Haruki Murakami and the Search for Self Therapy

• Author : Jonathan Dil
• Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release : 24 February 2022

Haruki Murakami, a global literary phenomenon, has said that he started writing fiction as a means of self-therapy. What he has not discussed as much is what he needed self-therapy for. This book argues that by understanding more about why Murakami writes, and by linking this with the question of how he writes, readers can better understand what he writes. Murakami's fiction, in other words, can be read as a search for self-therapy. In five chapters which explore Murakami's fourteen

• Author : Gitte Marianne Hansen,Michael Tsang
• Publisher : Routledge
• Release : 23 August 2021

This book is a timely and expansive volume on Murakami Haruki, arguably Japan's most high-profile contemporary writer. With contributions from prominent Murakami scholars, this book approaches the works of Murakami Haruki through interdisciplinary perspectives, discussing their significance and value through the lenses of history; geography; politics; gender and sexuality; translation; and literary influence and circulation. Together the chapters provide a multifaceted assessment on Murakami’s literary oeuvre in the last four decades, vouching for its continuous importance in understanding the

• Author : Walter Cohen
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
• Release : 19 January 2017

Walter Cohen argues that the history of European literature and each of its standard periods can be illuminated by comparative consideration of the different literary languages within Europe and by the ties of European literature to world literature. World literature is marked by recurrent, systematic features, outcomes of the way that language and literature are at once the products of major change and its agents. Cohen tracks these features from ancient times to the present, distinguishing five main overlapping stages.

• Author : Rick Honings,Gaston Franssen
• Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
• Release : 28 February 2017

Though fame might be fickle, it is what drives contemporary culture. We live in a celebrity society, which revolves around movie stars, pop idols, political icons, and sport heroes. However, celebrity is not only reserved for the world of entertainment or popular culture. In literary history, too, celebrities can be found. Throughout the centuries, readers have idolized writers - for their extra-ordinary life styles, their shocking opinions, or their enigmatic personalities. These 'star authors' succeeded in creating their own branded

• Author : Joachim Küpper
• Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
• Release : 20 December 2013

The present volume introduces new considerations on the topic of “World Literature”, penned by leading representatives of the discipline from the United States, India, Japan, the Middle East, England, France and Germany. The essays revolve around the question of what, specifically in today's rapidly globalizing world, may be the productive implications of the concept of World Literature, which was first developed in the 18th century and then elaborated on by Goethe. The discussions include problems such as different script systems

• Author : Ted Hopf,Bentley B. Allan
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
• Release : 06 April 2016

Constructivism, despite being one of the three main streams of IR theory, along with realism and liberalism, is rarely, if ever, tested in large-n quantitative work. Constructivists almost unanimously eschew quantitative approaches, assuming that variables of interest to constructivists, defy quantification. Quantitative scholars mostly ignore constructivist variables as too fuzzy and vague. And the rare instances in which quantitative scholars have operationalized identity as a variable, they have unfortunately realized all the constructivists' worst fears about reducing national identity to

• Author : Marc Yamada
• Publisher : Routledge
• Release : 29 October 2019

This book provides the first interdisciplinary examination of the popular fiction and film of the “lost decades” of Japan’s Heisei period (1989–2019). Presenting original analysis of major Heisei writers, filmmakers, and manga artists, the chapters examine the work of Urasawa Naoki, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Murakami Haruki, and Shinkai Makoto, among others. Through the work of these cultural figures, the book also explores the struggle to define the history of Heisei—three decades of economic stagnation, social malaise, and natural disaster. In

• Author : Matthew Carl Strecher
• Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
• Release : 01 October 2014

In an “other world” composed of language—it could be a fathomless Martian well, a labyrinthine hotel or forest—a narrative unfolds, and with it the experiences, memories, and dreams that constitute reality for Haruki Murakami’s characters and readers alike. Memories and dreams in turn conjure their magical counterparts—people without names or pasts, fantastic animals, half-animals, and talking machines that traverse the dark psychic underworld of this writer’s extraordinary fiction. Fervently acclaimed worldwide, Murakami’s wildly imaginative

• Author : Randall L. Nadeau
• Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
• Release : 28 January 2014

ASIAN RELIGIONS “A unique introduction to Asian religions, combining the scholarly rigor of an established historian of Asian religions with the willingness to engage empathetically with the traditions and to suggest that readers do the same.” Joseph A. Adler, Kenyon College “Randall L. Nadeau has accomplished what only a few have tried, but which has been much needed in the study of religions. He has written a genuinely novel approach to the religions of Asia… This is a work that

• Author : Peter Marks,Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor,Fátima Vieira
• Publisher : Springer Nature
• Release : 16 April 2022

The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures celebrates a literary genre already over 500 years old. Specially commissioned essays from established and emerging international scholars reflect the vibrancy of utopian vision, and its resiliency as idea, genre, and critical mode. Covering politics, environment, geography, body and mind, and social organization, the volume surveys current research and maps new areas of study. The chapters include investigations of anarchism, biopolitics, and postcolonialism and study film, art, and literature. Each essay considers central

• Author : Christopher Warnes,Kim Anderson Sasser
• Publisher : Cambridge University Press
• Release : 12 November 2020

Magical realism can lay claim to being one of most recognizable genres of prose writing. It mingles the probable and improbable, the real and the fantastic, and it provided the late-twentieth century novel with an infusion of creative energy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and many others harnessed the resources of narrative realism to the representation of folklore, belief, and fantasy. This

• Author : William Marling
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
• Release : 15 March 2016

The romantic idea of the writer as an isolated genius has been discredited, but there are few empirical studies documenting the role of "gatekeeping" in the literary process. How do friends, agents, editors, translators, small publishers, and reviewers-not to mention the changes in technology and the publishing industry-shape the literary process? This matrix is further complicated when books cross cultural and language barriers, that is, when they become part of world literature. Gatekeepers builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu,

• Author : Elana Gomel
• Publisher : Routledge
• Release : 18 February 2014

Space is a central topic in cultural and narrative theory today, although in most cases theory assumes Newtonian absolute space. However, the idea of a universal homogeneous space is now obsolete. Black holes, multiple dimensions, quantum entanglement, and spatio-temporal distortions of relativity have passed into culture at large. This book examines whether narrative can be used to represent these "impossible" spaces. Impossible topologies abound in ancient mythologies, from the Australian Aborigines’ "dream-time" to the multiple-layer universe of the Sumerians. More

• Author : H. Byron Earhart
• Publisher : Cengage Learning
• Release : 01 January 2013

This standard text explores religion in Japan as a complex tapestry of different religious strands, reflecting both the unity and diversity of Japanese culture, a theme Earhart pioneered in the first edition (1969) of this enduring, classic book--a theme he has devoted subsequent decades to refining through cutting-edge scholarship and keen observation of the evolving religious scene. Tracing the development of religious traditions from the prehistoric era through modern times, Earhart explores the vital influence of Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and

• Author : Barbara E. Thornbury
• Publisher : Springer Nature
• Release : 30 January 2020

Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film explores ways that late 20th- and early 21st- century fiction and film from Japan literally and figuratively map Tokyo. The four dozen novels, stories, and films discussed here describe, define, and reflect on Tokyo urban space. They are part of the flow of Japanese-language texts being translated (or, in the case of film, subtitled) into English. Circulation in professionally translated and subtitled English-language versions helps ensure accessibility to the primarily anglophone readers of this