Swarthmore Bookgroup with Prof. Will Gardner

Jun 13 2010 5:00 pm

Gardner, associate professor of Japanese and head of the Japanese section of Swarthmore College’s Department of Modern Languages & Literature, will speak on

From Mountain Witches to Virtual Unicorns: The Fantastic Mode in Modern Japanese Literature

How have Japanese writers used the fantastic mode to explore their evolving modern identities and their cultural past? Examples will range from an archetypal tale by Izumi Kyôka of a pilgrim’s encounter with a mountain sorceress, an idyllic but sinister garden created by Tanizaki Junichirô, and an intriguing mental landscape poised between a dystopic near-future cityscape and a mythical medieval village, as mapped by contemporary writer Haruki Murakami. The talk will also address the development of the fantastic mode in Japan as a foil to the dominant realist and confessional modes of writing, and the surprising affinities between fantastic literature and the detective, crime, and mystery genres.

Location: 
Street:
Politics and Prose
Additional:
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
,
Province:
District Of Columbia
Postal Code:
20008
Country:
United States
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