2018 Volume 98 Pages 100-115
In order to shed light on Soseki's early period (from late 1904 to early 1905), this paper examines unpublished portions of the lectures he would later expand and publish as Theory of Literature (Bungakuron), as recorded in his students' notebooks and diaries, and his own manuscript. In his lectures, he expresses “being tricked” and “enjoying fiction” in similar ways and, citing the Don Quixote and Shakespeare's plays, argues that tragedy and comedy are formally the same, but distinguished by a difference in the reader's psychological attitude. These unpublished lectures are related to the foundation of Soseki's theory of fiction, which asserts that readers/spectators become immersed in the world of a story by undergoing a sort of emotional self-hypnosis.
Although Soseki failed to draw a clear distinction between “lies” and “fiction” in either his lectures or in Bungakuron, in his work The Tower of London (Rondon Tō), he succeeds in telling a lie that is effective enough to allow readers to suspend the truth in a way peculiar to fiction.
