In A Tale of Two Cities, serialised in 1859, Charles Dickens depicts a mass of people and its unity that eventually leads to the French Revolution. It is personal stories told that form, unite, and propel the revolutionists, although a pub where people communicate with each other looks central to the assembly in some parts of the work. Meanwhile, in the real world, special correspondents gained popularity among contemporary readers during the 1850s. They shared their experiences and opinions or described what they saw abroad in news stories and thus created a new journalistic style. This style was similar to narration rather than traditional fact-based reports. It is notable that subjective storytelling plays a critical role in both the work of fiction and journalism and that both the novel and articles by some special correspondents were published in the same magazine: All the Year Round. Dickens, the periodical’s editor, had an intimate knowledge of the influence of narrative. Therefore, it is inferred that Dickens employed the new journalistic method in his work to depict mass gatherings. This paper examines the significance of storytelling in the novel by comparing it with the technique practiced by special correspondents in the real world.

This paper explores Thomas More’s view of ecology as a trope embedded in his literary and philosophical work, Utopia (1516). It is well recognised that More’s book plays a significant role in utopian literature in terms of the true origin of the genre. This socio-political satire utilizes various kinds of literary rhetoric – some inherited by other authors and recognised as elements in later utopian writings. It remains uncertain, though, whether More’s book has specifically influenced subsequent utopian works with respect to ecology or environmental issues. This paper attempts to uncover More’s rhetorical technique and to appraise his ecological views.

After careful consideration of the rhetoric and the ecological elements in the book, it is revealed that More adopts a narrative technique that makes the story more complicated to encourage readers to actively participate in a discussion of the work. In addition, he divides his identity into two fictional characters and sets them as narrators. By analysing dialogues between such characters, it is found that the author’s views on ecology—“agriculture-first” principle and communal property—are concealed in one of the narrators. More’s ecological views are consequently shown to be a significant and constituent element in this form of traditional literature.

This paper examines the purpose of missionary work to “Gypsies” by “domestic evangelical groups” who carried out evangelical missionary activities in England in the early 19th century. The home missionary society criticized the imprisonment of the Gypsies as “vagrants” and argued that in order to change their nature of wandering, it was necessary for them to live a civilized life and not be imprisoned. It was hoped that this method of missionary activities could be tried in the United States. However, Sarah Nicolasso, who studied the transition of the legal definition of “vagrants”, notes that the specific “race” group “Gypsy” was stipulated as “Vagrant” in the “Vagrant” Control Law. She points out that it worked effectively as a means to create a “racist” yet conceptually flexible, judicial-controlled space in the colonial United States. Since the 16th century, Gypsies had been legally categorized into a comprehensive definition of “homeless”, and the “racial” characteristic of Gypsies had been used to justify policies and the like. In the early 19th century, the missionary work on Gypsies was justified as a method of denying this vague definition.

This article explores the development of the nineteenth-century Regent’s Park villas within the context of the architectural evolution of the previous century. Recent historiography has focused on the transformation of the aristocratic villas of Georgian England into the family homes of the rising Bourgeoise in the late eighteenth century and its analogous impact on its expansion to North America in the mid nineteenth century. This piece attempts to illustrate how the architectural and social developments of the Georgian period helped to transform the purpose of these majestic edifices from leisure sites for the aristocracy to family homes for the rising middle classes. To do so, it looks first at how its architects adapted forms and ideas when designing and constructing these buildings by focusing on the Palladian villas on the banks of the River Thames, such as Chiswick House and Asgill House. This article then attempts to rectify the current historiography’s seemingly little interest in the Regency development in the early nineteenth-century London suburbs, which culminated in the villas of Regent’s Park, by examining three examples (The Holme, Hanover Lodge and Grove House). Finally, it shows that these villas were important exponents of the then contemporary ideas about these buildings’ form and purpose.

This paper considers cultural translations and adaptations in Meiji-era Japan. It places the focus on San’yūtei Enchō’s Ezonishiki Kokyō no Iezuto (Foreign Brocade as a Souvenir of Ezo-region, 1886–87) based on Wilkie Collins’ The New Magdalen (1872–73). Ezonishiki is a story of Rakugo, a type of traditional one-person oral storytelling, adapted by Enchō, who was the principal Rakugo performer and author of his day. He is still well known as the father of the modern Japanese language due to the impact of his spoken style on the Vernacular Movement.

Reflecting the general socio-cultural trend towards Westernization, adaptations of Western fiction found their way into the Japanese publishing sphere. They modified the foreign to fit domestic sensibilities, often changing Western characters and settings into Japanese. Enchō adapted various Western literary works to suit his audience’s narrative appetites. He transformed Collins’ original story about Victorian social discrimination against a fallen woman into a story about those who were against the Hinin class, which consisted of actors, beggars, and others regarded by feudal Japan as the most socially inferior. This paper also enquires into the following questions: how English-illiterate Enchō learned the original story, what kind of role Enchō took in popularizing Western literature, and what he thought about the Westernization policy promoted by the Meiji government.