2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The influence of Eastern religion on selected British authors
| Project/Area Number |
19K00416
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Iris Murdoch / Ted Hughes / Lawrence Durrell / Shintoism / Buddhism / shamanism / myth / intertextuality |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
From April 2019 to April 2020, papers for my research project on the influence of Eastern religion on Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell and Ted Hughes were presented at six international academic conferences, for two of which I used kakenhi funding. During this period, I also published two articles and a book chapter on the topic, and a book review on a related topic, with other publications shortly forthcoming. I have revised the conference paper that I gave at Sao Paulo University for publication, to be arranged by the organisers, in a Brazilian journal. The research is following two inter-connected paths: the first is the question of how the authors studied were influenced by philosophical aspects of Eastern religion, notably Buddhist/Shinto philosophy, but also Hinduism, shamanism and Sufism, and the second is the extent to which they draw on the literature, folklore and myth of these religions in the creation of their novels and poetry through intertextual allusion and mythical re-workings.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
I have accepted an invitation to be a member of the editorial board of‘Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture', the journal of The Society for Philosophy as Global Conversation. I have also continued to serve as an Executive Board member of the International Lawrence Durrell Society during this period and in this capacity I organised a Lawrence Durrell literary evening and dining event at Alexandrie restaurant in Kensington, London. I am continuing with my research, but it is unclear when I will be able to resume conference attendance or international travel to visit archives due to the Covid-19 crisis and I feel that I should abandon my plans to organise conferences in Japan or elsewhere.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
I will continue to explore the research theme in the work of the authors in question. I intend to give a paper which has been accepted for the Asian Studies conference in Bangkok (October 22nd-23rd, 2020), with the title‘Buddhism in the work of Lawrence Durrell’and to participate in a round-table discussion at the next International Iris Murdoch Society conference at Aoyama Gakuin University on November 14th, 2020. I intend to write a paper on Buddhist and Shinto influences in Iris Murdoch's novel,‘Nuns and Soldiers', to be presented at the next Iris Murdoch conference at Chichester University in June 2021 and to revise my last presentation from the Iris Murdoch Society Centenary conference of 2019 for publication in the next issue of the‘Iris Murdoch Review’(2021). I plan to publish in the‘Ted Hughes Review’and to attend the next Ted Hughes Society conference in Huddersfield, UK, in September 2021. I will also work on a paper for the Lawrence Durrell On Miracle Ground XXI in Toulouse (May 2022, postponed from May 2020), with the title,‘The Road to Angkor Wat: Hinduism/Buddhism in The Avignon Quintet'. These travel plans are, of course, subject to the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic being lifted.
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