Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Asian - Japanese

Thomas Rimer's book seeks to explain the background, structural principles, and development of pre-modem and modern Japanese fiction in a way that is comprehensive, methodical, and accessible to the general reader.

Originally published in 1978.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal...

In this...

The term strong refers not just to those with strength and power. It also includes other ideal attributes such as beauty, youth and goodness. Similarly, the term weak implies not only the weak and infirm, but also the disadvantaged, the indecent, the unsophisticated and those generally shunned by society. The former are associated not only with...

In the work of writer Abe Kōbō (1924-1993), characters are alienated both from themselves and from one another. Through close readings of Abe's work, Richard Calichman reveals how time and writing have the ability to unground identity. Over time, attempts to create unity of self cause alienation, despite government attempts to convince people to form communities (and nations) to recapture a sense of wholeness. Art, then, must resist the nation-state and expose its false ideologies.

Calichman argues that Abe's attack on the concept of national affiliation has been neglected...

Abe Kobo tackled contemporary social issues and literary theory with the depth and facility of a visionary thinker. Featuring twelve essays from his prolific career--including "Poetry...

Anhand einer Diskursanalyse reprasentativer Debatten zwischen 1920 und 1970 unter Einbezugnahme von Bourdieus Theorie des literarischen Feldes wird die Entwicklung, die Rolle und die Selbstwahrnehmung des modernen japanischen Intellektuellen in der Zwischen- und Nachkriegszeit des 20. Jahrhunderts gezeichnet und ein Profil des Schriftstellers als Intellektueller definiert.

Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair explores the possibilities and limits of terms such as body, woman, gender, and agency--categories that emerged within the context of western philosophical, religious, and feminist debates--to analyze texts that come out of altogether different temporal and cultural contexts. Through close textual readings of a wide range of classical and medieval narratives, from well-known works such as the Tale of Genji to popular Buddhist tales, Rajyashree Pandey offers new ways of understanding such terms within the context of medieval Buddhist knowledge....

Joan Ericson's magnificent survey of writing by Japanese women significantly advances the current debate over the literary category of women's literature in modern Japan and demonstrates its significance in the life and work of twentieth-century Japan's most important woman writer, Hayashi Fumiko (1903-1951).

Until the early 1980s, the literary category of women's literature (joryu bungaku) segregated most writing by modern Japanese women from the literary canon. Women's literature was viewed as a sentimental and impressionistic literary style that was popular but was critically...

Historical Style connects the birth of eighteenth-century British consumer society to the rise of historical self-consciousness. Prior to the eighteenth century, British style was slow to change and followed the cultural and economic imperatives of monarchical regimes. By the 1750s, however, a growing fashion press extolled, in writing and illustration, the new phenomenon of periodized fashion trends. As fashion fads came in and out of style, and as fashion texts circulated and obsolesced, Britons were forced to confront the material persistence of out-of-date fashions. Timothy...

Movements--of people and groups, through travel, migration, exile, and diaspora--are central to understanding both local and global power relationships. But what of more literary moves: textual techniques such as distinct patterns of narrative flow, abrupt leaps between genres, and poetic figures that flatten geographical distance? This book examines what happens when both types of tropes--literal traversals and literary shifts--coexist.

Itineraries of Power examines prose narratives and poetry of the mid-Heian to medieval eras (900-1400) that conspicuously feature tropes of...

How did a girl from the provinces, meant to do nothing more than run the family store, become a bold and daring poet whose life and work helped change the idea of love in modern Japan? Embracing the Firebird is the first book-length study in English of the early life and work of Yosano Akiko (1879-1942), the most famous post-classical woman poet of Japan. It follows Akiko, who was born into a merchant family in the port city of Sakai near Osaka, from earliest childhood to her twenties, charting the slow process of development before the seemingly sudden metamorphosis.

Akiko's later...

Southern Exposure is the first anthology of Okinawan literature to appear in English translation, and it appears at a propitious time. Although Okinawa Prefecture comprises only one percent of Japan's population, its writers have been winning a disproportionate number of literary awards in recent years--including the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for fiction, which was awarded to Matayoshi Eiki in 1996 and to Medoruma Shun in 1997. Both Matayoshi and Medoruma are represented in this anthology, which includes a wide range of fiction as well as a sampling of poetry from the 1920s to the...

Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in...