M Lindhorst's ePortfolio

Social Sciences

HIST 1500: World History to 1500

History is a very broad subject, especially when it encompasses the whole world's past. There is so much information to scan through and learn from that keeping up with this course was no easy feat. However, through reading the text book and participating in discussions and lectures, it becomes easier to grasp a general sense of what has gone on in the world up to the 1500s.

The main project of this semester was a document analysis. I chose to analyze The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and learn more about Japan's early ideology.

Reflection:

Analyzing The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu wasn’t a hard task. You just had to be in the right frame of mind to ask why Lady Murasaki wrote what she did and how she went about conveying her themes. It takes a discerning eye to see into the subtext and obtain her cultural ideologies and what life was like in the early eras of Japan.

Having the opportunity to analyze Murasaki’s writing let me understand her position in the Japanese society better. I learned about her government and what roles men and women played in it. I was fascinated by the themes of love and duty in this novel. The fact that this was a fictional account of the lives of many instead of a repetitive list of facts strengthened The Tale of Genji’s hold in history as the first classical piece of literature.