A Study on Locality in the Pacific Region

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370312
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: Yamamoto Taku 金沢大学, 学校教育系, 教授 (10293325)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 太平洋文学 / ポストコロニアル批評 / オセアニア文学 / マオリ文学 / R. L. スティーヴンスン

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project attempted to examine the concepts of locality in the twentieth-century Pacific literature. The early Pacific literature typically discussed personal and tribal identities which were oppressed under Western colonialism, insisting on a more stable and unconstrained style of self. However, since 1990s, writers have been trying to discover and create a new concept of the Pacific which is to be regulated not as a counterpart of the west but as the original and autonomous, to transcend the binary opposition of Self and Other or the center and its marginality. The study has traced the transformation of the concept of locality and revealed its significance in the contemporary Pacific literature.

Free Research Field

Literature in English