The Masks Of Kyōgen: A Study Of Morphology, Taxonomy, And Personae

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2021

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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ABSTRACT Kyōgen is the oldest continuously performed comedy in the world and introduced masking to performances more than a century earlier than the commedia dell’arte of Italy. The masks in use today remain essentially unchanged from at least the 17th century. My thesis explores the origins, evolution, conformations, and personae of Kyōgen masks. Existing scholarship focuses on mask usage in Honkyōgen, the genre of independent comedy performance, but masked Kyōgen actors also enact important roles in Sarugaku-Nō plays and the sacred ritual of Shikisanban. Knowledge of the roles represented by Kyōgen masks in these two branches of Nōgaku is vital to understanding the development of important mask types and properly interpreting their personae. Given the dearth of historical documentation of Kyōgen masks and the paucity of modern research, my thesis draws heavily on formal analysis of Kyōgen masks made prior to the Meiji period. For this purpose, I present photographs of nearly 400 different masks, the largest and most comprehensive archive, by far, ever published.

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Kyōgen masks, Kyōgen plays

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Japan

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