The Historical Reseach of Social/Consumer Sphere in the Eighteenth-Century England

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02315
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Seijo University
• Principal Investigator: Yoshida Naoki 成城大学, 文芸学部, 教授 (90261396)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 公共圏 / 英文学 / 経済学 / 消費 / 社交

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this historical research, I have examined how the popular culture of the eighteenth-century England has influenced the bourgeois public sphere which Jurgen Habermas thinks is an ideal community. Along with the process of proliferation of so-called low culture in many realms such as stages, magazines, books, paintings, and performances, the public could get access to a wide variety of literary products of popular culture. From this research, we can find that the commodification of culture and the rise of consumer society could make it possible for the literature and economics to establish itself as a distinct genre. I have also clarified how the issues of gender and sexuality come to be more significant because of the complexity of the contemporary religious and scientific debate of nature.

Free Research Field

英語文学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

18世紀啓蒙主義は、古くて新しい研究テーマである。カントの「啓蒙とは何か」という問いかけに対する最新の解答が、クリフォード・シスキンらによる18世紀啓蒙主義に関する最近の代表的研究This is Enlightenment（2010）に収められているが、この思想の現代的意義を経済/科学/宗教の相互関係の観点から論じた研究はこれが初めてであり、ジェンダー、セクシュアリティの問題を含む発展的テーマを多く提示しうる点で独創的である。