Author: Shyh-Jong RenPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Book Description
Some English Influences on Natsume Sōseki's Criticism and Novels
Author: Shyh-Jong RenSome English Influences on Natsume Sōseki's Criticism and Novels
Author: Shyh-Jong RenA Critical Study of the Novels of Natsume Sōseki, 1867-1916
Author: William N. RidgewayPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
This study is a comparative analysis of the major works of Natsume Soseki, which compares Japan's greatest novelist with his contemporaries, his works with influential English novels, his social milieu and literary concerns with Victorians and writers of his day. There being no golden key to unlock the mysteries of Soseki's novels, this critical inquiry uses unexplored categories of analysis- gender, sexuality, the body, and desire-to fathom the depth and breadth of Soseki's fictional world: interpersonal relations, gender roles, gender conflict, the battle of the sexes, love and disease, erotic triangles, love betrayed. Included is an Annotated Bibliography of Soseki scholarship and also a publishing history of the author's works translated into foreign languages.
And Then
Author: Soseki NatsumePublisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462900151
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
"A Japanese writer of genius."—Japan Quarterly Soseki Natsume is considered to be one of Japan's most beloved and respected authors. And Then is ranked as one of his most insightful and stirring novels. Daisuke, the protagonist, is a man in his twenties who is struggling with his personal purpose and identity as well as the changing social landscape of Meiji-era Japan. As Japan enters the Twentieth Century, ancient customs give way to western ideals, and Daisuke works to resolve his feelings of disconnection and abandonment during this time of change. Thanks to his father's wealth, Daisuke has the luxury of having time to develop his philosophies and ruminate on their meaning while remaining intellectually aloof from traditional Japanese culture and the demands of growing industrialization. Then Daisuke's life takes an unexpected turn when he is reunited with his college friend and his sickly wife. At first, Daisuke's stoicism allows him to act according to his intellect, but his intellectual fortress begins to show its vulnerabilities as his emotions start to hold greater sway over his inner life. Daisuke must now weigh his choices in a culture that has always operated on the razor's edge of societal obligation and personal freedom.
Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings
Author: Sōseki NatsumePublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Book Description
Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was the foremost Japanese novelist of the twentieth century, known for such highly acclaimed works as Kokoro, Sanshiro, and I Am a Cat. Yet he began his career as a literary theorist and scholar of English literature. In 1907, he published Theory of Literature, a remarkably forward-thinking attempt to understand how and why we read. The text anticipates by decades the ideas and concepts of formalism, structuralism, reader-response theory, and postcolonialism, as well as cognitive approaches to literature that are only now gaining traction. Employing the cutting-edge approaches of contemporary psychology and sociology, Soseki created a model for studying the conscious experience of reading literature as well as a theory for how the process changes over time and across cultures. Along with Theory of Literature, this volume reproduces a later series of lectures and essays in which Soseki continued to develop his theories. By insisting that literary taste is socially and historically determined, Soseki was able to challenge the superiority of the Western canon, and by grounding his theory in scientific knowledge, he was able to claim a universal validity.
The Gate
Author: Natsume SosekiPublisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175875
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
An NYRB Classics Original A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament. This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.
Natsume So ̄seki as a Critic of English Literature
Author: Sakuko MatsuiPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Kokoro
Author: Natsume SosekiPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684513758
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
"The subject of 'Kokoro,' which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling,' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness. The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight. The translation, by Edwin McClellan, is extremely good." —Anthony West, The New Yorker
Sanshiro
Author: Natsume SosekiPublisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141938072
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro's doomed innocence, the novel comes to life. Sanshiro is also penetrating social and cultural commentary.
Kokoro
Author: Sōseki NatsumePublisher: Peter Owen Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Natsume Soseki's importance to Japanese literature can be compared to that of Dickens to Britain or Henry James to America. Like these writers, his work now holds a hugely popular and important place in the literary imagination of his country. Unlike them, his work is only recently coming to the attention of readers from overseas. "Kokoro" joins the recent publications of "The Gate", "The Tower of London" and "the Three Cornered World" from Peter Owen as part of an international programme to bring one of Japan's best known authors to a new English speaking audience. As Damian Flanagan says in his new critical introduction "Kokoro" is the Soseki novel that has been given most attention by critics and the public in Japan. On one level, a meditation on the changing face of Japanese culture and its attitudes to honour, friendship, love, death, it is also a sly subversion of all of these things. The novel centres around the friendship between the narrator and the man he calls Sensei, who is haunted by mysterious events in his past. As the friendship grows and the narrator gets to know more about the man he so admires he is increasingly intrigued by this hidden history. The Sensei, however, refuses to reveal anything until the third part of the book when the narrator is called away to look after his sick father and the truth is revealed in tragic circumstances, etching itself onto the narrator - and the reader's - "Kokoro" : Heart.