Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji Era, known for his books Kokoro, Botchan, and I Am a Cat. Michael Bourdaghs is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Toson and Japanese Nationalism and the translation editor of Kamei Hideo's Transformations of Sensibility: The Phenomenology of Meiji Literature. Atsuko Ueda is assistant professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University and the author, most recently, of Concealment of Politics, Politics of Concealment. Joseph A. Murphy is associate professor of languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Florida and author of The Metaphorical Circuit: Negotiating the Gap Between Literature and Science in Twentieth-Century Japan. His recent work concerns the cognitive basis of narrative comprehension and includes an article in the volume Cognition and Literature, forthcoming from Yale University Press.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Natsume Soseki and the Ten-Year Project Part One: Excerpts from Theory of Literature Preface Book 1: Classification of Literary Substance Book 2: Quantitative Change in Literary Substance Book 3: The Particular Character of Literary Substance Book 4: Interrelations Between Literary Substances Book 5: Group F Part Two: Other Writings on Literary Theory, 1907-14 "Statement on Joining the Asahi" "Philosophical Foundations of the Literary Arts" "Preface" to Literary Criticism "The Merits and Flaws of -isms" "My Individualism" Notes Index

For fans of one of Japan's greatest novelists (Kokoro, Kusamakura) this volume of his literary criticism offers insights into his fiction as well as some prescient ideas about realism and multiculturalism. -- Bill Marx Public Radio International's The World Books An impressive work of remarkable erudition matched by the precision and lucidity with which the complexity of Soseki's thought and of its context are presented. -- Maria Flutsch Japanese Studies Three cheers for bringing this Soseki to us! -- Angela Yu Monumenta Nipponica A revelation... The editors deftly explore Soseki's connection with major currents in Western literary theory, philosophy, and social and natural science... An important and impressive contribution to the field of Japanese literary studies and to the ever-expanding domain of 'Sosekiana.' Journal of Asian Studies There are treasures to be mined in this book - insights into Soseki the man, Soseki the writer, Soseki the product of his time. -- Michael Hoffman Japan Times