物語・小説を読むときに留意すべき13の重要事項

モリソン

物語・小説を読むときに留意すべき13の重要事項

1．語り手は誰・何か（一人称、三人称、あるいはそのどちらでもないか）。何名いる（いくつある）か。

2．語り手は「信用できる」か「信用できない」か。

3．三人称の語り手の場合、その視点は全知全能か、あるいは限定的なものか。焦点はどこにあるか。

4．語り手は主として、（模倣、対話、内面的独白等を）示しているか、あるいは述べているか（説明・叙述・地文等）。（例：「藪の中」の語りは、全て示しているのみで、地の文がない。）

5．語り手と、語り手の描写する出来事・登場人物との関係はどのようなものか。

6．作品が書かれたのはいつか。歴史的・文学的背景はどのようなものか。作品は、何か特定の出来事や風潮に反応・応答して書かれたものか。

7．作品の文体について考えること。主として、詩的・隠喩的・象徴主義的・比喩的（寓意的）、そのいずれか。あるいは、表象的・自然主義的・透過的か。

8．作中に、象徴・イメージ・隠喩はあるいか。それらの効果はどのようなものか。個別的なものか普遍的なものか。

9．常に、作者と語り手とは明確に区別するよう気を付けること。両者は同一ではない。

10．暗黙の読者・聴き手は誰か。語り手は聴き手に向かってどのように語っているか。告白か、あるいは議論なのか。

11．作品の形式は何か。（bildungsroman, kunstlerroman, 告白、冒険（探求）物語、ピカレスク小説、夢物語、散文詩、百物語、日記、物語、歌物語、説話等）。作品の内容が形式によってどのように形成されているか、そしてその逆はどうか。

12．作品において欲望がどのように機能しているか。誰が何に対して欲望を抱いているのか。欲望と物語はどのように関係しているのか。読者の欲望はどのように取り込まれているか。

13．登場人物はある元型・タイプに対応しているか。そのような登場人物像は個別的なものか、普遍的なものか、あるいはその両方と言えるか。

13 Essential Points to Consider When Reading Narrative

This just in from Swarthyface:

1. Who/what is the narrator? Is he/she/it first person, third person, neither?  

2. Is the narrator a “reliable” or “unreliable” narrator? Can we trust what she says? Or is she trying to justify/vindicate herself to her readers/the world (as in Ōgai’s Vita Sexualis)?

 3. If third person, is she omniscient? Limited omniscient? Where is the focalization point? On what character(s)? 

4. Does the narrator primarily “show” (via mimesis, dialogue, free indirect discourse, interior monologue, etc.) or “tell” (narrate, describe from the narrator’s perspective)? How does the preferred narrative strategy affect the presentation of the story and the arrangement of plot? (Example to consider: Akutagawa’s “Yabu no naka,” which is all “show” and no “tell.”) 

5. What is the relationship between (a) the narrator and (b) the events/characters that he describes? How close are they emotionally/temporally/spatially? Is there any ironic distance? Is dramatic irony created? If it is a first-person narration, is there an “epistemological gap” between the narrator at present and his past self?

 6. Always keep in mind the era/historical context/literary context in which a work was written. Is the work a reaction/response to certain events or forces of history, or to certain literary trends at the time (e.g. Ōgai’s Vita Sexualis)? 

7. Consider the style of the work. (You will usually have to consult the original for this.) Is the style more literary/poetic/metaphoric/symbolic/figurative or more representational/realistic/transparent?

 8. What sort of symbols/images/metaphors/extended metaphors are found in the work? What is their effect? Do these images/metaphors/symbols carry specific meanings that are culturally prescribed? Or are they universal? (Note: in general, the more recent the work is, the more “universal” these symbols and metaphors are.) 

9. Always make a clear distinction between the author and the narrator. Don’t fall into the trap of the 私小説 mode of reading. Narrator and author are not the same, even if there is biographical overlap (as in Ōgai’s Vita Sexualis).

 10. Note the (implied) relationship between narrator and reader/audience. Does the narrator address a specific audience? Is she confiding in this implied reader? Trying to convince the reader of something? How does the presence of this implied reader affect the narrator’s behavior/narrative? (Note: an implied reader/audience often makes the narrator more conscious of his act of narration, as seen in the “self-conscious” narrators of early- and pre-modern Japanese fiction, Akutagawa’s “Negi,” Dazai Osamu’s fiction, Ishikawa Jun’s fiction, and much contemporary fiction.) 

11. Always note the form(s) of the work (e.g. bildungsroman, künstlerroman, confession, quest story, picaresque novel, dream narrative, prose poem, ghost story (hyaku monogatari), diary, monogatari, uta monogatari, setsuwa, etc.). How is the content shaped by the form(s) in which it appears? How is the form affected/changed/altered by the content it contains? 

12. How is “desire” depicted in the work? Who desires what? What is the nature of that desire? How are desire and narrative related? (Note: Criticism that focuses on these questions usually falls into the category of psychoanalytic criticism.) 

13. Do the characters correspond to certain archetypes? Are these character types particular (i.e. national) or universal or both? (Example: Botchan=Edokko, but he is also recognizable to non-Japanese readers who know nothing of Edo.)

13 Essential Points to Consider When Reading Narrative

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The Behold My Swarthy (Incomplete and Not so Helpful) Japanese Grammar Guide

Behold My Swarthy Japanese Grammar Guide

Monkey Business Vol. 5 is now available!

Though you will not find me in this year's volume (I had to take the year off to focus on finishing dissertation/200-pg appendix, the big move to Nagoya, etc), being the good sport that I am, I will continue to promote the project lavishly, as it is hands down the best literary journal of Japanese literature in English translation that the world has ever seen。『Monkey Business』 Vol. 5 , now available in paperback and electronic formats! Click here to purchase at the web store!

Vol. 5 Table of Contents

PHOTOGRAPHS ARE IMAGES — a vignette by Aoko Matsuda, translated by Jeffrey Angles

THE GREAT NOISE — a short story by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen

VARIATION AND THEME — a graphic narrative by Satoshi Kitamura, inspired by “Doubles,” a poem by Charles Simic

THE THIRTEENTH MONTH — a short story by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Hitomi Yoshio

THE CRULLERS — a short story by Stuart Dybek

MOTHER LEADS ME FROM IWANOSAKA TOWARD SUGAMO — a chapter from a novel by Hiromi Ito, translated by Jeffrey Angles

IN ANOTHER TIME AND PLACE: FOUR STORIES
STAR DATE by Laird Hunt
HEMINGWAY’S VALISE by Rebecca Brown
A RITUAL by Matthew Sharpe
3 > 16 > 44 by Steve Erickson

SO WHAT SHALL I WRITE ABOUT? — an essay by Haruki Murakami, translated by Ted Goossen

FAMILY TRADITIONS — a short story by Eric McCormack

TWELVE TWITTER STORIES by Toh EnJoe, translated by David Boyd

GOODBYE, CHRISTOPHER ROBIN — a short story by Gen’ichiro Takahashi, translated by David Boyd　*for the official 『BMSF』 study guide to this story, click here。

HAZUKI AND ME — a short story by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen

SHOEHORN TECHNIQUE — comic strips by Ben Katchor

UNDER THE CHERRY TREES — a short story by Motojiro Kajii, translated by David Boyd

IN THE BOX — a short story by Taeko Kono, translated by Jay Rubin

THE FORBIDDEN DIARY (PART 9) — an excerpt from a fictional diary by Sachiko Kishimoto, translated by Ted Goossen

THIS IS HOW WE TALKED ABOUT IT — a short story by Yoko Hayasuke, translated by Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen

ON NOT KNOWING MY OWN BOOKS — an essay by Kelly Link

BOTCHAN AND TSURU-SAN — a short story by Taki Monma, translated by Ted Goossen

RIVERS — a short story by Keita Jin, translated by Paul Warham

THE BOOK OF THREE HUNDRED TREACHEROUS WOMEN — an excerpt from a novel by Hideo Furukawa, translated by Michael Emmerich

Pure Form as Such

Just attended a 90-min emergency interfaculty meeting whose sole purpose was to explain in real time the actions of that 90-minute emergency interfaculty meeting, with the aid of a 90-page booklet that represented in graphs that very meeting! Talk about narcissistic postmodern self-reflexive involution! It was like looking into three mirrors that face each other! .... Not that I'm complaining. It was beautiful--sublime even. Pure form as such!

Gender Pronoun Trouble and Other Life-or-Death Issues

I'm in the final stage of revising the second half of my 215-page book of Ishikawa Jun translations before sending to America's best copy editor, Anne McPeak； as a committed anti-phallocentrist, I am seriously considering changing all third-person male personal pronouns to female pronouns so as to buy myself brownie points with all the hip gender abolitionists/performatists, and thereby increase book sales。My question： Should I do it? (Example： "Amid the phenomena of everyday [quotidian] life, the writer and her neighbor are painted in the much the same hues; but whereas the neighbor can [simply] go about her business [by] calculating and weighing matters according to the [urgent] demands [imperatives/expediencies] of the day, the writer by contrast is fated/condemned to exist [also] on a separate plane that is once removed from [this/her] quotidian [everyday] reality [,] wherein she is forced to think via her pen in a pure and [purely] writerly mode. The tip of her pen is a [the] blade/scalpel that severs her from all [her] previous worldly ties/connections, hurling [and hurls] her whole being into the unknown [inchoate/nascent] world of the work.")

... But then again, the translator's duty is fidelity to the original, not to pander to contemporary trends/public tastes/political correctness；I shall therefore go with "he," at the risk of being accused (once again) of phallocentrism...

... And as for the brackets... not to worry... they are only temporary, and will fall away eventually；they're only still there because I am such a wishy-washy/indecisive man who hates to choose between several (all good) possibilities；I become very attached to my selected words, and hate to send any of them away. ... For example：I've been deliberating for the past three months about whether to go with "two provisional definitions" or "two tentative definitions," or "human feelings" or "human sentiments/emotions" for 人情, or "soft literature" or "erotic literature" for 軟文学；I cannot decide for the life of me；with the brackets, I can have my copyeditor decide for me, and am thereby relieved of the responsibility of having to make the terrible choice--a choice that is analogous to having to decide which woman to marry (in a society where polygamy is illegal), or which child to throw into the river when there is a lack of food, etc。