The Weakened Masculinity in the British Novels of the Period of the Decline of the British Empire -- A Case Study of Rudyard Kipling

Research Project

Project/Area Number	25580066
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Literature in English
Research Institution	Tokyo University of Science
Principal Investigator	MATSUMOTO Kazuko 東京理科大学, 工学部, 教授 (90385542)
Project Period (FY)	2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2014)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000) Fiscal Year 2014: ¥520,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥120,000) Fiscal Year 2013: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000)
Keywords	キプリング / 男性性 / 英文学
Outline of Final Research Achievements	This project focused on the works of Rudyard Kipling and his contemporaries with the aim of (1) shedding light on their unmasculine characters, (2)investigating these character functions in the stories and (3) examining the reason why Kipling and others deal with such characters who are undoubtedly against the idealized heroes in the age of Imperialism. Through an intensive reading of their works along with carefully researching major previous studies and their biographies, the project successfully revealed the predicament of the authors living between the age of the decline of the British Empire and thriving Imperialism. It is higly possible that the authors injected their unmasculine temperament which needed to be supressed by the pressures of the age into their characters. The shared techniques by which the authors described the many unmasculine characters which this project exmined, seem to support the idea that such descriptions were effected by the pressures of the time.