Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction

Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction PDF Author: Christopher Weinberger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Can novels contribute to the ethical lives of readers? What responsibilities might they bear in representing others? Are we ethically accountable for how we read fiction? This study takes up modern Japanese fiction and metafiction, subjects overwhelmingly ignored by Anglophone scholarship on novel ethics, to discover pioneering answers to these and other questions. Each chapter offers new readings of major works of modern Japanese literature (1880s through 1920s) that experiment with the capacity of novel narration to involve readers in ethically freighted encounters. Christopher Weinberger shows that Mori Ogai and Akutagawa Ryunosuke help to address key issues in new ethical theories today: debates about the roles that identification and empathy play in novel ethics; concerns about the representation of “otherness” and alterity in novels; divergence between cognitive and affective theories of ethics; widespread disagreement about what novel ethics obtain in the experience of reading, the effects of reading, or the form or content of novel representation; and, finally, concerns with bias and appropriation in the study of world literature. Concluding with a jump to the present, Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction puts on display a startling continuity between the methods of Japan's modern novel progenitors and those of novelists at the forefront of global literature today, especially Haruki Murakami. Ultimately, this book models an original approach to ethical criticism while demonstrating the relevance of modern Japanese fiction for rethinking contemporary theories of the novel.

Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction

Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction PDF Author: Christopher Weinberger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
Can novels contribute to the ethical lives of readers? What responsibilities might they bear in representing others? Are we ethically accountable for how we read fiction? This study takes up modern Japanese fiction and metafiction, subjects overwhelmingly ignored by Anglophone scholarship on novel ethics, to discover pioneering answers to these and other questions. Each chapter offers new readings of major works of modern Japanese literature (1880s through 1920s) that experiment with the capacity of novel narration to involve readers in ethically freighted encounters. Christopher Weinberger shows that Mori Ogai and Akutagawa Ryunosuke help to address key issues in new ethical theories today: debates about the roles that identification and empathy play in novel ethics; concerns about the representation of “otherness” and alterity in novels; divergence between cognitive and affective theories of ethics; widespread disagreement about what novel ethics obtain in the experience of reading, the effects of reading, or the form or content of novel representation; and, finally, concerns with bias and appropriation in the study of world literature. Concluding with a jump to the present, Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction puts on display a startling continuity between the methods of Japan's modern novel progenitors and those of novelists at the forefront of global literature today, especially Haruki Murakami. Ultimately, this book models an original approach to ethical criticism while demonstrating the relevance of modern Japanese fiction for rethinking contemporary theories of the novel.

Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature

Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature PDF Author: Reiko Abe Auestad
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040106692
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This book takes the unique approach of combining cognitive approaches with more established close-reading methods in analysing a selection of Japanese novels and a film. They are by four well-known male authors and a director (Natsume Sôseki, Shiga Naoya, Ôe Kenzaburô, Ibuse Masuji and Imamura Shôhei) and five female authors (Kirino Natsuo, Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Tsushima Yûko, and Ishimure Michiko) from the early twentieth century up to the early millennium. It approaches the different artistic strategies that oscillate between emotional immersion and critical reflection. Inspired by new developments in cognitive theory and neuroscience, the book seeks to put a spotlight on the aspects of modern Japanese novels that were not fully appreciated earlier; the eclectic and fluid nature of the novel as a form, and the vital roles played by affects and emotions often complicated under the impact of trauma. Rejuvenating previously established cultural theories through a cognitive and emotional lens (narratology, genre theory, historicism, cultural study, gender theory, and ecocriticism), this book will appeal to students and scholars of modern literature and Japanese literature.

Fault Lines of Modernity

Fault Lines of Modernity PDF Author: Kitty Millet
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501316664
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This state of the art collection offers fresh perspectives on why intersections between literature, religion, and ethics can address the fault lines of modernity and are not necessarily the cause of modernity's 'faults.' From a diverse cohort of scholars from around the world, with appointments in comparative literature and other disciplines, the essays suggest that the imagined hegemony of a Judeo-Christian Western project is neither exclusively true nor productive. However, the essays also suggest that elements of the Western religious traditions are important vectors for understanding modernity's complicated relationship to the past.

IMAGINARY WORLDS AND REAL ETHICS IN JAPANESE FICTION

IMAGINARY WORLDS AND REAL ETHICS IN JAPANESE FICTION PDF Author: CHRISTOPHER. WEINBERGER
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788765105390
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Ethics of Affect

The Ethics of Affect PDF Author: Patrick W. Galbraith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789176351598
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Based on ongoing fieldwork in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, specifically a targeted subproject from 2014 to 2015, this book explores how and to what effect lines are drawn by producers, players and critics of bishōjo games. Focusing on interactions with manga/anime-style characters, these adult computer games often feature explicit sex acts. Noting that the bishōjo, or "cute girl characters," in these games can appear quite young, legal actions have been taken in a number of countries to categorize and prohibit the content as child abuse material. In response to the risk of manga/anime images encouraging underage sexualization, lawmakers are moved to regulate them in the same way as photographs or film; triggered by images, the line between fiction and reality is erased, or redrawn to collapse forms together. While Japanese politicians continue to debate a similar course, sustained engagement with bishōjo game producers, players and critics sheds light on alternative movement. Manga/anime-style characters trigger an affective response in interactions with their creators and users, who draw and negotiate lines between fiction and reality. Interacting with characters and one another, bishōjo gamers draw lines between what is fictional and what is "real," even as the characters are real in their own right and relations with them are extended beyond games; some even see the characters as significant others and refer to them using intimate terms of commitment such as "my wife." This book argues for understanding the everyday practice of insisting on lines, or drawing a line between humans and nonhumans and orienting oneself toward the drawn lines of the latter, as demonstrating an emergent form of ethics. Occurring individually and socially in both private and public spaces, the response to fictional characters not only discourages harming human beings, but also supports life in more-than-human worlds. For many in contemporary Japan and beyond, interactions and relations with fictional and real others are nothing short of lifelines.

Characters in Fictional Worlds

Characters in Fictional Worlds PDF Author: Jens Eder
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110232413
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys today ́s diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.

The Politics and Ethics of Identity

The Politics and Ethics of Identity PDF Author: Richard Ned Lebow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107027659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
Challenges the notion of consistent unitary identities, arguing that we are multiple, changing selves, shaped by social contexts and processes.

The Darkness That Comes Before

The Darkness That Comes Before PDF Author: R. Scott Bakker
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1590203852
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
A mysterious traveler intervenes in an epic holy war in this “impressive, challenging debut” of the critically acclaimed fantasy epic (Publishers Weekly, starred review). The first book in R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series introduces readers to a strikingly original and engrossingly vivid new world. With its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals, The Darkness That Comes Before has drawn comparison to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Frank Herbert’s Dune. Bakker’s Eärwa is a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future. As untold thousands gather for a crusade, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasûrimbor Kellhus—part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence—from lands long thought dead. The Darkness That Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion.

Narrative Factuality

Narrative Factuality PDF Author: Monika Fludernik
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110484994
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 751

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Book Description
The study of narrative—the object of the rapidly growing discipline of narratology—has been traditionally concerned with the fictional narratives of literature, such as novels or short stories. But narrative is a transdisciplinary and transmedial concept whose manifestations encompass both the fictional and the factual. In this volume, which provides a companion piece to Tobias Klauk and Tilmann Köppe’s Fiktionalität: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, the use of narrative to convey true and reliable information is systematically explored across media, cultures and disciplines, as well as in its narratological, stylistic, philosophical, and rhetorical dimensions. At a time when the notion of truth has come under attack, it is imperative to reaffirm the commitment to facts of certain types of narrative, and to examine critically the foundations of this commitment. But because it takes a background for a figure to emerge clearly, this book will also explore nonfactual types of narratives, thereby providing insights into the nature of narrative fiction that could not be reached from the narrowly literary perspective of early narratology.

A Subject Index to Current Literature

A Subject Index to Current Literature PDF Author: Australian Public Affairs Information Service
Publisher: National Library Australia
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1030

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Book Description