著者

森田 勝治

出版者

広島修道大学

雑誌

広島修大論集. 人文編 (ISSN:03875873)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, no.2, pp.51-72, 2003-02-28

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Anderson's most ambitious experiment in his frequent use of religious mode is the four-story sequence of "Godliness." Despite his efforts, the longest story is frequently criticized unfavorably or generally unheeded of all Winesburg stories. Following closely through the history of the Bentley family who "had been in Northern Ohio for several generations," however, the story reveals, without Anderson's intention perhaps, some humorously gloomy phase of human experience inherent in the materialistic age. During the summer of 1917 Anderson described his protagonist as a "delightful old man" named Joseph Bentley, "full of old Bible thoughts and impulses." Jarvis Thurston surmised that "Godliness" was the matrix of a novel Anderson recast to form part of Winesburg. The change of name, however, came about before he change a "delightful old man" to a "man of god." It is the known fact in Clyde that the first settler or "squatter" was a man named Jesse Benton. He built a crude cabin by the side of a spring adjacent to the house where Sherwood Anderson used to live. Anderson supposedly hit upon the name and the story unfolds differently. The story of Jesse's family tree might be happily associated with Biblical Jesse tree but Anderson made it an apple tree with full of twisted apples. The burlesque give Winesburg a significance which transcends its attachment to a specific time and place.