'Uta-e' and interrelations between poetry and painting in the Heian era.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Mostow, Joshua Scott.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art.

Oriental literature.

Comparative literature.

0295.

0305.

0357.

Local Subjects:

0295.

0305.

0357.

Physical Description:

305 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 50-01A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This thesis is an attempt to re-define the Heian period word "uta-e," or "picture-poem," and its practice. The first chapter gathers together and considers previous definitions of the term uta-e proposed by modern scholars, and a few paintings representative of these definitions. Previous scholars have tended to view uta-e as an ephemeral, rebus-like, picture-puzzle game, where players were challenged either to identify a poem pictorialized in a painting, or to compose a new poem, incorporating elements of the painting. Chapter two examines the available literary evidence from the tenth century related to the uta-e and proposes a new definition of that term, that is, that uta-e were pictorializations of either new or classic poems; that there was a marked tendency to motivate these pictorializations linguistically through the use of the homonymic synonymity of the verbal signifiers of certain visual images (what are called "visual pivot-words" in the thesis); and that a full or partial transcription of the poem accompanied its pictorialization, eliminating any guessing-game element.

Chapters three and five look at the use of the term uta-e and descriptions of uta-e found in Heian narrative fiction (monogatari), poetry collections and diaries through the end of the eleventh century. Chapter four is dedicated to a translation and study of "Lady Reikeiden's Poem-Picture Contest of 1050," and proposes a fundamental distinction between pictorializations of poems (uta-e) and illustrations of narrative fiction (monogatari-e). Chapter six examines the possible literary sources for six uta-e contained in the Ueno Hoke-kyo sasshi, and then goes on to examine the radical departure from previous uta-e practice found in Minamoto no Shunrai's personal poetry collection. The chapter concludes with a critique of some interpretive readings of putative uta-e by modern scholars. In the conclusion, a formal, historical definition of uta-e is offered, and the vestigal survival of some of its elements into modern times is briefly sketched.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-01, Section: A, page: 0133.

Supervisor: Wendy Steiner.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1988.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.