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1341–1427) called Jiandeng xinhua (Chien-teng
hsin-hua; New tales written while cutting the
wick), from which he drew much inspiration.
Kim Shi-sup returned to Seoul after Se Jo died
but did not take up a government position again.
Like other educated men of this period, he also
wrote verse, but it is for his stories that he is most
remembered.
An English Version of a Work by Kim Shi-sup
“Student Yi Peers Over the Wall.” In Anthology of Ko-
rean Literature from Early Times to the Nineteenth
Century. Compiled and edited by Peter H. Lee.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981.
Kleist, Heinrich von (1777–1811)
dramatist, novelist
Heinrich von Kleist, born in Frankfurt into a fam-
ily of the minor Prussian nobility, led a life as trou-
bled as the political fortunes his native country
would experience under Napoleon. After entering
the Prussian army in 1792, following his family’s
tradition of military service, Kleist found that his
temperament did not suit a life of rigid discipline
and unquestioning obedience. He resigned in 1799
to devote himself to study, but overtaxed himself at
the University of Frankfurt and left in 1800 to seek
a cure for his health. He settled in Switzerland, in-
tending to take up the rustic life, but his fiancée,
Wilhelmine von Zenge, declined to join him, and
their engagement ended.
In the following years, he turned to writing
plays and reading the works of the great philoso-
phers; he identified with ROUSSEAU and LEIBNIZ,but
reading
KANT’s theories about the absence of ab-
solute truth shattered Kleist, who believed the
search for truth was his chief goal in life. Lack of
funds forced him to take a position as a civil ser-
vant in 1805, which he resigned the next year to
take up the series of travels, failed enterprises,
bursts of writing, and bouts of desperation that
marked the remaining years of his life. In this time
he spent six months in prison after being mistaken
for a spy. Disillusioned by the cool reception given
his plays, disappointed by the failure of his literary
enterprises, destitute, and feeling he had failed his
family, Kleist ended his own life in an act of double
suicide with his friend Henriette Vogel, who was
dying of uterine cancer.
Throughout his life, Kleist wrote many letters.
Those which he wrote to his elder half sister Ulrike,
the one person he felt never abandoned him, show a
sensitive nature torn between grandiose ambition
and keen despair. His first play, The Family Schroffen-
stien (1803), was a gloomy tragedy that debated the
adequacy of reason as a guide for human existence.
He next began Robert Guiscard, a
TRAGEDY based on
the life of the historical Norman adventurer, but
frustration with his progress led him to burn the
manuscript in a fit of temper. Also in 1803 he began
work on The Broken Jug, inspired by a competition
among his friends. Completed in 1806, the play, a
FARCE of justice taking place in a courtroom where
the judge himself is the perpetrator of the crime,
emerged as one of the best German comedies. Am-
phitryon, begun in 1803 as a translation of the play
by MOLIÈRE, examines in detail the inner torment of
its female character, Alcmene. In Penthesilea (1807),
Kleist drew on his own anguish to create the violent,
passionate tale of the doomed Amazon queen who
loved and destroyed Achilles. In Kate of Heilbronn
(1810), a medieval fairy tale with knights and maid-
ens, he created a different sort of heroine, patterned
on his ideal of the virtuous, self-sacrificing woman.
His Battle of the Teutoburger Wald (begun in 1808)
shows the stirrings of a nationalism that would cul-
minate in the patriotic spirit of his last and best
work, Prince Friedrich of Homburg, written in 1810.
Friedrich was never staged during Kleist’s life because
his patrons did not approve of a Prussian soldier feel-
ing such a desperate fear of death, but the play, sub-
tle in its psychology, rather emphasizes the ideals of
enlightened devotion and service to country.
Kleist also wrote a number of short stories,
which survive, and a novel, which likely met the
same fate as Robert Guiscard. Some critics hail
Kleist as a forerunner of the age of modern
drama, and had he been born a hundred years
later, it is possible audiences would have appreci-
Kleist, Heinrich von 137
ated him. The criticism of his contemporary
GOETHE, who had a low opinion of the German
Romantic spirit in general, did much to discour-
age Kleist. His writings return again and again to
the impact of fate on human life, the causes and
consequences of chaos, and the imperative to find
some means of spiritual protection or under-
standing of the broader design. If Kleist failed in
anything, it was in finding a way to reconcile his
vivid interior world with the forces at work in the
outer one. Though he never succeeded in sur-
passing the brilliance of Goethe or
SCHILLER, his
influence on later dramatists and thinkers
grounds him firmly in the tradition of great Ger-
man literature.
English Versions of Works by
Heinrich von Kleist
The Marquise of O—and Other Stories. Translated by
Martin Greenberg. New York: Ungar, 1973.
Heinrich von Kleist: Three Major Plays. Translated by
Carl R. Mueller. Lyme, N.H.: Smith and Kraus, 2001.
Works about Heinrich von Kleist
Allan, Sian. The Plays of Heinrich von Kleist: Ideals
and Illusions. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Brown, Hilda Meldrum. Heinrich von Kleist: The Am-
biguity of Art and the Necessity of Form. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb
(1724–1803) poet, essayist, playwright
Friedrich Klopstock was born in the city of Quedlin-
burg to the lawyer and government adviser Gottlieb
Klopstock and his wife, Anna Maria. He attended
high school in his hometown before going on to
study theology at the universities of Jena and Leipzig.
In Leipzig, Klopstock published the first three
cantos from his Messiah, a work that engaged him
for the next 50 years and established his reputation
as a poet of extraordinary talent. After stays in
Switzerland and Denmark, Klopstock settled in
Hamburg, where he produced the bulk of his lit-
erary work and spent the rest of his life.
A mild-mannered, religious man, Klopstock re-
veals his personality and disposition in many ways
in his writing. Messiah is his best and most repre-
sentative work, which he himself referred to as his
“primary life’s purpose.” This long poem recounts
the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus and
his redemption of humankind. Written in hexam-
eters, an unfamiliar verse form for German poetry
at the time, the work stands out not only for the
density and beauty of the language but also for its
unique representation of Christ.
ENLIGHTENMENT thinkers portrayed Jesus as a
kind of exemplary moralist, but Klopstock depicts
him as an intermediary between God and man, a
medium of God’s eternal nature. Klopstock’s in-
tentions in writing the work were not only literary
but also spiritual, as he sought to set down Chris-
tian revelatory experience in an enduring form
that would speak to all human beings.
Though Klopstock also wrote literary essays
and biblical dramas, it is chiefly for Messiah, as well
as his lyric poetry, that he is now remembered.
GOETHE, SCHILLER, Hölderlin, and the great German
Romantic writers were among the admirers of
Klopstock’s work. His influence on German poetry
has been and continues to be fundamental.
An English Version of Works by Friedrich
Gottlieb Klopstock
Kohl, Karin M. Rhetoric, the Bible, and the Origins of
Free Verse: The Early Hymns of Friedrich Gottlieb
Klopstock. New York: W. de Gruyter, 1990.
Works about Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Hilliard, Kevin. Philosophy, Letters, and the Fine Arts
in Klopstock’s Thought. London: Institute of Ger-
manic Studies, 1987.
Lee, Meredith. Displacing Authority: Goethe’s Poetic
Reception of Klopstock. Heidelberg: Univer-
sitätsverlag C. Winter, 1999.
Knight, Sarah Kemble (1666–1727) diarist
Sarah Kemble Knight was the oldest daughter of
Elizabeth and Thomas Kemble, a merchant. Some-
time in the late 1680s, she married Richard Knight,
138 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb
an older man who, it is believed, worked as a ship-
master and London agent for an American business.
She gave birth to her only child in 1689, the same
year that her father died. Upon his passing, she was
rumored to have taken charge of the family business
affairs. Over time, she developed expertise in legal
matters, became adept at settling estates, worked as
a shopkeeper, and taught school. Legend has it that
Benjamin FRANKLIN was one of her pupils, but no of-
ficial documentation exists to support this claim.
Knight’s active participation in the workforce re-
veals that not all Puritan women were consigned to
the domestic world of hearth and home.
In 1704, two years before her husband’s death,
Knight embarked alone on a horseback journey
from her home in Boston to Connecticut, reportedly
to settle the estate of one of her cousins. The Journal
of Madam Knight (1825), the chronicle of her coura-
geous expedition, is filled with descriptions of the
rocky and mountainous roads she traveled with her
various guides; the difficulties she encountered when
trying to cross rivers; her attempts at steeling her
nerves as she made her way through dark, dangerous
nights; the manner in which her hosts prepared
meals; and the sometimes comical manners and cus-
toms of the people she met. Emory Elliott notes that
Knight adopted “techniques of the mock-epic and
elements of the picaresque,” a genre that is autobio-
graphical in nature and makes use of satire, espe-
cially when describing the social classes. The content
of Knight’s journal, which was published nearly a
century after her death, points to its significance in
the history of American literature. Her narrative
provides us with a woman’s perspective of 18th-cen-
tury American life. The worldliness of her account
stands in stark contrast to the more inward and spir-
itually-oriented journals kept by her Puritan prede-
cessors and contemporaries.
A Work by Sarah Kemble Knight
The Journal of Madam Knight. Boston: D.R. Godine,
1972.
A Work about Sarah Kemble Knight
Bush, Sargent. “Introduction,” in Journeys in New
Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives.
Edited by William L. Andrews. Madison: Univer-
sity of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Kobayashi Issa (Yatarô) (1763–1827) poet
Kobayashi Issa is one of the few acknowledged mas-
ters of the Japanese poetic art of HAIKU. Haiku is a
form of unrhymed poetry consisting of 17 syllables
in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, re-
spectively. Haiku often deal with the natural world,
focusing on a single moment that is transformed
by the poet’s vision into an idea of enduring signif-
icance. Kobayashi’s poetry is especially beloved by
the Japanese because of its humor and simplicity.
Kobayashi Issa was born Kobayashi Yatarô on
May 5, in Kashiwabara, Shinano province, Japan.
Later in life, he adopted the pseudonym Issa, which
means “cup of tea.” Issa’s father was a poor farmer
who was widowed not long after his son was born.
His remarriage a few years later created difficulties
for Issa, who was mistreated by his stepmother.
At age 14, he was sent to Tokyo to study with the
poet Nirokuan Chikua, who taught the boy haiku.
After Chikua’s death, Kobayashi traveled through-
out the southwestern part of Japan, publishing his
first collection of poetry Tabishui (Travel Glean-
ings) in 1795. This work was followed by many oth-
ers, including Chichi No Shuen Nikki (Diary of My
Father’s Last Days, 1801), Shichiban-Nikki (Seventh
Diary, 1810), and Oraga Haru (The Year of My Life).
During his lifetime, Kobayashi wrote more than
20,000 haiku. His sweet sense of humor is evident
in this simple poem in which he finds affinity with
a frog:
Frog and I
eyeball
To eyeball.
And his love of nature and ability to observe
acutely can be seen in this poem about the wind:
Cool breeze
Tangled
In a grass-blade.
Kobayashi led a lonely life for many years, a fact
reflected in many of his haiku. This one in particular
Kobayashi Issa 139
evokes a sense of the lonely boy sent from home at
an early age:
Come with me
and play
Parentless sparrow.
After the death of Kobayashi’s father in 1801, his
stepmother tried to prevent him from inheriting
the property his father had left him. It was not until
1813 that he finally was able to collect his inheri-
tance. In the next year he married for the first time
at age 52, but his married life was to be filled with
sorrow. Four children died in infancy, and his wife,
Kiku, died in childbirth. Of her death he wrote:
My grumbling wife—
if only she were here!
This moon tonight . . .
His second marriage was a failure, ending in di-
vorce after only a few months. He married a third
time but died on June 1, before the birth of his fifth
child, a daughter.
A poem titled “Kobayashi Issa” by Victor Her-
nandez Cruz beautifully sums up Kobayashi’s ge-
nius and his ability to see so much in the tiniest
aspects of existence:
His eyes were binoculars
small things
Had the fury of the cosmos.
....
The horizon smiles with Issa....
English Versions of Works by Kobayashi Issa
Spring of My Life. Translated by Sam Hamill. Boston:
Shambhala Publications, 1997.
The Year of My Life. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Works about Kobayashi Issa
Gollub, Matthew. Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs! The
Life and Poems of Issa. New York: Lee and Low
Books, 1998.
Ueda, Makoto, trans. Dew on the Grass: The Life and
Poetry of Kobayashi Issa. The Netherlands: Brill
Academic Publishers, 2004.
Kochanowski, Jan (1530–1584) poet
Jan Kochanowski was born in Sycyna in central
Poland. Because his family was of the Polish gentry,
he was able to receive an excellent education in the
classics. He enrolled in the Krakow Academy in 1544,
but left in 1547 after the death of his father. After
leaving Krakow, he went to the University of Wit-
tenberg in present-day Germany. In 1552 he studied
in Italy after receiving funds from Prince Albrecht of
Königsberg. Little is known about Kochanowski’s
studies there, because none of his letters or journals
of that time exist or have been found.
When Kochanowski returned to Poland, he
held appointments at the royal court of King Zyg-
munt August and wrote poetry in Latin and Pol-
ish. Some of his poetry was commissioned by
various noblemen to commemorate special occa-
sions or political events. His works include A
Game of Chess (1562), Susanna (1562), Concord
(1564), and The Satyr (1564). Kochanowski re-
tired from court life in 1570 and lived at
Czarnolas, a country estate, where he composed
the bulk of his poetry, including his tragedy, Dis-
missal of the Grecian Envoys, between 1570 and his
death in 1584.
His poetry was based on the classical traditions
of Greek, Roman, and early Christian writings. He
translated the Psalms into Polish between 1570 and
1578. His cycle of poems Laments was written in
1580, after the death of his daughter. These poems
describe man’s relation to God and are considered
to be the greatest works written in the early Polish
language. After Kochanowski’s death in 1584, his
collected Epigrams were published, as well as the
first printing of his early Songs. While Kochanowski
wrote his early works in Latin, he was among the
first to use Polish to write poetry, for which he
achieved lasting fame.
Works by Jan Kochanowski
Poems of Jan Kochanowski. Edited by George R.
Noyes, et al. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1928.
Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski. Translated by
Adam Czeriawski and edited by Piotr Wilczek.
Oxford: Legenda, 2001.
140 Kochanowski, Jan
A Work about Jan Kochanowski
Welsh, David. Jan Kochanowski. New York: Twayne,
1974.
Komam Q’Anil, Epic of (Xhuwan Q’Anil,
El Q’Anil, El Kanil, Man of Lightning)
(n.d.–present) Mayan epic
The Epic of Komam Q’Anil tells the story of El
Q’anil, the “Man of Lightning.” Myths of El Q’anil
are part of the oral tradition of the Jakaltek Maya
people of Guatemala. In the EPIC, the narrator re-
counts the history of the Jakaltek Maya, explain-
ing how their lands were given to them by the first
father and how they learned the knowledge of hi-
eroglyphics. Eventually, they were dispersed from
their land by natural disasters and wandered in the
wilderness until they came to Ajul, near the pres-
ent-day village of Jacaltenango, which became
their new land.
When the people heard news of a distant war
and felt pains for those dying, they decided to
join the fight. El Q’anil, the “Man of Lightning,”
is introduced in the form of a boy named
Xhuwan, who is chosen to carry the Jakalteks’
supplies to battle. He is forbidden, however, to
return to his people after engaging in the war.
Xhuwan summons lightning to save his people
from destruction, undertakes a great adventure
journey, and then leads the people to victory in
the fight. Unable to return to Ajul, he retires to
the southern volcano called El Q’Anil, from
where he can watch over his people as an im-
mortal.
The Epic of Komam Q’Anil is known today by
the Jakaltek Maya and taught to all of their chil-
dren to reinforce their people’s identity. It is also an
important symbolic image of endurance through
adversity for an indigenous people whose very ex-
istence today is challenged by the modern world.
A Work about the Epic of Komam Q’Anil
Montejo, Victor. El Q’Anil, Man of Lightning: A Leg-
end of Jacaltenango. Translated by Wallace Kauf-
man and Susan G. Rascon. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2001.
Kong Shangren (Kung Shang-jen)
(1648–1718) scholar, playwright, poet
Kong Shangren was one of the major playwrights
of the K’ang-hsi era. A descendant of Confucius,
Kong Shangren spent the early years of his life in
the traditional studies of the literati. As a scholar,
he was an exponent of Kaozhengxue (Kao-cheng
hsueh; “Empirical studies”).
In 1684 he served as a lecturer to the Kangxi
(K’ang-hsi) emperor, who visited the writer’s na-
tive province of Chufu. As a result of this meeting,
Kong Shangren was appointed to a position in the
Directorate of Education. From 1685 to 1689, he
served on an irrigation project in Yangchow. In
this capacity, he traveled to various historical
landmarks and became acquainted with the rem-
nants of the Ming dynasty. His poems and prose,
reflective of this time, are collected in a volume
called Hu hai ji (Hu-hai chi; Poems from the Lakes
and Seas).
In 1694 Kong Shangren began composing dra-
mas. His first, Xiao hu lei (Hsiao-hu lei; The Little
Thunderclap), was based on a Tang dynasty instru-
ment in his collection. Kong Shangren researched
its historical origins and created a story of a love
affair between a poet and a palace concubine. The
play’s exhaustive factual information was far in ad-
vance of other attempts at historical drama.
Taohuashan (T’ao-hua shan; Peach Blossom
Fan) was Kong Shangren’s next theatrical effort
and shows even more exhaustive research, includ-
ing bibliographical notes and a chronology of
events of the reign of Chong-Zhen (Ch’ung-
chen) in the southern Ming dynasty. In addition,
the characters are all based on real people. The
play was written to demonstrate Kong Shangren’s
idea that social obligations are more important
than individual rights. The play includes the story
of a group of honest intellectuals who wish to
save their country from invasion and anarchy.
They are opposed by a group of power-hungry
politicians.
Soon after the play’s premiere, Kong Shangren
retired from his official position, but he continued
writing, producing two more collections of poems
before his death.
Kong Shangren 141
Peach Blossom Fan has become one of China’s
most famous historical dramas, for which critics
have praised Kong Shangren for his skillful han-
dling of a complex plot, innovative theatrical form,
and tragic vision.
An English Version of a Work by
Kong Shangren
Peach Blossom Fan. Translated by Chen Shih-Hsiang,
Cyril Birch, and Harold Action. Boston: Cheng
and Tsui, 2000.
A Work about Kong Shangren
Lu, Tina. Persons, Roles and Minds: Identity in Peony
Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan. Palo Alto, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2001.
Krylov, Ivan (1768–1844) fabulist, journalist,
playwright
Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow to a poor officer
who, though informally educated, loved to read.
Ivan was nine when his father died, leaving his wife
and two sons with little legacy except for a chest
full of books. Krylov began working as a copyist to
support the family.
At age 14, Krylov moved to St. Petersburg. He
worked as a government clerk, explored theatrical
and literary circles, and tried his hand at literature.
His first important work, the opera Coffee Mill, sat-
irized the hypocrisy of seemingly progressive
thinkers. The publisher to whom Krylov brought
Coffee Mill praised the work and encouraged the
young writer with a considerable sum of money,
but refused to publish the opera.
After writing a sequence of scarcely successful
tragedies and comedies, Krylov finished a harshly
critical comedy called Mischief-Makers. In the
main characters of the comedy, Krylov’s contem-
poraries easily recognized influential figures of the
theatrical and literary world, some of whom were
Krylov’s patrons or supporters. His benefactors
were outraged and the opera was banned.
In 1789 Krylov began a monthly publication
called Supernatural Mail. The journal caricatured
Russian society in the form of a fantastic corre-
spondence between gnomes and a wizard. Censors
soon shut the journal down. In 1790 Krylov de-
cided to devote himself to literary work and retired
from his public service.
He then began another project, the Spectator, an-
other journal that did not survive the censors. Its clo-
sure was not surprising considering the severely
satirical nature of the work, which mercilessly criti-
cized the tendencies of Russian society to imitate the
West, to admire all things French, and to neglect the
native language and culture. Some of Krylov’s im-
portant works of the period include the articles
“Speech Made by a Scapegrace in a Gathering of
Fools,”“Thoughts of a Fashionable Philosopher,”and
a play, Praise to the Science of Killing Time, all of which
demonstrate his use of satire to expose social ills.
Krylov’s real fame followed his discovery that
his satirical talent could be best expressed in fables.
This genre had enjoyed popularity across many
cultures and all ages, as evidenced by the fables of
Aesop, Phaedrus, the Indian Panchatantra, and the
poetess Marie de France. Krylov began in 1805 by
translating and publishing two fables by the
French poet Jean de LA FONTAINE,which received
the critics’ highest praise. In 1809 Krylov published
a separate edition of his own fables, which brought
him enormous success. The Fables became a classic
during his lifetime; the books were sold in huge
numbers, and the czar personally asked Krylov to
accept the title of Honorary Academician of the
Russian Academy.
In his fables, Krylov combines a well-developed
skill of observation with his trademark ironic
skepticism. His satire did not reproach society for
its sins but invited people to see their own short-
comings and laugh at them. The fable Quartet, for
example, describes four animals attempting to play
a brass quartet without knowing how to play or
read music. Though the animals change places, the
quality of their music does not improve. “How-
ever you seat yourselves, my friends, you are still
not good musicians,” the fable concludes. Simi-
larly, A Crow and a Fox describes a vain crow,
tricked by the shameless flattery of an artful fox
into letting go of a piece of cheese. One of the most
famous fables, A Fox and Grapes, tells a story of a
142 Krylov, Ivan
fox who fails to get hold of grapes growing too
high and mollifies herself by concluding that “the
grapes must not be ripe, anyway.”
Krylov was the first to step out of the tradition
of using bookish words and poeticisms in the fa-
bles. By visiting fairs, markets, and public holi-
days, he acquired a thorough knowledge of
colloquial or everyday language, which he then
used in his writing. Sharp, proverbial phrases
make his fables catchy and easy to remember. He
often minimizes the traditional moral that con-
cludes a fable, or else disposes of it completely. His
fables are not dry moralizations but rather pic-
turesque and engaging portrayals of real life. Over
time, his fables have become an integral part of
Russian literature, contributing through their
popularity to conversational phrases in the Russ-
ian language and becoming a deeply embedded
part of the country’s folklore.
English Versions of Works by Ivan Krylov
15 Fables of Krylov. Translated by Guy Daniels. New
York: Macmillan, 1965.
Krylov’s Fables. Translated by Ivan Krylov. Westport,
Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1977.
Russian Satiric Comedy: Six Plays. Edited and trans-
lated by Laurence Senelick. New York: Performing
Arts Journal Publications, 1983.
Works about Ivan Krylov
Hamburger, Henri. The Function of the Predicate in
the Fables of Krylov. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1981.
Stepanov, Nikolay. Ivan Krylov. New York: Twayne,
1973.
Kyogen (1300s–present)
The Kyogen (pronounced kee-OH-gen; “crazy
words”) are Japanese folk plays that portray the sim-
ple emotions and everyday experiences of regular
people. The plays, which developed into their mod-
ern form in the 14th century, are meant to encour-
age a quiet sort of comic joy at the follies of a
common life.
The modern form of Kyogen theater devel-
oped out of a combination of the comic farcical
productions of Sarugaku and the athletic dance
performances called Dengaku. Kwanami Kiyot-
sugu and his son
ZEAMI Motokiyo honed the art
form, presenting a performance in front of
Shogun Yoshimitsu in 1374. Kwanami named the
performance style Kyogen, which means “mad
words”to emphasize the subtle comic effect of the
plays.
Kyogen were handed down orally, with only the
general outline and a sketchy sense of the dialogue
preserved from generation to generation. This gave
the plays flexibility and encouraged continual in-
novation. Various schools developed over the
years, including Okura, Sagi, Izumi and Nomura.
In more recent centuries the works have been writ-
ten down and presented in various volumes, few of
which are still in print.
The productions of Kyogen plays are simple,
performed on a plain stage with minimal props.
Fans are frequently used, as are weapons such as
spears, swords, and bows and arrows. The players
often wear wooden masks that represent, most
commonly, a rogue, a woman, an old man, a
young man, a monkey, and a fox. The comic ele-
ments of the performances are physical in na-
ture, a matter of situation rather than of
character. Popular superstitions play an impor-
tant role, and there is little or no love interest
portrayed.
English Versions of Kyogen
Morley, Carolyn Anne. Transformation, Miracles, and
Mischief: The Mountain Priest Plays of Kyogen.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University East Asia Pro-
gram, 1993.
Sakanishi, Shio. Japanese Folk Plays: The Ink-smeared
Lady and Other Kyogen. Tokyo: C.E. Tuttle, 1960.
Works about Kyogen
Keene, Donald. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Litera-
ture from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Cen-
tury. New York: Henry Holt, 1993.
Takeda, Sharon Sadako. Miracles and Mischief: Noh
and Kyogen Theater in Japan. Los Angeles: Los An-
geles County Museum of Art Agency for Cultural
Affairs, 2002.
Kyogen 143
144
L
Labé, Louise (ca. 1520–1566) poet
Louise Labé was the daughter of a middle-class
rope maker in Lyon, France, and as a child received
education in languages, music, and riding. In 1543
she married another rope maker, Ennemond Per-
rin, her senior by almost three decades. Around
1556, she left the literary circles of Lyon to live in
the countryside, where the plague brought a pre-
mature end to her life.
Labé began writing her first
SONNETS in 1546.
In these sonnets she employs not only the form but
also many of the themes used by the Italian poet
PETRARCH. In 1552 she began to write The Debate
Between Folly and Love, an expressive work full of
diverse structures and several voices. In the next
year she began writing her Elegies and in 1555 pub-
lished The Complete Works of Louise Labé of Lyon,
which was reprinted several times within the next
year. Some biographers attribute Labé’s popular-
ity to the increasing social prominence of women
in the mid-16th century, when literature by and
about women became fashionable. Certain critics
accused Labé of being immodest and unwomanly,
while others praised her lavishly, considering her
an admirable writer and exemplary woman.
Labé’s narrative voice is that of a woman who
possesses intellectual and poetic power and is
highly aware of herself. In her verse she combines
the Italian forms with the traditions of the early
Greek poet Sappho to write about female desire
and to characterize women as being both intellec-
tual and erotic, with mental as well as material
abilities. Labé continually resisted prevailing cul-
tural notions that limited women to roles as cour-
tesans, companions, or domestic servants; instead,
her poetry presents women as active, independent
subjects who are capable of thought as well as feel-
ing. In The Debate Between Folly and Love, Labé
scatters her poetry with allusions to classical
mythology that demonstrate her learning, and
gives her characters sly observations about the way
wisdom is underappreciated in society. For in-
stance, the character of Mercury makes a point
about how often folly prevails in the world, ob-
serving that “for every wise man who is talked
about on earth, there will be ten thousand fools
who will be popular with the common people.”
Labé’s shorter poems abound with themes and
images that express passionate love and lofty
heights of feeling, as can be seen in these lines from
Sonnet 18 (translated by Edith Farrell):
Kiss me. Again. More kisses I desire.
Give me one your sweetness to express.
Give me the most passionate you possess.
Four I’ll return, and hotter than the fire.
Labé’s women are not crushed by disappoint-
ment or despair, however; when the narrator of the
second elegy addresses a lover who has left her for
another, she taunts him for not seeing her worth,
declaring:
And know that elsewhere there’s no one like
me.
I don’t say that she might have more
beauty,
But never will a woman love you more
Nor bring more fame to lay it at your door.
Throughout her work, Labé demanded that
women be recognized and acknowledged as capa-
ble of intelligent action as well as desire.
Labé’s manuscripts and their circulation are
proof that women had active roles as authors,
readers, and patrons of the artistic
RENAISSANCE
taking place in France in the 16th century. Labé
herself was known to entertain poets, writers, and
other learned people in her private salon, and the
writer Pernette du Guillet was a great friend of
hers. In her writing Labé encouraged women to
write and sell their own works and also to support
each other in a female literary community. She
firmly believed in self-improvement through edu-
cation for women, and expressed this in the dedi-
cation of her Works. Addressing her friend
Clemence de Bourges, she conveys her character-
istic beliefs that writing is a form of self-knowledge
and that intellectual pleasures are preferable to
sensual ones. She encourages her female readers to
exercise their minds, inspire one another, and de-
vote themselves to the study of literature and the
sciences to gain recognition from and equality
with men. Like an earlier Frenchwoman, Christine
de
PISAN, Labé’s work expresses the voice of an ed-
ucated and feeling woman who was skilled enough
to use and refuse convention where necessary,
making a valuable contribution to the French Re-
naissance as well as a call for the emancipation of
women.
English Versions of Works by Louise Labé
Debate of Folly and Love: A New English Translation
with the Original French Text. Translated by Anne-
Marie Bourbon. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
Louise Labé: Sonnets. Translated by Graham D. Mar-
tin. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.
Louise Labe’s Complete Works. Edited and translated
by Edith R. Farrell. Troy, N.Y.: Whitson Publish-
ing, 1986.
Works about Louise Labé
Baker, Deborah Lesko. The Subject of Desire: Petrar-
chan Poetics and the Female Voice in Louise Labé.
West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press,
1996.
Cameron, Keith. Louise Labé: Renaissance Poet and
Feminist. Oxford, England: Berg Publishers, 1991.
Moore, Mary B. Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers
and Petrarchism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2000.
La Bruyère, Jean de (1645–1696)
moralist, nonfiction writer
Jean de la Bruyère was born in Paris to a comp-
troller general of municipal revenue. He studied
law, was admitted to the bar, and practiced until
1673, when he purchased a position from the
treasurer of finances of Caen. La Bruyère stayed in
Paris until he became history tutor to the duc de
Condé’s son and moved to the duke’s chateau in
Chantilly. He became friends with the duke and
eventually received a pension that allowed him to
stay with the duke’s household. He became a mem-
ber of the ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE in 1693 and died of
apoplexy in 1696.
La Bruyère is principally remembered for a
book he published anonymously in 1688, Les Car-
actères de Théophraste, traduits du Grec, avec les car-
actères et les moeuers de ce siècle (The Characters of
Theophrastes, translated from the Greek, with por-
La Bruyère, Jean de 145
traits and mores of this century). While the first part
is a translation of an ancient Greek work, the sec-
ond half is a collection of character sketches and
moral observations that have yielded plenty of
meaningful quotations still used today. For exam-
ple,“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a com-
edy for those who think” comes from La Bruyère.
His aphorisms reveal an amused distance that
allows him to make unflattering observations
about human nature and society without sounding
outraged or pompous. La Bruyère recognized that
love sometimes fades, people follow their own in-
terests, and God does not always reward the de-
serving with wealth and power, but his laconic
phrasing does not betray anger or disgust.
La Bruyère’s simple, well-balanced phrasing,
appropriate diction, and keen observations make
him admirable not only as a stylist but also as an
observer of human nature whose truths can still
surprise and inspire.
An English Version of a Work by
Jean de La Bruyère
Van Laun, Henri, trans. Characters. London: Oxford
University Press, 1963.
Works about Jean de La Bruyère
Knox, Edward C. Jean de la Bruyère. New York:
Twayne, 1974.
Mourgues, Odette de. Two French Moralists: La
Rochefoucauld & La Bruyère. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978.
Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de (Pierre-
Ambroise-François Choderlos de
Laclos)
(1741–1803) novelist
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was born in Amiens,
France. As an adult, he entered the French army
and, in 1782, when he was an artillery captain, he
wrote and published his only novel, Les liaisons dan-
gereuses (Dangerous Liaisons). It was a best-seller, al-
beit a scandalous one. After the Reign of Terror
ended and Napoleon came to power, Napoleon pro-
moted Laclos to general, and Laclos’s first command
was in Taranto, Italy, where he died of dysentery.
What makes Dangerous Liaisons such a signifi-
cant novel is how it perfectly encapsulates 18th-
century Western fiction while exploring universal
human themes and psychology. Laclos admired
the epistolary
NOVELS of Samuel
RICHARDSON and
used the form to reveal his characters’ social fa-
cades, as well as their real thoughts and motiva-
tions. His novel also operates as a response to the
philosophy of Jean-Jacques
ROUSSEAU, while
touching on themes later explored by the Marquis
de SADE.
On the one hand, Laclos seems to side with
Rousseau’s contempt for the vanity, hypocrisy, and
unnaturalness of contemporary French society,
but in his depiction of Madame de Tourvel, Laclos
implicitly critiques Rousseau’s idealism. Rousseau’s
belief in humanity’s inherent goodness also seems
to have influenced the character of Valmont. Val-
mont eventually reveals a capacity for intimacy
and empathy when he falls in love with Madame
de Tourvel, which reveals that his libertine behav-
ior is learned rather than innate. His death, how-
ever, like Madame de Tourvel’s, indicates that
morally upright and emotionally vulnerable peo-
ple cannot survive in a society that is dominated by
people like the Marquise de Merteuil.
The marquise is an impressive portrait of com-
plete egotism that looks forward to some of Sade’s
notorious libertine philosophers. She is a fascinat-
ing, multifaceted monster who thrives in a society
where the appearance of sincerity and virtue mat-
ters more than those qualities themselves.
In 1987 Christoper Hampton adapted the
novel for the stage, which Stephen Frears later
filmed. Laclos’s mastery of the epistolary form
and his acute psychological portraits have made
Dangerous Liaisons a widely read and well-re-
garded classic.
English Versions of a Work by Pierre
Choderlos de Laclos
Parmée, Douglas, trans. Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Stone, P. W. K., trans. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. New
York: Penguin Classics, 1961.
146 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de