Practices of the Sentimental Imagination

Jonathan E. Zwicker

ISBN 10: 0674022734 / ISBN 13: 9780674022737

Published by Harvard University, Asia Center, 2006

About this Item

New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

Seller Inventory # WH-9780674022737

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Practices of the Sentimental Imagination
• Publisher: Harvard University, Asia Center
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674022734
• ISBN 13: 9780674022737
• Binding: HRD
• Condition: New
• Weight: 628 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The history of the book in nineteenth-century Japan follows an uneven course that resists the simple chronology often used to mark the divide between premodern and modern literary history.

By examining the obscured histories of publication, circulation, and reception of widely consumed literary works from late Edo to the early Meiji period, Jonathan Zwicker traces a genealogy of the literary field across a long nineteenth century: one that stresses continuities between the generic conventions of early modern fiction and the modern novel. In the literature of sentiment Zwicker locates a tear-streaked lens through which to view literary practices and readerly expectations that evolved across the century.

Practices of the Sentimental Imagination emphasizes both qualitative and quantitative aspects of literary production and consumption, balancing close readings of canonical and noncanonical texts, sophisticated applications of critical theory, and careful archival research into the holdings of nineteenth-century lending libraries and private collections. By exploring the relationships between and among Japanese literary works and texts from late imperial China, Europe, and America, Zwicker also situates the Japanese novel within a larger literary history of the novel across the global nineteenth century.

About the Author

Jonathan E. Zwicker is Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Michigan.