GREEK TRAGEDY & NOH DRAMA.   Term Paper ID:28602 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Compares the 2 theatrical tralditions. Background of each, incl. Aristotle's theories on drama & influence of Zeami on the Noh repertory.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Compares the 2 theatrical tralditions. Background of each, incl. Aristotle's theories on drama & influence of Zeami on the Noh repertory. Paper Introduction: Greek tragedy and Japanese Noh drama offer interesting points of comparison. Although they are separated by nearly two millennia, by thousands of miles, and by cultural differences too numerous to mention both were theatrical traditions involving masked performers, the frequent use of music and dancing, on-stage choruses, and historic-mythological themes and stories drawn from traditions with which the audiences possessed some familiarity. Both theatrical traditions had important spokesmen and the perpetuation of the traditions, as well as later centuries' understanding of them, depended in large part on Aristotle's Poetics and Zeami's essays on Noh drama. But the two writer's approaches indicate the principal difference in the two traditions as well. Aristotle, as a thinker rather than a playwright or actor, contributed to the transformation of Greek Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. By the time Aristotle wrote about the methods and intentions of thegreat tragic playwrights, however, nearly a century had passed andconditions in Athens had changed considerably. Of the various elements oftragedy Plot, "the combination of the incidents, or things done in thestory," was the most important because it was through action, especiallythrough peripeties and discoveries, that the tragic fear and pity arearoused (Aristotle 673). But this tradition was interruptedin the fourth century and it was irretrievably lost. Human beingsalso delight in works of imitation because the observation of any work ofimitation is a form of learning and "to be learning something is thegreatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest ofmankind, however small their capacity for it" (Aristotle 668-69). Aristotle, as athinker rather than a playwright or actor, contributed to thetransformation of Greek drama into a literary tradition in which the textwas the dominant factor. The rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the Renaissance meant thatnew developments in drama, relying on the authority of the greatestphilosopher of antiquity, developed along these same lines and Westerndrama since that time has conceived of text and performance as separatephenomena while the mimetic nature of drama has always been taken forgranted. It is a flower because it is hidden. Sophocles introduced thethird actor and scenery. Yet his Poetics established aparadigm for drama which, though it was divorced from the imperatives ofperformance, was to remain the dominant conception of theater in the Westfor 2, years. They were also written in anartificial poetic language that bore little relation to contemporary speechand the five Noh schools all "insist that their own texts are the onlyauthentic ones" while also possessing individual traditions aboutauthorship (Keene 4). The theatrical professions continueto be hereditary, for the most part, "with fathers (or surrogate fathers)teaching youngsters, and the head of the school or subgroup taking over forthe final years of apprenticeship" (Brazell 117). The playwrightsproceeded by discarding the trochaic meter, more appropriate to dancing,for the iambic which was more like natural speech. New York: Modern Library, 1992.Brazell, Karen, ed. In this play the discovery(the change from ignorance to knowledge) hinges, of course, on the sameannouncement and will, as a properly constructed plot should, "arouseeither pity or fear--actions of that nature being what Tragedy is assumedto represent; and it will also serve to bring about the happy or unhappyending" (Aristotle 68 ). This does not mean that Noh texts were unimportant. The Noh tradition thus forms aremarkable contrast with the West where there is a "tacit assumption inmost countries that drama is the highest form of literature" while thehighly developed drama of Japan is not considered primarily a literarygenre at all but an art in which expressive performances bring meaning "amere framework of plot" (Keene 1). Zeami's influence was so great that until recently the traditioncrediting him with authorship of more than half the 24 plays in the Nohrepertory was uncritically accepted. Greek drama originated in the choral hymns sung to the god Dionysus.Mimed episodes were enacted to accompany the dithyrambs of the seventhcentury and, as Aristotle has it, a "long series of changes" ended only onTragedy's "attaining to its natural form" (Aristotle 67 ). No matter how well-intentioned efforts may be to recover such traditions this is not possiblewithout the direct intervention of performers who have learned from theirpredecessors. Through centuries of this performance tradition Noh performers havesought to achieve precisely the same type of connection with audiences thatwas Zeami's aim in the fourteenth century. Athenian tragedy was rooted inoral culture and dramatic texts in the fifth century were "principallymerely the means of preserving wording between performances" whileknowledge of the music and dance aspects of the works was conveyed throughthe performance tradition (Vince 39). And tragedy acquired its magnitude by expandingits scope and increasing the dignity of its presentation. Ingram Bywater. New York: Columbia UP, 197 .Kitazawa, Masakuni. The number of sceneswas increased as well, allowing for the representation of more complicatedactions. Introduction to Aristotle, 66 -712. Aristotle was not, therefore, writing about an unbroken dramatictradition and, even more importantly, he was writing with a specificpurpose in mind--the response to Plato. Certainly plot was of central importance to the Greekdramatists. You must select and show a figure and mind as a flower appropriate to a particular role. Although Aristotle offered some commentary on performative aspects ofthe tragedies his principal interest was in the construction of plot andits ability to reveal the turns of fortune that inspired the audience withfear or pity. The audience "can onlyfeel whether his acting is excellent or not" and even then the actor mustguard against being persuaded that he has achieved the flower if he knowshe has not (Kitazawa 1 9). The audiences knew the general outlines of the myths of theMycenaean Age on which the fifth-century dramatists almost invariably drew. According to Zeami, flowers bloom and fall intheir given seasons. Nohbecame a distinctive form of dramatic performance in the fourteenth centuryunder Kanami Kiyotsugu (1333-1384), who wrote a number of important Nohtexts, and his son Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), under whom Noh "attained itsclassic form and its highest level of literary distinction" (Keene 7). Human beings are the most imitative of all creatures and "learnat first by imitation" (Aristotle 668). LikeGreek tragedy Noh drama developed from dance drama and the celebrationsperformed at shrines and temples as early as the twelfth century. Keene remarks that the study of Noh "as a literaryform" has barely begun and the lack of interest in the topic among Japanesescholars seems related to the fact that the text, in and of itself, has notbeen the primary concern of the Noh tradition passed down since Zeami'stime (5). Had Aristotle's Poetics been lost likethe other 97 percent of fifth-century drama it is entirely possible that analternative, performance-based theater might have developed in the West.But, without the relative cultural homogeneity of a society such asJapan's, it is doubtful that it could have lasted in nearly the same formfor six centuries. Twenty Plays of the No Theatre. The more serious poets took the course of representing actions thatwere serious and involved noble personages. Ed. Scholars in the last half of thetwentieth century have begun to create more precise assessments ofauthorship. Performance is the same. At the same time that theperformance tradition was in decline Plato began objecting to thenonlogical aspects of aesthetic pleasure and these were most commonlyassociated with the power of music, meter, and rhythm--the performativeaspects of dramatic art. There are no "musicalscales, elocution lessons, or physical arts" involved--merely theacquisition of sections of the plays in the repertory as "performancepieces" (Brazell 117). There are many roles in noh which bloom and fall in particular scenes. Zeami noted that all goodstudents achieve the 'mastered' style in which they can imitate theirteachers exactly, but until the individual actor makes the movements andintonations "his own possession" he has not achieved "living Noh" (quotedin Waley 46). In concentrating on plot and theconstruction of the written text Aristotle was also in step with thegradual shift from an oral culture to a book culture. This tradition is not, however, simply "a form handed on fromgeneration to generation" it is, instead, "a continuous mind inseparablefrom signs composing the very art form" or what Zeami described as a"flower" (Kitazawa 1 8). But most importantly you must recognize that the flower is hidden. In the simplest description of Noh drama, for example, itcan be said that the play "consists of a dance preceded by a dialogue whichexplains the significance of the dance or introduces circumstances whichlead naturally to the dancing of it" (Waley 17). The performance as a whole"is best explained as a system of highly conventionalized, interlockingparts" in which the rules that have developed over the course of thecenturies may be slightly reinterpreted but "are seldom blatantly broken"(Brazell 124). But, as Keene notes, none of the plays is dated, some cannotbe dated nearer than the century in which they were written, "and othersseem to have been rewritten so often that the establishment of a singledate of composition would be impossible" (3). "Emotion and Meaning in Greek Tragedy." Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, 1-12. Aristotle cited, among other works, Sophocles'Oedipus Tyrannus as an example of the best constructed plots. Even the variations are named andstandardized and there is no controlling 'directorial' presence to induce anew interpretation. The performance tradition continues to the present day and there arecurrently around five hundred active, professional Noh performers in Japan. Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays. The performance is, in other words, entirely under thedirection of the performers themselves and the creativity of suchperformers is, as Brazell points out, "more comparable to that of musiciansthan to Western-style actors" (124). "The Aristotelian Theatrical Paradigm as Cultural- Historical Construct." Theatre Research International 22 (1997): 38- 52.Waley, Arthur. Even though it is a "questionable assumption" that "Aristotle'stheories were based on the practice of fifth-century dramatists" the notionof their tragic art that derived from his Poetics "is commonly treated asthe epitome of drama and theatre" (Vince 42). aculture in which communication was made and experience validated throughoral performance to a culture in which experience was preserved andvalidated in a written text" (Vince 39). Once he has done this the actor then strives for the perfectmatch of bloom and moment in the Noh play in which he can achieve theflower which consists, Zeami says, "in forcing upon the audience an emotionwhich they do not expect" (quoted in Waley 47). Both theatrical traditions had important spokesmen andthe perpetuation of the traditions, as well as later centuries'understanding of them, depended in large part on Aristotle's Poetics andZeami's essays on Noh drama. Works CitedAristotle. In this playperipety (a change in the state of things to its opposite) is produced bythe Messenger's announcement, which is intended to relieve Oedipus' anxietyabout his mother but has the opposite effect. Overall tragedy followed a course of development that fitted itfor the expression of important themes. Because Zeami's contribution is relativelyrecent the same tradition in which he worked continues to the present day.The Greek drama, however, had reached its height in the century beforeAristotle codified its means and ends. Ed. In addition to the shite, sometimes called the 'doer', the possibleroles in Noh drama are: the tsure, who accompanies the shite; the waki, orperson at the side, who is usually a priest; the waki's companion, orwakizure; and the kokata, which is the role of the child. The relatively low interest in theNoh text as a literature suggests, however, that Keene's interest reflectsthe Western approach to theater in which, as Vince puts it, "writing, asdistinct from performing, [is seen] as a creative literary activity" (4 ). Theperformers do, however, usually study more than one art and nearly all ofthem studying chanting and at least on instrument, even if they arestudying to be, for example, waki actors. They perform in the manner in whichthey learned from their teachers and the whole constitutes a trueperformance tradition, as distinct from the text-centered, literary-dramatic approach to theater that has almost always predominated in theWest. The separation of text and performance that followed from Aristotle'sinfluence was nothing like the true performative tradition that wasinfluenced by Zeami's writings and example in the fourteenth century. The stage is nearly bare, only a fewessential props are employed, and "costumes and masks provide most of thecolor and visual beauty"--as well as indicating age, gender, social status,and whether the character is of this world or not (Brazell 118). The alternationof choral song and dance with enacted scenes predominated until Aeschylusintroduced the second actor and "made the dialogue, or spoken portion, takethe leading part in the play" (Aristotle 67 ). If it were not hidden, it would not be a flower. It is therefore natural for themto create imitations in the various forms found in the arts. Poetics. For Aristotle drama was essentially imitative because the initialimpulse to create poetry, of which drama was one branch, derives from twonatural human characteristics: the desire to imitate and delight inimitation. Each performance of a Noh play is basically the same as anyother performance of that play. Even more importantly,Greek culture had begun to undergo "a larger cultural shift from . The performance is paramount and attention is focused almost entirelyon the principal character, the shite whose part is chanted by themotionless, seated chorus of ten or twelve individuals and accompanied bythe music of a flute and a pair of hand-drums. But "they did not know what versions, what variations and innovations theplaywright would use [nor] how he would shape his plot, how he woulddramatize it" (Taplin 6). Aristotle's later defense of poetry was meant tocounter Plato's objections and he concentrated, therefore, on non-performative elements in "developing a critical framework better able toexplain and justify the peculiar pleasure produced by the imitative arts,especially tragedy" (Vince 4 ). Erich Segal. The chorus does notrepresent characters but "impersonally voices the text, shifting easilyfrom speaking in the equivalent of an effaced third-person narrator tochanting the words of the main character in the first person" (Brazell118). "The Twilight of a Tradition." The Drama Review 39 (1995): 1 6-14.Taplin, Oliver. Greek tragedy and Japanese Noh drama offer interesting points ofcomparison. Trans. The variations in the singing-chantingstyle of vocal delivery and the three basic modes of dance defined by Zeamiare still used to describe performance today. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Vince, Ronald. New York: Columbia UP, 1998.Keene, Donald, ed. Although they are separated by nearly two millennia, bythousands of miles, and by cultural differences too numerous to mentionboth were theatrical traditions involving masked performers, the frequentuse of music and dancing, on-stage choruses, and historic-mythologicalthemes and stories drawn from traditions with which the audiences possessedsome familiarity. Training is primarily by means of imitation andmemorizing and it is highly specialized insofar as shite and waki actors,and the various types of instrumentalists learn in separate schools. New York: Grove, 1957. Indeed Zeamidevoted considerable effort to explaining the principles on which Noh textswere written, outlining the divisions of the plays, the types of roles, andthe subject matter in a manner similar to that found in Aristotle'sbreakdown of fifth-century Athenian practice. . . These were precisely the things the audiencescame to see and the skill of the dramatist in deploying all the means ofmanipulating the plot as well as "all the aspects of theatrical and visualtechnique" at his disposal was the measure of his greatness (Taplin 5).Yet, as Vince points out, almost nothing is left of the great flourishingof fifth-century Athenian drama other than a very few texts (whichconstitute less than 3 percent of the total number written), a few remainsof theaters, and Aristotle's Poetics. But the true essence of the "continuousmind" that is the 'way' passed on through the generations of theperformance tradition transcends mere imitation. In Aristotle's definition tragedywas "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as havingmagnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories,each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic,not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewithto accomplish its catharsis of such emotions" (Aristotle 672). In addition to the sparse number of roles there is avery simple means of presentation. There are certain felicities of performance--such as the natural grace of youth or the early success of beginners--thatmay be mistaken for the flower. (Zeami, quoted in Kitazawa 1 8).Whether that hidden flower can be attained within the actor's own body andmind is unknown to anyone but the actor himself. It is, however, "song and dance, the two arts of noh, [that] are usedto bring the material elements to life, to create the living tapestry thatis the performance" (Brazell 122). The intensive apprenticeship--which lasts from childhood to early adulthood--is much like the courseoutlined by Zeami six centuries ago. There is alsothe kyogen, which is a comic or menial character who appears in the kyogenplays which serve as interludes between Noh plays on an extendedperformance program. Thus with increasingacceptance of "writing, as distinct from performing, as a creative literaryactivity, drama and theater, text and performance came more and more to beconceptualized and treated as separate provinces involving separateactivities" (Vince 4 ). But the two writer's approaches indicate theprincipal difference in the two traditions as well. Keene does note, however, that "the history of Noh theatre andthe techniques of performance have been investigated with diligence andsometimes with brilliant results" (5). But the Noh text served asthe framework for performance which was itself the principal means ofcommunication. Richard McKeon. Zeami, on the other hand, was concerned withperformance and the dramatic text was not a fixed entity but was alwayssubordinate to the performance. Few of them make a living as performers and they often tutor amateurs orinstruct the children of other performers. The No Plays of Japan. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.