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第7巻別冊
井川 ちとせ Chitose Ikawaリアリズムとモダニズム ――英文学の単線的発展史を脱文脈化する――
Realism and Modernism: De-contextualizing the Progressive, Linear Developmental History of English Literature
2015年03月 発行
[ 要旨 ]
本論は、郷里のイングランド中部地方を舞台に市井の人びとの日常と心理を克明に写し取った「リアリズム作家」として長らく文学史の周縁に置かれてきたアーノルド・ベネット（Arnold Bennett：1867‒1931）と、その晦渋さゆえにつねに精緻な解読の対象とされるヴァージニア・ウルフ（Virginia Woolf：1882‒1941）、ジェイムズ・ジョイス（James Joyce：1882‒1941）、T.S. エリオット（T.S. Eliot：1888‒1965）ら「モダニズム作家」との同時代性に注目し、リアリズムからモダニズムへという単線的な発展史の脱文脈化を試みるものである。いくつかの（リアリズム小説の周縁性ゆえにあまり多くない）先行研究が、リアリズム小説のなかにモダニズムの実験的スタイルの萌芽を見ることでリアリズムの価値を高めようと目論むのに対し、本論の目的は、リアリズム小説の実験性を吟味することではなく、実験性、それもある種の実験性に富むことをもって論じるに値するテクストと定めるような文脈化の力学を検討することにある。おもに1880年代から1930年代までの文学テクスト生産の物質的コンテクストを考察の対象とし、ジャーナリズムと学術研究という２つの領域間の交渉を跡づけたい。
[ Abstract ]
This essay attempts to de-contextualize the dominant narrative of the modernist turn from realism in English literature. In this progressive, linear developmental history, Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) has been marginalized because of his putatively outmoded formal technique in detailing the quotidian existence of ordinary people in the English Midlands, while the younger and supposedly more cosmopolitan authors, such as Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), James Joyce (1882–1941), and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), are central figures whose abstruse styles have been deemed worthy of perpetual critical scrutiny. In focusing on the largely overlooked contemporaneity of so-called Edwardian realist authors such as Bennett and self-styled Georgians like Woolf who were to be named modernist only after the king’s reign ended, my argument also diverges from some of the preceding studies (though not many, due exactly to the marginality of realism) that have attempted to boost the value of realism by spotting their proto-modernist experimental traits. The aim of this essay is not to delve into the technical experimentation as such, but to examine the dynamics of contextualization at work in canonizing particular texts for what the institutions of English studies designate as experimental. The period between the 1880s and the 1930s witnessed not only the gradual institutionalization of English studies as an academic discipline, but also the rise of a publishing industry that provided cultural guidance to autodidact readers. While attending to the material context of literary production and consumption in turn of the century Britain, I hope to map the complicated process of negotiation between journalistic print culture and aspirations for disciplinary credibility on the part of scholars.