Introduction
The Tale of Genji is among some of the best quoted literature legacies. The tale constructed and written by the famous Murasaki Shikibu is an excellent example of a clean and organized literature work. Murasaki exercises his exclusive artistic talent to create a wide range and styles of punctuation in his essay (Murasaki, 3).
In the Tale of Genji, the writer puts his punctuations in a manner that outranges the vital importance of disambiguating meaning of the writings or sentence. He specifically varies on the types of punctuation along the article to maintain his reader attention throughout the whole text. The writer uses punctuation to input citations and examples of preferences through which he has collected his data from (Seidensticker, 22).
Since the article was earlier written as a form of entertainment to Japanese, modern find it quit hard to read and understand especially from the complex English grammar Mulasaki uses.
In this line, the author tries to put across romantic message. Murasaki explores Genji’s adventure for romantic love.Genji the hero admires a woman and inquires about her age. This shows how romantic Genji was (Murasaki, 87).By using this style, the author easily puts across the message unlike if she could have written in prose. By use of punctuation marks, Murasaki in her poetry brings in the romantic messages clear.
Apart from the romantic message depicted in the poem of the tale of Genji the author again uses punctuation marks to put across the culture of the Japanese. For example, it is said that the Japanese favored educating boys than girls (Shikibu, 99). Through their culture, Japanese viewed and regarded boys as more important than girls.
The eleventh century novel, Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji-970-1002) by Lady Murasaki Yasumoto contains the analysis of the works of Mishima and Kawabata who examined the linguistic styles of writings as per the Japanese. In the novel most of the quotations are used as replica of the economy of language that the writer shares with Haiku form. The quotation has a tendency of shortening sentences. The multi-clausal sentences in the novel are an illustration of the renga like features of writing. This is an implication of the use of “stream of consciousness” of a distinctive style and technique of writing which utilizes focalization that is her use of integration of the protagonist in the novel narration in the third person characterization that leads to multi-clausal sentencing ( Field,56).
Among these and the effective use of punctuations are the stylistic devices involved in the novel as effected by punctuations.
“The bond between husband and wife is a strong one. Suppose the man had hunted her out and brought her back. The memory of her acts would still be there, and inevitably, sooner or later, it would be cause for rancor. When there are crises, incidents, a woman should try to overlook them, for better or for worse, and make the bond into something durable”. The author uses quotations marks to emphasis her idea of the role of women. The commas in the above citation are the vital punctuation marks that bring about the effects of emphasis of an idea. Another effect brought about by the commas as used by the writer is the aspect of Japanese religion, which the writer punctuates the sentences to bring them out, this is more specifically the role of women. (Seidensticker,89)
Work cited
Murasaki, Shikibu. The tale of Genji. Random House Digital, Inc., 2013.
Field, Norma, and Murasaki Shikibu. The splendor of longing in the Tale of Genji. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Shikibu, Murasaki. The tale of Genji. Penguin. com, 2003.
Seidensticker, Edward. The tale of Genji. David Campbell, 1978.
