Japan, France, and East–West Aesthetics. French Literature, 1867–2000

Abstract

Impressive in its thoroughness and clarity, this chronological traversal of Japonisme in France traces the successive interpretations and pervasive influence of Japanese aesthetics on French writers since the mid-19th century. Starting with the Impressionist artists and naturalist writers who first fell under the spell of Japanese woodprints, Hokenson (Florida Atlantic Univ.) weaves an absorbing account of the French writers' discovery of, and apprenticeship in, Japanese forms and vision. allusive,sensory, affective, expressing the infinite in the finite, Japanese art is shown as transforming traditional Western notions of time and space. The author traces Japonisme in its first manifestations in the Goncourt brothers, Zola, Huysmans,Loti, Judith Gautier, and its symbolist avatars (Mallarme, Bing, Feneon, Dujardin). In subsequent years, the translations into French of Japanese poetry (notably haiku), the impact of Noh theater and Kabuki style, the infusion of Japanese aesthetics in the fashioning of modernist and, more recently, postmodern discourse are all shown to have in varying ways informed the work of such figures as Proust, Claudel, Eluard, Yourcenar, Malraux, Sartre, Barthes, Lyotard, Duras, Kristeva, Cixous, Mnouchkine, Bonnefoy, Roubaud, Jaccottet, and Butor.