Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings

Natsume Soseki, widely held to be Japan's greatest modern novelist, in fact began his career as a literary theorist and scholar of English literature. In 1907, he published Theory of Literature, a remarkably forward-thinking attempt to understand how and why we read. Soseki would later critique Theory of Literatureas an unfinished work, but the text remains an unprecedented achievement, anticipating by decades the ideas and concepts that would form the critical foundations of formalism, structuralism, reader-response theory, cognitive science, and postcolonialism.Employing the cutting-edge approaches of contemporary psychology and sociology, Soseki created a model for studying the conscious experience of reading, as well as a theory for how the process changes over time and across cultures. By insisting that literary taste is socially and historically determined, Soseki was able to challenge the superiority of the Western canon, and by grounding his theory in scientific knowledge, he was able to claim a universal validity.Along with Theory of Literature, this volume reproduces a later series of lectures and essays in which Soseki continued to develop his theories& -some of which have never before been translated into English. In addition, the editors of the book provide a critical introduction contextualizing Soseki's theoretical project in history and exploring its contemporary legacy.

Michael K. Bourdaghs is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of Chicago and the author of The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Toson and Japanese Nationalism. Atsuko Ueda is assistant professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University and the author of Concealment of Politics, Politics of Concealment. Joseph A. Murphy is associate professor of languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Florida and author of The Metaphorical Circuit: Negotiating the Gap Between Literature and Science in Twentieth-Century Japan.