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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Laura Moretti
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The popular prose of the seventeenth century (currently known askanazoshi) is the victim of distorted assessments. On the one hand, it is subject to a negative, as well as naive, judgement because it keeps its distance from the kind of narrative displayed in shosetsu (novels). On the other, the many and varied works it includes are choked in a misleading system of classification based on rigid distinctions between supposed narrative functions. What is needed is an analysis of those works considered hitherto as ‘failures’ and a re-examination of the canonical works in order to arrive at a reassessment of prose up to the end of the seventeenth century and, in some cases, even later on in the Edo period. The present paper is proposed as one step in this larger research project. It focuses on three works that defy the current view: Fushinseki (1645), Hyo (1665) and Kensai monogatari (from the Kanbun-Enpo era of the 1660s and 1670s). Was there a need during this period to distinguish between narrative and nonnarrative? And did a book appeal to readers for its narrative qualities alone or was there something else? These are some of the questions that I shall try to answer through an analysis of the narrative forms detectable in the three works considered here. This examination will also serve to test the basic assumption that reflecting on narrative and narrativity is one of the key strategies for elaborating a new understanding of seventeenth-century Japanese prose production.
Author(s): Moretti L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Japan Forum
Year: 2010
Volume: 21
Issue: 3
Pages: 325-345
Print publication date: 01/01/2010
ISSN (print): 0955-5803
ISSN (electronic): 1469-932X
Publisher: Routledge
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555801003773703
DOI: 10.1080/09555801003773703
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