Contemporary Japanese fiction

要旨

Natsume Soseki has intrigued scholars and readers for more than a century. He created an indisputably modern literature while appropriating techniques and practices that predated modernity. Soseki's Bungakuron represents an attempt to produce a scientific theory of world literature, valid for all places and all times. Soseki's use of quantitative language to define literature allowed him to break with previously dominant discourses of literature. In 1910 Soseki published Mon, the first trilogy. Higan sugi made, published after a nearly fatal bout with stomach ulcers, opens the second trilogy with another self-consciously experimental work. Kokoro, Soseki's best-known novel in the West, completes the second trilogy. In 1915 Soseki published the autobiographical Michikusa. The major turning point in Soseki's reception came in the 1970s and 80s, when a new generation of critics published influential new interpretations that again transformed Soseki. No longer the hero of the modernization of Japanese literature, he was now celebrated as the great critic of Japanese modernity.

主題