Travellers' visions : French literary encounters with Japan, 1881-2004 / Akane Kawakami.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kawakami, Akane.

Series:

Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; 4.

Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--19th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

French literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Japan--In literature.

Japan.

Japan--Foreign public opinion, French.

Physical Description:

205 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool [England] : Liverpool University Press, 2005.

Summary:

What is involved in 'seeing' a foreign culture? Guidebooks, historical references and cultural prejudices constantly colour what the traveller might hope to see afresh, with a 'naked eye'. Through whose eyes, for instance, do we see Japan today? Travellers' Visions is an analytical history of French literary images of Japan, from its reopening to the West in 1854 to the present day. It aims to analyse the social and historical contexts surrounding French perceptions of Japan, to present close readings of selected texts, and to show how Japan, as a country that was never colonised by the West, offers an 'exceptional' instance in postcolonial studies of French literary relations with the East. The book is centrally concerned with the experience of seeing and understanding a foreign culture, focusing on each writer's individual vision of Japan. Each of these is related to a specific mode of travel - journalism, diplomacy, collecting, ethnography, photography - and each writer is discussed as a different type of traveller.

The book offers an unusual angle on the work of canonical writers such as Proust, Claudel, Michaux and Barthes, as well as being an introduction to several less well-known writers such as Farrere, Loti and Gerard Mace. Interdisciplinary in scope, Travellers' Visions is the history of the intercultural exchanges between France and Japan, between a literary lineage and the object of its gaze, that is still relevant and pertinent today.

Contents:

Introduction: Modes of Travel, Modes of Seeing 1

1 Travels through Objects: Marcel Proust, Edmond de Goncourt, Pierre Loti 15

2 Journalists and Barbarians: Anatole France, Claude Farrere, Henri Michaux 54

3 Walking towards Japan: Paul Claudel's co-naissance of the East 90

4 Postwar Travellers and Photographic Writing: Roland Barthes, Michel Butor, Gerard Mace 128

Conclusion: Textual Worlds 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-201) and index.

ISBN:

0853238111

0853237301

OCLC:

61260300