Mother-Tongue in Modern Japanese Literature and Criticism Toward a New Polylingual Poetics /

• Main Author: Yokota-Murakami, Takayuki (Author, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore : Springer Singapore : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2018.
• Subjects: Comparative literature.; Japanese language.; Philology.; Linguistics.; Comparative Literature.; Japanese.; Language and Literature.

 This book examines how early research on literary activities outside national literatures such as émigré literature or diasporic literature conceived of the loss of 'mother-tongue" as a tragedy, and how it perpetuated the ideology of national language by relying on the dichotomy of native language/foreign language. It transcends these limitations by examining modern Japanese literature and literary criticism through modern philology, the vernacularization movement, and Korean-Japanese literature. Through the insights of recent philosophical/linguistic theories, it reveals the political problems of the notion of "mother-tongue" in literary and linguistic theories and proposes strategies to realize genuinely "exophonic" and "translational" literature beyond the confines of nation. Examining the notion of "mother-tongue" in literature and literary criticism, the author deconstructs the concept and language itself as an apparatus of nation-state in order to imagine alternative literature, genuinely creolized and heterogeneous. Offering a comparative, transnational perspective on the significance of the mother tongue in contemporary literatures, this is a key read for students of modern Japanese literature, language and culture, as well as those interested in theories of translation and bilingualism. 

 Introduction Theoretical Presumptions and Comparative Perspective -- Mother-tongue and the Formulation of the National Language in Meiji Linguistics -- Gembun-itchi Movement: The Creation of a Linguistic State Apparatus -- Korean-Japanese Writers and the Redefinition of Bokoku-go -- Dialectal Literature as Bilingual Literature -- Contemporary Bilingual/Exophonic Writers and Their Politics -- Deconstructing Language as a Ground for Mother-tongue -- Conclusion.