Recontextualizing Texts

This book offers the first systematic application in English of speech act theory to modern Japanese fictional narratives, based on a reading of five modern Japanese shosetsu as performances enacted by the narrator and the narratees in each text: Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and The Three-Cornered World (Kusamakura), Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain (Kuroi ame); Mori Ogai's Wild Geese (Gan), and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Quicksand (Manji). Sakaki's close reading of each text and her concern with narrative performance reveal a hitherto unexplored area of communications between narrator and narratee, as well as between "encoded author" and "encoded reader," within the text - an area overshadowed to date by interest in thematic concerns and political contexts.

Year

1999

Language

English

Publisher

Harvard University Asia Center

Editions

1

Pages

286

ISBN

9780674750944

Data source: Wikidata