J 314 Prompt for paper #2 on Masks and Intertextuality
Due Tuesday Oct. 22
First, a quick refresher on a couple of mechanical points:
1. Punctuation and Quotation Marks. Periods and Commas go inside quotation marks like "this." or "this," while Colons and Semi-colons go outside, like "this": or "this";
2. Indentation of Block quotes. When you do this, you do not need quotation marks...UNLESS the material you are quoting is in quotation marks in the original, like something a character said that was in conversation or dialogue, and so has quotation marks in the orginal. Then, even though it is indented (which tells the reader it is a direct quote from the text), you would retain the quotation marks from the original to indicate that it was quoted speech by one of the characters.
But this class is doing well on these things!
So, the Prompt:
1. Go back to the Noel Burch reading where he mentions the idea of INTERTEXTUALITY as an important characteristic of Japanese literature. By this term he refers to the way in which Japanese readers are inclined to "read any given text in relation to a body of texts." He notes that Japanese texts are traditionally not closed off from each other, but rather, cross-referenced and inter-related with each other in "successive and/or overlapping patterns of various sorts."
These "overlapping patterns" remind us that when a text is read in the light of another text, all the assumptions and effects of the other text give a new meaning and influence the way of interpreting the original text. Look here or here for other takes if you wish examine more on intertextuality.
In Masks we find just such an intricate pattern of "overlapping" and "layering" that brings together the Tale of Genji, Noh Theatre, especially Noh masks, the Tales of Ise, lines from Kokinshû poems, the Peony Lantern story, images from paintings, including the one of Mieko by Minoru Shimojô; also T'ang Dynasty Chinese poems, and fictional intertexts like Mieko's Account of the Shrine in the Fields, the letter from the unnamed father of Akio and Harume, Dr. Morioka's "story"--all of these items being located or "housed" in a piece of modern, postwar prose fiction. Noh actors, Noh robes and three different female Noh masks are also used to structure the text and shape how we view the characters and plot events.
So, here is your charge:
Write an essay which demonstrates how you think intertextuality informs and enriches our reading of Masks, and how it contributes to the powerful impact which the text has on us.
Instructions:
Given this impressive list of intertextual references, select a couple of them and show your reader how they can enhance or deepen our reading of the text. As a guiding principle, please remember that I am most interested in your response to the text, i.e., what you think the text is about; and why or how you think the text caused you to feel that way. You can do this most effectively by pointing to specific passages in the text by means of quotations, etc.
My EXPECTATIONS, then, are for a 4-6 page paper, typed, making effective use of block quotes from the text to illustrate your arguments. [And by the way, block quotes are indented, single-spaced, and DO NOT involve quotation marks around the author's words. The indentation istself tells the reader that this is a direct quote from the author. Just add a page number at the end of the quoted passage in parentheses. For an example, scroll down to the bottom of this page.]
Also, to NOTE: this author's name is ENCHI Fumiko. Fumiko is her given (first) name so you should not refer to her as "Fumiko" in your paper, just as you would not refer to Shakespeare as "William" or "Will." So, she would be Enchi. The convention is that if the author has a "penname" that they use instead of their given name, then we use it, as in the case of NATSUME Sôseki. No one ever calls him Natsume or by his given name, Kinnosuke, when discussing his work. In Enchi's case, she does not use a penname, but we can't call her Fumiko as though she is our dear friend! So she should be referred to as ENCHI or the author.
And, the character's name is MI-E-KO, not MEI-KO.
You will want to have a clearly articulated thesis or a "claim" that appears in your introduction, the function of which is to stake out the problems or aspects of Masks that you wish to explore. You should be able to put forth in your Introduction, then, a statement that at the very least says something like:
Intertextuality enriches our understanding of Masks in the following (two or three) ways. . .
or
In this paper, I will argue (or demonstrate) that an intertextaul reading of Masks enriches our understanding of the novel in the following ways...
or, if you prefer,
This paper will argue/discuss...
Or something along these lines.
In a paper of this length, pick two or three principal points that you want to make and use your textual evidence to support your position. You state your claim and the body of the paper should contain the supporting evidence for your claim. Your conclusion should remind the reader of what you set out to do in your paper and make the case that you succeeded in doing it very well!
For some general tips on good writing, click here.
For a summary of Jonathan Culler's position on intertextuality and presuppositions click on the word, please.
Although unlikely because we will NOT have finished reading/discussing Sputnik Sweetheart yet, if you have been reading ahead and feel you can operate on your own somewhat, here is a possible alternative topic.
2. Sputnik Sweetheart as Kokoro 2.0
As one reviewer of Sputnik Sweetheart puts it:
I'll come right out and say it: I don't really know what Murakami's startling new novel is about. But it has touched me deeper and pushed me further than anything I've read in a long time. (...) Murakami has given us a work so much larger and more pungent than the sum of its parts.
- Julie Myerson, The Guardian
In their own very different ways, both Natsume Sôseki's Kokoro and Murakami Haruki's Sputnik Sweetheart address the problems of friendship, loneliness and darkness in our modern and/or postmodern world. Sôseki asks his readers to ponder questions about morality, ethics, individualism, trust, alienation, human relationships--what it means to teach and to learn--and he explores the possibilities for communication between people--between friends as well as marriage partners, between teachers and students, between older and younger generations. Sensei says that if his story can help "I" and others "understand even a part of what we are," he will be satisfied.
Also, Sôseki presents us with a typical kind of love triangle two males, one female: Sensei, K, and Shizu. In Murakami's world we have another love triangle: a young man, the Narrator, also known as "K"--a nod to Sôseki?--who loves a young woman, Sumire; but she is only interested in Miu, and older Korean-Japanese woman.
Interesting flip, right? Sign of the times perhaps...It's no longer the early 1900s!!
Sôseki's darkness also seems to be rather historically and culturally specific: the end of the Meiji era and the death of a monarch, and with him, an older order. But it is also a "moral darkness," as there is a clear apprehension about the new order, about what challenges modernity presents to Japanese people, as well.
How possible is it to come know another human being and understand what is in his/her heart? How well do we know what is in our own heart and of what deeds were are capable?
If Sôseki is asking us to gaze deeply into the darkness of the modern condition, is Murakami asking us to update Sôseki's questions and apply them to or think about them in the context of the "postmodern" condition?
Murakami deals with all of the uncertainty, ambivalence and angst that we associate with contemporary life. As he says in the beginning of his novel,
This is where it all began, and where it all wound up. Almost.(3)
That "Almost,"of course, makes everything contingent, a hallmark of the postmodern condition.
In Sôseki's work, genuine communication between two people is perceived as something very difficult to achieve in the modern world.
In Murakami's postmodern world, they seem to talk to each other clearly enough...but the characters still orbit right past each other in space, like satellites, unable to really touch, make contact, or truly connect with one another. So is the end result much the same?
But perhaps appropriate to a postmodern work, Sputnik Sweetheart does not limit itself to the ordinary or familiar dimensions of human existence, but asks us to consider the possibility of fantastical and even paranormal ones. [Sensei meets the X-Files??]
Or, he might talk about:
Sumire's dream. Miu's split. These are two different worlds...This side---the other side.....Sumire went over to the other side...Sumire broke through the mirror and journeyed to the other side. To meet the other Miu who was there. (164-66)
How do we make sense of these kinds of moments?
The postmodern condition involves
a sense of discontinuity; often, the world is seen as a field of contesting explanations none of which can claim convincing authority,
so there is a sense that life is lived in a world with nothing to guarantee or to underwrite our being as meaningful moral creatures. Life just is.
Kokoro, at least, left us with a long "Testament" by Sensei, one bequeathed from an older to a younger man. Perhaps it contains a teaching. Perhaps it contains some hope. What does Murakami leave us with? Do we have any basis for feeling more (or less) hopeful?
But Murakami also leaves us some textual "data"--Sumire's "Documents," we learn that the narrator of Sputnik Swetheart is identified only as "K." Isn't this a clear link to Sôseki--to either the novel, Kokoro, or to the character "K,"or perhaps even Sôseki's given name, Kinnosuke? He does refer specifically to Sôseki on p. 39 though the reference is not to the novel Kokoro; rather, he refers to another novel about loneliness and alienation, Sanshirô.
But doesn't Murakami want his readers to summon up echoes of Mr. Sôseki? To think about the problems he posed to his readers back in 1914 and ask us to consider where we are today?
Have we learned our lessons well enough? Are we OK?
Although these two novels may seem like an unlikely pairing, you could write an essay that explores how they might actually be probing some of the same issues in human nature despite the eighty-year time difference in their construction. See if you can find two or three themes or issues in which the authors or characters seem to share an interest.
Think of it as juxtaposing or bouncing two narrativess off of one another; what sparks seems to fly and in what direction? How do narrative strategies differ? How are each appropriate to the times and the concerns with which they contend? Is one text more hopeful than the other?
There is no moral justice in Murakami's world; there is only the duty--both epistemological and moral--to try to understand.
--Steven Poole, The Guardian
Interesting, ne? Maybe Murakami wants us to keep on keeping on in the tradition of his illustrious predecessor.
BTW, here is an example of how to insert block quotes correctly in your paper from the Purdue Online Writing Materials:
Nelly Dean treats Heathcliff poorly and dehumanizes him throughout her narration:
They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room, and I had no more sense, so, I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it would be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house. (Bronte 78)
Note how the citation includes both author and page (Bronte 78). Both are nice but if it is obvious that you are quoting from Enchi because you already say so above the quoted passage, then just putting the page numbers (79) in parentheses after the quote is sufficient.