著者

長柄 裕美

出版者

日本ヴァージニア・ウルフ協会

雑誌

ヴァージニア・ウルフ研究 (ISSN:02898314)

巻号頁・発行日

no.28, pp.21-38, 2011-10-30

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The aim of this paper is to analyze how two contemporary female modernists at the beginning of the 20^<th> century, Virginia Woolf in the U.K. and Midori Ozaki in Japan, employed similar literary images of "the sea" which were fostered by familiar and fondly-remembered scenes from their childhood, and how these images influenced their literary themes. The sea images used by Woolf derive from the town of St Ives in Cornwall and those of Ozaki from the town of Iwami in Tottori. Though they worked separately in England and Japan probably without knowing much about each other, Woolf and Ozaki built up a very similar kind of literature. The shared characteristics of their works can be found in their description of the human unconscious or subconscious, by using "stream of consciousness" in the case of Woolf, and by picturing "the world of the seventh sense" (Dai nana kankai) in Ozaki. This paper analyzes and compares the influences of their sea images on their works, and also their opinions on literature as expressed in their essays. The paper concludes that the objects or content of their expression are very close to each other, though their styles of expression are different: Woolf being inclined to impressionism and Ozaki to expressionism. For both Woolf and Ozaki, the images of the reality of life distilled from their experiences with nature (including the sea) in their childhoods seem to have worked as essential sources of inspiration in creating the unique body of literature they produced.