著者

高森 暁子

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.473-488, 2011-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

著者

岡本 太助

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.279-287, 2019 (Released:2021-02-09)

著者

丹治 愛

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, pp.7-16, 2019 (Released:2020-04-20)

著者

鷲野 亜紀

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, pp.205-214, 2023 (Released:2023-03-02)

著者

澤田 治美

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, pp.169-175, 2023 (Released:2023-03-02)

著者

戸谷 陽子

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, pp.105-113, 2018 (Released:2019-02-07)

著者

Shotaro Sasaki

出版者

The English Literary Society of Japan

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.217-230, 2022 (Released:2022-02-14)

著者

田中 裕介

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.127-144, 2009-01-10 (Released:2017-06-16)

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It seems strange that Matthew Arnold, who could be regarded as a realistic relativist, devoted himself to the belief that 'culture' is an abstract and absolute idea, in his most famous work, Culture and Anarchy. In this paper, I will recount the how (not the why) of his thoughts by examining the transition of his use of critical terms such as 'culture' and 'state.' Through his early prose works, Arnold struggled to abandon the romantic sentiments that overwhelmed him as a young poet and confirm his own view of poetry by idealising the verbal reproduction of the 'actions' described in ancient Greek plays. In On Translating Homer, a creative activity based on 'models' was generalised as a form of recognition 'to see the object as in itself it really is', which he called 'criticism.' In 'Function of Criticism at the Present Time,' he defined 'criticism' as a mediating art to diffuse normative knowledge to a whole society; in his educational reports, he considered 'state' as an 'art' of creating or maintaining national unity. 'State' became a normative idea in Culture and Anarchy, where 'culture' was considered to function as a medium through which the English could attain the ideal. However, in his critical terminology, the word 'culture' has diverse meanings. In his early politico-historical essay, 'Democracy,' there is a strong indication of the general mode of the lives of the English aristocracy. Originally, it was a concrete noun that suggests a particular national life, though it gradually became an abstract concept that referred to general humanity. In 'Function of Criticism at the Present Time,' he stressed the social instrumentality of 'criticism' while restraining himself from pushing 'culture' to the forefront. Prior to Culture and Anarchy, he appeared to hesitate to use the word 'culture' extensively, especially in his literary criticism, since it is a term that implies nationality and is closely associated with romanticism, which he negated in his earlier writings. Thus, how did he manage to employ 'culture' as a normative concept in Culture and Anarchy? Paradoxically, he achieved this by defining it as an art. Based on the parallelism with the concept of the state, it follows the process by which 'state' changes from an instrumental framework to a normative idea. In this work, Arnold not only absolutised but also personalised the term 'culture', which appeared to be a medium or an image of God. Arnold claimed that the English adored 'culture' as it could function as a medium for their intellectual perfection. Absolute diction enabled him to use the word with a kind of transcendent significance. For this reason, we can consider the quasi-religious language of Culture and Anarchy as the discourse of idolatry.

著者

福岡 忠雄

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.331-338, 2012

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Peter Widdowson takes us by surprise when he enumerates as the major themes of Thomas Hardy war as well as sex and class. But the surprise is only for a moment. A moment's reflection on Hardy's literary career soon makes us agree with him. The battle of Waterloo was fought only 25 years before his birth. His interest in Napoleonic wars was a lifelong one as is shown by the novel The Trumpet-Major, a short story 'A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four' and, above all, that striking feat of poetic creation, The Dynasts which he completed in his sixties. While Napoleonic wars took place before he was born, the Crimean war, the Franco-Prussian war and the Boar war all broke out in his life time. Especially the Boar war which his friends and relatives took part in induced Hardy to write about ten poems including 'Drummer Hodge.' This essay is an attempt to focus on the comparatively neglected aspect of Hardy, i.e. Hardy as war poet, with special reference to the Great War and to the way the War brought a serious blow to Hardy's faiths in human progress. When England declared war to Germany which invaded Belgium to secure the route to France, Hardy was 74 years old. The reason why the War gave him so great a shock as he had never experienced is that it seriously undermined the last resort which barely kept in check the aggravation of his pessimistic view about the future of humanity. In 'Apology', a short essay attached to one of his collections of poems, Late Lyrics and Earlier, Hardy attempts to repudiate the criticism leveled to his pessimistic attitude by citing the evolutionary meliorism prompted by the advance of science. But the War made him face the fact that what the advance of science brought in was machine guns, cannons and poison gas which exacted an appallingly heavy toll of young lives caught up in this bloody war. His despair was so deep that in 'We Are Getting to the End', a penultimate poem of his final collection Winter Words, he gloomily predicted the misery of the Great War should be repeated. It might be argued that he was rather lucky not to see his prediction actualize in the form of the Second World War which arose only 11 years after his death.

著者

Tohru NAKAMURA

出版者

The English Literary Society of Japan

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.71-79, 2022 (Released:2022-02-14)

著者

松浦 和宏

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.5, pp.17-25, 2013

著者

楠木 佳子

出版者

日本英文学会中国四国支部

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.301-311, 2009

著者

石田 由希

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.381-393, 2009

著者

佐藤 憲一

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.169-184, 2011

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This paper is an attempt at rereading Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond as a political allegory. It focuses on the loss and recovery of the sight of Stephen Dudley, the father of the novel's heroine Constantia. Though overlooked by former critics, Stephen Dudley's blindness and subsequent recovery by surgical operation provokes political significance in Ormond, which up to now has been frequently referred to as simply a "Bildungsroman" of the novel's heroine Constantia. After briefly reviewing the history of treatment for cataracts, the paper first confirms Stephen's cure is clearly informed by Enlightenment medicine. Various contemporary documents show the radical cure of the blind is promoted most by the Enlightenment. The notion of radical cure was first prevailed in France and then in Britain by the promotion of scientific academies. In this process, curing the blind became one of the most important issues in the Enlightenment medicine. In view of this intellectual tradition, Ormond can be read as a novel, though partly, but clearly informed by the Enlightenment. Indeed, detailed comparison of the texts of Ormond and of contemporary reference sources on the treatment of cataracts proves that Stephen is cured through the method of extraction, which was invented and promoted by Enlightenment medicine. The next point to be observed is the problem of who operates on Stephen's cataract. The text of Ormond tells us that the doctor who treats Stephen is not a native of the United States but a traveling oculist from Europe. And contemporary advertisements in local newspapers tell us that the situation described in the novel is quite similar to the circumstances of cataract surgery in the United States around 1800. In Ormond, the traveling oculist radically extracts Stephen's 'evil' cataract. And the doctor, 'one of the numerous agents and dependants of Ormond,' is supposed to be a member of the Illuminati, a politically radical secret society that was a menace to social order in Europe and the United States. Here, a politically radical thus performs medically radical treatment. But, ironically enough, in respect of the policy of the Federalist Party, the doctor can be the very 'evil' who should be extracted from the body politic of the United States. Considering the fact that Federalists enforced the notorious Alien Acts to deport 'evil' foreigners such as the Illuminati out of the nation, we can safely say the performance of the traveling oculist is self-contradictory. He is at once a subject involved in extraction in a surgical operation and is an object of extraction by Federalist politics. In this sense, his performance accuses the Federalist policy of setting xenophobic laws in the nation framed mainly and invariably by immigration. Thus the pro-Federalist performance by the Illuminati doctor reveals the emptiness of the laws and their meaninglessness in setting binary opposition between inside/outside, foreign/native, good/evil at the first stage of nation-building. In this sense the performance of the doctor has the potential to be a counter-discourse against the Federalists by deconstructing their xenophobic policy. The cataract that invades Stephen's eye and makes him unable to see is a metaphor for the early Republic susceptible to 'internal invasion,' and his cure is a Federalist way of dealing with the matter. Performing the invasion and the treatment on it at once, the traveling oculist in Ormond illuminates the limit of the Federalist politics of the day. In short, he claims there can be no Americans without aliens. Detailed consideration of Stephen's cataract operation thus opens the possibility of reading Ormond as a political allegory.

著者

高橋 愛

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.7, pp.229-236, 2015-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

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Moby-Dick has been considered to be the most masculine of Herman Melville's novels. However, few studies have extensively considered the masculinity of those on board the Pequod despite the possibility that Melville had worked hard to express masculinities that deviated from the norms of American society in the nineteenth century. This paper discusses Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Seas, as a character onto whom Melville projected a facet of his multiple ideas of masculinity, by examining his body and his behaviors. First, Queequeg's race and ethnicity are ambiguous, though he is introduced as a Pacific Islander. His tattooed body characterizes him as non-white, but at the same time he transgresses the color line with his phrenologically excellent skull. His tattoos do not reveal any ethic characteristics, though it is said that he is based on a real Maori chief. Additionally, Queequeg's sexuality and gender are also ambiguous. He has a cordial friendship with Ishmale, a common sailor and the narrator of the novel. However, their friendship often seems too sensual to presume that they are just friends: Queequeg caresses his friend many times and his actions anticipate the homoerotic ecstasy that Ishmael experiences later. There also seems to be indications that Queequeg is transgender: for instance, his affectionate huging of Ishmael and his rescue of Tashtego, another harpooner. Given these points, Queequeg seems to be portrayed as an amorphous man who transgresses the boundaries of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. It is possible that his amorphous self is a projected image of what Melville regards as masculine.

著者

北村 紗衣

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.149-167, 2011-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

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In J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, the barbarian girl, one of the main characters, suddenly begins to menstruate during the journey to the territory of her people, the barbarians. This scene of menstruation might seem irrelevant to the rest of the novel, which deals with the conflict between the Empire and the barbarians. Few critics have mentioned the menstruation in this novel, although Waiting for the Barbarians has been the subject of considerable commentary. However, if it is irrelevant to the novel's plot, why does Coetzee go out of his way to describe menstruation, even though literature seldom mentions it? In fact, some haunting images in Waiting for the Barbarians, such as children and blood, are closely linked to menstruation. This paper discusses how menstruation, a phenomenon that has many layers of meaning, works in this novel, focusing mainly on its physiological and symbolic meanings. On the physiological level of meaning, menstruation in Waiting for the Barbarians means that the barbarian girl is not pregnant; and it serves as a kind of foreshadowing of her clear break with the Magistrate, an officer of the Empire and the novel's narrator. After the Magistrate has sex with the barbarian girl, for a quick moment he dreams of making a family with her; but her menstruation shows that it is impossible for them to have children together. She leaves him and returns to her people just after menstruating. On the symbolic level of meaning, the barbarian girl's menstruation means that the "flow," which the Empire's control blocked, returns at the "margin," or the boundary, where the Empire's power intertwines with that of the barbarians. Under the Empire's control, blood is described as stagnant and clotted, and natural phenomena's flow is also disrupted. The flow, however, is visualized as menstruation when the barbarian girl reaches the boundary between the Empire and the barbarians' territory. Menstruation, the physiological phenomenon of blood leaking from a woman's body at its margin, symbolises boundary-crossing and overlaps with the act of geographic boundary-crossing, the barbarian girl's and the Magistrate's transition from the Empire to the barbarians' territory. Although both the Magistrate and the barbarian girl become boundary-crossers by being involved in geographic boundary-crossing and menstruation, the barbarian girl achieves greater fluidity than the Magistrate. This is because fluidity, a dangerous attribute, is traditionally ascribed to women in literature. In Waiting for the Barbarians, menstruation is used to symbolise the contrast between the Empire as a patriarchal, solid order and the margin where the Empire and the barbarians encounter each other, creating fluidity. It also symbolises the contrast between the woman who can achieve great fluidity, and the man who cannot escape from the Empire's solid order. Menstruation, which is fluid and cyclic, also symbolises the cycle of nature, especially reproduction, which the Empire hinders. In Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate thinks that the Empire does not respect nature's cycle and that it deprives its people and its land of fertility. As Julia Kristeva points out in "Women's Time," the time of history is linear and often is ascribed to men, but the time of nature is cyclic and often is ascribed to women. The Magistrate feels antipathy toward the time of history of the Empire, and he hopes that the barbarian girl, who achieves great fluidity through menstruation, will have children and regain nature's cycle.

著者

Fuminori MATSUBARA

出版者

The English Literary Society of Japan

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, pp.277-287, 2018 (Released:2019-02-07)

著者

中島 崇法

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.57-59, 2016-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

著者

竹腰 佳誉子

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, 2018

著者

塚田 雄一

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.185-202, 2011-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

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This paper examines how the notion of homosexuality was formed in late nineteenth-century England, and how Oscar Wilde contributed to its formation, through an analysis of the discourse of Victorian sexology, the trials of Oscar Wilde, and Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, while focusing particularly on the social and ideological background of the late Victorian period. In fin de siecle England, a growing fear of infectious diseases such as cholera and syphilis generated the idea that these diseases (and the people who carried them) needed to be purged in order to invigorate the British Empire, which was showing some indications of decline. Homosexuality, also known as "perverted sex," was listed among such diseases. The Victorian middle class believed that effeminate homosexuals were spreading corruption among "healthy" citizens and thereby debasing the masculine strength of the British Empire. The newly found science, Victorian sexology, provided a means to identify homosexuals in society by inventing new terms and theories to describe their sexuality, about which little was acutually known at that time. In this environment, Oscar Wilde was regarded as a poignant symbol of homosexuality, as he was significantly brought to trial and found guilty of gross indecency. The trials revealed how Wilde's sexuality threatened Victorian society. Wilde, with his homosexual activities, nullified two important boundaries that secured patriarchal society; not only did he threaten social distinctions by communicating with young men from the lower classes, but he also destroyed the barrier that safeguarded the Victorian household by committing a gross indecency while being the father of two sons. As such, the purge of Wilde the homosexual was significantly staged so as to maintain a "healthy" empire. Wilde's own writings echo the themes of his life. His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, demonstrates the infectious nature of homosexuality. Through the representation of Dorian as a musical instrument that the wise elder Lord Henry plays, the homosexual state of being "infected by the elder" and ultimately "infecting the younger" (for Dorian himself also corrupts the youth in the second part of the novel) is examined throughout the novel. Moreover, the fact that this novel was citied in the trials as evidence of Wilde's crime (corrupting the "healthy" youth) and that it later served as a handbook for homosexuals suggests that The Picture of Dorian Gray itself was indeed an infectious, replicating presence in the same way as homosexuals were considered to be in Victorian society. Wilde thought a great deal of his aesthetic sense, and believed that he was leading the life of a decadent artist, free from the affairs of the middle-class society that he so despised. However, ironically enough, Wilde was in fact contributing to the British social purity movement by providing and reinforcing the representation of Victorian homosexuality in his trials and his novel in a way that mirrored how Victorian sexology attempted to theoretically characterise homosexuals in order to cure the disease of the empire.