|
|
Article: No and purification: the art of ritual and vocational performance.
- Article from:
- Studies in the Literary Imagination
- Article date:
- September 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Georgia State University, Department of English. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The art form we know today as No theatre was established by two geniuses, Kan'ami (1333-1384) and his son Zeami (1363-1443). The play consists of two elements of performing art: dancing and miming, or ritual and drama. Kan'ami and Zeami fused these two elements. Kan'ami's contribution was to initiate this combination and Zeami's was to formulate it into a theory of performing art.
W. B. Yeats also attempted to recover the primitive dramatic elements of ritual and drama in his adaptation of No. Referring to his version of a No play in the preface to Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound's collection of translated plays, Yeats says, "Perhaps some day a play in the form I ...