| The literature of the Heian Era(794-1192)is one of the splendors created by the Japanese people,for in that era quite a few women began to write and they wrote well.The female diary literature came into being as an independent genre since the female members of the middle aristocracy,confined in the closed space away from politics,depicted their lives and emotions in the form of Kana prose.As a unique existence in the history of ancient world literature,it not only boosted the prosperity of the literature of the Heian Era,but also played an important role in the history of Japanese literature.Kagerou Nikki,created in 970s,was regarded as the pioneering and the most representative of female diary literature.The author of Kagerou Nikki,mother of Fujiwara Michituna,had very high Waka attainments and literary accomplishments.She was born in a middle class aristocrat family of the local officials,got married with the upper class aristocracy Fujiwara Kaneie and gave birth to her son,Fujiwara Michituna,hence being known as the mother of Fujiwara Michituna.She took the form of diary prose,blending Waka and prose style,to write about her own 21-year marriage life from 954 to 974.The diary was divided into three volumes,which were basically unified under the theme of the unsettled marital state between the author and her husband.Although the title Kagerou is usually written in Chinese characters meaning "Dragonfly",it is in effect related with the natural phenomenon of its Japanese homophone,"glare of sunlight",which means the illusory imagery,the shadow of a shade.This diary not only has a profound influence on the later female diaries of literary pedigree,but also exerts a profound impact on the later Monogatari literature as well as private novels.In the introduction part of this paper,it first introduces and discusses the diary literature of the Heian Era as well as the author,the content and the title of Kagerou Nikki.Then it concludes and tries to sort out the former research regarding the same topic.Looking back at the findings that have already been obtained,the study of Japanese diary literature in the Chinese academic circle is still in its infancy while that in Japan are very fruitful.Empirical researches and social historical researches still occupy the mainstream of the research methods.It is not until in recent years that attention has been gradually paid to textual analysis.In the former narrative studies of Kagerou Nikki,only a few achievements have been realized on the narrative expression of the first person narration as well as the difference between the author and the characters.Nevertheless,the narrative theory has not been expounded on,the research is not systematic enough,and there is still a great gap in both research depth and breadth.Therefore,the narrative theory can be used for detailed reading of KagerouNikki,which can provide a fresh perspective and new method for the study of diary literature in the Heian Era.Upon the achievements of the former researchers,employing the theories of western narratololgy,comparative literature,stylistics and sociology,this paper mainly explores the narrative art of Kagerou Nikki from its stylistic features,mode of communication,time as well as spatial features,and makes correlative comparisons between this target novel and the other diary literature,recorded diary,essays,Monogatari literature in the same era.In this way,this study tries to make a profound analysis on the micro level,and take account of the narrative features of the diary literature as a genre on the macro level.The first chapter mainly discusses how Kagerou Nikki is developed from the applied diary to a literary diary,and has become a masterpiece of the female diary literature from the perspective of Kana writing,and the blending of prose writing style and rhyme style combined with the social and cultural context of the time.The Japanese diary literature was developed on the basis of the Chinese diary literature.In the first section,the paper traces the recorded diaries in the ancient Japan,then figures out the development process from male diary to Kagerou Nikki,as well as the function that Ki Tsurayuki's novel Tosa Nikki achieved since he created the novel in name of a female.Furthermore,the factual authenticity of the diaries and the fictionality of literature and art are also analyzed in this section.In the second part,the function and effect of the Waka and prose writing style in narratives and the reasons why the author chose diary prose as the form of literary creation to express herself are discussed.With the popularity of the Chinese diary and the Japanese Waka,the aesthetic taste and the literary attainment of the aristocracy are cultivated;meanwhile,the presence of Kana,the inspiration of the Monogatari literature and the development of prose literature also stimulate the creation of Kagerou Nikki and the development of the diary literature.The emergence of Kagerou Nikki,also originates from the pursuit of subjectivity of life and the sense of oneself.Written in the form of diary,the author of Kagerou Nikki took Waka,letters,travel notes and recorded diaries as materials,expressing them in the form of Kana prose and rhyme stylistic language.The Waka in Kagerou Nikki represents the author's emotion and makes the novel vivid;the prose,on the other hand,contributes to the completeness and coherence of the narrative;while the combination of Waka and prose creates a unique form of literary expression and becomes the carrier of the writing subject to express personal feelings.The second chapter aims to analyze the situational mode of the narrative communication of Kagerou Nikki,including the perspectives of narrator and the narration.The first section focuses on discussing the phenomenon of implicit diary literature writers,narrators and characters in former studies,clarifies the distance between the narrative subject and the narrative object,and defines the role of"speaker".Kagerou Nikki belongs to the true story narrated by the author.The narrator is in fact the author herself,and the author is the source of the narration in the diary.Although Kagerou Nikki is usually considered as the third person narration with the opening of "there is someone" style,as matter of fact,from the perspective of this paper,it analyzes the reintegration and separation of the "I" in the different periods of the retrospective narrative with an implied first person narrative mode.The character in the diary is chosen and shaped intentionally by the author.She is the author to some extent,but is not equivalent to the author.Therefore,"the mother of Fujiwara Michituna" or "I" is referred to the character so as to be different with the author herself.Kagerou Nikki is usually regarded as the author's creation because of the employment of the writing skills of Waka,the existence of "preface" and "postscript",and a small amount of language confiding to the readers.This paper argues that the manifestation of the so-called reader consciousness is derived from the narrative strategy of the existence of a "invisible listener";in other words,it can be conceived as a literary means adopted by the author to disguise self confession.The reader assumed by the author,who can understand her,is imaginary and not tangible under the conception of the implied author.By analyzing the superficial discourses of Kagerou Nikki,there shows a dual mode of communication on the author and other "listeners".In fact,the confession to the others is still due to the relief and consolation of the hope of the author herself,inferring the inner monologue of the author.The third chapter discusses the timeline of Kagerou Nikki.From the two aspects of the inheritance and dislocation of the story time line,the historical linear time,the natural circulation time as well as the inner psychological time,this paper explores how the author of Kagerou Nikki shows and narrates her life experience in the time stream.Kagerou Nikki's time line starts from the courtship of the couple,and then basically follows the natural time line of story,and the narrative time has a linear lengthwise extension.Meanwhile,the annual narrative follows the basic rules of the circulation of four seasons,the replacement of the day and night,as well as the rush of vegetation.Furthermore,the irreversible linear time are juxtaposed and interlaced.The external history and natural time are presented under the main lines of the characters in the story,with the writing skill of narration interposed,flashback,overview,and mitigation,making the narrative more rhythmic.The multiple time dimension of narration is demonstrated in this diary by twisting psychological activity with reality,crossing memories with the present.Other female diary literature,including KagerouNikki,have a clear timetable or calendar time mark,which can be regarded as the most different symbol from the non-fiction essayist literature such as Makuranosousi.The timeline of female diary literature not only provides the general background for the development of the story,but also plays the role of connecting the scattered materials such as Waka,letters,travel notes with the narrative,leading the text more coherent in content and constraint in theme.The fourth chapter discusses the space form and the narrative function of Kagerou Nikki,which is seldom probed into in the former studies.This paper analyzes psychological space from two perspectives,the image of dream as well as rain.The diary belongs to the non-fiction narrative since it is constructed with the author's life experience,so the analysis of the space in this novel can not be separated from the author's living space in reality.This section first analyzes the light and shadow of the regional space of Heian embodied in Kagerou Nikki and then inspects the relationship between the space transformation of "I",the narrative theme and the narration time.The distance between the couple's emotional distance is directly related with spatial distance under the general background of polygamous marriage state when the women are supposed to wait for their husbands' visit.In the story,the narrator moved to the house that was closer to her husband's house when the relationship of the couple was very intimate;on the contrary,when the estrangement appeared,the narrator moved away from the residence of her husband;finally,the narrator moved to her father's place of the suburb when the affection fade away,never seeing each other again.Living in an unfixed place aggravates the uncertainty in the life of the narrator,and the situation of whole marriage is always in the state of preoccupation with the word "empty".When she falls into the emotional crisis with her husband and becomes depressed,she tries to escape the dismay and upsets through going out and visiting temples in order to achieve the inner peace and temporary relax by resorting to Buddha from the external world.In the psychological space,the illusory dream goes beyond the actual timeline,indicating the past life and present life,and the image of rain in the present world provides a closed space for the memorization and contemplation of the narrator.The different narrative attitudes of the narrator to dreams and rains reflect the changes of mood of the author in different timeline.In the story,when the relationship of the couple is stable,the narrator has no intention of the Buddha,and the rain is only an objective of "natural rain" at that time;however,when she falls into the emotional crisis with her husband and could not help thinking about it,the rain becomes something more than the "natural rain",namely a sad and lonely rain-her sorrows.Under that circumstance,she only expects the Buddha could guide her a way to find the inner peace.Nevertheless,when the wife finds out her change of attitude towards her husband and all these worship rituals,she initiates her own reflection and thinking of life and self where the rain embodies as "peaceful rain".The husband and the family,the outgoing worship,the spiritual dream gradually disappeared from the diary text,and was replaced by the nature,the growing children,and the feeling of her own life.The narrator's shuffle between secular and sacred space represents the interaction and penetration of the geographical space and psychological space.The conclusion summarizes the narrative features of Kagerou Nikki.The world,the work(text),the author and the reader are the four basic elements that would be involved in the creation of literature and research,and the stories in the works can not be separated from the characters,events,time and space.This paper covers the narrative study of Kagerou Nikki from social and cultural context,the writers and readers who are excluded from the classic narratology,as well as the tense,language and voice in the text.The author of this diary,a member of aristocracy,confining herself in the house or the temple temporarily visited,narrates the story from a first person perspective and voices her personal emotions and thoughts,by recalling the past,paying attention to herself and taking care of nature.The author of Kagerou Nikki expresses the occasional and scattered life experience in the form of the combination of Waka and prose,achieves the inner integration through continuous timeline,and uses the literary devices to coordinate the setting,the timing,and the choices of materials.In this sense,Kagerou Nikki not only possesses the authenticity of the documentary diary,the implicitness of the private diary,but also embodies the unique literary characteristic for its retrospective narration and the existence of the hidden listeners. |
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