アメリカ文化論 : アメリカの英雄像に見られる「矛盾」のパターン(故岡田茂教授追悼論集)

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The paper examines a theme of American heroes reflected in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and The Way to Wealth, James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneer in the early nineteenth century; and severel of Gary Snyder's modern poems. Tracing their heroes, we can find a pattern of contradictions in the hero ideal. The patterns of the hero's psychic dichotomy and dualism show a characteristic of American culture. My approach is drawn from People of Paradox by Michael Kammen who contends that American historical experience of "polarities" in early colonial society is endowed with a contradictory tendency in American minds. The American hero is destined to play a role of a Janus-headed men. He is, for instance, an aristocratic-common man like Franklin, and also the aristocratic-democratic writer, Cooper who dreamed of a fusion of two polarities - civilized and primitive. The modern American hero is fully conscious of the split-self and the contradictions which give great tensions to modern intelligence. We can find contradictions in every culture, but its tensions are enormous in American culture when studying a literary pattern of the American hero.
聖霊女子短期大学の論文
1985-06-01