“The Elusive and Haunting Portrait of the Mother in and around Narratives of Barthes, Tanizaki, Kanai and Guibert"

Professor Sakaki's article “The Elusive and Haunting Portrait of the Mother in and around Narratives of Barthes, Tanizaki, Kanai and Guibert" was published in Comparatisme et Intermédialité Comparatism and Intermediality. Réflexions sur la relativité culturelle de la pratique intermédiale. Reflections on the cultural relativity of intermedial practice. A summary of the book is below. Both the summary and the book cover on the right are courtesy of Königshausen & Neumann.

The comparative discipline and intermediality have in common an indisputable (inter)cultural dimension: the definition of the comparative discipline varies from one culture to another, so that its positioning towards intermediality varies between cultures as well. In the same way, the definition of intermediality differs from one culture to another because the intermedial practice itself varies between cultures. Correspondingly, the aim of this volume is a double one. On the one hand, it seeks to draw greater scholarly attention to the cultural relativity of the intermedial practice, and on the other one, to show in what way comparative literature is likely to enrich and renew intermedial studies, without sacrificing its literary component and losing itself in the process.