18世紀イギリス小説に描かれた事故の意味を考える : デフォー、フィールディング、そしてスターンを題材にして

概要

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This paper considers the implications of accidents depicted in the novels written by three major novelists of the eighteenth century; Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne. They describe a variety of accidents in their fiction, and those scenes of accidents tell us a lot about the development of the novel as a realistic literary form. As David Lodge puts it in The Art of Fiction, a real accident in our own life can be seen as an evidence of what he calls "life's randomness, inconsequentiality and openness." On the other hand, Lodge goes on to suggest, a fictional accident in a novel tends to illustrate how the author thinks much of "the achievement of structure, pattern and closure" of his art of fiction. This theory of accidents should bring us to the reconsideration of the intricate meanings of various accidents described in novels of the eighteenth century. In those earlier novels like Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, accidents are there not so much to imply how random and open life can be as to suggest that all the incidents happened there are related and consequential. However, some novels published after 1750, including Henry Fielding's Amelia and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, have fictional coincidences which, just like accidents in our real life, make us realize that life is basically very random and inconsequential.
日本英語文化学会の論文
2011-02-25