MELVILLE'S ENGLISH AND THE BOSTON SHAKESPEARE EDITION

1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 07610467
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 英語・英米文学
• Research Institution: KOBE UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: INAZUMI Kaneaki THE FACULTY OF CROSS-CULTURE STUDIES,KOBE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, 国際文化学部, 教授 (90019000)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): NISHITANIM Takuya THE FUCULTY OF CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES,KOBE UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, 国際文化学部, 助教授 (80180610)
• Project Period (FY): 1995 – 1996
• Keywords: Melville / Shakespeare / the 19th century English / Style / Compounds / Hyphen

Research Abstract

The aim of this project is to show the stylistic influence of William Shakespeare upon Herman Melville, one of the 19th century American authors. As we have already pointed out in Maeno's Melville Lexicon (Kaibunsha, Tokyo, 1984) and "Compounds used and coined by Melville" (Inazumi, K., Kobe Miscellany, No.15,1989), one of the characteristic features of Melville's English is the use of compounds or compounding words of various kinds, many of which were coined by himself and not found even in OED.It was not, however, certain whether the use and coinage of the compound words were only limited to Melville or the common trends among the 19th Century American authors. To make the point at issue clear, we have chosen the works by his contemporaries, E.A.Poe, R.W.Emerson, H.D.Thoreau, N.Hawthorne and compared the compounding patterns ((A) Noun + Noun Pattern, (B) Adjective Compound Pattern) found in their works with those found in Melville's. The result is Melville is not so conspicuous for word combining. Almost all the patterns are found in the works of Shakespeare.
The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare ; with a life of the poet, and notes, original and selected Boston : Hilliard, Gray, and company. 1836.7vols.is the Shakespeare edition which Melville "exulted over it, page after page". The important point about this edition is that the editors first paid attention to the original sources and claimed to follow the readings of the folio of 1623. Melville mentioned Shakespeare most in Moby-Dick, then in Pierre, Confidence-Man, and The Piazza Tales. The work he referred to most frequently is Hamlet then come King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, all of them collected in the seventh volume. Next come Cymbeline in the sixth volume and Macbeth in the third one. We have not so far found any direct influence or connection between Hamlet and Melville's English except that Melville also used the compound patterns which Shakespeare used in Hamlet.