Gender and national literature : Heian texts in the constructions of Japanese modernity
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Bibliographic Information
Gender and national literature : Heian texts in the constructions of Japanese modernity
（Asia-Pacific : culture, politics, and society）
Duke University Press, 2004
- : pbk
- : cloth
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Note
Bibliography: p. [261]-268
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note to the Reader
Introduction 1
1. The Feminization of Heian and Eighteenth-Century Poetics 25
2. Gender and the Nationalization of Literature 41
3. Women and the Emergence of Heian Kana Writing 81
4. Politics and Poetics in The Tale of Genji 111
5. Tokieda's Imperial Subject and the textual Turn in Heian Literary Studies 146
6. Gender and Heian Narrative Form 182
Epilogue: Heian Texts and Feminist Subjects 214
Notes 231
Bibliography 261
Index 269
by "Nielsen BookData"