English Criticism in Japan: Essays by Younger Japanese Scholars on English and American Literature

This collection of essays has been compiled in the hope of making scholars in the rest of the world more familiar with Japanese studies in English literature. By revealing to Western scholars the insights and criticisms of their Japanese colleagues they should help to expand the arena of intellectual discussion and improve its quality. The essays are the work of younger scholars from several leading Japanese universities. They range widely over English and American literature, stretching in time from Chaucer to T. S. Eliot, and in subject from the concept of “the royal” in Shakespeare to the involuntary memory as discovered by Coleridge. The writers have some uniquely Japanese perspectives, not of the hackneyed “East meets West” type, but insights stemming, the editor suggests, from these writers’ experience of their own very rich literary tradition.

Originally published in 1972.

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