COMP 266
Confession and Deception in Japanese Literature
Last Offered Spring 2009
Division I
Cross-listed JAPN 256
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Situated at the origins of Japanese literature are the beautiful and revealing diaries of ladies in waiting of the tenth-century imperial court. Since that time, Japanese literary tradition has placed great value on confessional writing of many kinds, from Sei Shônagon’s classical Pillow Book and the haiku master Bashô’s eighteenth-century travel diaries to postwar autobiographical fiction by writers like Mishima and Tanizaki. The source of interest in many of these texts lies in their combination of self-revelation and concealment or deception. This course asks what it meant for these authors to write from their own experience, and also what new things we can reveal in their work by writing about it ourselves. The class and the readings are in English.