Description
Book SynopsisSong in an Age of Discord is a companion volume to the author''s translation of The Journal of Socho, the travel diary and poetic memoir of Saiokuken Socho (1448-1532), the preeminent linked-verse (renga) poet of his generation. The Journalwhich records several journeys that Socho made between Kyoto and Suruga Province during the tumultuous Age of the Country at Waris unparalleled in the literature of the period for its range of commentary and freshness of detail, and for its impressive array of literary genres, including more than 600 poems.
The present volume opens with an overview of the author''s life and times, and explores the relationships between politics, patronage, and the creative process in late medieval Japan. Raised in the service of a feudal lord in Suruga Province, Socho subsequently became the devoted student of the renga master Sogi and the iconoclastic Zen monk Ikkyu, a variety of influences clearly visible in his journal.
Trade Review
"Professor H. Mack Horton's magisterial study of Saiokuken Socho adds a new perspective to the extensive body of renga scholarship in English published over the past twenty-odd years." -- Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
"Ambitious and provocative." -- Journal of Japanese Studies
"...a fine entry into the cultural world of the elite classes of warring states in Japan." -- Journal of Asian History
"H. Mack Horton has succeeded admirably in bringing to life not only the rich humanity of Socho, his poetry, and his text, but also the literary world in which he was active . . . .[Song in an Age of Discord contains] rich, multifaceted contextualizations of Socho and his life in a time of turmoil and transition." -- Monumenta Nipponica
