Prasol Y. The image of Japan in Japanese and English prose in the late XX - early XXIth century.

The object of the research is the writings of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Roger Zelazny, Todd Shimoda, David Mitchell, Masahiko Shimada and Haruki Murakami. The aim of the research is to define comparative and typological relationships as well as contact and genetic connections in the development of the image of Japan in Japanese and English prose in the late XX - early XXIth century in the parameters of literary imagology. Research methods are comparative and typological, contact and genetic, imagological, intertextual, intermedial, hermeneutical, receptive and aesthetic. The thesis with the focus on comparative analysis of the Japanese and Anglophonic prose, written in the last decades, examines constant, stereotypical and historically changing features of the literary image of Japan in the writings of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Roger Zelazny, Todd Shimoda, David Mitchell, Masahiko Shimada and Haruki Murakami as well as the discursive ways they are used by scholars (Said, Barthes, Karatani). It helps to see the ways in which imagery and concepts are activated in the discourse on Japaneseness. Bringing forth new imagological problems of contemporary comparative studies and broad historical, sociological, cultural and literary contexts allows unveiling the imagological paradigm of representing Japan at the core of which is auto-image - "a theory of japaneseness" (nihonjinron). The research expands the knowledge of Japan as a set of meanings, tracing not only the common features, but delving also on their historical evolution, multidimensional nature, specific artistic deconstruction and recontextualization. Area: learning process.