摘要
How much more can be gained from a piece of World Literature when the reader is semiotically literate in the culture that produced the work？ What are the implications of introducing the element of cultural literacy into the teaching of world literature, and how might culturally contextualizing the narrative enhance the reading experience for those who may not be familiar with the national culture that produced the work？ This paper examines these questions using as a case study The Tale of Genji （n.d.）, a novel from llth century Japan and ＂La Troisi6me Jeunesse de Madame Prune＂ （1905）, a French text set in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. Using examples taken from each writer＇s text, the author will show how a knowledge of both the target culture and the time period in which the work was produced can serve as a critical tool for analyzing the text; the former text shall be used to argue for an integration of a cultural anthropology element into the teaching of world literature, while the latter example shall be used to argue for the importance of contextualizing a text within its historical creation period. In concluding, the author shall examine the ways in which including an element of cultural literacy can lead to a truly interdisciplinary, trans-national, and trans-linguistic understanding of a particular literary text.
