Fate, Nature, and Literary Form : : The Politics of the Tragic in Japanese Literature / / Kinya Nishi.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Nishi, Kinya,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (168 p.)

This study is a theoretical reconsideration of the concept of the “tragic” combined with detailed analyses of Japanese literary texts. Inspired by contemporary critical discourse (especially the works by such thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams), the author challenges both exotic and postmodern representation of Japanese culture as “the other” of the West. By examining the social backgrounds of artists’ endeavors to create new literary forms, the author unveils a rich tradition of tragic literature that, unlike the dominant local tradition of naturalism, has registered the unbridgeable gap between universal ideals and social values at a particular historical moment.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- A Note on Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Names -- Preface -- Part One—The Historical Development of the Tragic in Japanese Literature -- Chapter 1: Approaching the Idea of Tragedy in the Non-West -- Chapter 2: Tragic Dramaturgy in Classical Japanese Theater -- Chapter 3: Tragic Individualism in Modern Japanese Fiction -- Part Two—The Dialectics of Nature in Japanese Intellectual History -- Chapter 4: The Dilemma of Multicultural Aesthetics -- Chapter 5: Japanese Modernity and the Cultural Configuration of Nature -- Part Three—Social Crisis and Literary Form -- Chapter 6: Matsuo Bashō’s Realism -- Chapter 7: Hiroshima and the Poetics of Death -- Chapter 8: Narrative after Fukushima -- Bibliography -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects