Session 07: Delight & humor

Topics

❖ Cultural salons & daughters of provincial governors
❖ Genre: zuihitsu (brush-follows-thoughts)
❖ Genre: nikki (journal, memoir)
❖ Texts: Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book (10th c. / Heian Two memoir)
❖ Aesthetic term: okashi
◊ Genre: Short fiction—otogi zōshi (Muromachi period short fiction)
◊ People: Ihara Saikaku (17th c. / Edo short fiction writer) *Ihara Saikaku is introduced in full later
◊ I screen an example of how the multiple choice questions will be projected for the midterm

Thoughts—read before class, revisit for tests

We take this one session to look at humor in premodern writings, albeit primarily from the perspective of the delightful and entertaining. The key concepts of this day are to take a good look at the Pillow Book and cover the concept of okashi which will be presented as a type of delight. The otogi zōshi are interesting but presented more as examples of humor than as a stand-alone topic for this class.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Delight and Humor provides the framework for the readings. Start there. It has readings and it will also lead you to:

• Pillow Book further selections—extensive readings in Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, one of the main prose works of the Heian period
• Otogizoshi basic info and Cats Tale—examples of short fiction from the Muromachi period
• Saikaku Amorous Woman—Selections from Ihara Saikaku's Life of An Amorous Woman, one of several of his main prose works

Other

There is an optional one page PDF on Sei's basic biography: Sei Shonagon basic bio (PDF, bSpace).

Terms and such mentioned this day that are not otherwise in an obvious place on the web site, the powerpoints, the assigned reading, etc. (to help with capturing items mentioned, perhaps quickly, in class, not for test purposes)

Fall 2011: kemari (蹴鞠) "kickball" | Nishijin (西陣) a hundreds-of-years old weaving "factory" in Kyoto that produced the brocade shown today. Visit there; it's interesting.