{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260418T162306Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231146574?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"0231146574","authors":["Sōseki Natsume","Michael Bourdaghs","Atsuko Ueda","Joseph Murphy","& 1 more","Natsume Sōseki"],"book_id":"9780231146579","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/theory-of-literature-and-other-critical-writings-0231146574","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231146579.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-20T23%3A15%3A44Z","description":"Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was the foremost Japanese novelist of the twentieth century, known for such highly acclaimed works as Kokoro, Sanshiro, and I Am a Cat. Yet he began his career as a literary theorist and scholar of English literature. In 1907, he published Theory of Literature, a remarkably forward-thinking attempt to understand how and why we read. The text anticipates by decades the ideas and concepts of formalism, structuralism, reader-response theory, and postcolonialism, as well as cognitive approaches to literature that are only now gaining traction. Employing the cutting-edge approaches of contemporary psychology and sociology, Soseki created a model for studying the conscious experience of reading literature as well as a theory for how the process changes over time and across cultures. Along with Theory of Literature, this volume reproduces a later series of lectures and essays in which Soseki continued to develop his theories. 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Bourdaghs"],"book_id":"9781478014621","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781478014621.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-20T23%3A15%3A44Z","score":10.5661,"title":"A Fictional Commons","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781478014621"},{"authors":["Kōbō Abe","Richard Calichman"],"book_id":"9780231163873","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231163873.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-20T23%3A15%3A44Z","score":9.9997,"title":"The Frontier Within","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231163873"},{"authors":["Thomas P. 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