著者

毛利 可信

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.1, pp.207-212, 1986-09-01 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

山口 治彦

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.241-250, 2018 (Released:2019-02-07)

著者

石橋 敬太郎

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.6, pp.53-60, 2014

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In his play Bussy dAmbois (c. 1604), George Chapman created a hero who takes an unyielding stand against courtiers at Henry III's court and governs himself by the law of his own reason. More important in the play is that Guise and Monsieur appear as ministers of fate and providence. The French courtiers are controlled by stoic moral doctrine, the belief in the rationality of Nature. According to the stoics, God imparted a rational design to the degrees of Fate which govern Nature. In Chapman's play, the French courtiers believe that human nature is created within the divinely ordered scheme. For Bussy D'Ambois, however, human nature is constructed from the law of his own reason, not from the supernatural existences of fate and providence. Bussy challenges the providential view of human nature conceived by Guise and Monsieur. What is the nature of the element that made Chapman embody the hero's idea of human nature in a sharp contrast with that of the French courtiers? To examine this problem, I would like to focus on interrogation of the stoic view of human nature by intellectuals in the early Jacobean period. In the time when Bussy d'Ambois was composed, it was believed among the stoics that natural law emerges from the universe as "encoded" in creation with order, value and purpose. In virtue of his rational capacity, man synchronizes with this teleological design and discovers within it the main principles of his own moral law. The most famous exponent of such view was Richard Hooker, a divine of the Church of England in Elizabethan period. He combined with it a version of Christian providentialism. In the play, Bussy claims that rational man is a law unto himself, preserving a higher degree of virtue than law can legislate. He governs himself by the law of his own reason. There is a remarkable parallel between the portrait of Bussy and Sir Francis Bacon's portrait of human nature. In Bacon's view, the ontological basis of human beings was nature as the intrinsic principle-intellectual reason-within himself, not derived from God. Considering human nature as intellectual reason, he attempted to free people from the stoic traditional authorities, such as church and sacred kingship. In this sense, the hero's view of nature in the play serves as the precise inversion of Hooker's positive dependence of man upon God-man within nature created by God. To illustrate the conflict between the two human natures, it is important that Bussy's love for Tamyra is gained by obedience to reason. With his refusal of stoicism, the play's supernatural dimension works against fate and providence. In particular, Behemoth and his spirits are shown to be incompetent. But Guise sees the hero's interrogation of providentialism creating an arbitrary order that jeopardizes all "law", especially the idea of kingship itself. By the actions of Guise and Monsieur, finally, Bussy dies in a scene which begins with repudiations of teleology, providence and natural law to be found anywhere in stoicism of the early Jacobean period. An idea of fate and providence in human nature is still preserved at Henry III's court. However, the effect is too detached to praise Guise and Monsieur's providentialism. Actually, Bussy is transmogrified into a new star in the "firmament," an abiding reminder of his repudiations of stoic view, at the end of the play. Strongly aware of Bacon's human nature, therefore, Chapman illustrated the conflict between the two human natures seen in early Jacobean period. In doing so, the dramatist explored the significance of the hero striving to insulate himself from the stoic view of human nature by his self-fashioning in order to become a law unto himself.

著者

松浦 嘉一

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, no.2, pp.303-305, 1930-04-30 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

河合 利江

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.359-364, 2011-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

著者

岩田 美喜

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.99-112, 2011

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Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768) has mainly been interpreted as an abortive piece of laughing comedy and often contrasted with False Delicacy (1768), a sentimental comedy by Hugh Kelly. Modern scholars point out that, though critics contemporary with Goldsmith upbraided the former as "low and vulgar" and praised the latter as "refined and sentimental," the two plays actually share the same ambivalent views about sentimentalism. Nevertheless, The Good Natur'd Man greatly differs from False Delicacy in that Goldsmith's play tries to highlight the commercialism latent in sentimental comedy rather than to conceal it. As Sir William Thornhill in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) does, Honeywood in The Good Natur'd Man suffers from "a sickly sensibility" and his excessive benevolence makes his fortune decay. Thus, Honeywood's distress is always connected with his economic discomfort, especially in Act 3, where he is placed under house arrest for his debts and has to meet his beloved, Miss Richland, who comes to rescue him, in this humiliating situation. Though he tries to disguise a bailiff and his follower as respectable gentlemen, they misinterpret the couple's conversation about the London literary taste as the literal "taste," i.e., food prices in London, making Honeywood feel even more humiliated. In the final scene, Honeywood, remonstrated by his uncle and Miss Richland, vows that he would henceforth bestow charity only for those who deserve it and the play ends in expectation of the marriage between Honeywood and Miss Richland. Even in this conventional ending, the surname of the heroine, whose first name is unknown throughout the play, reminds the audience that his mental happiness is concurrent with his financial success. The Good Natur'd Man exposes the commercialist drive, which is existent but usually concealed in the virtue-in-distress strategy of sentimental comedy. However, at the same time, the fantasy ending of the comedy does admit the utilitarian exercise of sensibility, which seems the last thing the author of The Traveller (1764) and The Deserted Village (1770) would do. Richard Cumberland, in his memoirs, recollects with compassion that Goldsmith even in his final years laboured to write scribbles according to the demand of publishers, resignedly commenting that "Paternoster-Row is not Parnassus." The phrase may also be true of the divided attitude towards the economy of sensibility in The Good Natur'd Man.

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, no.2, pp.340-345, 1932 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

澤村 寅二郎

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, no.2, pp.205-207, 1943-10-10 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

澤村 寅二郎

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, no.2, pp.205-207, 1943

著者

菊池 清明

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.68, no.2, pp.387-392, 1992

著者

橋本 槙矩

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, no.1, pp.59-62, 2002-09-30 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

村田 辰夫

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.52, no.1-2, pp.238-239, 1975-12-01 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

唐戸 信嘉

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.6, pp.125-132, 2014

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When Thomas Hardy published Jude the Obscure, it was bitterly criticized by reviewers chiefly for its unconventional discourses on "marriage," "family," and "sexual instinct." Although it is, as critics have agreed unanimously, obvious that an antagonistic attitude to Victorian domestic ideology provoked the reader's antipathy, a more accurate analysis of the socio-cultural context in which Jude was written and read would be needed to clarify what the radicalism of "the marriage question" in the text was. This paper first gives a brief outline of the institution of marriage which was strongly conditioned by social evolutionary theory. This theory identified the patriarchal and monogamous family as one of the most important achievements of evolutionary advance. While evolutionist anthropologists formulated the late Victorian norm of marriage, the 1890s marked a turning point in the interpretation of marriage as a result of the publication of Edyard Westermarck's The History of Human Marriage; it rejected the evolutionist theory of primitive matrimonial anarchy and cast a doubt upon the patriarchal tradition inimical to the idea of sexual equality. Accepting a new historical point of view through which the contemporary institution of marriage loses its historical legitimacy, Jude redefines marriage as a private act whose duration depends only on the couple's will, and also revolts against the evolutionist ideology which, looking on a family as the social unit, coerces people into compulsory monogamy. In the process of analysing matrimonial conventions, the text discloses their exclusive structure and detects that they arise from the desire to monopolize wealth. While symbolizing the historical shift of the idea of "marriage" in the 1890s, Jude's attack on the hypocrisy of the middle-class ideology was, we can conclude, premature (only four years after the publication of Westermarck's book) and drew heavy criticism from many readers.

著者

池上 忠弘

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.55, no.2, pp.349-352, 1978-12-01 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

笹山 隆

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.37, no.2, pp.187-200, 1961

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Revenge is so vitally connected with the essence of Elizabethan tragedy that it can never be analyzed away as a mere theatrical device for sensationalism. The present paper is an attempt to see how in the works of each playwright revenge as an actional pattern was affected and modified by his vision of tragedy. The Biblical phrase "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." was ringing in popular ears; it was nothing less than an abominable sin of pride to anticipate the justice of God. Besides, in all the extant plays of Seneca, whose influence on contemporary tragedy was so potent, the revengers were always depicted as villains. From these circumstances came a line of villain-revenger plays from The Jew of Malta to The Cardinal. God's dictum against human revenge, however, also implied a commitment to divine vengeance. And if the heavenly justice be realized, not by supernatural means alone, but through the agency of man, it would not be impossible that an act of revenge should be justified, though the revenger himself must suffer death as the price of his sin. Thus a lawful revenger was often looked upon at once as a hero and a sinner. This was part of the mystery of the cosmic fate and was closely related to the ambiguity which exists in the core of tragedy. Already in The Spanish Tragedy we find the author confronted with the problem of how to deal with this paradox. By gradually adding the hero-revenger a Machiavellian aspect, Kyd deliberately cancelled the pity aroused for him and simplified the audience's response accordingly. Fletcher in his Valentinian went on this line so far as to disintegrate tragedy through a totally implausible transformation of the protagonist's character. Here as in many other tragedies by Fletcher or Shirley, revenge was linked up with such an ego-centric concept of honour that it had lost its universal ethical meaning. A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Atheist's Tragedy might be considered as potential revenge tragedies in which revenge is transcended either with the spirit of forgiveness or the absolute confidence in divine providence. In The Changeling the author seems to point out incisively that a sinful crime, regardless of the motive, must inevitably germinate a revenge upon the criminal himself. The characters in Women Beware Women and The Revenger's Tragedy inhabit the heart of darkness where various evils latent in human flesh devour each other in complicated plots of revenge and counter-revenge. Webster in his two great tragedies stood above easy moralization; for him revenge was an instrument with which to set off the vain absurdity of being and extol the glory of the human soul that boldly challenges it. Massinger tried to impress somewhat melodramatically the emptiness of self-righteous human justice, whereas Ford utilized revenge only as an aesthetic medium to sustain the pale icy glow of beautified suppressed passions. Chapman in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois tackled philosophical problems of revenge, but failed to give unity to his tragedy through the obscurity of his own footing. In Hamlet, when we reflect upon the growing cognizance in the hero of the ubiquitous providence since the incident on the sea, it seems quite reasonable to see in his killing of Claudius not so much a consummation of the revenge which occupies his whole mind in the earlier acts as an instance of divine intervention. Such an interpretation makes way for Hamlet's salvation, and brings him nearer to the hero of Oresteia in his sacrificial role.

著者

竹内 康浩 松浦 和宏 小塩 大輔 石川 まりあ

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.7-16, 2015-01-20 (Released:2017-06-16)

著者

竹森 修

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.2, pp.179-198, 1971

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Modern society with its materialist standard of values is now plunging back into the chaos from where it was supposed to have emerged. The materialist civilization has now brought to light its own irrationalities and contradictions, which will prove to be fatal to mankind, if they are left unchecked. From behind its neon-sign brightness a shadow of negative nihilism is looming so overwhelmingly that most of us are in great anxiety about the future of mankind. We are beginning to suspect that this threatening shadow might betray the true character of our civilization, that it might be self-destructive. However, while deeply concerned about the phenomenal aspect of social miseries, we still remain unaware of their spiritual connotations in relation to ourselves, for we take it for granted that they came from the outside. Our spiritual crisis lies in the ever-growing neutralization of human relationships in society. It has its root in our unrestricted self-complacency. Human consciousness is by nature self-complacent, that is, self-centred or self-attached. We are attached to ourselves like a spoilt son, or we spoil ourselves like an indulgent mother. That is what Blake calls 'Maternal Humanity'. It is a spoilt-child mentality which is domineered by a kind of possessive false maternity, false because it is essentially different from true maternity that sets an example of selfless love by its self-devoting, self-annihilating acts. It is a mentality in which paternal severity to oneself remains shadowy, 'silent and invisible', on account of the exclusive mother-child relationship. That is the inherent structure of human consciousness, root of all misery. If there are any authentic possibilities within us, they will be realized only when we expose ourselves constantly to a critique of self-satisfaction. However, the problem is that we have now lost sight of the critique which we saw embodied in religion. As a result, that individual mentality was left to prevail without check so widely that it has come to constitute a kind of climate of opinion in society. It is a spoilt-child society, or we might say a foundling society, for the critical principle of self-satisfaction which is its true parents seems nowhere to be seen. Self-complacency has extended even to the world of ethical and religious values, and is changing it into another hot-house for that mentality. It is most dangerous for humanity, for religion is the only exhaustive critique of self-satisfaction. If religion should cease to be that, it would cease to mean anything for us. And that would lead to mental suicide of mankind. On this point Blake is prophetic. Like other romantic poets, his concern is 'transformation', that is, to transform the cold, inanimate world into a world full of light and life. But he is radically different from them in his severest view of human consciousness, that is, of his own selfhood. He is well aware that the dualism of subject and object created by the discriminative faculty of consciousness implies in itself discrimination against other beings, that our consciousness itself constitutes unauthentic selfhood as self-love. And his greatness lies in his conviction that poetic vision is possible only through self-annihilation, and that 'transformation' is, first of all, the problem of self-transformation, which will ultimately result in the transformation of society. Blake's ontological approach to Reality is really suggestive about the problem of the reinstatement of religion as the one critique of self-satisfaction as well as about the relationship of religion and art.

著者

北川 依子

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.92, pp.136-139, 2015-12-01 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

植田 和文

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.74, no.2, pp.211-215, 1998-02-10 (Released:2017-04-10)

著者

荻野 昌利

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.78, no.1, pp.48-52, 2001-09-30 (Released:2017-04-10)