Description
Book SynopsisDazai Osamu (1909-1948) is one of Japan's most famous literary suicides, known as the earliest postwar manifestation of the genuinely alienated writer in Japan. In this first deconstructive reading of a modern Japanese novelist, Alan Wolfe draws on contemporary Western literary and cultural theories and on a knowledge of Dazai's work in the context
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. vii*PREFACE, pg. xiii*Introduction. SAINT OF NEGATIVITY Introduction SAINT OF NEGATIVITY, pg. 3*Chapter One. FROM SEPPUKUTOJISATSU: SUICIDE AS NATIONAL ALLEGORY, pg. 21*Chapter Two. TWO TALES OF SUICIDE: SOCIO-LITERARY COMPLICITIES IN JAPANESE MODERNIZATION, pg. 48*Chapter Three. NOVEL, GHOSTLY, AND NEGATIVE SELVES, pg. 79*Chapter Four. THE LAST OF THE I-NOVELISTS, pg. 97*Chapter Five. DYING TWICE: ALLEGORIES OF IMPOSSIBILITY, pg. 120*Chapter Six. DEATHSCRIPT: SUICIDE AS POLITICAL SURVIVAL, pg. 147*Chapter Seven. ALLEGORICAL UNDOINGS, pg. 165*Chapter Eight. JAPANESE RESSENTIMENT, pg. 185*Epilogue. POSTMODERN POSTMORTEM, pg. 212*NOTES, pg. 225*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 247*INDEX, pg. 257
