A way to begin.
Haikai reached its greatest prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Derived from renga, the courtly form that flourished in the medieval period, it was a collaborative genre, especially in its earliest phases of development. Composition typically took place in group settings, and involved the production of chains of verses composed spontaneously, improvised in response to a collaborator's verse. Renga and haikai thus shared many conventions, but had two major differences. One was aesthetic: whereas renga poets confined themselves to the same restricted highly elegant lexicon that was permitted to waka poets, haikai poets were allowed to use so-called vulgar (zoku) language and situations. The other difference was in the social status of the people who composed and read each of these genres: the population of renga poets was mainly derived to warriors and aristocrats. Haikai, by contract, was a plebian genre.
Haikai's primary
Haikai reached its greatest prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Derived from renga, the courtly form that flourished in the medieval period, it was a collaborative genre, especially in its earliest phases of development. Composition typically took place in group settings, and involved the production of chains of verses composed spontaneously, improvised in response to a collaborator's verse. Renga and haikai thus shared many conventions, but had two major differences. One was aesthetic: whereas renga poets confined themselves to the same restricted highly elegant lexicon that was permitted to waka poets, haikai poets were allowed to use so-called vulgar (zoku) language and situations. The other difference was in the social status of the people who composed and read each of these genres: the population of renga poets was mainly derived to warriors and aristocrats. Haikai, by contract, was a plebian genre.
Haikai's primary
