What would literary history look like flattened out? If it wasn’t, in fact, history at all as we understand it but more static, the topography of a field rather than a genealogy through time? This seminar will examine the literary world of Meiji 22 (1889) as a way to ask larger questions about how a literary field is constituted; what the relationship is between high and low aesthetics; between literary and non-literary discourses; between discourses and events. Readings will be drawn from canonical writers (Kitamura Tōkoku, Kōda Rohan, Mori Ōgai) as well as less canonical figures (Aeba Kōson, Ishibashi Ningetsu, Kuroiwa Ruikō), translations (of Alexander Dumas fils, Victor Hugo, Anna Catherine Green), and reprints of earlier bestsellers (by Kyokutei Bakin and Tamenaga Shunsui). We will also dip the broader cultural archive (newspapers, journals, ephemera) and frame our discussion in relation to recent Japanese criticism (Karatani Kōjin, Komori Yōichi, Kōno Kensuke, Suga Hidemi) and theoretical readings (Adorno, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Eco, Feyerabend, Gramsci, Kracauer).