Interpretare un'eroina romantica. Utatane e la letteratura di epoca Heian (794-1185)

Utatane (Fitful Slumbers, ca. 1260) describes a frustrated love affair with a nobleman of high rank from the perspective of a lonely woman who longs for the past. It is a sort of memoir narrated in the first person and written in a style that recalls court diaries and tales of the Heian period (794-1185). The conventions of court poetry, the lives and the female characters depicted in the Genji monogatari (The tale of Genji, XI sec.) and other stories are taken up by the Nun Abutsu and used cleverly in the text as productive ways to narrate her own life. Through a close reading of Utatane, this paper will focus on a few scenes that reveal why Genji monogatari in particular was considered a “literary encyclopedia” for women’s creative inspiration in Kamakura period (1185-1333). The examination of some of the numerous literary allusions borrowed from Murasaki Shikibu’s masterpiece will help the reader to understand why Nun Abutsu’s intertextual strategies are so effective and what they tell us about her and other medieval women in a period of great political and social change.