A Theory of Coherence: Narrativity and Non-narrativity in Man’yōshū and Kagerō nikki
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
East Asian Languages and Literatures
First Advisor
Kamens, Edward
Abstract
This dissertation pursues narrativity and non-narrativity as equally valuable types of coherence of human selves and literary texts. I propose that “coherence” is a hidden untranslatable of the English language. It is widely used, in particular by scholars in the humanities. The meaning of the word coherence, however, is usually assumed rather than explicitly theorized in the academic discourse. I argue that coherence can be a helpful critical term because it applies both to the inner reality of a human being and the internal organization of a literary work. Although coherence in this project is close kin of the literary-theoretical idea of “form,” coherence places greater emphasis on the philosophical and psychological organization of a work of art as a reflection of the processes in the human mind.The central text of the dissertation is a corpus of ancient Japanese poetry included in the 8th-century anthology Man’yōshū. It is a corpus of love poems, subdivided into two categories, kibutsu chinshi (“thing-feeling”) and seijutsu shincho (“just-feeling”). I argue that the unknown compilers of Man’yōshū make an important contribution to philosophical thought by communicating the idea that the human mind can operate in these two different modes. Thing-feeling poems cohere non-narratively; just-feeling poems cohere narratively. Man’yōshū is a canonical text, but this corpus of poetry has never been discussed in a dedicated study in English and has received only limited theorizations in Japanese. My work with it, therefore, makes a contribution to literary theory and to Japanese literary studies. In literary theory, there are operable dichotomies such as lyric and epic or metaphor and metonymy. These could be said to correspond, in the narrow sense, to non-narrativity and narrativity in genre and in rhetoric. In a variety of other discourses in the contemporary Anglophone world, academic and non-academic, narrativity has become the dominant paradigm, to which there is seemingly no alternative. I engage with the work of the philosopher Galen Strawson who is the only consistent proponent of non-narrativity as a viable philosophical and psychological alternative to narrativity. Strawson suggests that narrativity and non-narrativity may be persistent personality traits. In my view, every human being is capable of experiencing both as temporary mental states. Only if one alternates between the two types of coherence can one have a fulfilling sense of one’s selfhood. Literature, I contend, is an instrument that can help one to practice both types of coherence. Although the speakers of thing-feeling poems exhibit non-narrative coherence and the speakers of just-feeling poems transcribe narratively coherent mental states, this entire corpus of poetry fits with the idea of the lyric. Using the work of the scholar of the lyric Jonathan Culler, I attend to the distinction between lyric as a non-narrative genre and non-narrativity as a type of coherence. Any work of art, regardless of genre or medium, can cohere narratively or non-narratively; in most cases, works of art contain a mix of both tendencies, just as human selves do. I closely attend to the rhetoric of thing-feeling and just-feeling poems, using poems with garment tropes as my case study, to further explore how the distinction between metaphor and metonymy can help one to see the various layers of narrativity and non-narrativity in a literary text. In this endeavor, I build on formalist and structuralist approaches to literature, such as that of Roman Jakobson. Having thus developed, with Man’yōshū, a method of reading which accounts for different types of coherence, I use this method to read Kagerō nikki, a 10th-century noblewoman’s memoir with poems. Her writing indicates that her isolated lifestyle, which a woman of her social standing was forced to lead, results in a lack of non-narrative coherence in her mind. She experiences the excess of narrativity as a heavy burden in her mind and body. I turn to feminist and new-materialist theory to modify my method of reading for coherence so as to include the body into equation. I also propose that the reader must be prepared to engage with the text non-narratively in order to effectively empathize with the emotional content of Kagerō nikki, rather than settle on a narrative that explains away the Author’s pain. With modifications, the method of reading for coherence that I develop can be used to comprehensively account for the artistic and psychological complexity of works that belong to different genres and media; it also affirms the plural experience of the functionally coherent human selfhood.
Recommended Citation
Farizova, Nina, "A Theory of Coherence: Narrativity and Non-narrativity in Man’yōshū and Kagerō nikki" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1063.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1063
