H. Mack Horton – författare

Linked verse (renga) was the most popular form of poetry in Japan’s medieval era (c. 1200–1600 CE). Renga poets linked verses of seventeen and fourteen syllables into long sequences in accordance with complex rules and literary allusions; the first verse, which initially stood alone, was the ancestor of the modern haiku. Courtiers, warriors, and commoners alike practiced linked verse in an atmosphere of literary artistry, scholarship, social sensitivity, and charged competition. The masters were often invited at great expense to warrior domains to preside at linked-verse sessions and provide instruction in the art and in allied works of the classical canon, such as The Tale of Genji. Some of Japan's most famous poets, among them Sōgi and Bashō, not only composed renga sequences still revered today but also made important contributions to the study of renga history, theory, composition, and etiquette.This book is the most comprehensive work in English on premodern Japanese linked verse. It includes a history of the genre in both its formal (ushin) and unorthodox (haikai) manifestations up through the time of Bashō, an introduction to linked-verse composition and commentaries, and an overview of the art’s performative aspects. These three parts are each linked to original English translations: an early treatise on renga history, theory, and rules; a particularly intricate hundred-verse sequence and its contemporary commentaries; and two guides to mental attitude and deportment at a renga session. Wide-ranging and erudite, Linked Verse in Medieval Japan is a masterful account of the history, theory, and practice of one of Japan’s great art forms.

In the sixth month of 736, a Japanese diplomatic mission set out for the kingdom of Silla, on the Korean peninsula. The envoys undertook the mission during a period of strained relations with the country of their destination, met with adverse winds and disease during the voyage, and returned empty-handed. The futile journey proved fruitful in one respect: its literary representation—a collection of 145 Japanese poems and their Sino-Japanese (kanbun) headnotes and footnotes—made its way into the eighth-century poetic anthology Man’yōshū, becoming the longest poetic sequence in the collection and one of the earliest Japanese literary travel narratives.Featuring deft translations and incisive analysis, this study investigates the poetics and thematics of the Silla sequence, uncovering what is known about the actual historical event and the assumptions and concerns that guided its re-creation as a literary artifact and then helped shape its reception among contemporary readers. H. Mack Horton provides an opportunity for literary archaeology of some of the most exciting dialectics in early Japanese literary history.

Song in an Age of Discord is a companion volume to the author's translation of The Journal of Socho, the travel diary and poetic memoir of Saiokuken Socho (1448-1532), the preeminent linked-verse (renga) poet of his generation. The Journal—which records several journeys that Socho made between Kyoto and Suruga Province during the tumultuous Age of the Country at War—is unparalleled in the literature of the period for its range of commentary and freshness of detail, and for its impressive array of literary genres, including more than 600 poems. The present volume opens with an overview of the author's life and times, and explores the relationships between politics, patronage, and the creative process in late medieval Japan. Raised in the service of a feudal lord in Suruga Province, Socho subsequently became the devoted student of the renga master Sogi and the iconoclastic Zen monk Ikkyu, a variety of influences clearly visible in his journal. Socho lived in an era in which established values and hierarchies were being questioned, and his journal reflects his own testing of traditional literary boundaries.Subsequent chapters read the journal in terms of the standard norms of genres that Socho appropriated and reinterpreted in fashioning his own literary persona. The norms of medieval eremitic literature are presented via works by two other noted linked-verse poets, Shinkei and Shohaku, and those of travel literature are set forth in travel diaries by Socho's teacher Sogi, who also supplied the template for Socho's orthodox (ushin) poetry.The comic and unorthodox haikai verse of Yamazaki Sokan serves as a point of comparison for Socho's frequent excursions into that genre. Unlike other orthodox renga masters, Socho maintained parallel interests in composing and preserving haikai poetry, and he contributed much to that evolving art form. Throughout, Song in an Age of Discord illustrates the dialogue Socho pursued with his literary and cultural heritage.