User:Jallenmosby/I-novel

Difference from autobiography
Autobiographies usually present a comprehensive life story of the author, while I-Novels are more personal and emotional, focusing on greater depth and the feeling of a particular experience happening to the author. An I-novel is a semi-autobiographical work where the boundary between author and narrator is blurred, and the reader is meant to consider the narrator and author as one in the same.

Language style
The Japanese language contains a number of different words for "I"; mostly, the formal watashi (私) is used in the I-novel. Other words "I" such as Boku and Jibun may also be seen in some works. There are also some instances where the author uses third-person pronouns or a named main character (such as Yozo in No Longer Human ) to present the stories as the experience of others or as fictional. The title of the genre (Watakushi Shōsetsu) includes the more formal pronoun Watakushi

Notes "What distinguished the shishosetsu from western fiction is not how closely it follows 'real life' but how singularly it operates as a mode of discourse. ... In short, fiction and autobiographies in the west have as one of their formal properties a sense of forward movement and purpose. ... The Japanese author, meanwhile, has regarded his hero as virtually powerless in the face of society and nature and as more comfortable when keeping aloof from society or when submitting to, rather than confronting, the forces of nature. ..."Complicit Fictions