The Birth of the College Novel: Sentimentalism and male authors of the 19th Century

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K12857
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Kyushu Institute of Technology
• Principal Investigator: Ohno Setsuko 九州工業大学, 教養教育院, 准教授 (50380720)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 大学小説 / 感傷小説研究史 / 19世紀アメリカ社会 / 大学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I originally intended to elucidate the birth of the “college novel” in the context of American sentimentalism in the nineteenth century. Examining the research area of sentimental novels, however, I realized that recent scholars lost the sense of urgency that scholars of the 1980s had, and that it is necessary for us to have a will to change society, when opening up a new field of research. Therefore, I went on to embark on the study of college novels in response to the urgent issue we are facing today: what is the meaning of higher education? I discussed how a few novels written in the first half of the nineteenth century reacted to the contemporary discussion of the usefulness of higher education.

Free Research Field

アメリカ文学