2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Popular Poetry as Protest Literature: The Voice against the Social Vice of 19th-century America
| Project/Area Number |
15K02360
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Literature in English
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| Research Institution | Rikkyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
SAWAIRI Yoji 立教大学, 文学部, 教授 (20261539)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | アメリカ大衆詩 / プロテスト文学 / Lowell, Massachusetts / Duganne, A. J. H. / 社会改革運動 / 労働運動 / 自由土地運動 |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The America of the first half of the 19th century witnessed the upsurge of social reform movements, to which popular poets immediately responded. They vocalized their support, helping strengthen solidarity and encourage activists to pursue their ideals. Analyzing their works, however, this study demonstrates that these poems were far from being rebellious; instead, they advocated righteousness and urged bravery, without being inflammatory. For example, factory girls at Lowell, Massachusetts, composed poems upon a strike against a wage reduction, but these songs were an attempt to gather bravery by comparing their struggle to that of the Founding Fathers. The poems promoting the free soil movement also tried to help factory workers obtain some land as a natural right authorized by God; they did not denounce the government for monopoly.
In America there was no social hierarchy visible even to poets, and they sang from within what seemed a homogeneous society, not as outsiders.
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| Free Research Field |
アメリカ詩
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