Academic literature on the topic 'Haruki murakami'

Murakami Haruki est probablement l'auteur le plus célèbre et le plus largement traduit de sa génération. Ce succès mondial, que la critique a parfois pu expliquer par l'occidentalisation de l'auteur, nous semble plutôt reposer sur une utilisation habile de l'intertextualité. Notre étude, après une présentation générale de la notion d'intertextualité, s'attache à déterminer les divers mouvements intertextuels chez l'auteur ; d'abord, en s'intéressant à l'intertextualité externe, qu'elle intervienne au plan microstructural, avec la référence et la citation, ou macrostructural, avec le pastiche et la parodie. Ensuite, en revenant sur l'intertextualité interne, également appelée intratextualité, si prégnante chez Murakami et qui structure son œuvre en réseau d'univers labiles. Nous verrons enfin que cette intertextualité massive pose question tant du point de vue critique, avec la problématique de la postmodernité, que du point de vue du lecteur, avec celle de la réception<br>Murakami Haruki is often said to be one of the most famous and most widely translated Japanese authors of his generation. This worldwide success, which have sometimes been explained by critics regarding the author's occidentalization, is, for us, rather based on a clever use of intertextuality. Our study, after a general presentation of the notion of intertextuality, sets out to determine the various intertextual movements in the author's works. First, by analyzing external intertextuality, whether it occurs on a microstructural (with references and quotations) or macrostructural plan (with the use of pastiche and parody). Then, by analyzing internal intertextuality (also called intratextuality), which structures his works in a labile worlds' network. We will finally see that this massive intertextuality is an important issue both for critical (with the question of postmodernity) and reader's (with the question of reception of the works) points of view

This thesis offers a reading of the first eleven novels of popular Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki, as well as a selected number of his short-stories and non-fictional works, as an evolving therapeutic discourse. In short, it is a response to Murakami's own claim to have started writing fiction as a means of self-therapy. Murakami, I will argue, is primarily responding to existential anxieties that have been magnified by conditions of cultural decline in late-capitalist Japan. His resulting therapeutic discourse shares interesting parallels with certain psychoanalytic theories of the twentieth century. Previous psychoanalytic readings of Murakami's work have tended to take either the writings of Carl Jung or Jacques Lacan as their starting point. This thesis will argue, however, that both theoretical frameworks are needed if one is to truly understand where Murakami is coming from. This kind of therapeutic reading might seem to justify those critics who see only the escapist elements in Murakami's fiction and who fault him for failing to engage fully with the important political and social issues of his day. In fact, a therapeutic reading, I will argue, is the best way to see how closely related Murakami's search for self-therapy and his growing search for commitment really are.

This thesis examines animals in the fiction of John Irving and Haruki Murakami, two authors who have much in common, contemporaries whose work is both commercially successful and regarded as literary. Different in that Irving works within a traditional realist framework while Murakami delves into the magical, each includes animals in his fiction. They employ anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in a variety of ways and demonstrate how animals, as Claude Levi-Strauss puts it, are “good to think with”. I draw on the work of Erica Fudge in an overview of thinking with animals and examine the role of anthropomorphism and how it complements animal advocacy and liberationism in Irving’s Setting Free the Bears. I compare and contrast anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in The Hotel New Hampshire. In doing this, I complicate and challenge Wendy Doniger’s assertion that “sexuality makes humans into animals; language makes animals into humans”. This also applies to Murakami’s animals, who have further roles including enabling engagement with a magical dimension. I argue that, as instantiated in both writers’ fiction, animals evoke thought effectively largely because they are, as John Berger puts it, “both like and unlike”, and as Fudge identifies, that the “paradox of like and not like…exists in our fascination with animals”. My argument is that it is this very paradox, that they are simultaneously both “them” and “us”, along with other factors, such as the diversity, versatility and the inherent ambiguity of animals, that renders them fascinating. Furthermore, Murakami’s magically real animals link conceptual realms that are conventionally separate and facilitate criticism and challenging of conventional human hegemonic structures while operating outside national and cultural boundaries. In summary, Irving’s and Murakami’s animals are good to think with for many reasons, not despite their enigmatic furry ambiguity, but largely because of it.

This dissertation demonstrates how the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami infuses religious concepts and sacred motifs into his works, generally through surreal events and otherworldly encounters that defy purely realist interpretations. The literary use of these images and themes encourage the author’s unique stylistic mood as well as subsequent magic realist readings, where everyday occurrences are interjected by providential asides and often overt references to the supernatural. This study of Murakami also helps to demonstrate how his postmodern works might be viewed in light of widely accepted narratives from varying religions. Certain trends are established in Murakami, especially via themes like isolation and loneliness, which help replace the traditional search for God with an internal quest for meaning through investigations of identity. This is especially accomplished using the Japanese I-Novel form. The addition of dreams and alternative realities, another common topic, represent other worlds in his fiction that mask Heaven and Hell. The sacred is also habitually linked with the profane and cultish behaviour, casting traditional religious concepts in a negative light. Throughout his career, Murakami has often incorporated a range of ideas from all manner of religious systems, specifically Buddhism, Christianity, and folk mythology. This dissertation, then, addresses a range of critical views on Murakami's fiction, especially considering thematic shifts in later works like 1Q84, which feature concepts of religion and the sacred in a more blatant way.<br>published_or_final_version<br>English Studies<br>Master<br>Master of Arts