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Review: The Darkness at the Foot of the Lighthouse.

Recent Research on Shishο̄setsu


Reviewed Work(s): The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishosetsu in Early Twentieth-Century
Japanese Fiction. by Edward Fowler
Review by: Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit
Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 337-345
Published by: Sophia University
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The Darkness at the Foot
of the Lighthouse

Recent Research on Shishosetsu

by IRMELA HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT

The Rhetoric of Confession:


Shishosetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction.

By Edward Fowler.

University of California Press, 1988.


xxix +333 pages. $32.50.

HOEVER attempts to acquaint her- or himself with


THE RESiElORNC modern Japanese literature will have co
EARLYTWsEN rTE Tli CF4URV the shishosetsu, this 'peculiarly Japanese' ge
j 4PANBrKTION at the core of twentieth-century Japanese narrat
EVAR>t, FOyaw tion. Literary historians do not tire of hinting
portance of this genre for our understanding of literary
life. They call it an 'archetype' of modern Japanese fic-
tion (Morikawa Tatsuya), and a 'cultural necessity
6RL.W-,.y - (Takahashi Hideo), and even regard it as reflecting the
distortions of Japanese society as a whole (Tamiya
Torahiko). Consequently, Takeuchi Yoshimi can stat
as early as 1953, 'The problem of the shishosetsu is by no means limited to
the literary sphere; it is, rather, a problem of the character of Japan's "mo-
dernity" . 1
The alert reader, being familiar with statements to the effect that the genre
'has remained highly important in Japanese literature down to the present da
(Hisamatsu Sen'ichi), will, however, discover with some surprise that the

THE AUTHOR is the director of the Depart- Trier.


ment of Japanese Studies in the Faculty of 1 Takeuchi Yoshimi, 'Shishosetsu n
Languages and Literature, University of tsuite', in Bungaku 21:12 (1953), p. 69.

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338 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3

shishosetsu has hardly ever been subjected to systematical study by Japanese


literary historians. How can we explain this seeming contradiction? It is not
unlikely that the very notion of the shishosetsu mode as lying at the core
of modern Japanese prose literature might well have prevented Japanese
philology from scrutinizing this seemingly all-too-obvious phenomenon.
Could we not even infer a kind of blindness vis-a-vis the self-evident in the
manner of the proverb that speaks of 'the darkness at the foot of the
lighthouse' (todai moto kurashi)? The fact remains that literary histories,
apart from making general statements of the kind quoted above, hardly
bothered to give a closer description of the development of the shishosetsu or
even a definition of the term, and this state of affairs is also reflected in the
overall history of modern Japanese literary research until fairly recently. Why
study the shishosetsu? Everyone knows about it, anyway, they seemed to
think.
On the other hand, we do have a number of book-length studies on shishose-
tsu authors that attest to the particular focus of research interest when dealing
with the genre. Biographical studies, which form the bulk of literary research
in Japan, seem all the more adequate as an approach to this mode of writing
that, in return, demonstrates its irresistible spell over professional as well as
amateur readers by the very fact of determining and reinforcing this approach.
A book by an American scholar that promises to give an overall assessment of
the genre is therefore a most welcome contribution. How then does Edward
Fowler, the author of The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishosetsu in Early Twen-
tieth-Century Japanese Fiction, tackle this subject?
The book is divided into three parts, each of which, according to the
author's preface, offers 'a specific approach to shishosetsu'. Part 1, titled 'The
"Transparent" Text', gives an overall framework, tracing indigenous literary
and intellectual traditions that conditioned the genre, such as the belief in im-
mediacy and firsthand experience or the dichotomy of fiction and literature
and the latter's supremacy as art. The second chapter of this part is concerned
with 'Language and the Illusion of Presence', and introduces what will turn
out to be the central thesis of the book. Referring to a model of narrative styles
presented and developed by S.-Y. Kuroda, Ann Banfield, and others, Fowler
characterizes a particular mode of representation to be found in modern
Japanese prose, the so-called 'written reportive style' that is rooted in certain
linguistic features of the Japanese language, such as the impossibility of
speakerless, narratorless sentences. Whereas in Western languages, 'the
linguistic cotemporality of PAST and NOW and the coreference of SELF and
the third person supply a language for representing what can only be imagined
or surmised-the thought of the other' (Banfield, as quoted by Fowler, p. 38),2
in short, a language that is suited for depersonalized, multi-consciousness nar-

2 The same sentence is quoted on p. 33, with 'conference' instead of 'coreference'.

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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 339

ration. But the absence of these two features in the case of Japanese provides
a linguistic explanation for its tendency in narration to be one-dimensional,
seemingly 'unmediated', and devoid of demarcations between the 'framing'
discourse and the 'framed' story, factors that apply most of all to the shisho-
setsu.3 The third chapter deals with 'Shishosetsu Criticism and the Myth of
Sincerity' by offering an overview of the contemporary discussion accompany-
ing the rise of the genre.
Part 2 highlights the more immediate literary, historical, and social factors
giving rise to the genre. The discussion focuses on Tokoku, Doppo, and Hoge-
tsu, and assesses the role of Katai and Homei in its formation. The most
original contribution in this part appears to be Chapter 6, 'The Bundan:
Readers, Writers, Critics', which describes the peculiar literary subculture c
nected so inseparably with shishosetsu writing. By way of delineating the
widening access of shishosetsu authors to newspapers and literary journals,
Fowler provides a vivid impression of the sociological aspects in the develop-
ment of the genre.
Part 3 of the book examines in detail three writers who are seen 'as particu-
larly instrumental figures in the shishosetsu's development' (pp. 149-50). The
author selects Chikamatsu Shuiko, Shiga Naoya, and Kasai Zenzo as examples
to demonstrate, by way of analyzing several works of each, the shishosetsu
author's way of 'transforming experience into art'. This is achieved by
situating the works in the context of the author's vita, and, in particular, by
scrutinizing the construction of the text; this includes intertextual relations and
their particular narrational features that refer to the central thesis, according
to which 'the narrating voice merges most easily with that of the narrated sub-
ject' (p. x). The discussion is concluded by a short Epilogue sketching 'The
Shishosetsu Today', for although Fowler maintains, 'Kasai's death [in 1928]
did coincide with the end of the shishosetsu's heyday' (p. 290), the genre is,
nevertheless, still going strong. He sums it up by observing that 'the shisho-
setsu is very much at home with "modern" life in Japan and will continue to
be as long as its epistemological base remains intact' (p. 297).
Fowler's study offers an intelligent and well-informed introduction to this
important subject. Each part and chapter is headed by well-selected quotations
that relate nicely to the topics discussed. The author presents us with an im-
pressive amount of materials well organized into the overall scheme of the
book. The text reads pleasantly, and one senses the author's delight in vivid
wording, even though it tends to be slightly repetitious in places, such as when
he explains again and again the epistemological identity of first- and third-per-
son narration in Japanese. But this point is linked to Fowler's central thesis,

3 An even clearer explanation of the be found in Barbara Mito Reed, 'Chikamatsu


linguistic features determining the narrative Shulko: An Inquiry into Narrative Modes in
modes in modern Japanese fiction, including Modern Japanese Fiction', in JJs 14:1 (1988),
the shishosetsu, than Fowler's discussion can pp. 59-76.

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340 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3

namely, the narratological observation that it is the grammar of the Japanese


language itself that produces the narrowly personal shishosetsu mode in that
only the narrating subject can communicate her or his own experience directly,
while another's experience can only be surmised. The main objective, as the
author states in the Preface, is therefore 'to distance shosetsu from "novel"
while collapsing the perceived distinctions between shosetsu and shishosetsu'
(p. ix).
Whereas we may concede that the author has achieved this aim, it is pre-
cisely this seeming coincidence of shosetsu and shishosetsu that poses a major
problem for the reader of this book. What makes everyone speak of the
shishosetsu as opposed to shosetsu never becomes clear, for nowhere does
Fowler provide his definition of the term. On the contrary, by stating, 'The lat-
ter differs from the former only in that it can be more autobiographical' (p. ix),
he gives rise to doubt as to whether we can really regard the shishosetsu as a
distinct and definable object of study. A possible, not even imperative, higher
degree of closeness to (auto)biographical facts is certainly a poor and not very
reliable criterion for differentiating one group of texts from another, all the
more so since autobiographical veracity can never be subjected to definite and
conclusive objectivation. In this respect, Fowler obviously does not depart
from the theoretical framework of conventional Japanese shishosetsu research
that concentrates so much attention to the relationship between real life and its
supposed representation in the literary work-hence the above-mentioned
biographism in Japanese philology that has been, in my opinion, deeply in-
fluenced by the mode of shishosetsu reception.
The logical impasse of this theoretical approach, however, becomes clear on
closer examination: who would be entitled to attest to the shishosetsu or non-
shishosetsu character of a given work if the distinction necessitated an objec-
tive assessment of its truthfulness to biographical facts? It would be possible to
come up with a large number of approximations in differing degrees and would
need a god-like figure to demarcate the borderline between acceptable and no
longer acceptable degrees of 'fictionalization'. The criterion for allowing
shishosetsu to 'be more autobiographical' (if it wants to!) is, as we have seen,
most unsuited for a distinction, and I wonder why the author has not done
away with it altogether. He obviously could not, because the phenomenon
does seem to exist, but his theoretical approach surely did not allow him to
solve this epistemological aporia.
This observation leads us to consider Fowler's main approach, which lies in
the demonstration of narratological peculiarities of modern Japanese prose.
Whereas this approach is indeed helpful in understanding certain linguistic
features of the texts and their effects on the Japanese readership (a topic system-
atically explored in Barbara Mito Reed, 'Language, Narrative, Structure and
the Shosetsu', doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1985), it is unsuited
for establishing a distinction between shosetsu and shishosetsu. Fowler would

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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 341

obviously have needed another approach to be able to tell us what makes a


shishosetsu a shishosetsu. It also does not save him to suggest that it might bet-
ter be treated 'as a form rather than as a genre or subgenre' (p. xxvii), for this
only shifts the problem of definition within the realm of terminology.
Instead, Fowler tides over this equation by resorting to an eloquent literary
historical description in Part 2 that blurs the fact that the basic problem re-
mains unsolved. We learn a lot about the shishosetsu's way of being in this sec-
tion and Chapter 3, for sure, but the author never quite manages to link these
observations meaningfully to his overall thrust, that is, an assessment of the
shishosetsu on the basis of its epistemology. So absorbed is he in applying his
theory that he occasionally tends to overdo his argument, as in the case of
Shiga Naoya's An 'ya Koro. To Fowler, the repeated shift in narrative perspec-
tive in this work (most conspicuously toward the end, where the hero Kensaku,
through whose eyes we have seen the fictional world so far, is seriously ill, and
we are presented with Naoko's point of view) amounts to a 'bold experiment':
by introducing an omniscient narrator (?), Shiga transforms 'his shosetsu into
a novel' (p. 242). Apart from the fact that Fowler counteracts his central ar-
gument of the fundamental difference between novel and shosetsu, reducing
it to a mere question of narratorial stance by making this point,4 it is not even
convincing.
Other Western researchers of shishosetsu, such as Phyllis Lyons, writing
about Dazai Osamu's literature, aptly show that the juxtaposition of view-
points serves to reinforce the perspective of the hero-narrator,5 a point also
made in another study of Dazai's Ningen Shikkaku and of the work and scene
discussed by Fowler here.6 Considering the extent to which Fowler's treatment
of the question of point of view in the case of An 'ya Koro parallels the one in a
previous book on shishosetsu that I published in 1981, one could almost con-
clude that he let himself be inspired by it; he includes the Shiga comment on
the problem, only to utilize it for a different purpose, namely, to demonstrate
Shiga's consciousness of the limits of his particular authorial stance, an argu-
ment that is, in an equally unconvincing way, extended to a quotation from
Shiga's postwar proposal to introduce French as a national language (pp.
244ff).
We have now reached the point where we should try to assess the scholarly
value of this study. How does it relate to the field of shishosetsu research as

4 Needless to say, the implied equation bloBungsrituale: Zur Theorie und Geschichte
'omniscient narrator = (Western) novel' vs. der autobiographischen Gattung 'Shishosetsu'
'single point of view=shosetsu' is seriously in der modernen japanischen Literatur, Franz
misleading. Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1981, pp. 190ff & 132ff.
5 See Phyllis I. Lyons, 'Art Is Me': Dazai The quotations of Japanese critics' remarks
Osamu's Narrative Voice as a Permeable on the shishosetsu given at the beginning of
Self', in HJAS 41 (1981), p. 106. the present article can also be found in this
book.
6 See Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Selbstent-

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342 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3

a whole, and where does it depart from preceding scholarship and offer new
insights? Let us first take a quick look at the field in general.
Since the early eighties, there has been what could almost be called a boom
in shishosetsu studies in as well as outside Japan. This stands in startling con-
trast to former decades when shishosetsu research seemed to have suffered
from the stigmatization of the genre itself. The reasons for this sudden
flourishing are manifold and can only be hinted at very roughly here. First, in
keeping with a changed intellectual climate, a reevaluation and reappraisal
of the shishosetsu on the part of writers as well as a renewed interest in the
phenomenon on the part of a younger generation of critics can be observed
around the beginning of the eighties. This is illustrated, for example, by the
publication of a shishosetsu anthology7 and a valuable collection of secondary
materials,8 as well as by a number of monographs9 and countless statements of
authors and critics in literary journals and the like.10
In the West, two main tendencies support, as I see it, this new interest
in shishosetsu research. One is the tendency to challenge conventional
japanology by turning to those notoriously 'Japanese' authors and works with
the reputation of being difficult of access on account of their very
'Japaneseness', and of which shishosetsu literature formed the core. The late
seventies and early eighties, therefore, saw the publication of many studies and
translations into a Western language, from Edwin McClellan's translation of
Shiga's An 'ya Koro as A Dark Night's Passing (Kodansha International, 1976),
and William F. Sibley's The Shiga Hero (University of Chicago Press, 1979),
to Phyllis I. Lyons, The Saga of Dazai Osamu (Stanford University Press,
1985), studies and translations of Ozaki Kazuo,1" Kajii Motojiro,12 and
Shimao Toshio,13 to name only a few. My study of the theory and history of
the shishosetsu, completed in early 1979 and published in 1981, also belongs to
this group.

7Nihon Pen Kurabu, ed., Nakamura Mi- English-language version of my Selbstent-


tsuo Sen: Shishosetsu Meisaku Sen, Shuieisha blo53ungsrituale, cited in n. 19, below.
Bunko, 1985. I I See Robert Epp, tr., Rosy Glasses &
8 Shishosetsu, Nihon Bungaku Kenkyui Other Stories by Kazuo Ozaki, Paul Norbury,
Shiryo Sosho, Yuiseido, 1983. Woodchurch, Kent, 1988.
9 Aeba Takao, Hihyo to Hyogen: Kindai 12 See Stephen Wechselblatt, 'The Trans-
Nihon Bungaku no 'Watakushi', Bungei Shun- lator as Reader and Writer: English Versions
jui, 1979; Hasumi Shigehiko, 'Shishosetsu' o of Japanese Short Fiction by Kajii Motojiro
Yomu, Chiao Koronsha, 1979; Katsuyama with a Critical Commentary', doctoral dis-
Isao, Taisho, Watakushi-shosetsu Kenkyu7, sertation, University of Iowa, 1982, and
Meiji Shoin, 1980; Omori Sumio, Watakushi- Christine Kodama De Larroche, Les Cercles
shosetsu Sakka Kenkyu, Meiji Shoin, 1982; d'un Regard: Le Monde de Kajii Motojiro,
Ishizaka Mikimasa, Shishosetsu no Riron: Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 1987.
Sono Hoho to Kadai o Megutte, Yachiyo, 13 See Kathryn Sparling, tr., 'The Sting of
1985. Death' and Other Stories by Shimao Toshio,
10 See the appendix, 'Recent Trends in Center for Japanese Studies, University of
Shishosetsu Research', in the forthcoming Michigan, 1985.

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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 343

The second tendency is the interest in narratology that produced studies


such as the above-mentioned book by Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences:
Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, London, 1982, and S.-Y. Kuroda, The (W)hole of the Doughnut: Syntax
and Its Boundaries, E. Story-Scientia P.V.B.A., Ghent, 1979; also Richard
Hideki Okada, 'Unbound Texts: Narrative Discourse in Heian Japan',
doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1985; Narae G.
Mochizuki, 'Speaker's Point of View in Modern Japanese Narratives: A
Literary and Linguistic Analysis of Point of View', Ed.D. dissertation, Univer-
sity of San Francisco, 1986; Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, Narrative Voice
in the Tale of Genji, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, University of
Illinois, 1985; and Barbara Mito Reed's 1985 dissertation mentioned above.
Fowler's book is clearly rooted in both of these trends, but when we try to
place it in relation to these lines of study, we come up with a peculiar and ir-
ritating observation. The closer some of the studies are related to Fowler's
topics and approach, the more reluctant he seems to acknowledge them. We
search in vain for names such as Lyons or Reed in the bibliography, authors
whose works he must have undoubtedly consulted given his particular research
interest.14 True, we may observe that he also did not take into account recent
Japanese scholarship on the subject, such as the Ishizaka book and other
studies, but it seems that the case with the above-mentioned titles, as well as
several other Western ones, is somewhat different. In short, it looks as if we
find ourselves here up against another kind of 'darkness at the foot of the
lighthouse'.
Let me make my point by offering some observations on Fowler's practice of
referring or not referring to pertinent scholarship. That I take my own work as
the main example is not to suggest that I am the only 'victim' of the author's
approach: it is simply because I am probably the person having the most de-
tailed knowledge of what has taken place in this case. Fowler does indeed men-
tion my Selbstentblol3ungsrituale once in his Preface, although it is missing
from the bibliography. But his twisted wording (which, incidentally, gives
quite a distorted and misleading description of my book's intent)15 does not
make it clear whether he has read it or not, and never again in the course of his
study does he allude to it. As a result readers of his book may well assume that
Fowler found it neither necessary nor helpful to take notice of, according to
him, the only existing study so far to deal with the shishosetsu form itself (p. x).

14 In contrast, Fowler readily acknowledges was also discussed in reviews by Richard Bow-
his indebtedness to non-japanologist authors ring in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
such as Walter Ong, p. 274, and Antony African Studies, 46:1 (1983), pp. 187-88; Kato
Easthope, p. 279. Shuiichi, in JJs 10:1 (1984), pp. 196-204; Bar-
15 Linguistic inaccessibility cannot excuse bara Yoshida-Krafft, in MN 39:1 (1984), pp.
these distortions, for not only does the book 94-97; Marian Galik, in Asian and African
contain a four-page English summary but it Studies, 20 (1984), p. 211-14; and others.

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344 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3

What readers also cannot know is that Fowler did in fact not only read my
book, albeit with difficulty as he admitted in correspondence, but also went on
to ask for a copy of a paper I wrote in English concerning questions that he
treats in his Epilogue-a request that was promptly granted long before my
article appeared in print. 16 How can readers know this, as this title, too, is miss-
ing from the bibliography?
It so happens that the present book is based upon the author's doctoral
dissertation, 'Fiction and Autobiography in the Modern Japanese Novel', Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, 1981, and a comparison of that version with
the present text of his study reveals a most thorough-going metamorphosis.
This is, of course, nothing to be astonished about. What is irritating, however,
when we compare the earlier and the present version, is the extent to which the
author has obviously benefited from my and other colleagues' work in re-orien-
tating his focus and in enriching and deepening his argument without any
acknowledgment to this fact on his part.
I find numerous traces of the stimulating effect of my Selbstent-
blol3ungsrituale, ranging from the general plan and scope of the study, on the
use of Fowler's sources-he has practically doubled the volume of his
references and might have found my research report and bibliography
helpful17_to striking correspondences in detail, be it particular argume
even phrasing.18 Instead of substantiating this impression with more indica-
tions of parallels between the two books-and the respective distance between
Fowler's two versions19-let me make it clear that I see this concrete case as
pointing to a larger problem in our profession. It is the question of how we
relate to our field of study.

16 Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, 'The Stub- section of my study, the chapter heading is


born Persistence of a Much Abused Genre: 'Der "heilige Tor"' ('The "holy fool" ').
On the Popularity of Shishosetsu in Contem- As an example of the coincidence of single
porary Japanese Literature', in Gordon arguments, let us take the discussion of Shiga
Daniels, ed., Europe Interprets Japan, Paul Naoya's Wakai. In Fowler's dissertation,
Norbury, Tenterden, 1984, pp. 173-80 & 268. Wakai is treated only briefly, while in his book
17 Fowler could, of course, have come it is the object of an extended discussion and
across all these titles elsewhere, but it is a fact forms a subchapter of its own, pp. 204-21.
that sources such as Kobayashi Hideo; Ito Sei, The same quotations are used to demonstrate
Tobo Dorei. . .; Nakamura Mitsuo, Fuzoku the same aspects, namely, the threefold time
Shosetsuron; Akiyama Shun, 1976; Miyoshi frame (which, as far as I know, was discussed
Yukio, Sakuhinron. ..; Takahashi Hideo, for the first time in my study) and the emo-
1976; Hiraoka Tokuyoshi, 1975; Matsubara tionality of the hero, as are given in Selbstent-
Shin'ichi, 1961; and Oe Kenzaburo, 1961, bliB3ungsrituale, pp. 157-63.
which figure prominently in his book, can be 19 Anyone wishing to check this matter may
found in my study but not in his dissertation. easily do so. The Japanese edition of Selbstent-
18 Take, for example, the subtle changes blol3ungsrituale is due out this summer under
in the thematic/topical stance of chapter the title Shishosetsu: Jiko Bakuro no Gishiki,
headings, such as 'Chikamatsu Shuko: The Heibonsha, while the English translation will
Hero as Masochist' in the dissertation to 'The appear as a Harvard East Asian Monograph,
Hero as Fool' in the book; in the Chikamatsu Rituals of Self-Disclosure.

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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 345

Nobody starts her or his research from zero. We are all indebted to previous
works in one way or another. One could concede, of course, that it can easily
happen with persons working in the same field and with the same materials
that they mistake for their own ideas what was actually stimulated by a col-
league's work. None of us is free from this danger, but it is exactly because we
are aware of it that we make it one of our basic professional rules to clearly
and completely state our sources. That Fowler violates this rule and forgets to
mention his sources in more than one case raises suspicion that otherwise
might not have arisen.
To my mind, the act of not acknowledging one's indebtedness to or even
knowledge of certain of one's sources is not only uncollegial and unscholarly,
but it means placing oneself outside the academic society that can only func-
tion if its basic ethical rules are observed. It is truly saddening to think that
even in our small or at least easy-to-survey field it may no longer be possible to
offer and exchange ideas and information freely because we can no longer be
sure that our partners will respect them as our intellectual property. But how
can a field flourish without the stimulation of an open discussion? Is the
pressure to publish and to appear as the first person to have considered and
discovered certain topics so strong that it must lead to such unfair behavior as
to no longer acknowledge hints, information, and ideas obtained from col-
leagues working in one's field? It seems particularly unfair as, at first sight,
there is nothing special about different people arriving at similar conclusions
when they work on the same topic and use the same materials, and as only a
handful of people, that is, those whose work is immediately concerned, may
know to what extent an author has depended on the research of others.
One will therefore come away from this study with mixed feelings, for here
we have a nicely written and well-wrought study on an important topic in
modern literary history, yet which is more deeply rooted in the context of our
field than many readers will ever realize.

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