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Abstract
JEFFREY JOHNSON
Saikaku and the
Narrative Turnabout
This
essay contextualizes Ihara Saikaku’s comedy within broader elements of
Tokugawa society and critical concepts in literary studies. The complexity of Saikaku’s work
is examined by employing and altering Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the
“carnivalesque” and rhetorical tropes from Japanese and Western literary
traditions. Saikaku’s comedy
engages elite and lowly as well as social and literary hierarchies in its
constant inversions and play.
Volume 27, Number 2 (Summer
2001)
© 2001 Society for Japanese Studies
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