조형된 악녀상 재검토 -『겐지 모노가타리(源氏物語)』 고키덴 뇨고(弘徽殿女御)를 중심으로 -

Abstract

In The Tale of Genji, which features the protagonist Hikaru Genji and several other figures, the notorious villainess is the Kōkiden Consort. She was envious of the Kiritsubo Consort, the mother of Genji, and even resented Hikaru Genji, fearing that he might hinder the future of her son, the Suzaku Emperor. Still, her apparent villainous behavior is driven by her maternal instinct and her desire for the prosperity of her family lineage. This shows that, though she is described as the villainess to complete the theme of the story, her behavior is not utterly different from the emotions of envy and anger that people normally have. Also, to shape the image of the Kōkiden Consort, the author, though influenced by the Chinese The Annals of Empress Lü, removed elements of cruelty and related things that would not be compatible with the elegant noble culture. I reveal that the author constructs a world of miyabi ‘elegance’, an aesthetic sensibility of the Heian period, in the stories. Based on these findings, I claim that an attempt to study classical Japanese literature from a new perspective while maintaining the fundamentals of the narrative world is necessary for the further development of research on classical Japanese literature.