Reading as Ritual: Desire for Textual Community in Works by Jeremias Gotthelf, Izumi Kyōka,yanagita Kunio and Annette von Droste-hülshoff
Open Access
- Author:
- Amano, Yuka
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 31, 2014
- Committee Members:
- Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member
Reiko Tachibana, Committee Member
Martina Kolb, Committee Member - Keywords:
- reading
ritual
textual community
performance
Japanese literature
German literature
modernity - Abstract:
- This dissertation proposes that reading non-religious, literary texts from modern Europe (Germany and Switzerland) and Japan through the interpretive lens of ritual provides a discursive method for linking premodern, subnational traditions and notions of what constitutes the literary to the emergence of a national literary culture identified as such. Studies of ritual texts or the ritual experience of reading have been conducted predominantly in the pre-modern religious context. The present study is concerned with modern secular texts and examines them from a sociological perspective. By focusing on four works spanning the period from the mid-nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, I consider how ritual experience is produced through an interactive process between the text and the reader. Specifically, I consider two Japanese texts (Kusa-meikyū by Izumi Kyōka and Tōno monogatari by Yanagita Kunio), one Swiss text (Die schwarze Spinne by Jeremias Gotthelf), and one German text (Die Judenbuche by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff). The theoretical framework of the study draws on existing theories of reading, fiction, and ritual performance. Though theories of reading tend to emphasize the subjective experience of the individual reader, my study focuses on the communal aspects of reading. By attending to the major features of ritual—formality, performativity, symbolism, and group identity—I define the concept of ritual reading as inhering in a public act of prioritizing the textual world through the reader’s compliant subjection to its fictional order. Through an immersive experience of the text (i.e., by accepting its norms, beliefs, and worldview), the reader achieves a sense of belonging to the inter-subjective community of the text beyond spatio-temporal boundaries. Exploration into the social dimension of reading by integrating two central but seemingly incompatible ideas—reading as an individual, private act and ritual as a collective, public event—I argue, opens a new possibility for understanding reading experience. Through a comparative investigation of the four texts, I define what constitutes the ritual textuality of the books—the historical context, the cultural background, and the worldview underpinning the construction of each. The choice of these texts from different historical and cultural backgrounds is informed by the fact that they all constitute a critical response through the literary form to the impact of modernity—dissolution of local communities in the wake of industrialization and urbanization, emphasis on values of individualism, and a sense of social alienation. Through this research, I highlight a key feature common to all four texts: the instantiation of a textual community of shared values to counter the homogenizing/abstracting force of the modern nation-state. In essence, these works each constitute a modern ritual undertaking, as each refers to extraordinary experiences in the virtual space of the text while involving the physicality of each individual reader in the creation of community.