Dephallicizing Women in Ryūkyō shinshi: A Critique of Gender Ideology in Japanese Literature

1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-586
Author(s):  
Chieko Ariga
Keyword(s):  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
Exclusive Focus

In surveying the history of Japanese literature since the Meiji period (1868–1912), readers immediately recognize that Japanese literature has been approached most predominantly from the perspective of the question of the “modern.” Although specific subjects of focus have varied, the primary underlying question has been whether a literary work is “modern,” “premodern,” or “antimodern.” This approach has been so firmly embedded in the Japanese literary tradition that it has established itself as the most legitimate way to examine literature written after the Meiji period.The issue of the “modern” is related to the question of Japanese modernization; it is unquestionably important and deserves full critical attention in view of the geopolitical position of Japan in Asia, affected by Western hegemonic power over the past few centuries. However, because of this exclusive focus, other significant questions, including questions related to gender, have escaped critical attention.

Basho as a Post-Pastoral Poet (ポスト・パストラル詩人としての芭蕉)

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30
Author(s):  
Kinya Nishi ◽  
欣也 西
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Uncritical Acceptance

This essay is an attempt to explore Basho Matsuo’s establishment of haiku as a significant moment in the history of Japanese literature where the perception of nature was drastically changed. It is often assumed that Basho’s poetry exemplifies aesthetic harmony between human beings and nature. However, with the help of recent critical discussions on the idea of nature I will argue that Basho’s poems entail intriguing paradoxes between, for example, the natural and the artificial, or between the legacy of the past and the perception of the present. A reconsideration of the literary, religious and social dimensions of Basho’s work will help us clarify how the poet, having mastered a range of styles, whether classical or contemporary urban, exposed himself to nature during his journeys in order to establish a new structure of aesthetics. I will draw on the “post-pastoral” debate to position Basho’s achievement among the great traditions that have expanded the possibility of representation by striking a subtle balance between uncritical acceptance and wholesale rejection of literary tradition. 〔概要〕本論は、松尾芭蕉による俳諧の確立を、日本文学史において自然認識を大きく変容させる重要な時機として考察する試みである。しばしば芭蕉の詩作は、自然と人間との間の美的調和を典型的に示すものと考えられている。しかし、自然の観念をめぐる最近の議論を踏まえるならば、芭蕉の詩は《自然なもの》と《作られたもの》、《過去の遺産》と《現在の知覚》等々のあいだの興味ある逆説を内包していることがわかる。芭蕉の作品の背後にある文学的、宗教的、社会的諸次元を再考していくことにより、芭蕉が、古典から同時代の都市の流行まで多様な様式に習熟したのち、旅において自らを自然に曝し、新しい構造を持つ美学を構築したことが示されるであろう。「ポスト・パストラル」の議論を参照しながら、筆者は芭蕉の達成したものを偉大な伝統のうちに据えてみたい。その伝統とはすなわち、文学伝統の無批判な受容と総体的拒絶とのあいだの精妙なバランスをとることによって、表現の可能性を拡大する伝統である。 This article is in Japanese.

Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Confidence Man ◽  
Ugly Duckling ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

Homer's Use of the Past

1929 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
H. L. Lorimer
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Present Writer ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Systematic Examination ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

Of the sources of Homer in the literary sense we can know nothing. There is no antecedent, no contemporary literature extant; and no analysis of later works will yield anything that can be proved to represent a literary tradition earlier than Homer. Archaeology, however, which has made the origins of Hellenic culture in some degree intelligible, has at least furnished a solid stage and a veritable background for the action of the Iliad. How much did Homer know of the past? A systematic examination of the archaeological data which the poems offer suggests that he knew a great deal; knew it with a precision which cannot be explained away as fortuitous, and about so remote a past that we must postulate a stream of tradition traceable much further back than the siege of Troy. For the purposes of this paper Homer means the author of the Iliad in substantially its present form, whose floruit the present writer would not put earlier than the ninth century, and the term is used, without prejudice, for the author of the Odyssey also. Eratosthenes' date of 1184 for the fall of Troy is assumed less because it came to be accepted as the standard date in antiquity than because it fits so well into what we know of the history of the Mediterranean world at that time.

scholarly journals Karakteristik Sastra Sufi (Content Analysis Karya-karya Sastra Indonesia)

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Lidya Arman
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Past ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Times

Literary work is an inseparable part of human life. Literature appears along with the history of human existence. In fact, it can be said that from the literature produced, it reflected the support of human civilization. As a social institution, literature reflects the expression of appreciation and inner experience of the narrator or the author of certain authors or situations. Literature always experiences development along with changing times and the emergence of new thoughts in every aspect of life. This also applies in the world of literature. Parallel aspects will show a clear picture of literature from the past until now. Methodologically this research uses library research or library research. The object of the study in this study is Sufi literary works. The approach used in this study is descriptive qualitative, in which this study describes not intended to test certain hypotheses. Literary works with religious characteristics will be able to direct readers to make conscience more serious, pious and conscientious in inner consideration. So that religious works make the reader pensive and template.

The Polymorphous Pesaḥ

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-343
Author(s):  
Mira Balberg ◽  
Simeon Chavel
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Original Version ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Creative Thought ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rich History

Despite points of critical clarity in the scholarly tradition, the biblical account of Exodus 12 continues to be treated as a sufficiently coherent story of origins that relates how the Passover festival and the pesaḥ ritual were established and what makes all subsequent performances reenactments. This article surveys ancient literature presenting or invoking the pesaḥ, from its very first representation in biblical literature up to the debates about it in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, to show that the pesaḥ is an instance of “repetition without origin” and one that problematizes the very notion of reenactment. The article demonstrates that successive authors and editors do not provide any clear sense of how the pesaḥ was done in their time or what the general tradition was as to its origins; the original version was itself already fragmentary and unworkable; subsequent work to recast and re-present it is always interpretive and re-interpretive in nature, is conditioned by the argument of the larger literary work, and advances contradictory views. Because the early sources construct the pesaḥ in so many opposing ways, subsequent readers had unusual liberty to interpret and retold this important practice in whatever shape best suited their needs and understanding. The survey illustrates how completely the pesaḥ foils the attempt to write its history both as a practice and as a literary tradition, but also how it generated a long and rich history of creative thought around itself.

scholarly journals THE POSITION OF LOW MALAY SHORT STORIES IN THE HISTORY OF INDONESIAN LITERATURE

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Pujiharto Pujiharto ◽  
Sudibyo Sudibyo
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Cultural Orientation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diverse Cultures

This article tries to determine the factors causing the Low Malay short stories became unaccounted, especially those that were collected in Miss Koelit Koetjing (2005), in the constellation of the history of modern Indonesian literature. To answer these problems, this paper explores the criteria applied by the author of the history of Indonesian literature, comparing it with the Low Malay short stories, and relates them to their cultural historical context.The results showed the reason that Low Malay short stories collected in Miss Koelit Koetjing were not accounted, are caused by the following factors. First, most of the short stories still retain the traditional genres, such as hikayat (saga) and fairy tales, which show the strength of the cultural orientation of the past. Second, the authors of short stories are not natives; the author is not in the sense of the creator, the creator, but a storyteller, just to recount a story that has been there before. Third, short stories were published in newspapers and not in the book form. Fourth, the world of their stories came from diverse cultures and not from the world of the Indonesian archipelago. With a similar reality, it can be concluded that the short stories collected in Miss Koelit Koetjing, in the broad realm of Low Malay literature, is a literary tradition of its own in the constelation history of Indonesian literature.

Animation, Affirmation, Anarchy: Folk Performance in Brazil

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (54) ◽  
pp. 159-181
Author(s):  
Marco Camarotti Rosa
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Eastern Brazil ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Folk Performance ◽  
Comprehensive Coverage

The folk theatre of North-Eastern Brazil has been given scant critical attention in the past. Even within Brazil itself attention has been largely concentrated in the writings of folklorists, musicologists, and those interested in popular dance. Marco Camarotti Rosa's article is the first attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of the activity as theatre. In describing the four major forms, with some reference to the proliferation of deviations from the norm which are bound to occur when performance is rooted in the oral rather than literary tradition, the article draws attention away from a futile search for historic precedents and stages of development in favour of viewing the performances as they are now, and considering the part they play in the hard-working lives of the communities of North-Eastern Brazil. Marco Camarotti Rosa is a Lecturer in the Department of Theory of Art and Artistic Expression in the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).

scholarly journals Deceptive Strategies in Literature: The Meaning of Folded Story

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 302
Author(s):  
Silvia Rosa
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Past History ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
West Sumatra ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kinship Structure

Tambo Minangkabau is a storehouse of knowledge about the history of the Minangkabau people. Initially, it developed as oral literature, passed from generation to generation in the Minangkabau community in West Sumatra, an Indonesian provinces with a matrilineal kinship structure. However, after the Minangkabau people embraced Islam, Tambo began to be written using Jawi characters in Arabic thus becoming an historical literary work. Tambo tells the history of the Minangkabau ethnic group and also the history of customs and Minangkabau culture. Tambo records past events, stories about the origins of Minangkabau ancestors, philosophy, norms and laws in community life, and even the tragedies that have occurred in this ethnic group. To express the tragedies that have occurred in the past history of the Minangkabau ethnic group, Tambo uses the power of symbolic language. There are two episodes in Tambo that illustrate this. This article reveals the strategy of hiding a tragedy by the Minangkabau tribe through the power of the use of language in historical literary works, especially those depicted in the episodes of “Teka-teki Kayu Tataran” and “Teka-teki Unggas”.

Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianjun He
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Vernacular Fiction ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Spring And Autumn Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
First Time

This book is the first complete English translation of Wu Yue Chunqiu, a chronicle of two neighboring states during China's Spring and Autumn period. This collection of political history, philosophy, and fictional accounts depicts the rise and fall of Wu and Yue and the rivalry between them, the inspiration for centuries of poetry, vernacular fiction, and drama. Wu Yue Chunqiu makes use of rich sources from the past, carefully adapting and developing them into complex stories. Historical figures are transformed into distinctive characters; simple records of events are fleshed out and made tangible. The result is a nuanced record that is both a compelling narrative and a valuable historical text. As one of the earliest examples of a regional history, Wu Yue Chunqiu is also an important source for the history of what is now Zhejiang and Jiangsu. This engaging translation and the extensive annotations make this significant historical and literary work accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time.

scholarly journals Koriak’s Cultural Critique

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-26
Author(s):  
Olesia Omelchuk
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Proletarian Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

According to the author of the article, the content and directions of literary criticism of Volodymyr Koriak (1889–1937) were determined by the idea of proletarian culture. Its basic principle was the struggle between the bourgeois and proletarian world, formulated in the philosophy of Marxism. However, this concept was not sufficient to build the concept of Ukrainian proletarian literature. In 1920s the most problematic for the critics was the choice of the criteria for identifying the literary text as a proletarian one. They had to take into account such non-textual factors as the author’s biography, national cultural forms, historical influences of Europeanism, colonialism, anti-colonialism, nationalism, imperialism, etc. Koriak’s works reflect the conflicts and compromises that the concept of Ukrainian proletarian literature underwent during 1919 – 1934. Especially complicated were such topics as the history of Ukrainian Marxist-proletarian thought, the ‘Borotbyst’ narrative, the issues of proletarian style and bourgeois cultural influences. The Ukrainian ‘narodnytstvo’ became a major part of Koriak’s critique. As a result, the bourgeois legacy (namely modernism, ‘narodnytstvo’, ‘national literature’) in Koriak’s literary-critical discourse received a particular negative evaluation. Koriak’s literary work testifi es to the fact that the proletarian-Marxist criticism of his contemporaries is featured by the coexistence of the three schemes of constructing proletarian literature: proletarian literature as terra nova; proletarian literature as a continuation of the socialist ideas of the pre-October literary works; proletarian literature as a transformation of the past (bourgeois) qualities and their recombination with new proletarian ones.

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