Luca Capponcelli

Research in the field of Japanese modern literature, with reference to the following principal areas of interest:

1. Japanese modern poetry, with a focus on the transition from traditional versification to shintaishi, modern tanka, and poetry in free verse.This topic entails several issues, such as the influence of European literature on Japanese romanticism and modernism, this poetry’s coexistence with traditional aesthetic conventions, the pursuit of the first modern Japanese poets of new aesthetical horizons, and their negotiation with traditional heritage, including classic Japanese and Chinese poetry. The latter issue is also connected with the dialectic between the Self and the Other in the quest for a Japanese national poetry in the frame of national identity construction. The main authors studied from this perspective are Kitamura Tōkoku, Yosano Tekkan, Ishikawa Takuboku, Hagiwara Sakutarō, Doi Kōchi and Taketomo Sōfu.
2. Japanese modern poetry, with a focus on the process of authors’ (individual) identity construction and the negotiation with the process of national (collective) identity construction through the works of modern Japanese poets such as Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku and Hagiwara Sakutarō. Their work displays a form of gender positioning or re-positioning in response to national body politics, which set forth a normative gender epistemology based on moral, ideological and medical scientific discourses. In other words, in my study, the body rendered in poetic expression is considered to be strictly intertwined with the political, social and cultural changes brought about by the process of modernization in Japan.

Member of  Nihon KIndai Bungaku Gakkai (Association for Modern Japanese Literary Studies)

                 Aistugia (Associazione italiana di studi giapponesi)

Member of FIR "Corpi plurali, questioni di genere" 2014-2016 (Dipartimento Scienze Umanistiche Università degli Studi di Catania, P.I. Anita Fabiani)

                Centro interdisciplinare Studi di genere "Genus"