This section contains 3,635 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” in Masterworks of Asian Literature in Comparative Perspective: A Guide for Teaching, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller, East Gate, 1994, pp. 517-25.
In this essay, Keene offers a background to Chikamatsu's creation of the puppet play The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. Keene suggests that the tragedy was innovative in its use of commoners as tragic figures, comparing the play to Western dramas including George Lillo's The London Merchant.
In the 1880s, when the Japanese first began to examine their own literary heritage in light of their newly acquired knowledge of Western literature, the fame of Shakespeare in England, Goethe in Germany, and Racine in France induced them to search their own dramatic literature for a Japanese equivalent. The Japanese possessed a rich tradition of theater: the Noh drama, perfected in the fourteenth century, had enjoyed the patronage of the shoguns for almost 500 years...
This section contains 3,635 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |