Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This study is a theoretical reconsideration of the concept of the “tragic” combined with detailed analyses of Japanese literary texts. Inspired by contemporary critical discourse (especially the works by such thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams), the author challenges both exotic and postmodern representation of Japanese culture as “the other” of the West. By examining the social backgrounds of artists’ endeavors to create new literary forms, the author unveils a rich tradition of tragic literature that, unlike the dominant local tradition of naturalism, has registered the unbridgeable gap between universal ideals and social values at a particular historical moment.

Tragic, The, in literature. --- Aristotle. --- Buddhism. --- Christianity. --- Daiichiji sengo-ha. --- Dainiji sengo-ha. --- Daisanji sengo-ha. --- Edo period. --- Hiroshima. --- Japanese literature. --- Kamakura. --- Marxism. --- Meiji period. --- Muromachi. --- Nagasaki. --- Oriental. --- Qin dinasty. --- Shintoism. --- Taisho. --- Taoism. --- Tokugawa period. --- World War II. --- aesthetics. --- allegory. --- ambiguity. --- androgyny. --- anthropology. --- anti-pastoral. --- atomic bomb. --- bunka. --- capitalism. --- catharsis. --- classical Japanese theater. --- colonialism. --- comparative literature. --- critical theory. --- exoticism. --- feminism. --- haiku. --- imperialism. --- industrialization. --- mimesis. --- modernism. --- multiculturalism. --- naturalism. --- othering. --- phenomenology. --- poetry. --- post-structuralism. --- postmodernism. --- postwar. --- realism. --- socialism. --- tragedy. --- trauma. --- universalism.