2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Loss and Insurance in American Literature
| Project/Area Number |
22720104
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Literature in English
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| Research Institution | University of Miyazaki |
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Principal Investigator |
SHIMOJO Keiko 宮崎大学, 教育文化学部, 准教授 (30510713)
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| Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha) |
SCOTT Pugh 福岡女子大学, 文学部, 教授 (60244795)
TATSUMI Taka Yuki 慶応義塾大学, 文学部, 教授 (30155098)
AKIMOTO Takafumi 甲南大学, 文学部, 教授 (70330404)
SAKAI Takashi 熊本県立大学, 文学部, 准教授 (90438317)
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| Research Collaborator |
CHRISTOPHER Schreiner グアム大学, 人文科学部, 教授
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| Project Period (FY) |
2010 – 2012
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| Keywords | 思想史 / 英米文学 / 社会史 |
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| Research Abstract |
The outcome of this three-year research project on “Loss and Insurance inAmerican Literature” has been very successful and academically beneficial. During the first research tripto the United States, I found and purchased several rare historical documents of the history of theinsurance industry in America since the Colonial period. My analysis of those documents and the fieldresearch in the meccas of the insurance business since the Age of Great Discovery-such asPhiladelphia, London, and Florence-reinforced my thesis that the American sensibility in Americaninsurance business has acquired transoceanic aspects and they are pervasively illustrated in manymonumental works of American literature, which describe many layers of loss and lapse. My furtherstudy also made clear that these transoceanic aspects have been described not only as “transatlantic,”that is between Europe and the Americas, but also as resulting from “transpacific” imaginations-in thesixteenth century , Europeans happened
… More
to reach the Americas entirely by chance while they weresupposed to be heading for Asia. The subsequent discourses of “Asia/Utopia” in the Age of GreatDiscovery have not been fully discussed in American studies, but they are fully present in Americanliterature. My research findings came to fruition in some parts of my PhD dissertation (2011), twopeer-reviewed articles (2011, 2012), and three oral presentations at literary conferences (2010, 2011,2012). In addition, I invited renowned literature professors to two public lectures, which I hosted tointroduce the topic of my current research in an open and dialogical way beyond the confines ofacademia (2010, 2011). Furthermore, this three-year-long research also allowed me to come up with a new research hypothesis,that the reason descriptions of business contracts often carry a theological air in American literaturemight be that the idea of such contracts has been blended, together with other social and religious contracts such as the “Mayflower Pact” and the “Contract of Grace” of the Covenant, into the very coreof founding ideas of the United States. Less
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