Ihara Saikaku's "The Great Mirror of Male Love" and the construction of the model of homoerotic love.

• Grant number: 24/05845-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Joy Nascimento Afonso
• Grantee: Ítalo Antonio Grafanaz de Paula
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

"Love letter sent on a sea stalk" and "Resentment provoked by a hat" are two stories that form part of the collection of homoerotic stories "The Great Mirror of Male Love" (1957) by Japanese author Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), in which the author, one of the first professional writers of Japanese literature, draws on the microcosm of the military class (samurai) to compose homoerotic stories that would appeal to readers eager for narratives that dealt both with love between the reality of this warrior class that had risen to aristocracy during the political reform promoted by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Edo Period. By analyzing the short stories, we set out to present the author's narrative style with a focus on the construction of the model of homoerotic characters that will still serve as a model for contemporary representations. Ihara's work, being a representation of his time, reflects the arts that were consumed and developed mainly for the elite, and for the new class that was forming class that was forming: the bourgeoisie.