Undergraduate Course: Modern Japanese Literature 4 (ASST10110)
Course Outline
School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | The course aims to provide students with a historical, cultural and theoretical background to the study of Japanese literature since 1900, and to build upon their general reading skills in Japanese so that they can apply them to the critical reading of Japanese literary texts. Class work will include sessions focussing on the works of selected authors who are recognised as representative of Japanese literature in the modern period and consideration of issues relating to the reception of modern Japanese literature by non-native (particularly Anglophone) readers.
All students will be given a formative feedback exercise that will be helpful for the assessment for this course and students' general academic development. |
Course description |
The course will address the following topics:
Definitions of modern Japanese literature and the relation of literary activity to modernization in Japan
Japanese intellectuals and their study of Western (chiefly European and North American) literature and scholarship in the Meiji period
Trends in the reform of literature and language; major literary movements
Literature and its relationship with government; pre-war, wartime and Occupation censorship and its effects
Literary responses to the Japanese defeat in 1945 and the literal and metaphorical rebuilding of the nation
Which modern Japanese authors are considered representative of their literary culture and why?
Modern Japanese literature and its reception outside Japan; the place of Japanese works in world literature
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Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Apply knowledge of the historical, cultural and theoretical background to the study of Japanese literature since 1900
- Read, translate and evaluate critically original modern literary texts by selected authors
- Communicate information and ideas effectively in essay form
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Reading List
General reading
Copeland, Rebecca L. Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press 2000)
Fujii, James A, Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative (University of California Press 1993)
Gessel, Van C, Three Modern Novelists: Sôseki, Tanizaki ,Kawabata. (Tokyo: Kodansha International 1992).
Kat¿ Sh¿ichi, tr. Don Sanderson, A History of Modern Japanese Literature: the Modern Years (London: Macmillan 1983)
Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West, 2 vols. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1984.)
Kobayashi Hideo, Literature of the Lost Home: Literary Criticism 1924-1939. Edited, translated and with an introduction by Paul Anderer. (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995)
Kokusai Bunka Shink¿kai ed., Introduction to Contemporary Japanese Literature. (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 1939.)
Murakami, Fuminobu, Ideology and Narrative in Modern Japanese Literature (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996.)
Napier, Susan, The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: the Subversion of Modernity (London : Routledge, 1996)
Petersen, Gwenn B, The Moon in the Water. (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii 1979.)
Rubin, Jay, ed., Modern Japanese Writers (Charles Scribners Sons 2000)
Tanaka Yukiko, ed., Unmapped Territories: New Women's Fiction from Japan (Women in Translation 1991)
_________, Women Writers of Meiji and Taish¿ Japan: Their Lives, Works and Critical Reception, 1868-1926 (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland 2000)
Treat, John Whittier, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1996)
Ueda Makoto, Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature (Stanford: Stanford U.P. 1976.)
Yiu, Angela P., Chaos and Order in the Works of Natsume S¿seki (University of Hawaii Press 1998).
Translations and Anthologies
Ariyoshi Sawako tr. Mildred Tahara. The Twilight Years. (London: Peter Owen, 1984.)
________, The River Ki. Trans. by Mildred Tahara. (New York, NY: Kodansha America, Inc., 2004.)
Akutagawa Ry¿nosuke, Hell Screen: Cogwheels. A Fool's Life, with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges (Hygiene, Colorado : Eridanos Press, 1987.
______, tr. Geoffrey Bownas, Kappa: A Novel; with an introduction by G.H. Healey (Rutland, Vt : Tuttle, 1971).
Kawabata, Yasunari, tr. Howard Hibbett, Beauty and Sadness (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1975).
________, trs. Seidensticker/Pecon The Izu Dancer and Other Stories. (Tokyo:Tuttle 1974.)
_______, tr. Edward G Seidensticker, Snow Country (Rutland, Vt : Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957.
________, tr. Edward G Seidensticker, Thousand Cranes (New York: Putnam, 1981)
Keene, Donald, ed., Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day (New York: Grove Press 1956).
Murakami Haruki, tr. Jay Rubin, Norwegian Wood. (New York: Vintage Books, 2000)
_________, tr. Alfred Birnbaum, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2001)
Nakano Hitori, tr. Bonnie Elliott, Train Man (London: Robinson 2006.)
Natsume S¿seki, tr. Alan Turney, Botchan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1978).
_________, tr. Edwin McClellan, Kokoro: A Novel (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1969). EUML PL812.A8 Nat
¿e, Kenzabur¿, Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: the Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures (Tokyo; London: Kodansha International, 1995).
_______ Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels (London: Boyars, 1978)
_____, trs. Paul St John Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (London: Boyars, 1995
Tanizaki Jun'ichir¿, tr. Paul McCarthy, Childhood Years: A Memoir. (Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, 1988).
________, trs. Thomas J Harper and Edward G Seidensticker, In Praise of Shadows, foreword by Charles Moore; afterword by Thomas J. Harper. (Rutland, Vt. : Tuttle, 1984.)
________, tr. Edward G Seidensticker, The Makioka Sisters (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958).
________, tr. Edward G Seidensticker, Some Prefer Nettles (London : Secker & Warburg, 1983.).
Yosano Akiko, tr. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. Tangled hair: selected tanka from Midaregami. (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, c1987.)
Yoshimoto Banana, tr. Megan Bachus. Kitchen. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1993.)
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Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Helen Parker
Tel: (0131 6)50 4230
Email: Helen.Parker@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Horn
Tel: (0131 6)50 4227
Email: david.horn@ed.ac.uk |
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