NOTA |
(★)(Titulo original : 猿蓑[Sarumino], This is the first English translation of ´The Monkey´s Straw Raincoat´ in its entirety along with other major works of Matsuo Bashoo [1644-1694] and his school that represent a peak in the evolution of premodern Japanese poetry. Bashoo is Japan´s most loved poet, and his ´haikai´ was one of the two kinds --with renga-- of linked poetry in Japan. The present work offers both an extension of Earl Miner´s earlier book,´Japanese Linked Poetry [Princeton]´, and a new interpretation of The Monkey´s Straw Raincoat as an anthology modeled in various ways on the canons of linked-verse sequences. Three earlier sequences and one later one are included with the whole of The Monkey´s Straw Raincoat to demonstrate the variety and the ideals of the Bashoo school. An introduction and detailed commentary elucidate the nature of the art of haikai. Also provided, in addition to maps and other illustrative material, are an index of critical terms and a biographical index of poets, bringing together for the first time in any language information about all the poets involved. 「Quoting the title poem : The first winter drizzle the monkey too seems to desire a little straw raincoat」〜the authors write that it ´excellently shows Bashoo´s metaphysical relation of nature and humanity, or of humanity in nature. It is not only that monkeys resemble us in longing for protection, since everyone knows them to be imitators. It is rather that we see ourselves and our lives in the monkey.´ Earl Miner is Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Hiroko Odagiri is a Research Fellow at The Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University in Japan.) |