Nineteenth-Century English Literature and the City

Research Project

Project/Area Number	16520157
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	ヨーロッパ語系文学
Research Institution	Hiroshima University
Principal Investigator	KEIJI Kanmeda Hiroshima University, Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Associate Professor (60137247)
Project Period (FY)	2004 – 2006
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2006)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000) Fiscal Year 2006: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000) Fiscal Year 2005: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000) Fiscal Year 2004: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Keywords	the nineteenth century / England / literature / the city
Research Abstract	The purpose of this research is to study nineteenth century English literature in its relation to the city. The research has been pursued with its focus on the analysis of literary texts, which I regard as being generated at the point where urban geography, the human body and psychology and systems, both political and cultural, merge. Initially I tried to trace the process by which the English middle class formed their identity by separating themselves from "the lower" as the Other. However, a different approach of applying a philosophical thinking about power turned out to be necessary, in order to clarify the ideological significance of the "urban improvement", which begun in London in the 1830s and 1840s. The main objects of analysis on the realm of administration have been the Metropolitan Police, sanitary reform and the housing for the poor. The analysis required a consideration of the development in Michel Foucault's thinking from Discipline and Punish to The History of Sexuality … More , Book 1, the two of his major books. It is found out that the mechanism of organizing the local sites in which micro-power is exercised into the network of macro-power of the government is analyzed by Foucault in the unbroken process of thinking from the first book to the second. It is also found out that the problematics of "individualizing distribution" considered by Foucault in Discipline and Punish is taken up and refined in his thesis of "population" in The History of Sexuality, Book 1, though without any fundamental change of the concept in the process of writing the two books. The product of this consideration of his thought in the two books is effectively applicable to the analysis of the modern society, which is organized by bio-power, and in which this power circulates among the human beings who have become "individuals". Literature, the novel among others, also can be understood in another light when it is analyzed in the social and cultural context of the modern city, in which protagonists are individuals, and in which they discipline themselves by assimilating bio-power as their own. Less