Paper short abstract:

This paper examines narration and its fusion with characters' speeches in Zeami's deity plays and warrior plays, using theater semiotics and narratology. It reveals Zeami's careful manipulation of narrative style to match the play's socio-religious purposes.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to Western theatrical tradition, in noh, not only characters' speeches but also "narration" is spoken (or rather chanted) on stage. Many noh plays also contain sections in which narration and characters' speeches merge and become indistinguishable. This paper examines how narration and its fusion with characters' speeches affect the stage-audience relationship, first by applying Western theoretical frameworks, and then by analyzing specific cases in Zeami's warrior plays and deity plays.

Borrowing theater semiotics and narratology, we can say that "narration on stage" transforms the audience's spatial cognition with "absolute authority" (authority that forces the audience to accept whatever narration says), through maximum stage-audience communication (with excellent "appeal" to the audience). The same effects can also be attributed to the sections in which narration and characters' speeches merge.

Analyzing narration and its fusion with characters' speeches in Zeami's plays reveals that he adjusted the play's narrative style depending on the type of play. Warrior plays use less narration at the end of an act than other dream plays. Similarly, the chorus part with a grammatically ambiguous addresser often ends with signal words that indicate that it is indeed one character's speech to another. Thus, the whole dramatic incident occurs mostly within the framework of the onstage communication between characters, with minimum intervention from the narrator in warrior plays.

In contrast, in deity plays, the ends of acts and the chorus sections with an ambiguous addresser are characterized by avoidance of a character's speech. Thus, the ambiguity of the addresser (narrator or a character) is sustained; the praise of the deity's benevolence toward the current regime is thus directly delivered to the audience through the stage-audience communication, from a voice that is not restricted to a single character but rather bears the "authority" of narration.

Such differences between warrior plays and deity plays reveal Zeami's careful handling of the narrative style to match the play's socioreligious purposes.