The Disintegrating Machinery of the Modern

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's suicide in July 1927, coming little more than half a year after the beginning of the Shōwa period, seemed to many at the time to signify the end of an era. A number of writers and critics, for example, interpreted his death as marking the defeat of an intellectual (or aestheticized) literary practice disengaged from historical and social reality. This point was particularly emphasized by several prominent Marxist critics, who read his personal crisis as "one aspect of a collapsing bourgeoisie" (Sekiguchi 1993, 4: 334). Miyamoto Kenji crystallized this sentiment in his landmark 1929 essay, "Haiboku no bungaku" (The Literature of Defeat), in which he wrote that Akutagawa's late writings and death constituted a warning to bourgeois intellectuals of the inevitable and disastrous result of their aestheticism and hermeticism (Sekiguchi 1993, 6: 222-46). Indeed, Akutagawa's expression of "vague anxiety" as the cause of his suicide, coupled with the turbulent and transitional character of the 1920s, transformed his death from a personal, private catastrophe into a general historical allegory, an empty vessel into which a variety of narrative interpretations could be projected. In this way, Akutagawa's suicide achieved the status of an eminently historical gesture

Aesthetics · Allegory · Allusion · Art · Bourgeoisie · Literature · Narrative · Period (music) · Petite bourgeoisie · Political science · Politics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

• The Ideologies of Japanese Tea

  Tim Cross, Murakami Fuminobu•Reading the Tale of Genji•2009

  Incluir item

• Critical theory since Plato.

  Hazard Adams•Critical theory since Plato.•1971

  Incluir item

• Rabelais and his world

  Mikhail Bakhtin, H Iswolsky•Applied Theatre Reader•2020

  Incluir item

• Dreams of Difference

  K M Doak, Kevin Michael Doak•Dreams of Difference•1994

  Incluir item

• The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature

  Susan J Napier, Susan Napier•Fantastic in Modern Japanese…•2005

  Incluir item

• Origins of Modern Japanese Literature

  Open Access•Karatani Kōjin, K ̄ojin Karatani et al.•Origins of Modern Japanese…•1993

  Incluir item

• Narrating the Self

  Tomi Suzuki•Narrating the Self•1997

  Incluir item

• The Discursive Space of Modern Japan

  Kojin Karatani, Seiji M Lippit•boundary 2•1991

  Incluir item

• Personality in Japanese History

  George A Devos, Albert M Craig et al.•Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies•1971

  Incluir item

• Akutagawa Ryunosuke and I-Novelists

  Kinya Tsuruta•Monumenta Nipponica•1970

  Incluir item

• Literature of the Lost Home

  J Cohn, Jay B Cohn et al.•Monumenta Nipponica•1996

  Incluir item

• Dawn to the West

  Makoto Ueda, Donald Keene•Monumenta Nipponica•1985

  Incluir item

• The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction

  Ann Sherif, Dennis Washburn et al.•Monumenta Nipponica•1995

  Incluir item

• Narrating the Self

  Richard Torrance, Tomi Suzuki•Journal of Japanese Studies•1997

  Incluir item

• Other Worlds

  Leith Morton, Paul Anderer•Journal of Japanese Studies•1987

  Incluir item

• On Idealism and Realism in the Thought of Okakura Tenshin

  F G Notehelfer•Journal of Japanese Studies•1990

  Incluir item

• Dawn to the West

  William F Sibley, Donald Keene•Journal of Japanese Studies•1986

  Incluir item

• The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction

  Reiko Abe Auestad, Dennis Washburn et al.•Journal of Japanese Studies•1996

  Incluir item

• Culture and Identity

  F G Notehelfer, J Thomas Rimer•Journal of Japanese Studies•1992

  Incluir item

• Dreams of Difference

  Alan Tansman, K M Doak•Journal of Japanese Studies•1995

  Incluir item

• Akutagawa

  James A O''Brien, James A O'Brien et al.•Journal of the American Oriental…•1974

  Incluir item

• Personality in Japanese History

  John S Brownlee, Albert M Craig et al.•Pacific Affairs•1971

  Incluir item