表題番号：1995A-062
日付：2002/02/25
研究課題16・17世紀英文学の題材としての古代英国史の研究
| 研究者所属（当時） | 資格 | 氏名 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| （代表者） | 文学部 | 外国人講師 | アントニー・マーチン |
- 研究成果概要
- The British History in Renaissance Literature
The first stage of this research involved a wide and thorough reading of the historical backgroundof the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Three areas in particular emerged as entailing detailed
consideration. First, the whold question of nationalism, whethdr British or English, as it arose in
the period; second, the expansion of the early modern, absolutist, Tudor state, in both geographic andsocial areas; thirdly, the legitimacy and foundation of the Stuart dynasty, with special reference ofits attempts to establish a unified Britied British state in the first decade of the seventeenth century.In looking at these areas I read large number of modern historians and also considered at great lengthhow such questions were variously approached in the works of contemporary antiquarians, historians andlegal theorists, such as Leland, Lambarde, Camden, Coke, and Cotton.
The second stage was thus to examine the entire development of early historiography and archaeology(as it applied to historical consciousness) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides the
authors mentioned above, I studied the historical writings of such scholars as Holinshed, Verstegen,Speed, and Selden. In particular, however, and of crucial importance to my study, was an examinationof William Camden's Britannia, especially as it moved through successive editions in Latin, andsubsequently in English.
The third stage of my research was to read all the fictional or literary treatments of early Britishhistory in the Tudor and Stuart periods. This in volved close reading of such works as Sackville andNorton's Gorboduc, The Mirror for Magistrates, Spenser's Faerie Queene, a number of minorElizabethan plays, Shakespears's King Lear and Cymbeline, Drayton's Polyolbion,and a number of Milton's works. A particular theme which emerged from this consideration of the literaturewas that over the period there was an increasing tendency to transmute history into romance.
Some preliminary results of this reseach were contained in a paper "The Romans in Britain:
Shakespears's Cymbeline and Fletcher's Bonduca," which I presented at the annual conferenceof the Shakespeare Society (Japan), in Hiroshima in October 1995. This paper had a positive reactionand generated considerable discussuin in the session at which it was presented. At present I am involvedin rewriting the paper with a view to publication. I envisage producing at lesat a further two papersfor publication from the results of the research within the next academic year.