Poetics of Desire and Difference: Reestablishing the History of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K12856
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Takeda Masaaki 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 准教授 (10434177)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: イギリス文学 / 18世紀小説 / 文学史 / 文学理論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study focused on the uncontrollable desire commonly described in eighteenth-century British novels and showed how several famous novelists faced the fear of such desire and tackled this problem in different ways, analyzing the protagonists’ names in their works. Combining these analyses with the latest theory in anthropology, moreover, this study lay the groundwork for establishing a new history of the British novel which reevaluates and incorporates many works that are either regarded as offshoots or disregarded as non-novels.

Free Research Field

18世紀イギリス小説を文学史の観点から再検討し、近代文学全般の理解を更新することを目指している。