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Madness, one of the great themes of literature from the classical period onwards, provides writers with a subject of enduring interest evoking darkness and disorder. Some of the most powerful images of social disintegration and individual anomie emerge from the complexity of representing madness, which is not only clinical but can also be prophetic. Since ancient times madness has been seen as a product of divine or diabolical inspiration, or the effusion of poetic genius. In literature, madness is not simply rendered as mental illness from a medical point of view, but may be treated as a carnivalesque performance by the narrator, interrupting the continuity of everyday life to overthrow social norms and reject the brutality and absurdity of their impact on people. Because of their marginal status, the mad enjoy the liberty of speaking openly about culture. Although "madness" as a term has been avoided in modern medical discourse for its imprecision and its pejorative potential, its rich connotations have driven scholars to enquire into its implications in various cultural contexts. Many studies, most prominently Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, focus on the depiction of madness in the Western tradition. In this paper, I will investigate an equally fascinating historical phenomenon: how the idea of madness was translated through various cultures and how it transmitted the spirit of modernization from the West to the East.
In Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature, Karen Thornber cites Silvia Spitta's definition to explain "transculturation" as "many different processes of assimilation, adaptation, rejection, parody, resistance, loss, and ultimately transformation."1 To demonstrate the dynamics of transculturation, Thornber investigates the transformation of cultures in intra-East Asian literary contact nebulae during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 She draws on Lu Xun, the leading figure of modern Chinese literature and the central figure in Sino-Japanese transculturation in the early twentieth century, to reveal the vibrancy of the intra-East Asian contact zone. While Thornber 's book focuses mainly on interactions among East Asian cultures, the present paper also engages with the Western world. My principle concern is how "Western" madness is transculturated in East Asian countries-Japan and China in particular-in their pursuit of modernism.
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