Circles of Fantasy: Convention in the Plays of Chikamatsu (Harvard East Asian Monographs) - Hardcover

C. Andrew Gerstle; Chikamatsu

9780674131712: Circles of Fantasy: Convention in the Plays of Chikamatsu (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674131711 ISBN 13: 9780674131712

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1986

The vibrant merchant culture of Tokugawa Japan gave rise to many new forms of art, none more fascinating than the puppet theater, Jōruri, created chiefly by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the foremost playwright of popular Japanese drama. In this analysis of Chikamatsu's artistry, Dr. Gerstle focuses on features hitherto neglected by Western scholars the musical structure of Jōruri, integral to the form, mood, and movement of the drama. For extensive translations from the various types of Chikamatsu's dramas, Gerstle supplies the musical notations, which illuminate the sophisticated conventions of this unique and timeless artistic form.

Chikamatsu's art, combining puppets, text, samisen music, and chanting/narration, encompasses three major types of drama--history, contemporary-life, and love-suicide plays--each with distinct structural features. Gerstle shows how the music of Jōruri, a mixture of the samisen and chanting/narration, supplements the texts and expresses a dramatized action or emotion through complex changes in pitch, tempo, and style of delivery.

Richly illustrated with woodblock prints, this is a fascinating study, which will be welcomed by scholars of Japanese culture, literature, and musicology.

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About the Author:

C. Andrew Gerstle is Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Review:

Circles of Fantasy should be a standard reference wherever Chikamatsu's plays are studied. (Choice)

The book offers a good deal [of] information and analysis that in itself is a most welcome addition to the literature on joruri. Readers interested in Japanese drama or comparative drama will be amply rewarded. (Monumenta Nipponica)

A pioneering effort in recent Western scholarship to explore the underlying dramaturgical side of a performing art whose strong ties with the No have remained largely unexplored--outside of Japan...Circles of Fantasy is a tribute to the creative genius of Chikamatsu. (Journal of Asian Studies)

[Gerstle does] well in drawing attention to the structural function of performative aspects of the plays, and in illuminating the complex texture of the dramatic pattern thus created...[A] valuable overview of [an]...important Japanese theatrical tradition. (Mark Jewel Asian Affairs)

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