Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: December 7, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780312239954
Subjects: Novels, other prose & writers: 19th century; Translation & interpretation; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Japanese; Literary Criticism; Japan; Asian - Japanese; Literary Criticism & Collections / Asian American; American - Asian American; Asia - Japan; Adaptations; History and criticism; Japanese literature; Literature; Meiji period, 1868-1912
First sentence: As Edward Young so charmingly demonstrates above, originality has, at times, been held in higher critical esteem that imitation.
Description: "As Japan first began interacting with the West in earnest during the late nineteenth century, Japanese readers' curiosity about and interest in Western literary texts gave rise to a variety of translations. Some were translated quite literally, while others went through a process of adaptation (hon'an). Retaining the central elements of the original tale, the adaptations were often quite creatively fleshed out with traditional Japanese elements. J.

Scott Miller examines three examples of these Meiji period adaptations of Western literature: a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, recasting him as a Japanese warrior; a Victorian novel reset as oral performance; and an American dime novel redone as a serialized tale promoting the reform of Japanese theater. Miller argues that hon'an was a valid form of contemporary Japanese translation that fostered creative appropriation across genres and among a diverse group of writers and artists.

In doing so, he reconsiders adaptation in the context of translation theory."--BOOK JACKET.