Reading Notes W5: Basho, Part B

Matsuo Basho (p. 616-628)

  • During mid and late sixteenth hundreds, Basho was only one of many haikai masters
  • In 1684, he wrote poetic travel diaries and in 1689, he set out his travel on a five month journey to explore the Northeast
  • Basho  gave the haikai movement a distinctive prose style (617) because developing a prose language of its own wasn't the norm, "but with the innovations of haikai prose, haikai poetry reached a new degree of freedom, where poetry, prose, painting, and lifestyle flowed seamlessly into one another" (617)
  • Basho wanted to view places that he's never heard of and place his faith in an uncertain future (618)
  • Sogoro helped Basho overcome the hardships of travel 
  • Tokyu was a man they visited at the Sukagawa station
  • Matsushima is the most beautiful place in Japan (621) it has gathered countless islands
  • Basho coul not sleep at night, so Sogoro gave him a Chinese poem on Matsushima, and Hara Anteki had sent him a waka on Matsugaurashima (622) he then connected to those poems like friends for the rest of the night
  • The Hall of Light held three generations of coffins-preserving three sacred images-"the coffins contained the mummified remains of Hidehira, his father, and his grandfather" (623)
  • They climbed a large mountain after they were able to cross the barrier
  • "For three days, the win and rain were severe, forcing us to stay in the middle of a boring mountain" (623) since they were stuck inside due to weather conditions, Basho wrote,
"Fleas, lice-
a horse passes water
by my pillow"


  • He then visied Seifu at Obanazawa and stayed with him for shelter for a couple of days since he eased the pain of the long journey
  • The Ryushaku-ji, a pure and tranquil place, had urged them to  backtrack from Obanazawa
  • They climbed Gassan (moon mountain) and walked over ice and snow and climbed for twenty miles (624)
  • After they left Haguro, they stayed at En'an Fugyoku's house, who is a doctor
  • Basho got very ill from all the traveling and  harsh conditions he had to travel through
  • Although he had not yet fully recovered from his journey, he set off again on the sixth of the ninth month
As Basho travles the world, he records the views he see's and writes them in his poetic haikus and also pays his respects when he comes across these places.

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 25, 2018 at 1:37 PM

    Great reading notes! I love how you organized them and how they are set up. You putting page numbers is a huge help. I like going to back to page numbers if I see something that stands out to me or if I want to use a certain example in my writings.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 2 Analysis: Philosophical Satire Literary Analysis

1. Literary Elements - Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz's poem, "Philosophical Satire," sets a strong tone in her writing and her tone will be the literary device I will discuss for this analysis. Sor Juana's tone had such a liberated and inspiring tonality that it almost seemed like she was trying to get her point across and make women feel outraged with the way men inferior women. In my understanding, it is as if Sor Juana wanted to make it alarming that the role assigned to women are difficult and showed her own perspective and view on society. She questions and exclaims the foolishness that goes on and I, for one, truly appreciate this poem and the tone she set because she wants to let women know that it is not okay to be inferior upon men and that something should be done about it.  2. Themes -   The theme in "Philosophical Satire" is symbolized by women needing to be better and stronger and not to be knocked down by a man's judgment call. The underlyin...
Read more

Week 14 Analysis: Lispector

Close Reading on Clarice Lispector's, "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman" (808-814) The thing that intrigues me about this reading is the use of simile's and imagery. Lispector creates these vivid images in your head when speaking because she describes the situation so clear. For example, when the husband and the kids leave the woman home alone, she says, ""Oh what a succulent room! Here she was, fanning herself in Brazil. The sun, trapped in the blinds, shimmered on the wall like the strings of a guitar" (810). I like this quote because at least for me, I can perfectly image this scenery in my head and it give me a snip of what this story is like in reality. This story, "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman," reveals deeper possibilities in this woman. She is unhappy and full of rage. The reasons for her misery all reflect on the choices that she has made while seeking security and protection and the social conditions that foster such poor circumstan...
Read more

Reading Notes W17: Devi, Part B

Mahasweta Devi (1147-1165) Mahasweta Devi is the most important fiction and prose weiter in the Bangali language since India's decolonization (1147) she is also the premier social activist in Asia of the past fifty years dedicated to the cause of aboriginal peoples, having worked tirelessly for the little-known Lodhas and Shabars on West Bengal her unflinching novels, stories, plays, and essays about these and other disenfranchised people provided the literary foundations for what would later be called "subaltern studies" Devi was born in 1926 into a Hindu brahmana family in Dhaka, then in East Bengal in British India, and now the capital of Bangladesh her proper name is is Mahasweta, as devi is simply an honorific term attached to many Indian female names she was educated in schools in East Bengal and at Viswa Bharati, the experimental institution established by Rabomdranath Tagore her graduate studies in English literature at Calcutta University, in the mid-194...
Read more