Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Novels of Oe Kenzaburo

The Novels of Oe Kenzaburo

Claremont, Yasuko

Paperback

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan

Literary CriticismGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0415666759
ISBN13: 9780415666756
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Apr 11 2011
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.47 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Ôe Kenzaburô was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. This critical study examines Ôe's entire career from 1957 - 2006 and includes chapters on Ôe's later novels not published in English. Through close readings at different points in Ôe's career Yasuko Claremont establishes the spiritual path that he has taken in its three major phrases of nihilism, atonement, and salvation, all highlighted against a background of violence and suicidal despair that saturate his pages. Ôe uses myth in two distinct ways: to link mankind to the archetypal past, and as a critique of contemporary society. Equally, he depicts the great themes of redemption and salvation on two levels: that of the individual atoning for a particular act, and on a universal level of self-abnegation, dying for others. In the end it is Ôe's ethical concerns that win out, as he turns to the children, the inheritors of the future, 'new men in a new age' who will have the power and desire to redress the ills besetting the world today. Essentially, Ôe is a moralist, a novelist of ideas whose fiction is densely packed with references from Western thought and poetry.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All