Daddy-Long-Legs (1912), written by Jean Webster (1876-1916), has been popular since the publication. The story is very simple: Jerusha Abbott, an orphan, is sent to a college by a trustee. She writes letters to the anonymous benefactor, whom she calls Daddy-Long-Legs, to let him know the college life. After unveiling who he is, she marries him. So, the narrative-mode is letter-writing except for the first chapter. The true value of the novel has been misunderstood only because the targeted readers were young women. Recent feminist studies found that the story might be subdued by the patriarchy and follow the popular taste. However, Webster seemed to try to persuade girls through the sophisticated strategy to get educated. The strategy involves three steps. The first step is to attract young women by a lot of illustrations and the narration of colloquial speech. Second, the process of the heroine’s growth is reality-based, providing specific examples: the classes which she is taking at college, the books which she is reading, and the manners which she is acquiring. Third, with a higher level of sentence, young readers could feel as if they also are growing up. Thus, the novel was intended for young women to get familiar with “education,” which may lead to change the social system in the future.

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The multilayered narrative of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has fascinated both critics and general readers ever since the novel’s first publication in 1818. Their main interests, however, have tended to lie in the narratives of its protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and his hideous creature, thus overlooking the significance of the outermost layer in the novel: the letters from Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville. According to the British Critic’s 1818 review of Frankenstein, this “sort of introduction, which precedes the main story of the novel” has “nothing else to do with it.” In the present age, Frankenstein is often regarded as the prime example of a fictional work which “shifts from epistolary immediacy to monologic narrative, from eighteenth-century novels of letters to nineteenth-century first person narratives” (Britton 2009). These remarks seem to suggest that the epistolary form was no longer valued in the early nineteenth century. It should be pointed out, however, that Mary Shelley was deeply read in epistolary novels, especially the ones written by her own parents. This essay maintains that Shelley was keenly aware of the fact that she was born into a family of literary geniuses, and that her choice of an epistolary format for her very first work shows her desire to invigorate this slightly outdated mode. It attempts to shed light on her masterly performance of epistolarity, first by closely examining the way in which she created “Letters from the Arctic” à la Letters from Sweden (1796) by her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. I then try to give a possible answer to the question of why these fictional letters are addressed to “a

sister in England,” whose own voice is totally silenced. By considering the creation of Margaret Saville, I hope to shed light on the imaginative dialogue between Shelley and her own half-sister, Fanny Wollstonecraft. Lastly, I analyse the “mock epistolarity” (O’Dea 2004) in Frankenstein, hoping to clarify the innovativeness of Shelley’s narrative. I conclude with a brief examination of the voices of women skillfully embedded in this seemingly “unfeminine” epistolary novel.

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セオドア・ドライサーの短編 “Will You Walk into My Parlor?” はドライサーの短編の中では最も長い作品であり, 意外な結末を試みた唯一の短編であると考えられている。この短編はわずかな注目しか集めておらず, 評価も低い。確かに傑作ではないが, 読者を引き込む魅力が備わったスリリングな作品と見なすことができる。この論文では「私の居間にどうぞ」の再評価を試みている。

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The present author describes the close encounter of Martin Secker (a publisher) with D.H. Lawrence. He compares their relationship in contrast with that of Edward Garnett (a publishers' reader) and the writer. The friendly environment among the three is compared and examined. The author concludes that Garnett and Secker both indispensable to the increase in Lawreace's fame played an important role.

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In Elizabeth Gaskell's day, to have written with sympathy of a fallen woman' was an act of courage. Under such a circumstance, Gaskell deals with this problem in Ruth (1853). The heroine, Ruth is seduced and abandoned by Bellingham. In despair, she decides to kill herself, but the minister Benson saves her. The Bensons and their servant Sally are responsible for educating Ruth, and pass her off as a young widow. Telling a lie is needed to save Ruth's child from a bastard's position. Gaskell describes the effect on Leonard of the circumstances of his birth. Leonard has affection without being spoilt. But the secret is revealed. Leonard experiences a sense of danger to his identity by need to disconnect from the sinful mother. This paper concentrates some form of conflict between mother and son, because the effects of the discovery fall with impact on Ruth and Leonard. The relationship of Leonard's bonding to the mother Ruth is strengthened when Ruth enters the public world as a nurse, and is admired by her community. At the end, Ruth dies as a result of nursing Bellingham. It is not love that takes her to his side, but a sense of duty.
The narrative voice manifests passions about their relationship, for Gaskell seeks an outlet for her own personal agony: the trauma of losing her only son from scarlet fever when he was only nine months old. The mother's unconscious desire related to her son will be made clear by the tools for dream interpretation. In this sense, a part of the psychoanalytic works of Freud provides a useful framework for Ruth. Following the way in which mother and son interact with one another and the emotional conflicts between them, we can find Gaskell's own ideas about the human rights. Ruth is in favor of the view that the fallen woman can earn reacceptance into normal life, and the right of the illegitimate child to a proper home and a place in society. In other words, Gaskell exposes a social evil from the purely human standpoint of pity for an individual case.

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I am the origina1 of my deceased friend Lafcadio Hearn's paper “A Conservative” in his Kokoro. (from Nobushige Amenomori's letter dated Dec. 21, 1904.)
Amenomri Nobushige had an excllent appreciation of both the Japanese and European civilization. Therefore, he could become one of the best helpers of Lafcadio Hearn. But there was no positive vidence as to whether the real man in Hearn's “A Conservative” was Amenomori himself.
While researching the Griffis Co11ection in the University of Rutgers, I found the two 1etters addressed to W. E. Griffis by Amenomori. In one of them he declared that he was the very original. On the story he looked up Mt. Fuji above the clouds in the early morning on board returning to Japan after the long visits on foreign countries, Then he determined to do some works of introducing civilization from Western countries and strengthen the new Japan.
Certainly he was apatriot, though Christian love was deeply rooted in his mind. In “The Japanese Spirit, ” an English essay written by Amenomori and admired by Griffis, his o1d teacher in Fukui, Amenomori wrote that Japan would win the Russo-Japanese War, because the Japanese had the loyalty to the Imperial House, Bushido spirit and the ancient religion of Buddhism. The idea was one that Griffis and Hearn wanted to find in Japan and the Japanese people.

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一般に、の多くは、「〈はじめ〉から〈なか〉を経て〈おわり〉に至る」という直線的時間軸に沿って展開するが、時代が下りモダニズム、ポストモダニズムが書かれるようになると、作品内の時間軸はより複雑で錯綜したものに置き換わる、と言われる。しかしこのような説明こそ、形態の時代に伴う変遷に直線的モデルを当てはめるものではないだろうか。本稿ではこの疑問から議論を起こし、黎明期の作品の多くが一本調子の時系列に対してきわめて自意識的な距離をとるものであることを明確にし、〈のはじまり〉がはらむ根源的な論理破綻に光を当てることを目指す。最終的に、あらゆるとは一見したリアリズム色の濃淡に関わらず、常にその〈はじまり〉において、「すでにあるはずのものに依存しなければ何もはじめられない」のに、「何かが今・ここではじまっているように信じたふりをしなければ何もはじめられない」という存在論的矛盾を抱え込むものであることを明らかにしたい。

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