著者

浜名 恵美

出版者

東京女子大学英米文学研究会

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, pp.57-80, 0000

著者

中野 学而

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.60, pp.17-54, 2014-03-01

著者

渡辺 美知夫

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, no.1, pp.79-101, 1966-06

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In the present age, men are suffering from a sense of desolation-a privation of communication and of solidarity, and above all, a destitution of love. They are uneasy because they cannot find any positive significance in life. Somerset Maugham's philosophy is based upon his belief that life has no meaning, but Graham Greene could not endure this. He knows, as well as Maugham, the boredom of life, but he cannot stop there. He wants to go beyond the negative view of life. His conversion to Catholicism is obviously a manifestation of this longing. In the process of our pilgrimage of life, however, there is inevitably an alternation of negation and affirmation in one's attitude toward life, like the motion of a pendulum. It seems to me that in his successive works Greene takes away, one by one, the affirmative elements. In Pinkie of Brighton Rock, the romantic idealism of Andrews in The Man Within is not found. The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter do not contain any ideal female character like Elizabeth of The Man Within or Rose in Brighton Rock. Scobie, the hero of The Heart of the Matter, is a victim of an acute sense of the privation of love. Sarah of The End of the Affair is a person who finds herself driven into a blind alley while trying to escape from God. After her death, both her husband, Henry, and her lover, Bendrix, are at a loss, deprived of any impetus to live. After The End of the Affair, Greene concentrates on male characters-Fowler of The Quiet American and Querry of A Burnt-Out Case; both these characters are exiles from the community they originally belong to. A Burnt-Out Case is most typical in describing the privation. The hero, Querry, is a character perfect in his negation, so perfect that the affirmation is hinted only through his unnatural death. In Greene's most recent work, The Comedians, it is said that "a stronger current of optimism runs through the book." If this means a return of affirmation after the utmost negation, we may expect an even loftier stage of affirmationin the work that follows The Comedians.

著者

林 茂子

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, no.1, pp.83-101, 1960

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Hopkins' so-called "terrible sonnets" are utterly different from his earlier pieces, especially the poems of nature, in point of tone and imagery. Instead of brightness, happiness and harmony, here are darkness, desolation, a sense of disconnectedness, and a biting agony. Hopkins' nature poems describe beautiful things of nature, and at the back of them there is a firm sense of relation with God; in the terrible sonnets that sense is totally lacking, and the poet desperately seeks for it. The tension that gives beauty to the poems of nature is a natural, exhilarating kind of tension that springs out when a creature expresses its "self" to the full in conformity with the Creator's aim; the tension we find in the terrible sonnets is a terrible, twisted, unnatural, but no less beautiful, kind of tension that arises when the sorrow and anguish of man's self separated from God is opposed by the Christian faith and the energy of recovery. The poet, who is extremely sensitive to individuation or 'selving,' now in these sonnets painfully tastes the bitter taste of his own self, and the spiritual world the poet lives in is a fearful, dark night that seems to be endless. What these sonnets so vividly present before us is the tragedy of man's absolute self that takes place when the self is cut off from God and is left by itself. He can feel nothing but his own self with the sureness of the senses, and that self is as bitter as gall with the curse which is self-existent within it. Man, cut off from God, is in itself curse and sin, and the sorrow and anguish he suffers is a scourge for it. Individuation is good when it is in relation to God, but individuation without such a relation-to be 'selved' absolutely-is a damnation. Thus compelled to face the sin, worthlessness, and helplessness of his absolute self, the poet eventually learns to give up the pursuit of self with which he has been obsessed; he knows he is powerless and that he can do nothing but rely on God. He gradually learns the virtue of patience, a virtue that requires selflessness and the firm faith to obey God. The concluding parts of the sonnets, "Patience, hard thing..." and "My own heart let me more have pity on," suggest that the poet is beginning to perceive a light, a hope that he might get out of the terrible world and recover the sense of relation with God. Now Hopkins, even when he is in the depth of desolation and agony, never doubts the existence and righteousness of God. The trouble with him is not that he does not believe in God, but that he does believe in God and cannot feel the relation with Him with all his senses. The terrible sonnets are in a sense the poet's desperate effort to seek for the confirmation of this relationship. It is because of his faith that he suffers, and it is because of his faith, too, that he recovers. The terrible sonnets of Hopkins are beyond doubt a touching experience of a Christian soul that is extraordinarily sensetive. These, however, are also appealing, considered as an experience of a modern man who acutely feels a sense of uncertainty and disconnectedness in this world and looks for certainty and a solid relationship. The terrible sonnets are more directly the poems of personal experience than other works of his, as the style indicates; they are strongly emotional, at times even sentimental and almost hysterical. Nevertheless, they are excellent, creative works of art, and we must remember that it is only after writing these sonnets that the poet could compose "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection," a poem of an objective, inclusive vision and an intense but calm feeling.

著者

楠 明子

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, pp.59-74, 2004

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1604年11月1日、OthelloがWhitehall Palaceで上演された時、当時Queen Anneの側近だったLady Mary Wroth (c. 1587-1653)が観劇したのはほぼ確実といえる(Miller:"Engendering Discourse:"170)。彼女は自らも牧歌劇Love's Victory (c. 1620)を書き、1605年1月、宮廷での十二夜の祝いにはQueen Anne主催のBen Jonson作The Masque of Blacknessの上演にも参加したほど演劇好きだった。彼女の恋人はShakespeareのパトロンのWilliam Herbert (1580-1630)、第三代Earl of Pembrokeであったから、Shakespeareと面識があった可能性も高い。Wroth作の散文ロマンスUrania I・II部、戯曲Love's Victory、そしてUrania Iと合本の形で刊行されたソネット詩集Pamphilia to Amphilanthusには、Shakespeareの作品を想起させる箇所が多い。本論では、Othelloを強く意識して書かれたと思われるUrania第II部のなかのエピソードである、主人公のパンフィリァ王国女王のPamphiliaと、彼女の夫となるタータリア王Rodomandroの話を取りあげる。Uraniaの特徴の一つは、散文ロマンスでありながらストーリーが登場人物の会話体で進行していく部分が多いことである(Miller:"Engendering Discourse:"155-6)。ここにもWrothの演劇への関心が窺える。また、この独特の形態のおかげで、ロマンスと演劇というジャンルの違いは2作品を比較するのにあまり大きな支障とならない。両作品における「黒」の表象を比べてみることで、イギリス・ルネサンスの白人女性の異文化に対する認識を、主にジェンダーの観点から考察する。Wrothが男性作家のつくりあげた当時の文学伝統にいかに自らの作品を順応させようとしたかではなく、彼女がOthelloという作品のどのような点を問題として捉え、Uraniaのなかでその点をいかに書きかえているかに焦点を当てる。その結果、Othelloのどのような面が照射されるかを考えてみたい。

著者

林 茂子

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, no.2, pp.93-127, 1959

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Hopkins' poetry strikes us with the beauty and strength of the unique tension with which it overflows. In this essay the writer attempts to consider the nature of this tension in connection with the poet's notion of "self" and his sense of beauty. The poems of nature of the 1870's in which Hopkins admiringly describes beautiful individual things of nature impress the reader with the beauty and strength of tension and give him a feeling of vitality and animation. The present writer considers this tension to spring out when each one of God's creatures expresses its beautiful "self" to the full, unconsciously giving glory to the Creator. The beauty of the tension of self-expression is also perceived in "Harry Ploughman" in which the subject is not nature but a human being. Such is the basic form of Hopkinsian beauty. However, when human beings and therefore consciousness and will are involved, there can be a still higher kind of beauty, the most perfect and ideal of which is seen in Christ's character-unselfish love, magnanimity, tenderness, and the sternness which enabled him to go through the Passion, sacrificing himself for the sake of mankind. It is, in other words, the beauty of the tension of self-exhaustion or self-sacrifice, and this kind of beauty is what most strongly appeals both to the poet's soul and to the poet's senses. The former kind of beauty is, so to say, a beauty at saturation-natural, exhilarating, free, and at ease; while the latter is a beauty beyond saturation, intensely strained, spiritual, often "dangerous," laborious, and pathetic. At the end of this essay, "The Windhover" is referred to as a work in which these two kinds of beauty are contrasted and the poet's aspiration after the highest beauty is most touchingly presented.

著者

本合 陽

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, pp.75-94, 2003

著者

清水 護

出版者

東京女子大学

雑誌

英米文学評論 (ISSN:04227808)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.25, no.1, pp.98-117, 1979

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At his funeral service, King Henry V was praised as "a king bless'd of the King of kings", who "fought the battles of the Lord of hosts". It is striking that such a concept of the ideal kingship derives from the figure of the Israelite kings in their prime of power. Even the future of the 'infant Elizabeth', daughter of Henry VIII, is blessed with the felicitous picture modelled upon the peaceful life of Solomonic prosperity. Dominant among the English people was the respect for their king as being 'the Lord's anointed', or 'the deputy elected by the Lord', as is seen in Ricbard II IV. i or Ricbard III III. i. Similar concepts of the 'demigod Authority' (Measure for Measure I. ii) and 'the deputed sword' (Id.II.ii) may have bearings upon the political theory of the Divine Right of Kings, which in turn seems to be based on Scriptural ideas as is evident in Romans 13. 1-4. Apart from the prominent idea concerning the ideal sovereignty, a casual analysis of the text of Henry V reveals a number of instances of Biblical images and wordings embedded in common parlance, such as 'th' offending Adam', 'have no wings to fly from God', 'death is to him advantage'. Over and above its title, a variant of the lex talionis, Measure for Measure is rich in Biblical references, notwithstanding that some of them are more or less obscure. 'Virtues go forth of us', 'torcbes do not ligbt them for themselves', 'Nature lends tbe smallest scruples of ber excellence but she determines herself the glory of a creditor, both thanks and use (=usury)' (all in I. ii), are instances which may be taken as reminiscences of Gospel passages. It must, however, be admitted that the last of the above illustrations is somewhat elusive, because the whole is the story of the one talent and the returning master in disguise, as was the Duke himself, who went on a journey disguised. Two kinds of imagery concerning the 'candle' or 'light' may be distinguished in the Bible-the one which emphasizes the giving forth of light to the world, which is prominent in the New Testament, and the other, the putting out of the light (of life), prominent in the Old Testament. Reflections of both of them can be found in Shakespeare. Macbeth's "Out, out, brief candle!" may be taken as an instance of the latter. It often happens in Shakespeare, as in many authors, that a cluster of Biblical phrasings appear in certain passages, particularly in those that have gained special popularity. The well-known soliloquy in Macbetb V. v is a striking example, where, besides the apparent 'dusty death', the sequence of 'candle light'→(walking) sbadows→(poor) players (→signifying notbing→vanity) could be traced by taking into account such passages as Job 8.9, Psalter 39. 6-7. "It is a tale told (by an idiot)" calls for special notice. The most likely source is Psalter 90.9: "We bring our years to an end, as it were a tale tbat is told." But why is life like a tale...? A comparison of various versions makes is clear that there is one group of translators which chooses words which denote transient breatb, such as sigb, murmur, talk. Another puts here quite surprisingly a spider's web. The problem is, why can the same original be rendered a breatb by some, and a spider ('s web) by others? It was further made clear that the Hebrew original favors breatb or sigb (→talk, tale), whereas, the Greek (LXX), the Syriac Version and the so-called popular 'Gallican Psalter' of the Vulgate (Which is Jerom's revision of the Old Latin Version in 387 A.D.) stand for spider, and that the Psalter and AV followed the 'Hebrew' Psalter of the Vulgate (which is Jerome's translation, started in 389 A.D., direct from the Hebrew). There is, however, nothing that bridges the ideas of the 'spider's web' and 'a tale' except the English rendering of the Greek and English LXX of this particular verse: "our years have spun out their tale as a spider." One thing should be added in this connection. Against AV's Job 27.18: "(The wicked man) buildeth his house as a motb", RSV puts "The house which he builds is like a spider's web", which is a translation according to LXX and the Syriac. Thus there seems to be a tendency in LXX and the Syriac to prefer the figure of a spider to signify something frail and transient. Further, 'as a tale that is told (i.e. has been told)' may have occasioned 'as tedious as a twice told tale' (King Jobn III. iv). It is sometimes open to question whether any particular Biblical reference was made wittingly. But a careful study of all such reminiscences and echoes is necessary and rewarding for the appreciation of English litereature, specifically Shakespeare, who is so outstanding in the use of the Scriptures. My thanks are due to my colleagues and friends who encouraged me in clarifying the mystery of 'a tale that is told', although something still remains untold.