Mae J. Smethurst – Författare

By means of a cross-cultural analysis of selected examples of early Japanese and early Greek drama, Mae Smethurst enhances our appreciation of each form. While using the methods of a classicist to increase our understanding of no as literary texts, she also demonstrates that the fifteenth-century treatises of Zeami--an important playwright, actor, critic, and teacher of no--offer fresh insight into Aeschylus' use of actors, language, and various elements of stage presentation. Relatively little documentation apart from the texts of the plays is available for the Greek theater of the fifth century B.C., but Smethurst uses documentation on no, and evidence from no performances today, to suggest how presentations of the Persians could have been so successful despite the play's lack of dramatic confrontation. Aeschylean theater resembles that of Zeami in creating its powerful emotional and aesthetic effect through a coherent organization of structural elements.Both playwrights used such methods as the gradual intensification of rhythmic and musical effects, an increase in the number and complexity of the actors' movements, and a progressive focusing of attention on the main actors and on costumes, masks, and props during the course of the play. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

By means of a cross-cultural analysis of selected examples of early Japanese and early Greek drama, Mae Smethurst enhances our appreciation of each form. While using the methods of a classicist to increase our understanding of no as literary texts, she also demonstrates that the fifteenth-century treatises of Zeami--an important playwright, actor, critic, and teacher of no--offer fresh insight into Aeschylus' use of actors, language, and various elements of stage presentation. Relatively little documentation apart from the texts of the plays is available for the Greek theater of the fifth century B.C., but Smethurst uses documentation on no, and evidence from no performances today, to suggest how presentations of the Persians could have been so successful despite the play's lack of dramatic confrontation. Aeschylean theater resembles that of Zeami in creating its powerful emotional and aesthetic effect through a coherent organization of structural elements.Both playwrights used such methods as the gradual intensification of rhythmic and musical effects, an increase in the number and complexity of the actors' movements, and a progressive focusing of attention on the main actors and on costumes, masks, and props during the course of the play. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book explores the ramifications of understanding the similarities and differences between the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles and realistic Japanese noh. First, it looks at the relationship of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy to the tragedies he favored. Next, his definition is applied to realistic noh, in order to show how they do and do not conform to his definition. In the third and fourth chapters, the focus moves to those junctures in the dramas that Aristotle considered crucial to a complex plot - recognitions and sudden reversals -, and shows how they are presented in performance. Chapter 3 examines the climactic moments of realistic noh and demonstrates that it is at precisely these moments that a third actor becomes involved in the dialogue or that an actor in various ways steps out of character. Chapter 4 explores how plays by Euripides and Sophocles deal with critical turns in the plot, as Aristotle defined it. It is not by an actor stepping out of character, but by the playwright’s involvement of the third actor in the dialogue. The argument of this book reveals a similar symbiosis between plot and performance in both dramatic forms.By looking at noh through the lens of Aristotle and two Greek tragedies that he favored, the book uncovers first an Aristotelian plot structure in realistic noh and the relationship between the crucial points in the plot and its performance; and on the Greek side, looking at the tragedies through the lens of noh suggests a hitherto unnoticed relationship between the structure of the tragedies and their performance, that is, the involvement of the third actor at the climactic moments of the plot. This observation helps to account for Aristotle’s view that tragedy be limited to three actors.

In an important and unique contribution to the study of noh, this volume includes, for the first time, essays on the subject of one noh play written by scholars from both sides of the Pacific Ocean in their own language, Japanese or English (with a summary of each contribution translated into the other language also included). The essays show some of the breadth and depth that is available for the study of Japanese literature and drama both in Japan and abroad. Japanese scholars Amano Fumio, Nishino Haruo, Takemoto Mikio, and Wakita Haruko join with actor Uzawa Hisa and American scholars Monica Bethe, Steven Brown, Susan Klein, William LaFleur, Susan Matisoff, Carolyn Morley, Mae Smethurst, and Arthur Thornhill, to interpret the noh Ominameshi, all from the vantage point of their own analytical approaches. The intent is to provide the reader with more than just an introduction to the variety of ways of studying noh in general by focusing on one particular play and analyzing it closely and from many directions.The volume includes a preface and introduction plus 19 color and 4 black-and-white illustrations; one less literal and one more literal translation of the noh accompanied by the Japanese texts; and contributions interpreting Ominameshi in the light of medieval commentaries, the ai-kyōgen, new historicism, gender studies, legends surrounding the history of the play's setting, the etiology of the graves of the two principal characters, poetic usage, other plays on the subject of ominameshi, the religious background and meaning, authorship, structure, performance, costumes and masks. The volume concludes with reflections on the performance of the play by Uzawa Hisa in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the conference out of which the book developed.