On Late Tanizaki Jun’ichirō: Transcription, Authorial Discontent, and Creative Revival
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Researchers have long presented Tanizaki Jun'ichirō’s (1886-1965) late works as a trilogy: Kasanka Manganmizuno Yume (1955), The Key (1957), and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). They selected these three works for a thematical continuity (in a Freudian term) – personal probation of his late-year existential problems through infantile sexuality in contrast with the genital sexuality observed in his earlier works. This observation, however, overshadows a critical transition of Tanizaki’s writing technique in 1959, the year he started to have his works dictated due to neuralgia. In particular, this study focuses on Diary of an Old Man (1961) and The Maids (1962-1963), the last two novels published before his death in 1965, to examine a stylistic transition influenced by the transcription process after 1959. This paper argues that accepting transcription as writing involving two people meant to be a disillusioning loss of masculine control over his text and thus his belief in literature as art for individual cultivation. This sense of loss was represented in the multi-layered ironic device in Diary of a Mad Old Man. In contrast, the succeeding novel, The Maids, stylistically overturned the extreme ironic device in The Key to demonstrate a masochistic reception and utilization of his late-year biological dilemma. In general, this close investigation aims to complicate the previously constructed understanding of Tanizaki’s late style and to illustrate Tanizaki’s way out of the old-age disabilities and its impact on creation itself.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | August 4, 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Lu, Yingzhi | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Reichert, James | |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies |
Subjects
| Subject | Modern Japanese Literature |
|---|---|
| Subject | Tanizaki Junichiro |
| Subject | 1959-1963 |
| Subject | Late Style |
| Subject | Transcription |
| Subject | Irony |
| Subject | Allegory |
| Subject | Freud |
| Subject | Paul de Man |
| Subject | Subjectivity |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Lu, Yingzhi. (2020). On Late Tanizaki Jun’ichirō: Transcription, Authorial Discontent, and Creative Revival. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/bs374xn3590
Collection
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection
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