Works
The Tale of Genji
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A long prose narrative following the romantic and political life of Hikaru Genji, the son of a Japanese emperor demoted to commoner status, and, in its later chapters, the generation that follows him, set against the refined and ritualized world of the Heian imperial court. Its psychological interiority, formal sophistication and sustained length lead many scholars to treat it as an early and fully realized example of the novel as a form, centuries before the eighteenth-century European works older, Eurocentric literary histories once credited with originating it.
Facts
Disputed
Composed, From (Year)Most reference sources place composition in the first decade of the eleventh century, commonly cited as substantially complete by around 1008 based on a contemporary diary reference, but the work's composition across many chapters over an extended period, and uncertainty about its precise chronology, mean no single start year is agreed. Cross-Tradition Connections
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