著者

藤澤 博康

出版者

広島大学英文学会

雑誌

英語英文學研究 (ISSN:02882876)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, pp.27-38, 2012

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Since the appearance of Alain Corbin's The Foul and The Fragrant, many studies on the history of senses have been published. Some Shakespearean scholars have just begun to learn from these studies and apply their achievements to the interdisciplinary studies of Shakespeare, along with the study of the topos, the "banquet of sense" in Elizabethan poetry. This essay first glimpses Francois Quiviger's point that "smell was considered an intermediary sense between the corporeal world of taste and touch and the spatial universe of sight and hearing," and that the smell gradually comes to be associated with the brain, which improved its status in the hierarchy of the five senses. As for the importance of sight in the Age of Enlightenment, the essay also mentions Constance Classen's study of the shift in the use of roses from the material of perfumes to the objects of visual appreciation. It never forgets to remind us of Stuart Clark's remark that the sixteenth century English poetry was the rich source of suspicions about the eyes." Owing much to these historians' points, this essay focuses on the representations of the sense of smell in William Shakespeare's The Sonnets and tries to show how this sense functions within the poetry.Next, this essay analyses many sonnets designed to praise the beautiful appearance and virtues of the young man through the sense of sight in The Sonnets. Despite the numerous admirations of him, the poet similarly expresses his anxiety of failing to understand the young man's heart and his disgust at the excessive ornaments and luxurious clothes that take away from the young man's natural beauty. These are the cases, this paper maintains, that prove the poet's disbeliefs in sight.Given this, the essay goes on to suggest that the poet is very confident in what he perceives not through the eyes but through smell throughout the work. For the poet, the young man is the example of the smell by which he can judge everything according to whatever odour it emits. In terms of the advantages of the smell in The Sonnets, this essay chooses the topic of distillation as a typical instance of the poet's distinguishing genuine nobleness from vulgar fellows. We can extract the essence of, say, roses, by distillation. The poet is keenly aware of the mysterious process of the art and makes the most of it to emphasise the difference of the noble nature of the young man compared with others. He also employs the theme as a strategy for running counter to Time' s destruction.Following the discussions about the young man, the paper shifts its focus from him to the dark mistress, the other love of the poet. It calls our attention to the surprising fact that the poet never praises the dark mistress' smell throughout The Sonnets. Although the poet attempts to use the topos of a "banquet of sense" in order to represent her, he later declines it, saying that no senses "desire to be invited / To any sensual feast with thee alone." ('Sonnet 141' 8) Taking that fact into account, this essay argues that it is true that no senses including the sense of smell fascinate the poet, but that 'Sonnet 141' is dramatically successful in completely subverting the poet's evaluation of the dark mistress by making him confess honestly, "But my five wits nor my five senses can / Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee..." (Sonnet 141' 9-10)Besides the examples that deal with sight and smell, the paper points out that representations of taste and touch in The Sonnets are mainly concerned with the dark mistress, not the young man, and that in those sonnets dedicated to her, the poet does not hesitate to openly express his carnal desire or hopes to touch her while he merely worships or fears the betrayal of the young man in the other sonnets of the work.In conclusion, the essay maintains that sense of smell makes the most of its "intermediary" nature classified just between the high sensorium such as seeing and hearing and the low sensorium like taste and touching and supplements the defects of sight that often fails to perceive the young man's heart. It is true that the poet may oscillate between the high and the low sensoria which the two main masks in The Sonnets, the young man and the dark lady, respectively correspond to. However, he firmly believes in the power of sense of smell in that he can intuitively sense through it what the essence and truth is represented in the form of the young man.

著者

三村 尚央

出版者

広島大学英文学会

雑誌

英語英文學研究 (ISSN:02882876)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, pp.91-104, 2018

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This paper explores the functions of art, as articulated in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. In the last moments of Never Let Me Go, Tommy, a clone waiting for his fourth donation, is quietly drawing imaginary animals in his notebook. The readers should wonder why he is doing such a meaningless thing so close to the end of his life. There was a persistent rumor among Hailsham students concerning the deferral of a donation and the removal of their vital organs. Tommy had a theory that works of art were the key to being given the right to a deferral, which turned out to be unfounded. It seems appropriate to consider that Tommy is doing this seemingly valueless activity as a pastime to turn his mind from the dread and fear of his coming death. However, I aim to discuss the functions of art as a means of resistance against brutal suppression.As Ishiguro himself mentions in interviews, although some characters are portrayed as artists in his novels, such as An Artist of the Floating World and The Unconsoled, these characters cannot efficiently use their artistic skills to open up new prospects in their lives. Ishiguro shows art as not being so powerful or effective in one's life. However, some critics expand the idea of art to the contemporary sense of "immaterial labors," like those of the butler in The Remains of the Day, or the detective in When We Were Orphans. The critic Lisa Fluet discusses the nature of such immaterial labors as music, art, mothering and caring, based on the ideological models of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt on knowledge work. In accordance with Negri and Hardt's discussion on immaterial and affective labor, Fluet argues that the protagonists in Ishiguro's novels represent the contemporary ideas of labor in the age of globalism that emphasize the value of immaterial products such as services, knowledge and information.As a result, this attitude also values art and the skills used in producing it, meaning that people with these sophisticated skills can be much more treasured in a society or community that organizes a social order based on them. Stevens, in The Remains of the Day, insists that the skills of a butler, such as polishing silvers, enable him to climb the ladder in their community. Similarly, in Never Let Me Go, artistic skills are considered important among students in Hailsham. Even the guardians there tell the students that their artworks are precious because they reveal the status of the creators' souls. Consequently, students respect others who can produce better works, resulting in these artworks creating both order and rivalry among the students. However, we should keep in mind that the ability of individuals to move up in society is maintained by the governmental structure. In other words, these rules of self-help promotion work successfully as long as members of the society observe the structure's laws. If someone shows signs of rebelling against the governing structure, the structure suppresses him or banishes him from the community. A critic, Bruce Robbins, discusses this function, associating it with the structure of contemporary Britain's welfare state. He sees skills of art as the primary target to be managed alongside anger, both of which are considered to have a possible risk of disturbing the equilibrium of the state management. Therefore, interestingly, Robbins argues that the banishment of Miss Lucy, a guardian in Hailsham who told students too much about their fate, is one of the state's managements of inconvenience.The governing body's management often emphasizes the efficiency and speed within the state. It encourages and hastens the members to work for the purpose of a practical production system. Therefore, sociologist Richard Sennett argues that the "ingrownness" of workers with craftsmanship skills can function as a means of rebelling against such managing power by slowing it down or suspending it. I have shown in this paper that Tommy's queer devotion to drawing imaginary animals, even after its proclaimed uselessness by Madame, could have such possibility. Even though Tommy himself can never escape his fate, he seems to be desperately telling us that we should never give up our hope of living till the very end.

著者

光森 幸子

出版者

広島大学英文学会

雑誌

英語英文學研究 (ISSN:02882876)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, pp.11-27, 2014

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Alice Walker focuses on the lives of sharecroppers suffering under Jim Crow laws in the post-Civil War South in her first published novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, by realistically delineating the life of Grange Copeland. Facing everyday hardships, Grange's main concern is to survive the crop-lien system, which was de facto slavery by another name, through its rigidly hierarchical structure. It is reasonably assumed that his violence against his wife and his son, Brownfield, is deeply rooted in white supremacy. Therefore, in previous studies, Grange's behavior has been mostly construed as the reactions of an archetypal black male against white male dominance. Even the incident of Central Park in New York has been considered from such dichotomous perspective. Grange shows a remarkable self-development when he happens to see the breakup between a pregnant white woman and a soldier in the park. Feeling deep sympathy for the white people for the first time in his life, regardless of the danger, as an equal human being he tries to cross racial boundaries in order to console the grieving woman. Consequently, her refusal of his approach and her hatred of blacks cause her to slip into a pond and die. Despite the fact that he had got a glimpse of the human bonding beyond race, after she releases his rescuing "black" hand, Grange lets her die in the frozen pond. However, it should not be overlooked that, whereas the white woman's death restores his manhood and rekindles his racial pride, his flash of inspiration "to save and preserve life is an instinct" continues to haunt him, and he accuses himself of this "murder" for the rest of his life. After Grange returns to Georgia, his emotional growth becomes reinforced by understanding the lonely battle of his son's wife, Mem. She is more marginalized than Brownfield, living in a cabin on a white man's plantation. Mem represents any anonymous sharecroppers' wife, who is a victim of racism and sexism in society as well as at home, an archetypal black female who has no chance to develop her inner self. However, through Ruth's eyes, Walker implies Mem's unyielding resistance against falling victim to the Sachiko Mitsumori 27 system. That Mem voluntarily gets shot by Brownfield should be given more consideration. She thought her violent act against her brutal husband as horrifying but necessary for survival, to protect her children from him and also to liberate him from "new slavery." By giving up her life in atonement for her "sin," she tried to put an end to the chain of violence. Grange understands her struggle for finding human bonds in the segregated social milieu and guides Ruth by regarding Mem as her role model. Thus, Walker places Ruth as a witness to Mem's silent resistance, and leaves her the future responsibility to embody collective voices of black people. Through his unconditional love of Ruth, Grange realizes that he was once trapped in the system by creating a white destructive "God" inside him, and that he made himself a slave by abandoning his responsibility for his family. The understanding Grange has obtained in his life can be interpreted as his own "emancipation proclamation." Whereas Grange thus achieves selfrealization by overcoming his own racism, Brownfield becomes an agent of white supremacy-"living dead" who regards a white judge as his God and uses his power to get Ruth back to him. On the surface, Grange's killing of Brownfield is "kin killing" in a racist society. When Grange shoots Brownfield to protect Ruth from him, at the same time, he is determined to give up his life, for he had already learned that his life was not only his own. It was passed on to him through generations and it must continue in the next generation. Hence, in condemning violence, Grange voluntarily takes responsibility for breaking off his human bonds in the same way that Mem did. As a result, Grange's achievement of his full humanity, which is "a state of oneness," is firmly passed on to Ruth.