Download or read book Memento Mori in Contemporary Art written by Taylor Worley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how four contemporary artists—Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, and Damien Hirst—pursue the question of death through their fraught appropriations of Christian imagery. Each artist is shown to not only pose provocative theological questions, but also to question the abilities of theological speech to adequately address current attitudes to death. When set within a broader theological context around the thought of death, Bacon’s works invite fresh readings of the New Testament’s narration of the betrayal of Christ, and Beuys’ works can be appreciated for the ways they evoke Resurrection to envision possible futures for Germany in the aftermath of war. Gober’s immaculate sculptures and installations serve to create alternative religious environments, and these places are both evocative of his Roman Catholic upbringing and virtually haunted by the ghosts of his excommunication from that past. Lastly and perhaps most problematically, Hirst has built his brand as an artist from making jokes about death. By opening fresh arenas of dialogue and meaning-making in our society and culture today, the rich humanity of these artworks promises both renewed depths of meaning regarding our exit from this world as well as how we might live well within it for the time that we have. As such, it will be a vital resource for all scholars in Theology, the Visual Arts, Material Religion and Religious Studies.

Download or read book The Historical Fiction of Mori gai written by David A. Dilworth and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1991-05-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiction of Mori Ogai, written after the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, secured his promiment place in modern Japanese literature. This collection of stories, set in the Tokugawa Period, provide a means for Ogai to deal with contemporary moral and philosophical values and themes.

Download or read book Contemporary Authors written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Asian American Short Story Writers written by Guiyou Huang and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian America has produced numerous short-story writers in the 20th century. Some emerged after World War II, yet most of these writers have flourished since 1980. The first reference of its kind, this volume includes alphabetically arranged entries for 49 nationally and internationally acclaimed Asian American writers of short fiction. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Writers include Frank Chin, Sui Sin Far, Shirely Geok-lin Lim, Toshio Mori, and Bharati Mukherjee. An introductory essay provides a close examination of the Asian American short story, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.

Download or read book The Political Thought of Mori Arinori written by Alistair Swale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new study of the Meiji Government's controversial Education Minister and thinker, Mori Arinori, seeks to complement Ivan P. Hall's excellent earlier biography (1973) by providing an alternative interpretation of the man and his mission, namely that he is 'overwhelmingly closer to the social evolutionist's view of social change', with a considerable debt to the writings of Spencer rather than the Utalitarian philosophy of J. S. Mill. In other words, Mori was able to develop a workable philosophy of government and administration in line with the pragmatic needs of Japanese society. The book, therefore, will contribute to a radical rethink of Japanese perceptions of the Meiji reforms seen in their own terms.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature written by Seiwoong Oh and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces American writers whose roots are in all parts of Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, the Indian subcontinent, and the Middle East.

Download or read book Suicidal Honor written by Doris G. Bargen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 13, 1912, the day of Emperor Meiji’s funeral, General Nogi Maresuke committed ritual suicide by seppuku (disembowelment). It was an act of delayed atonement that paid a debt of honor incurred thirty-five years earlier. The revered military hero’s wife joined in his act of junshi ("following one’s lord into death"). The violence of their double suicide shocked the nation. What had impelled the general and his wife, on the threshold of a new era, to resort so drastically, so dramatically, to this forbidden, anachronistic practice? The nation was divided. There were those who saw the suicides as a heroic affirmation of the samurai code; others found them a cause for embarrassment, a sign that Japan had not yet crossed the cultural line separating tradition from modernity. While acknowledging the nation’s sharply divided reaction to the Nogis’ junshi as a useful indicator of the event’s seismic impact on Japanese culture, Doris G. Bargen in the first half of her book demonstrates that the deeper significance of Nogi’s action must be sought in his personal history, enmeshed as it was in the tumultuous politics of the Meiji period. Suicidal Honor traces Nogi’s military career (and personal travail) through the armed struggles of the collapsing shôgunate and through the two wars of imperial conquest during which Nogi played a significant role: the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). It also probes beneath the political to explore the religious origins of ritual self-sacrifice in cultures as different as ancient Rome and today’s Nigeria. Seen in this context, Nogi’s death was homage to the divine emperor. But what was the significance of Nogi’s waiting thirty-five years before he offered himself as a human sacrifice to a dead rather than living deity? To answer this question, Bargen delves deeply and with great insight into the story of Nogi’s conflicted career as a military hero who longed to be a peaceful man of letters. In the second half of Suicidal Honor Bargen turns to the extraordinary influence of the Nogis’ deaths on two of Japan’s greatest writers, Mori Ôgai and Natsume Sôseki. Ôgai’s historical fiction, written in the immediate aftermath of his friend’s junshi, is a profound meditation on the significance of ritual suicide in a time of historical transition. Stories such as "The Sakai Incident" ("Sakai jiken") appear in a new light and with greatly enhanced resonance in Bargen’s interpretation. In Sôseki’s masterpiece, Kokoro, Sensei, the protagonist, refers to the emperor’s death and his general’s junshi before taking his own life. Scholars routinely mention these references, but Bargen demonstrates convincingly the uncanny ways in which Sôseki’s agonized response to Nogi’s suicide structures the entire novel. By exploring the historical and literary legacies of Nogi, Ôgai, and Sôseki from an interdisciplinary perspective, Suicidal Honor illuminates Japan’s prolonged and painful transition from the idealized heroic world of samurai culture to the mundane anxieties of modernity. It is a study that will fascinate specialists in the fields of Japanese literature, history, and religion, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Japan’s warrior culture.

Download or read book Not a Song Like Any Other written by Mori Ōgai and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-05-31 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literary writings of Mori Ōgai (1862-1922), one of the giant figures of the Meiji period, have become increasingly well known to readers of English through a number of recent translations of his novels and short stories. Ōgai was more than a writer of fiction, however. He has long been regarded in Japan as one of the most influential intellectual and artistic figures of his period, possessing a wide range of enthusiasms and concerns, many developed through his early European experiences. Not a Song Like Any Other attempts to reveal the full range of Ōgai’s creative endeavor, providing trenchant examples of his remarkable range, from dramatist and storyteller to poet and polemicist, all translated into English for the first time. The first of seven parts, “The Author Himself,” offers a variety of self portraits and other insights into Ōgai’s character through his essays—laconic, ironic, detached—written over the course of his career. “Mori Ōgai in Germany” reveals his responses to living in Germany in the 1880s and seeing for the first time how his country was being interpreted from the outside. It includes his celebrated and spirited defense of his country, originally published in a German newspaper. “Mori Ōgai and the World of Politics” relates his uneasy reactions to Japanese society at a later phase in his career. The fourth section provides some of the first information available in English concerning his lifelong interest in painting and other aspects of the visual arts in the Japan of his day. Ōgai’s theatrical experiments are briefly chronicled in Part 5. “Four Unusual Stories” offers new evidence of the range of the writer’s interests and ambitions. The final section includes some of the first translations of Ōgai’s poetry available in English. Contributors: Richard Bowring, Sarah Cox, Sanford Goldstein, Andrew Hall, Mikiko Hirayama, Helen Hopper, Marvin Marcus, Keiko McDonald, J. Thomas Rimer, Hiroaki Sato, William J. Tyler.

Download or read book Japan and the Specter of Imperialism written by M. Anderson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-10-12 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan and the Specter of Imperialism examines competing Japanese responses to the late nineteenth century unequal treaty regime as a confrontation with liberal imperialism, including the culture and gender politics of US territorial expansion into the Pacific.

Download or read book The Conversion of the Maori written by Timothy Yates and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-31 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Conversion of the Maori is the latest volume in the Studies in the History of Christian Missions series, which explores the significant, yet often contested, impact of Christian missions around the world. Timothy Yates introduces the history of missions among the Maori people of New Zealand in the mid-1800s. On the basis of painstaking archival research, Yates charts the change in society and religion over the course of nearly thirty years in detail, describing the historical development of the conversion process. The Conversion of the Maori is ecumenical and historically informed to give a balanced presentation of the conversion of a whole people.

Download or read book Contemporary Women Writers Look Back written by Alice Ridout and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before John Barth announced in his famous 1967 essay that late 20th-century fiction was 'The Literature of Exhaustion,' authors have been retelling and recycling stories. Barth was, however, right to identify in postmodern fiction a particular self-consciousness about its belatedness at the end of a long literary tradition. This book traces the move in contemporary women's writing from the self-conscious, ironic parodies of postmodernism to the nostalgic and historical turn of the 21st century. It analyses how contemporary women writers deal with their literary inheritances, offering an illuminating and provocative study of contemporary women writers' re-writings of previous texts and stories. Through close readings of novels by key contemporary women writers including Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Emma Tennant and Helen Fielding, and of the ITV adaptation, Lost in Austen, Alice Ridout examines the politics of parody and nostalgia, exploring the limitations and possibilities of both in the contexts of feminism and postcolonialism.

Download or read book Transnational Japan as History written by Pedro Iacobelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at the history of Japan from a transnational perspective. It brings to the fore the interconnectedness of Japan's history with the wider Asian-Pacific region and the world. This interconnectedness is examined in the volume through the themes of empire, migration, and social movements.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Life Writing written by Margaretta Jolly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 1141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book Fantasies of Cross dressing Japanese Women Write Male Male Erotica written by Kazumi Nagaike and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Male homosexual narratives in various genres and media—from “high-brow” literature by distinguished female authors to “pornographic” comic books produced and distributed by amateurs—have attracted the attention of a number of cultural critics in Japan and abroad. This book represents the first extensive critical attempt to examine Japanese women's narratives of male homosexuality/homoeroticism, addressing not only popular culture genres, but also the considerable body of critically acclaimed literary works (with English translations of the original works). The result is an in-depth analysis of the ways in which female fantasies of male homosexuality/homoeroticism may be composed, acknowledged, and interrogated.

Download or read book Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature written by Mina Qiao and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yōko, Tawada Yōko, Kanai Mieko, Hino Keizō, Murakami Ryū, Kawakami Hiromi, Murata Sayaka... These acclaimed authors are united by a shared fascination with fantastical conceptions of space. In highlighting these luminaries of contemporary Japanese literature, Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature examines the role of extramundane topos from an interdisciplinary approach. As writers navigate fantastical spaces in resistance to the logic of everyday life, they are able to challenge the dualistic norms on the body and mind that typify modern Japanese life. These studies demonstrate the essential role played by fantastical spaces in the development of modern Japanese literature to the present day. Scholars of Japanese studies, literature, and other fields will find this book an excellent resource for teaching and research.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science written by Allen Kent and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1977-05-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science provides an outstanding resource in 33 published volumes with 2 helpful indexes. This thorough reference set--written by 1300 eminent, international experts--offers librarians, information/computer scientists, bibliographers, documentalists, systems analysts, and students, convenient access to the techniques and tools of both library and information science. Impeccably researched, cross referenced, alphabetized by subject, and generously illustrated, the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science integrates the essential theoretical and practical information accumulating in this rapidly growing field."

Download or read book Sat Haruo and Modern Japanese Literature written by Charles Exley and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Satō Haruo and Modern Japanese Literature, Charles Exley offers the first comprehensive examination of Satō’s literary oeuvre from the 1910s through the 1930s. The study examines the ways in which selected novels and short stories interact with cultural discourses of the time, including the fantastic, the discourse on melancholy and mental illness, detective fiction and early film, colonial encounter and critique of civilization, and hysteria and psychoanalysis. Exley’s alignment of Satō’s fictional work with its cultural and historical context illustrates the complex ways in which Satō’s aesthetic projections derived from and comment on Japan’s experience with modernization during the twentieth century.