A. Critical and Comparative Studies

47. Miner, Earl. ‘Our Heritage of Japanese Drama’. Literature East and West 15/4-16/1-2 (1971-72): 577-600.

Finds that artists in Europe and America have been attracted both by the beauty and the form of Japanese drama, but also by something ‘that may be called a possibility of a creative center that had not theretofore been glimpsed’. Pound, Sergei Eisenstein, Yeats, and others ‘found Japanese drama a revelation’ and ‘a justification for a new departure and a break with existing conventions’, though often this ‘finding’ was of ‘what they needed rather than what is . . . present in the arts they extolled’. Includes discussion of the ‘church dramas’ of Plomer and Britten (BJ18, 19, and 21) and passing reference to Fenollosa (D10) and Amy Lowell.