2003 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Evolution of Environmentalism in English Romantic Literature
| Project/Area Number |
14510502
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
ISHIHATA Naoki Tohoku University, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Professor, 大学院・国際文化研究科, 教授 (30125497)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
OTOMO Yoshikatsu Tohoku University, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Professor, 大学院・国際文化研究科, 教授 (60007333)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2002 – 2003
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| Keywords | English Literature / notion of Nature / English Romanticism / ecology / ecocriticism / environment |
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| Research Abstract |
We are the descendents of the Romantics, since we owe the modem notion of Nature and this appreciation of our environment and ecosystem to them. Consider, for instance, Keats's Cupid and Psyche. In a figure of a poet with "that shadowy thought" who aspires to be a priest in the fane of Psyche in the green bower, we see what we might call Keats's green thought. Also in his treatment of, sympathy for, and reconciliation with nature, there seems to be a proto-ecological viewpoint which warns us about the decreasing of greenness on the earth.
What Keats sees "inspired by his own eyes" in Ode to Psyche, or he dares to grasp with "the viewless wings of Poesy" in Ode to a Nightingale is what the Romantic poets valued as the essential creative power, imagination. Both Psyche's "lucent fan" and his "viewless wings of Poesy," the symbol of imagination and poesy, seem to have much to do with the poet's belief in "negative capability" and his stance as a "chameleon poet." The ideal poet for Keats is one who can, with no obtrusive character but a "self-destroying" (Endymion I,799) one, melt into the nature around him to consequently gain the ultimate inspiration and imagination.
The spiritual wandering of Keats as well as some other English Romantic poets in search of disinterested love for nature's disinterested beauty is likely to exemplify our own predestined journey in search of ecological coexistence with nature. We might be born to repeat this journey perpetually.
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Research Products
(6 results)
