Gender and National Literature

Heian Texts in the Constructions of Japanese Modernity

Bibliographic Data

ID8067491
AuthorsHarry Harootunian, Tomiko Yoda (corresponding author), Masao Miyoshi, Rey Chow
Year2004
Pages296
Publication date2004-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueGender and National Literature (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/9780822385875
OpenAlexW4252506185
ISBN9780822385875
Open LibraryOL29604923M
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Boldly challenging traditional understandings of Heian literature, Tomiko Yoda reveals the connections between gender, nationalism, and cultural representation evident in prevailing interpretations of classic Heian texts. Renowned for the wealth and sophistication of women's writing, the literature of the Heian period (794–1192) has long been considered central to the Japanese literary canon and Japanese national identity. Yoda historicizes claims about the inherent femininity of this literature by revisiting key moments in the history of Japanese literary scholarship from the eighteenth century to the present. She argues that by foregrounding women's voices in Heian literature, the discipline has repeatedly enacted the problematic modernizing gesture in which the "feminine" is recognized, canceled, and then contained within a national framework articulated in masculine terms.Moving back and forth between a critique of modern discourses on Heian literature and close analyses of the Heian texts themselves, Yoda sheds light on some of the most persistent interpretive models underwriting Japanese literary studies, particularly the modern paradigm of a masculine national subject. She proposes new directions for disciplinary critique and suggests that historicized understandings of premodern texts offer significant insights into contemporary feminist theories of subjectivity and agency

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Art · Epistemology · Femininity · Foregrounding · Late modernity · Literary criticism · Literature · Modernity · National identity · Nationalism · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Feminism and literature · Feminist literary criticism · History and criticism · Japanese literature · Japanese literature, women authors · Women and literature · Women authors

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