VICTORIA朝小説の再評價 : その概況と展望

抄録

In the history of English Literature the distinctive product of the Victorian age was its prose fiction; the era produced incomparably more numerous novels than any age preceding it. We want to reassess their artistic and moral qualities accurately, and now in the middle of the twentieth century, we may be able to see them in their proper perspective, comparing them with the twentieth century novel, and without being much hampered by excessive anti-Victorianism. In England and especially in America, there have appeared recently or are to appear soon the definitive editions of the letters of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope and George Eliot and also the comprehensive biographies of those and other Victorian novelists. In this connection we must highly appreciate the achievements of Prof. Gordon Haight, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hanson, Mr. Humphrey House, Mr. Edgar Johnson, Dr. Richard L. Purdy and Prof. Gordon N. Ray. Many books of literary criticism on Victorian novels have also been published, and many valuable articles treating them have appeared particularly in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Studies of Phiiology and PMLA. One of the characteristics of the recent biographical and other studies of Victorian novels and novelists is that they treat the novels and novelists in their 'contemporary context.' They provide us with abundant information about the current topics, thoughts, and literary convention contemporary with the novels and novelists, and this information is indispensable especially when we investigate the social criticism in the works of early Victorian novelists. In our study of the Victorian novel, we must of course and cannot but consult the above-mentioned books and articles as extensively as possible. But at the same time we must read Victorian novels themselves all the more intensively, because we cannot successfully pursue the biographical research for lack of such materials as manuscript sources, and also because after all it is these novels themselves that can tell us most clearly what they are. Not a few persons are making a special study of the Victorian novel in our country, and by organizing their assiduous activities we can hope to contribute in our own wav to the task of revaluating the Victorian novel.