Reconstructing Wilderness Ideology in American Literature

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K16791
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Meiji University
• Principal Investigator: Yamamoto Yohei 明治大学, 理工学部, 専任准教授 (40646824)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: アメリカ環境文学 / ウィルダネス / ソロー / キャザー

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I have studied the notion of wilderness which began to receive more attention after Roderick Nash’s_Wilderness and the American Mind_ in 1967, which called attention to a dual aspect of wilderness: “the mental criteria for wilderness are as important as the physical.” Influenced by Nash’s genealogical studies, several critics have discussed wilderness as a socially and historically constructed concept. As the result, not unlike the untamed wilderness American authors such as Thoreau, Melville, Dickinson, Jewett, and Cather so passionately narrates, the thickets and branches of his/her writings, too, must be ventured into and woven through by the reader. In this regard, one of my achievements in this study is to go beyond the oversimplified dichotomies of previous criticism, focusing on the details of their works in relation to the concerns of literary criticism and the environmental humanities.

Free Research Field

アメリカ文学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

近年のエコクリティシズムの動向は，批評理論的には"trans-corporeality"や"multi-species"といった身体の越境性・浸食性・相互関連などが議論されるようになり，他方，気候変動が喫緊の社会的な課題になるに呼応してきた。本研究の蓄積は，これらの人文学の使命に応答しうるものである。