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“This
book is one of the most valuable contributions to the study of noh to
appear in recent decades. Terasaki’s interpretations are among the
handful, in any language, that actually reveal the complexity and richness
of noh texts.” “An
impressive study informed by modern critical and rhetorical theory.
Focusing on such topics as the role of wordplay, apostrophe, and
prosopopoeia, and the performative functioning of language, along with
more traditional thematics topics in the tradition of Noh play, Etsuko
Terasaki’s Figures of Desire will build bridges between the study of Noh
plays and the vanguard of contemporary criticism in the field of
comparative literature.” “Etsuko
Terasaki’s investigation of Noh drama offers fresh perspectives on the
important aspects of the canon from a variety of critical/historical
viewpoints. Her accessible yet probing and well-documented writing freshly
illuminates the plays and stimulates a desire to revisit them in
performance. This book will prove enlightening to readers already familiar
with Noh and to the many newcomers who will make good use of it.” “Among
theoretically informed readers familiar with Noh play, it has long been a
truism that, while the texts of Noh persistently resist such facile
psychologization as one may customarily find in modern theaters, they
deserve the most serious kind of psychoanalytic reading. For the first
time in North America, Western Europe, or Japan, a resolutely
psychoanalytic analysis has been conducted by Etsuko Terasaki on the texts
of the celebrated pieces, such as Sotoba Komachi and Matsukaze. The result
is simply astounding: the book illuminates Terasaki’s extremely
perceptive interpretive skills; it proves how fruitful a theoretically
oriented reading of Noh texts can be.” Etsuko
Terasaki considers the powerful religious-ideological role that Buddhism
and the social and economic aspects of Kamakura and early Muromachi
society played in framing the status of women in the Noh plays of the
period. In a world where social norms break down, the identity of women is
fragmented or divided (spirit possession), resulting in madness, being
sold into slavery, torture, and even deification. Figures of Desire also
examines earlier folk legends that were appropriated into the new
construct of Noh as evidence of cultural and ideological shifts or
displacements. Through
a close critical reading of the Noh texts, Terasaki deals with topics such
as sexuality, desire, fantasy, madness, spirit possession, and mourning,
aspects of Noh drama that have been ignored in previous commentary. With
an analysis of the language of the plays, she examines the intricacy and
complexity of the rhetorical presentation. The author also utilizes
contemporary literary theory. Published by Center
for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan |
