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E-book Conversations with Shotetsu

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Penilaian

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This leaves the question of whether Sogi and his cohorts sawsomething in the waka of their day that scholars since have not; andthe answer would seem to be yes. For while many poets of that agewere satisfied with vain repetitions of familiar lines, a few intrepidindividuals still managed to approach the old form with vitality andartistic purpose. Among these, most prominent was Shotetsu(1381—1459), author of the poetic miscellany Shotetsu monogatari, or"Conversations with Shotetsu," translated here.Sogi and his teacher Shinkei (1406—75) are very explicit intheir praise for Shotetsu, to whom they give credit not only for theexcellence of his own poetry but also for the inspiration he gave topractitioners of their own genre of linked verse.4 But, perhaps be-cause he came at the very end of a tradition and thus appearednowhere in the twenty-one imperial anthologies (chokusenshu) thathave always been considered as the primary texts of court poetry,Shotetsu was largely neglected in later years. Indeed, during the Edoperiod (1603—1868), when scholars busied themselves with the col-lation and analysis of virtually all of the other great texts of the courttradition, Shotetsu's work, if considered at all, was generally dis-missed as an aberration of interest only for its eccentricities andhardly a proper object for emulation. As one eighteenth-centurypedant put it, "Secretary Shotetsu's poems showed skill; but his stylewas bad."5 One wonders whether this resistance came about partlybecause of the obstacle presented by his personal collection of poetry,Sokonshu, "Grass Roots," which, containing over 11,000 poems, nodoubt proved a daunting challenge to any scholar who wanted tostudy more than the works of one poet in a lifetime. Yet the poet's role in his own age, as attested by Sogi andShinkei and others, could not be denied even by his detractors; andthis fact kept his name alive until eventually he was rediscovered byJapanese scholars of our own day, who have searched out his texts,documented the major events of his life, and created the foundationfor further research. One outcome of this is the publication of severalfull texts of Sokonshu; another is Inada Toshinori's massive studyShotetsu no kenkyu: chusei kajin kenkyil, which has done much tocounteract the prejudices of the past toward a poet who is rapidlyattracting the attention he deserves as one of the finest and mostoriginal artists of the entire medieval period.7One thing that Inada's study clearly shows is that one cannotproperly approach Shotetsu without a firm understanding of theliterature and literary history of his age—which means in essence ofthe entire period from the death in 1241 of Fujiwara no Teika,whom Shotetsu worshipped as his one true god of poetry, to the latefourteenth century. For, however eccentric he may have appeared tosome of his contemporaries, Shotetsu was a man of his time as well,whose debt to the previous tradition is obvious in all of his writings.What follows, then, is an attempt to place Shotetsu in his propercontext, in order to in turn understand his unique contributions as apoet and critic.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

895.6 BRO c

Penerbit

USA : University of Michigan Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

237 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780472901579

Klasifikasi

895.6

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Japanese Literatures

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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