A Fictional Commons Natsume Soseki and the Properties of Modern Literature

Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons, Michael K. Bourdaghs explores how the literary and theoretical works of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), widely celebrated as Japan's greatest modern novelist, exploited the contradictions and ambiguities that haunted this new system. Many of his works feature narratives about inheritance, thievery, and the struggle to obtain or preserve material wealth while also imagining alternative ways of owning and sharing. For Soseki, literature was a means for thinking through-and beyond-private property. Bourdaghs puts Soseki into dialogue with thinkers from his own era (including William James and Mizuno Rentaro, author of Japan's first copyright law) and discusses how his work anticipates such theorists as Karatani Kojin and Franco Moretti. As Bourdaghs shows, Soseki both appropriated and rejected concepts of ownership and subjectivity in ways that theorized literature as a critical response to the emergence of global capitalism.

ISBN:	9781478014621
Publisher:	Duke University Press Books
Imprint:	Duke University Press
Published date:	24 Sep 2021
DEWEY:	895.6342
DEWEY edition:	23
Language:	English
Number of pages:	248
Weight:	360g
Height:	152mm
Width:	230mm
Spine width:	19mm

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