著者

宮澤 眞一

出版者

埼玉女子短期大学

雑誌

埼玉女子短期大学研究紀要 (ISSN:09157484)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, pp.299-315, 1999-03-01

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Sometime in the period between 1907 and 1911, and that almost 20 years after the tremendous success of the opera The Mikado (1885), W.S. Gilbert was asked by a London publisher to rewrite it into the form of a story. The Story of the Mikado stepped out into the post - W.W. publishing world in 1921. In the following study, to begin with, a critical attention is directed to the textual comparison of the story: the autograph and proof texts (British Museum) and the first edition. Secondly, follows the textual criticism of both the opera and the story. Thirdly and conclusively, an attempt is made to bring into the historical limelight the dual aspects of Gilbert's Japonism, dual in the sense that some parts of the opera underwent changes more or less drastically in the process of re-writing, while the others were left untouched. The intention of the paper is thus to comprehend the basic images or ideas of W.S. Gilbert's Japonism out of these textual and historical studies combined.