| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,580,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this research project was to clarify how Natsume Soseki dealt with what in literary theory is called the reader's horizon of expectations (the set of expectations that readers bring to a literary text). In so doing, it becomes possible to understand what parts of his novels, representative works of late Meiji and early Taisho literature, correspond to their era and what parts transcend that era. The method adopted was to analyze a number of books that readers of the Asahi Shinbun, which was aimed at a readership consisting of the emerging middle class, can be presumed to have read and comparing them to the texts of the novels. My conclusion was that while Soseki, by incorporating the middle class reader's horizon of expectations , raised the status of the serialized novel, at the same time, by disappointing those expectations in certain respects, he attempted to raise the literary value of his works. This latter aspect of his works is certainly one reason they retain the
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ir value to this day.
To give one example, in Sanshiro, where the present is approximately Meiji 40(1907), Soseki made the heroine, Satomi Mineko, into a typical former girl student. In this, he can be said to have incorporated the reader's horizon of expectations concerning the female student novel that was popular in the Meiji 30s. But Soseki did not allow Mineko to lose her innocence in the manner of a typical female student novel heroine, instead marrying her to the law graduate friend of her older brother, the head of the household, in accordance with his wishes. This is precisely the way of life set forth in the novels which can be called lessons for women, which expounded the lifestyle appropriate for women brought up in contemporary middle class households. As a result, we can speculate that many readers found it difficult to focus on a single set of expectations. In this way, Soseki, while conforming to the reader's horizon of expectations, simultaneously, in disappointing those expectations, protected his novel against the ravages of time. Less
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