Writing Violence : The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature

David C. Atherton

ISBN 10: 0231211554 / ISBN 13: 9780231211550

Published by Columbia University Press Okt 2023, 2023

About this Item

Neuware - David C. Atherton offers a new approach to understanding the relationship between the challenging formal features of early modern Japanese popular literature and the world beyond its pages.

Seller Inventory # 9780231211550

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Writing Violence : The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature
• Publisher: Columbia University Press Okt 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231211554
• ISBN 13: 9780231211550
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 21D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 21 millimeters depth
• Weight: 462 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Edo-period Japan was a golden age for commercial literature. A host of new narrative genres cast their gaze across the social landscape, probed the realms of history and the fantastic, and breathed new life into literary tradition. But how to understand the politics of this body of literature remains contested, in part because the defining characteristics of much early modern fiction―formulaicness, reuse of narratives, stock characters, linguistic and intertextual play, and heavy allusion to literary canon―can seem to hold social and political realities at arm’s length.

David C. Atherton offers a new approach to understanding the relationship between the challenging formal features of early modern popular literature and the world beyond its pages. Focusing on depictions of violence―one of the most fraught topics for a peaceful polity ruled over by warriors―he connects concepts of form and formalization across the aesthetic and social spheres. Atherton shows how the formal features of early modern literature had the potential to alter the perception of time and space, make social and economic forces visible, defamiliarize conventions, give voice to the socially peripheral, and reshape the contours of community. Through careful readings of works by the major writers Asai Ryōi, Ihara Saikaku, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Ueda Akinari, and Santō Kyōden, Writing Violence reveals the essential role of literary form in constructing the world―and in seeing it anew.

About the Author

David C. Atherton is assistant professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University.