Planned topics include improving comprehension and communication through work with television and internet sources. Yoshiko Hain will teach the spring quarter in 2002. This course introduces the civilization of early Japan and the literature it produced. Our focus will be on fiction, from early poem tales and court romances to warrior tales and stories of the floating world. We will bring the works off the page with careful attention to their historical and cultural background as well as a close look at their visual and artistic dimensions.
All works read in translation.
No background in Japanese studies is required. The End of the World in Japanese Literature Warfare. From thirteenth century warrior tales to contemporary science fiction, the end of the world is an idea which has occupied a central place in almost every generation of Japanese literature. Beginning with the endemic warfare of the medieval era and continuing through the atomic bombing and the violent explosion of technology after the war, the spectacle of destruction has paradoxically given birth to some of the most beautiful, most moving, and most powerfully thrilling literature in the Japanese tradition. This course examines the literature of disaster, including popular novels and film, in order to investigate the link between destruction and literary creation.