SOURCE: Lamarque, Peter. “Expression and the Mask: The Dissolution of Personality in Noh.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47, no. 2 (spring 1989): 157-68.

In the following essay, Lamarque claims that the portrayal of characters in the stylized and austere theatrical form of Noh is possible because of the character's ability to identify himself totally with the character he is representing by, paradoxically, dissolving his personality; Lamarque claims that the Noh thus uses a presentation of character that is radically different from that found in Western art.

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From the point of view of literary aesthetics, there are many intriguing and puzzling features of the Noh drama. I will focus on a somewhat abstract problem which might be expressed in a Kantian formulation as follows: how is the portrayal of character possible in a dramatic form as stylized and austere as Japanese Noh? The question presupposes of course that...