著者

藤森 かよ子 Kayoko Fujimori

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.24, pp.115-136[含 英語文要旨], 2010-03

---

This paper aims to demonstrate the logical affinity between gender feminists and Libertarians by clarifying and reconsidering the exact connotation of "gender." Now it is a common knowledge to distinguish sex as the biological state of being male and female from "gender" as the socially and culturally constructed state of being male or female. However, by the end of 1990s, as Joan Wallach Scott says in the preface to the revised edition of Gender and the Politics of History, "gender" in generally accepted usage had become something quite different from what it really means. Some regard "gender" as a synonym for the differences between the sexes. Some think that "gender" denotes the social rules imposed on men and women. Some misunderstand that gender feminists aim to eliminate the difference between men and women. Some warn that gender feminists attack manhood, womanhood, masculinity, femininity, fatherhood, motherhood, heterosexuality, marriages and family values. These misinterpretations are caused by their failure to grasp the exact meaning of gender concept. The earliest meanings of "gender" were "kind," "sort" and "type or class of noun." Since the 14th century the word gender has been used as a grammatical term, referring to the classes of nouns and pronouns in Latin, French, Greek, German, Russian and other languages designated as masculine, feminine, neuter and common. In other words, "gender" is a way to recognize things by classifying them. We cannot see innumerable things as they are. To categorize them to classes according to shape, size, color and other distinctions is the first step for human beings to perceive the world. However, this perception is a judgment based on an illusion. In fact, properties, numbers and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. Only particular, individual objects exist. To classify things never leads us to know them, since we cannot have a true appreciation of all attributes that an individual thing has. Thus we can safely say as follows : Once you know that gender is "the knowledge that establishes meanings for bodily difference," we are necessarily induced to accept nominalism that universals or general ideas are mere names or inventions without any corresponding reality. That's why gender feminists have been resisting the consolidation of women into homogeneous categories. Such gender feminists are destined to become Libertarians. Libertarianism has a greater affinity for a nominalistic view about human existence than any other political thoughts, since it advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action. Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary. All schools of Libertarianism take a skeptical view of "the common good," though they embrace viewpoints across a political spectrum, ranging from pro-property to anti-property (sometimes phrased as "right" versus "left"), from minarchist to openly anarchist. Libertarians share the notion that "the common good of a collective-a race, a class, a state-was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men," as Ayn Rand, one of representative Libertarian thinkers, says in The Fountainhead, her novel. This is why Libertarians hold that activities such as drug use and prostitution that arguably harm no one but the participants should not be illegal ; people are free to choose to live any kind of life on their own risks on condition that their activities never violate other people's rights. Thus gender /Libertarian feminists refuse the general, collective image of women as victims and the oppressed. They seek to celebrate or protect the individual woman. They encourage women to take full responsibility for their own lives. They also oppose any government interference into the choices adults make with their own bodies, because they contend that such interference creates a coercive hierarchy and suppresses the individual woman.

著者

藤森 かよこ Kayoko Fujimori 桃山学院大学文学部

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.21, pp.55-82[含 英語文要旨], 2007-03

---

What is called "American feminism" in this article means liberal feminismor radical feminism. Many critics, especially French ones such as ElizabethBadinter and Emmanuel Todd, underestimate American feminism in the pointthat its pro-violence tendency hinders feminism from its mature developmentand further prevalence. This article does not share their view. As explainedlater, the pro-violence attitude of American feminism might be able to present aprototype of "a citizen of the world" in the coming (?) borderless, post-nationstatesworld promoted by globalization. Here "globalization" does not mean thelatest stage of American imperialism. Here globalization is "the process of increasinginterconnectedness between societies such that events in one part ofthe world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away."It is true that not a few of American feminists regard violence as one of theiroptions to protect themselves. American radical feminists such as Naomi Wolfand D. A. Clarke assert that women should not hesitate to counterattack againstdomestic violence and other sexual violence. Paxton Quigley recommendswomen's owing guns against crimes. Martha McCaughey, a physical feminist, advocateswomen's going into training in martial arts for self-defense. The NationalOrganization for Women (NOW), which is a representative of liberal feminists inUSA, is positive about woman soldiers' service in war battles for national defense.Yet they are not especially pro-violent, because their attitude is necessarilyresulted from American core values.Some American feminists regard their position as "militia" or contemporarycitizen soldiers. Militia is a military force that engages in a rebel or terrorist activitiesin opposition to a regular army. Militiamen, ordinary people with theirown guns used for their hunting for food (never for pleasure) won the victory inthe American War of Independence, though some researches say that it is nothingbut a myth, not a historical fact. Myth or fact, in this point, militia symbolizesAmerican core values : freedom, independence, individualism, equality and democracy.Once American people feel that their "unalienable Rights, that amongthese are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" are threatened by others,governments or any organizations or individuals, they might be ready to use theirown weapons. Weapon ownership is a key aspect of citizenship under democraticgovernment for some American people. They believe that the Constitution ofthe United States of America supports their view.Certainly Amendment 2 of Bill of Rights enacted in 1791 says "A well regulatedMilitia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the peopleto keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The survey of ABC News in2002 shows that seventy three percent of the American citizens think thatAmendment 2 guarantees their right to keep and bear weapons for self defense.American people against gun control are not only what antigun critics call "gunenthusiasts." According to one research, gun owners believe that society is aviolent place; so they prepare for the possibility of doing violence themselves ;they view this position to be the most responsible one they have to take in relationto their own safety ; they are also aware that many oppressive governmentsdo not permit firearms to be owned by the general people, because gun ownershipcan potentially threaten the government through a citizens' revolt. SomeAmerican feminists share this view with gun owners.This article does not mean that American feminists' pro violence attitudeshould be positively considered because their views are resulted from Americancore values. Even if American feminists regard themselves as militiawomen,contemporary citizen soldiers, such kind of attitude can be called caricatural.There is a hypothesis that the peripheral members in a given society try to moreradically embody the society's most sweeping ideologies than the central members.American feminists who try to be regular citizens, never "second citizens",may be more stimulated to achieve American core values as completely as possible.We should notice that this kind of caricatural American feminists providesus with a prototype of a citizen of the coming world developed by globalization,where order in world politics emerges not from a balance of power among nationstatesbut from the interactions between many layers of governing arrangements.Nation-states demand its constituency to be subject to their policies andlaws, and in exchange for its subordination, they are supposed to offer their peoplebenefits and protection. But history has been showing the examples thatnation-states could be the worst oppressor and violator for people. However,globlization might permit people to traffic the many layers of governing institutions,depending on their own needs and profits. Then, nation-states will be ableto be optional, not fatal.The political philosophy of the coming, globalized world is the most radicalform of republicanism, also called civic humanism. The coming world might beable to be the most expanded republic, a new world order governed by and forthe people. Then, people will not be able to rely on nation-states as their protectors,if people don't want state interference. In other words, future citizens ofthe world must be ready to be citizen soldiers, caricatured form of militia,"American feminists." As citizens of a republic, American feminists who premisethat they can't trust the government and its agents, do not invite the state to beresponsible for their safety, even though dependency is so seductive.Some people wonder if such a world can be the greatest prison, the mostelaborate "Matrix" controlled by invisible power. Whether the biggest republic,the new world order may be utopian dystopian, a pro-violent, pro-counterattackAmerican feminist is a prototype of a citizen of the post-nation-states world.

著者

奥山 康治

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.183-189, 1994-12-20

著者

軽部 恵子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.24, pp.375-382, 2010-03-19

著者

宮之原 匡子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.157-178, 1999-12-20

---

The wood is said to be a sacred place, where there is something of a solemn and mysterious atmosphere. In this paper I try to consider A Midsummer Night's Dream, focusing on the function of the wood in which young Athenian lovers undergo utter confusion. The young lovers enter the wood, the world of fairies, escaping from Athens, where severe laws and paternal authority govern. There they fall into great confusion because of Puck's mistake. They lose their reason, identity or judgement, act on instinct, and animal-like passions, which were suppressed in Athens, gush out. With the help of fairies they can restore themselves, recovering their identity and reason. By being released from restraints, and acting on instinct in the wood, they widen their mental vision. Shakespeare seems to regard their blind animal passions as necessary energies in the society. In the play these passions, necessary but sometimes very destructive, are put under rational control in the form of marriage, a symbol of order. After great confusion the two couples can end up as well-matched pairs with Duke's blessings, with a promise of new vitality and prosperity in Athens. Shakespeare makes this wood a blissful place by making fairies kind to human beings. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the young lovers come to be blessed after the night of folly, irrationality, madness in the wood, and a vision of concordia discorse is achieved. Though the wood becomes the place of madness or delusion for a period of time, Shakespeare makes it "the place where love finds fruition, where lovers are united or reunited, enemies are reconciled, where a happy conclusion of the story of the plays is worked out," to quote Peter G. Phialas.

著者

吉田 一穂

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.20, pp.129-153, 2006-03-20

---

In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Charles Dickens (1812_70) used the same method as he had used in Oliver Twist (1838). He gave a strong impression of goodness to readers by showing the contrast between goodness and evil until the end of the story ; Nell's innocence, purity, beauty, and goodness, became more striking by the grotesqueness of Quilp, the evil.Quilp could scarcely be said to be of any particular trade or calling, though his pursuits are diversified and his occupations numerous. He collects the rents of whole colonies of filthy streets and alleys by the water-side, advances money to the seamen and petty officers of merchant vessels, has a share in the ventures of divers mates of East Indiamen, smokes his smuggled cigars under the very nose of the Custom House, and makes appointments on Change with men in glazed hats and round jackets pretty well every day.Quilp is also a malevolent dwarf who lends money to Nell's grandfather, takes over the Old Curiosity Shop in payment, and then pursues Little Nell and her grandfather when they flee from him. Dickens represented Quilp's appearance: `His head and face were large enough for the body of a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly, and cunning. What added most to the grotesque expression of his face, was a ghastly smile, which revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog.' One can safely state that Dickens created the sadistic Quilp by Punch and Richard III. First, the source of Quilp is, as Paul Schlicke supposes, Punch in Punch and Judy. Quilp who gives a lot of blows to Kit and Tom Scott with hiscudgel and says, `I'll beat you to a pulp, you dogs' in Chapter 6, reminds readers of the destructive power and the sadistic aspect of Punch who hits the characters with his stick and kills Toby, his child, Judy, the doctor, and the Devil. The feature of Punch can be seen in Quilp in his relationship with his wife. The words of Quilp to his wife in Chapter 4 (`Oh you precious darling! Oh you de-licious charmer!') are similar to the words of Punch to his wife (`What a pretty creature! Isn't she a beauty?). Not only the relationship between Quilp and his wife but also the relationship between Quilp and Nell is similar to the relationship between Punch and Judy. Dickens seems to intend to represent a male chauvinis and an obedient woman in the relationship between Quilp and his wife and the relationship between Quilp and Nell. The difference between Judy and Nell is that Judy is killed by Punch while Nell escapes from the menace of Quilp. Richard III is thought to be the other model of Quilp. As Philip Collins describes Quilp as an exultant bourgeois Richard III, there are some common points. The appearance of Richard III overlaps with the appearance of Quilp. Richard III tells us about his appearance, `I, that am curtailed this fain proportion, heated of feature by dissembling Nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up-And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them-', while Dickens represented Quilp as `a dwarf whose head and face are large enough for the body of a giant, whose black eyes are restless, sly, and cunning, and whose finger-nails are crooked, long, and yellow'.Quilp, the hideous dwarf, terrifies and dominates all who come into contact with him. His power of sexual invasion reminds us of Richard's power of sexual invasion. Ann is urged to make a definite decision by Richard III : `Take up the sword again, or take up me'. His persistence wears her down, and she gives in. Quilp admires the sexual attraction of Nell and says, `To be Mrs. Quilp the second, when Mrs. Quilp the first is dead, sweet Nell'. In The Old Curiosity Shop, the bird symbolizes Nell who has escaped from Quilp and dies at the ending ofthe story. Quilp's words, `Wring its neck', show his sadistic aspect. Dickens created the sadistic aspects of Quilp, dexterously making use of the sadistic aspects of Punch and Richard III. The sadistic aspects of Quilp contribute to the emphasis on Nell's femininity. What has to be noticed is that Quilp's death presents a contrast to Nell's death. Quilp's shout in the water is equivalent to Richard's shout, `My kingdom for a horse'. Richard notices that he is trifling before his death, and Quilp's death gives the impression of his pettiness. Nell's death presents a contrast to Quilp's death. The little bird, `the poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed', symbolizes Nell. It reminds us of the words of Quilp, `Wring its neck'. We can say that Dickens represented the condition of Nell who has been released from the sadistic Quilp by the little bird as a symbol.

著者

吉田 一穂 Kazuho Yoshida 桃山学院大学兼任講師

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.18, pp.41-65, 2003-12

---

In 1857, Charles Dickens (1812-70) revisited the Marshalsea prison to look back upon the past and make a necessary atmosphere in Little Dorrit (1857). The Marshalsea prison was the place which Dickens could not forget in his lifetime. Dickens returned to his father's experience of debt again while he was drawing the portrait of the Father of the Marshalsea, William Dorrit, as 'a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged gentleman.' John Dickens, Charles's father, was a cheerful person but he had no sense of economy. He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison, and Charles had to work at Warren's Blacking warehouse, which gave him an agony and despair. Dickens seems to change the relationship between his father and him into the relationship between William Dorrit and Amy in Little Dorrit. William Dorrit who is called 'the Father of the Marshalsea prison, is proud of the title although he is a prisoner for debt. Amy as a 'Little mother' of his father and the chief support of the family, shows consideration for her father ; she is a protector of her father and his respectability. Indelibly marked by the more than twenty years to which the Circumlocution Office has condemned William Dorrit behind those walls, it is forever impossible for him, even when he is released, to lose those psychological scars. In Book 2, Chapter 19, 'The Storming of the Castle in the Air', William returns to the identity in the Marshalsea prison. William Dorrit who lived for many years, there is a victim of social system. Arthur who becomes a prisoner of the Marshalsea prison in Book 2, Chapter 27, is also a victim of social system. Arthur who has invested in the business of Merdle, goes bankrupt after he killed himself. Arthur is a victim of Calvinism which drives people to the condition of confinement, and is a prisoner of the wicked religion of Mrs. Clennam. Dickens showed how Arthur could be released from the cultural ideology of Calvinism which made him an indecisive man and how he could get freedom. In Book 2, Chapter 29, Amy visits Arthur who went bankrupt and became the prison of the Marshalsea prison. Amy gives him motherly love. What has to be noticed is that Amy says to Mrs. Clennam, 'Be guided only by the healer afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities', before the house of Mrs. Clennam collapses. The words of Amy show the forgiveness of sin as a theme of Little Dorrit. Moreover, the representation of nature emphasizes the relief by Jesus Christ just before the house of Mrs. Clennam collapses : "From a radiant centre over the whole length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of light streamed among the early stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant of peace and hope that changed the crown of thorns into glory." Amy delivers Arthur from the ideology of Calvinism which Mrs. Clennam brought him. In Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked the Christianity of Mrs. Clennam which deprived Arthur of his liberty and imprisoned his mind. Mrs. Clennam adopts Arthur, the love child of Mrs. Clennam and his love, to raise him in righteousness and retribution, but her Christianity which justifies her scheme of retribution does not bring her and Arthur happiness. Dickens demonstrated that people could be released from vengeful feelings by a practice of forgiveness of sin as Jesus Christ had done, through showing how Arthur could be released from the influence of the vengeful thoughts of Mrs. Clennam with the help of Amy.

著者

中村 祥子 Shoko Nakamura 桃山学院大学文学部

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.19, pp.133-163, 2005-02

---

The short story, "The Doom of the Griffiths" was written by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1857, more than one year after her former fictional creation, "The Poor Clare". The story presents a conflict between two types of landlords ; a landlord who may prosper and one who may not. This is the author's first treatment of an issue that becomes a major theme in her later works. "The Doom of the Griffiths" is a tale about the fall of the Griffiths family, people of the landlord class. At the beginning of the story is an explanation of why the Griffiths were doomed to fall. When Owen Glendower, a Welsh hero in the Middle Ages, rebelled against Henry IV, an ancestor of the Griffiths named Rhys ap Gryfydd betrayed Owen, who believed in him. It means that Rhys ap Gryfydd was shrewd, and that he tried to side with those most likely to be victorious. In great anger, Owen, who was said to be able to use magic, cursed the traitor and his descendants. As a result, members of the Griffiths family were doomed by Owen to fail and disappear after nine generations. Owen prophesied that at that time a son should slay his father, the ninth Griffiths. After this brief explanation the main plot begins. Two generations are described ; the ninth named Robert Griffiths and his son, Owen Griffiths. They are father and son, but are quite different in manners. Robert is the second son and inherits the estate of the Griffiths as a result of his elder brother's death. He is gifted and able to create his own future. On the other hand, Owen is the only son who is an heir to the estate from the moment of his birth. He has no choice but to succeed his father. Therefore, he is passive and does not try to take a step forward, even though he becomes under the necessity of earning a living. Their attitudes toward marriage also differ. The father gets married to a rich attorney's daughter after he inherited his family's estate. And after his first wife, who is Owen's mother, died, he marrys again a beautiful young widow with a little boy named Robert, who, coincidentally, has his stepfather's name. The son, on the other hand, secretly gets married to the beautiful daughter of a man who works as a half farmer and half fisherman. The girl's name is Nest. They have a baby named Owen. Because the young couple cannot make a living, the wife and their baby live with her father in his cottage. Owen frequently and surreptitiously comes to the house from his father's manor house. The wife's father, who is a tenant of the Griffiths estate, endures this irregular situation, believing that his daughter will be Lady Griffiths in the future. Robert's new wife schemes to drive Owen out of the mansion and make her child Robert inherit the family's estate. As a result of her scheming, her husband becomes estranged from his son and begins to favor his stepson. One day she tries to irreparably break the relationship between Robert and his biological son to make sure of her biological son's inheritance, and she exposes Owen's secret marriage to her husband, lying and insinuating that Nest is a prostitute. The angry father goes to his son's secret home to require him to separate from his wife, and snatches the little Owen from Owen's arms to throw the baby back at Nest. As a result, the baby falls to the floor and dies. At last, Owen decides to leave his father's mansion for ever to live with his wife in a big city, earning his bread. It is, however, too late. After some troubles, the father moves into action. He and his son are placed in a situation in which they struggle on the edge of a precipice. A push of the son to escape from the father's grip causes the father to fall off the cliff, to hit his head against the edge of a boat, and to die. Though it seems that this is a fulfillment of the prophecy, the author denies the supernatural element, emphasizing that the father's death is accidental. As a squire, Robert, a person who is shrewd and selfish like his ancestor Rhys ap Gryfydd, prospers, but he is also very cruel, while Owen, a passive liberal, is disqualified as a landlord. Through the story, the author is critical of the father. The last of the story deals with Owen, his wife, and her father, who should leave the country before the dead body of the squire is found. They venture out on a stormy sea to disappear into the night. The author partly suggests that the three are shipwrecked and die. She, however, leaves room for another interpretation. The three might safely arrive in Liverpool, where Owen could "gain a livelihood by his own exertions." The author accepts Owen's way of living when he leaves the status of a landlord. That is the reason that Owen is the younger of the two central characters. It is important that the name of the second son Roger in Wives and Daughters, who is Robert's successor, has the initial "R", and that of the elder son Osborne in the same novel, who is Owen's successor, has also the initial "O". It means that "The Doom of the Griffiths" developed into Wives and Daughters.

著者

小野 良子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.51-70, 1998-12-21

---

Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion was composed as the Twelfth Night masque for the Court Christmas. Ben Jonson wrote the masque in answer to the request from Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham who had returned from a Spanish mission. Charles and Buckingham had made a secret journey to Spain to negotiate the prince's marriage with the Spanish Infanta and to bring her home to England. The Spanish match had been a favorite and ambitious project of King James. However, after long negotiations the prince and the duke returned home resentfully, and the Jacobean court was divided between James and Prince Charles concerning England's Continental policies. Jonson's masque dealt with the safe return of Prince Charles from his misson to Spain; and yet the subject-matter was to pay homage to King James's political wisdom and the consequent triumph for the victorious return of his son. Neptune and his court was dentified with James I and his court and the argument of the masque was presented as an ideal version of the recent political events. In fact, Charles's mission to Spain brought nothing fruitful to England; and much worse, King James was pushed into a new and hard course in foreign policy. Nevertheless, Jonson's loyalty to the State as the court poet urged him to rewrite English history and to create another myth of Jacobean England as the 'Fortunate Isles'. Jonson was convinced that the poet had obligation to serve the State and to sustain wise government by providing the monarch with good counsel. Yet Jonson was never ignorant of the fact that the masquewriter's function which the poet himself believed to be was not identical with the one that the court audience expected. Jonson's awareness of this gap was demonstrated in the comic dialogue between the 'Poet' and the 'Master-Cooke' of the masque. The main masque celebrated the ideal reign of James I by identifying it with the myth of Ocean God, Neptune. And, by the employment of the poet figure as masque-writer of the masque in progress on the stage, Jonson exposed that the masque world was an illusion, a fiction created by the poet. The meta-masque device introduced in Neptune's Triumph was thus a Jonsonian way of manifestation that the poet's invention alone could achieve the ideal transformation of the Monarchy.

著者

日下 隆平

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.113-138, 1994-12-20

---

In recent years, there has been a growing inclination to re-examine the way that Irish exiles was perceived by British contemporaries in colonial England. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between Irish exiles and British dreamers at the end of the nineteenth century. The image of Ireland in the colonial age was derived from the Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser. While he had distaste for the rebel Irish, he regarded the charming landscape of Ireland as an Arcadia. This Spenser's point of view was sustained by William Makepease Thakeray and Anthony Trollope. At the end of the nineteenth century, some British people used Ireland as a stage for their dreams and ideas, such as Ann Horniman and Maud Gonne. Their viewpoints were based on a kind of colonialism. It is no exaggeration to say that 'Celticism' might be approximated to 'Orientalism'. In the 1880s, a certain kind of Irish literary emigrant was advancing to prominence. Oscar Wilde, George B. Shaw and W.B. Yeats were three examples of a breed which can be traced back to middle-class Irishmen on the make, who were mainly engaged in the journalistic profession in England. They were not the average Irish emigrant. One of the typical examples was Justin McCarthy who migrated from Cork journalism into the world of Fleet Street, and afterwards became a Parnellite MP. W.B. Yeats spent his youth travelling back and forth between England and Ireland. His view of Ireland is inseparable from his emigrant status. Consequently, he could discover or re-create the image of Ireland, as seen in The Shadowy Waters. M. Gonne, who had spent her childhood in Ireland, was magnetized to the revolutionary era in Ireland. She identified Ireland's independence with her own independence. In this study, therefore, the interaction between Yeats and Gonne will be dealt with as one between an exile and a dreamer.

著者

ヘンリー・ジェイムズ 出原 博明

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2, pp.79-101, 1990-07-17

著者

小野 良子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, pp.57-71, 2000-12-20

---

The female figures in Shakespeare's comedies, such as Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night, are traditionally portrayed as healthily asexual heroines by women actors on the modern stage or screen. The disguised heroine as witty, eloquent, and beautiful boy who is erotically alluring to another female figure in the play reveals in the final act the female body in the female clothes to celebrate her own marriage to a male superior. The cross-dressing of the female figure is simply taken for granted as a theatrical convention and never raises sociopolitical issues concerning sexuality and gender among the modern audience. However, for the critical reader of Shakespeare's plays transvestism and 'the body beneath' of the female figures are of much consequence in speculating on the representation and its reinterpretation of the Elizabethan stage. Every Shakespeare student knows that there were no professional women actors on the English stage before 1660, and that the female roles had been played by young male actors. The taking of female parts by boy actors should not be dismissed as the convention. Indeed, this fact has raised crucial issues of postmodern cultural criticism among Shakespearean readers. From the recent critical point of view, identity, either gendered or sexed, has been seen as a historical production. The human subject is considered the ideological product of the relations of power in the Elizabethan patriarchal society. The theatre then becomes an agent of the absolutist state, reproducing the state's strategies and celebrating and confirming its power. The purpose for my essay is to examine the process by which power is produced and legitimated on the Shakespearean stage and to lead to the argument which explores possibilities of reinterpretation and its cultural production of Shakespeare's comedies on the modern Japanese stage. This paper traces the contemporary anti-theatrical campaign and its discourse which condemned the closs-dressing of the boy actor as the threat to the male identity and hierarchical society itself; and then speculates upon the relation between the boy actor and the woman he plays-the imaginedbody of a woman, a staged body of a boy actor-and how clothes embodied and determined a particular sexual identity and contradictory fantasies of the body beneath.

著者

藤森 かよこ

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.71-92, 1998-12-21

---

Much description about sexual troubles, conflicts or oppression, in Winesburg, Ohio has been stimulating the readers to clarify its significance and functions. This issue was one of the reasons why the novel was unfavorably ctiticised just after its publication. Still in 1919 there survived the remains of puritanically genteel tradition in literary criticism, which regards sexual matters as unworthy to think of. However, in the post Freud era, the readers never fail to perceive Sherwood Anderson's insight about sexuality as real aspects of human existence. Even rough reading leads us to find the mutual permeation between the sexual desire and spiritual aspiration which the characters are tortured with. Sex cannot be explained only from sex; spirit cannot be explained only from spirit. This is one of the recognitions we share in the present, postmodern age when all kinds of dichotomy, including a binal oppsition of flesh and soul, already have been deconstructed. Some feminist critics notice that the sexual conflicts of the female characters are more compassionately described than those of the male ones. As one feminist points out, this is because the author identifies the feminine with a pervasive presence of a fragile, vulnerable, hidden something that seeks tenderness, communication and deep relationship in body and soul. Yet this kind of criticism should be blamed for its essentialism, since it presupposes that the feminine belongs to women. Women are not necessarily feminine; men are not always masculine. Anyway it is certatin that the author sympathizes more with the female characters, but it does not mean that this novel is in favor of feminism. In the novel men are allowed to leave their small town, but women are confined within their suffocating life with frustration and irritation. Men are qualified to consume and use women's love and concerns, though women are expected to be exploited by men. As a whole, Winesburg, Ohio is one of the stereotyped, male-centered novels in which various kinds of victimization of women are repeatedly presented. But what we should pay more attention to about this novel is not the author's sympathetic but traditionally sexist attitudes toward women, but the occasional, brilliant moments when something beyond the gender system are revealed. A strange man in "Tandy" confesses that he has been longing and looking for an ideal woman, "something more than man or woman." In "Sophistication," George and Helen feel embarrassed in their encounter, because their respect and love to each other is impossible to be represented in the customs and codes which the gender-bound society implicitly forces lovers to accept and obey. Kate in "Teacher" does not know how to express her love except in eccentric ways, because she is too sensible and too intelligent to get involved to the sexual relationships which the gender-bound society expects her to have. Gender is a hierarchial order of sexes; gender devides people into men as upper, dominant class and women as lower, subordinate class. The sexual troubles of the female characters are caused by their gender-bound society, which makes it difficult to create and keep equal, fair sexual relationships and communication between men and women. Needless to say such a sexual hierarchical system obstructs not only the fulfilment of women's love but also that of men's. Some male characters also suffer from sexual expoitation, because they are required to be strong enough to be utilized by women. Love is impossible in the gender-bound system. Sexual relationship is likely to be mutual exclusive and mutual expoitative there. The significance of a prevalent presence of sexual troubles in Winesburg, Ohio lies in that the distortions and absurdities that the gender-bound system impose on people are exposed through them. Although Anderson did not know about a "gender" concept at all, which has been academized since 1970s, his insight and sensibility enabled him to grasp what we call the gender troubles. Winesburg, Ohio is gender-bound in the episodes and anecdota, but it dreams and visions "something more than man or woman" in a utopia beyond gender. If this novel's tone sounds dark and gloomy, it is partly due to the impossibility of a utopia.

著者

日下 隆平

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, pp.25-46, 1997-12-20

---

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social changes in the later nineteenth century had a great impact on Yeats, through his literary works. Yeats was brought up in the ancien regime: Victorian, Protestant, Ascendancy Ireland. The Ascendancy, here, represented the dominant Irish Protestant class. Some of them were Anglo-Irish absentee landlords of the ruling class. Yeats's family, which had a farm in Kildare, belonged to the Ascendancy, too. His youth spanned the period that inaugurated the decline of this Irish Ascendancy, as the outbreak of the Land War then shows. This paper is made up of three sections: In the first, Yeats's sensitivity to the times, such as the sense of an ending, is illuminated in such poems as "The Second Coming". In the second section, I make it clear that the apocalyptic vision which can be seen in the poem is derived from the decline of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. In the last section, the process in which Yeats came to identify himself with Jonathan Swift is dealt with. Swift's Gulliver, who was isolated between Yahoo and Houhyhnhnm, represents a symbolic figure for the "Ascendancy which was both colonized and colonialist", to use Eagleton's words. Yeats regarded him as an example of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy and followed him.