study sets the ground for a prospective analysis of the evolution the bastard motif in the short-story collections of different years or a comparative study of the motif in short stories and novels by Maupassant.


Jurnal KATA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Nanny Sri Lestari

<p>Sebuah peristiwa, dalam kehidupan manusia, dapat menjadi inspirasi bagi penulisan sebuah cerita. Pengarang, sebagai bagian dari masyarakatnya, mengangkat relung-relung kehidupan manusia, ke dalam sebuah cerita. Namun harus dipahami, bahwa pengalaman pengarang dalam kehidupannya sehari-hari, juga mempengaruhi subjek yang ditulisnya. Saat ini tidak dapat dipungkiri lagi, bahwa teknologi komunikasi yang sangat canggih, telah mempengaruhi perkembangan karya sastra. Media penulisan karya sastra, tidak lagi melalui media cetak seperti kertas tetapi sudah melalui peralatan modern yang sesuai jamannya. Namun demikian ragam karya sastra prosa, seperti cerita pendek, justru mampu mengisi ruang media kommunikasi tersebut. Dua orang pengarang, yang menulis cerita pendek di media masa, berusaha mengangkat isu tentang lingkungan. Isu yang diangkat, lebih menekankan kepada masalah lingkungan alam dengan mengangkat isu tentang pohon sebagai bagian dari kehidupan manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini, untuk menelusuri struktur cerita pendek yang mengangkat isu lingkungan dalam jalinan ceritanya. Untuk memenuhi tujuan penelitian, langkah awal dari penelitian ini, adalah melakukan pendekatan struktur cerita, yang kemudian dikaitkan dengan pencarian makna cerita tersebut. Sering sekali di balik sebuah cerita ada pesan yang ingin disampaikan kepada masyarakat pembacanya. Bentuk pesan tersebut tersirat, dalam jalinan struktur cerita pendek tersebut. Pesan yang disampaikan, dalam kedua cerita pendek tersebut,  adalah pesan tentang lingkungan alam, yang  saat ini tidak pernah diperhatikan oleh masyarakat. Dengan alasan, kebutuhan ekonomi yang sangat dominan.</p><p><em>An event, in human life, can be an inspiration for writing a story. The author, as a part of his society, lifts the niches of human life, into a story. But it must be understood, that the author's experience in everyday life, also affects the subject he wrote.</em><em> </em><em>Today it is undeniable, that highly sophisticated communication technology, has influenced the development of literary works. Media writing literature, no longer through print media such as paper but have been through modern equipment that fit his era.</em><em> </em><em>However, the variety of prose literary works, such as short stories, is able to fill the media space communications. Two authors, who write short stories in the mass media, try to raise issues about the environment. Issues raised, more emphasis on the issue of the natural environment by raising the issue, about the tree as part of human life. The purpose of this research, is to trace the structure of short stories, which raised environmental issues in the composition of the story. To fulfill the purpose of research, the first step of this research, is to approach the structure of the story, which is then linked with the search for the meaning of the story. Very often, behind a story, there is a message to be conveyed to the readers. The form of the message is implied, in the composition of the short story structure. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society.</em></p>


Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher

Stories of a visit to the realm of the dead and a return to the upper world are among the oldest narratives in European literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and extending to contemporary culture. This volume examines a series of fictional works by twentieth- and twenty-first century authors, such Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, which deal in various ways with the descent to Hades. Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture surveys a wide range of genres, including novels, short stories, comics, a cinematic adaptation, poetry, and juvenile fiction. It examines not only those texts that feature a literal catabasis, such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, but also those where the descent to the underworld is evoked in more metaphorical ways as a kind of border crossing, for instance Salman Rushdie’s use of the Orpheus myth to signify the trauma of migration. The analyses examine how these retellings relate to earlier versions of the mythical theme, including their ancient precedents by Homer and Vergil, but also to post-classical receptions of underworld narratives by authors such as Dante, Ezra Pound, and Joseph Conrad. Arguing that the underworld has come to connote a cultural archive of narrative tradition, the book offers a series of case studies that examine the adaptation of underworld myths in contemporary culture in relation to the discourses of postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism.


Author(s):  
Oscar Wilde

‘Wilde did not converse - he told tales.’ Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. They have never lacked readers and admirers, George Orwell and W. B. Yeats among them. The stories give free rein to Wilde's originality, literary skill, and sophistication. They include poignant fairy-tales such as ‘The Happy Prince’ and ‘The Selfish Giant’, and the extravagant comedy and social observation of ‘Lord Arthur Savile's Crime’ and ‘The Canterville Ghost’. They also encompass the daring narrative experiments of ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.’, Wilde's fictional investigation into the identity of the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, and the ‘Poems in Prose’, based on the Gospel stories. This edition demonstrates the centrality of Wilde's shorter fiction in his literary career, and his continuing development and experimentation with the short story format. Combining myth, romance, and irony, Wilde's stories enthral and challenge the reader. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


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