2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Influence of the contemporary European novels on Natsume Soseki's early works
| Project/Area Number |
15520235
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Literatures/Literary theories in other countries and areas
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
ANDO Fumihito Waseda University, Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Professor, 文学学術院・文学部, 教授 (70193117)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | Natsume Soseki / influence of foreign literature / early works / database analysis / research on the writer's collection |
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this research project is to investigate the influence of the contemporary European novels on Natsume Soseki's early works through the analysis of his collection of foreign books.
We started the project with compiling the bibliographic database of all the foreign books in Soseki's library. Though it took unexpectedly long to finish it, we then processed the database in terms of the year of publication to see their distribution. The results we obtained was that over 80% of the European books other than British and American ones were published after 1900 and most of them during 1903-1908,when Soseki wrote his first fiction, I Aw A Cat and changed careers from a teacher at The First High School and The Imperial University to a professional writer under contract to Asahi Simbun.
This quantitative analysis implies that Soseki's interest and needs on the European books peaked and concentrated around his start as a professional writer, when he wrote his early works. Further research would be essential to find what kind of interest and need Soseki had on these European books in the period, though at least one hypothesis could be proposed that these European books --- most of which are English translation of contemporary continental writers' works like Daudet, Maupassant D'Annunzio, Sudermann and so on --- had considerable influence on Soseki's early works.
Some researches have already been made on the influence of foreign fictions on Soseki's writings, though only on indivual bases like one of Meredith's works on Gubijinnso. This research has convinced us that we need to explore more traces of influence the contemporary European fictions had on Soseki's novels.
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