著者

原田 昂

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

no.46, pp.39-53, 2016

著者

原田 昂

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, pp.39-53, 2016

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<p>"The Signalman", a short story by Charles Dickens can be distinguished from other ghost stories. What makes this short story special is its focus on railways and the telegraph. This is a complex 'network' where ghosts appear in the story and to which the work itself belongs, for "The Signalman" was published as a part of <i>Mugby Junction</i>.</p><p>Employing media theory analysis, this paper re-reads "The Signalman" as a novel that echoes a Britain of the nineteenth century where new networks of railways and electrical wires enabled the rapid transit and mass communication. The new and revolutionary flow of information was mysterious and beyond the understanding of ordinary people. It was almost something spiritual. Dickens represented this enigma in "The Signalman" as the junction of ghosts and the latest media. The author's consciousness towards this junction can be found in the other chapters he wrote for <i>Mugby Junction</i>. Through this book, the protagonist improves his understanding of this junction. Our focus on technological media and spiritualistic mediums would give nineteenth century ghosts a certain definition: a piece to fill an unexplainable space in a complex of lines of information. Networks offer ghosts a place to appear, and people recognize a network through ghostly images.</p>

著者

原田 昂

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.52, pp.23-37, 2022-03-31 (Released:2022-04-28)

参考文献数

12

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Recent studies have indicated that A Tale of Two Cities depicts the French Revolution as a critical period in which information technologies had developed and information transmission had accelerated and that it thereby represents the idea that social changes and technological development are inseparable. Those studies, however, have paid little attention to the end of Book 2 and the beginning of Book 3 of the work. These chapters clearly illustrate the impact of the means of communication on people’s lives, making them the most significant part of this work of fiction in regard to its consciousness of communication. This paper verifies that the aforementioned chapters are crucial for comprehending the understanding of the media presented in this work. This study first focuses on the dates of events in which those chapters progress. The time they span is sufficient to deliver messages from Paris to London by telegraph but is not long enough to do so without electric wires. It then reaffirms the meaning of the dates by examining the fact that Charles Dickens had set this scene in winter before changing his manuscript. Finally, it analyses Darnay’s travel across the English Channel, which is repeatedly impeded, to clarify that this novel delineates the substantial gap of communication between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

著者

原田 昂

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

no.47, pp.31-45, 2017