Rituals of Self-Revelation
Subtitle: Shishosetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon (Harvard East Asian Monographs)
Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
Published: April 15, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 373
ISBN-13: 9780674773196
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Japanese Novel And Short Story; Literary Collections; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Japanese; Literary Criticism; Japan; Japanese fiction; Asian - Japanese; Social Science / Ethnic Studies; Asian; 20th century; Autobiographical fiction, Japa; Autobiographical fiction, Japanese; History and criticism
Description: Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit brings her sophisticated literary methods and graceful method of analysis to this English translation of her book on the shishosetsu, one of the most important yet misunderstood genres in Japanese literature.

This thorough and insightful study of the Japanese version of the I-novel provides a means of researching and interpreting the whole tradition of this genre, linking it to the forms of autobiographical fiction as well as to the cultural assumptions and ways of thinking of the classical period of Japanese history.

Hijiya-Kirschnereit provides a model of systematic inquiry into literary traditions that will stimulate American and English japanologists used to different methods, providing a much-needed bridge between German japanologists and the rest of the field.