SOURCE: Napier, Susan J. “The Lost Garden: Beginnings of a Mythic Alternative.” In Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, pp. 17-42. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
In the following essay, Napier examines how the early works of Ōe and Mishima Yukio—particularly Ōe's “Prize Stock” and Pluck the Buds, Shoot the Kids and Yukio's Sound of Waves—represent a rejection of traditional Japanese narratives by focusing heavily on pastoral and dream-like themes.
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