- 著者
-
米須 興文
- 出版者
- 沖縄国際大学
- 雑誌
- 沖縄国際大学外国語研究 (ISSN:1343070X)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.6, no.2, pp.11-30, 2003-03-31
This essay recounts my career as a student and teacher of English, which had its beginning on Saturday, August 4th, 1951 and ended on the same day of the month and week fifty years later : a strange coincidence coupled with another that marked a Golden Jubilee of the IAUPE (International Association of University Professors of English) on the same date in Bamberg, Germany. There I concluded my career by being invited to contribute two papers for the occasion, one orally presented at the conference and the other included in the Jubilee Volume of essays written by 20 representative members of the Association. The present article is a narration of various fortunes and adversities that I experienced in my life and during the half century of my career. The epigraph quoted from Shakespeare is meant to portray myself as a player on a stage of life, beginning with "the whining school-boy, with his satchel... creeping like snail/Unwilling to school," leading up to the "Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history...." I played various roles from act to act on the stage, ranging from one of a bartender at a US military recreational facility on Okinawa to that of an academic delivering a lecture on Yeats at an international seminar held in the poet's country, Ireland. Mine has been indeed a "strange eventful history," attended with many difficulties ; yet it has been a truly rewarding one.