This thesis is an examination of the stylistic methods and intentions of the British modernist Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957), the first practitioner of stream-of-consciousness technique in English. The study attempts to secure recognition of Richardson's formative role in modernist literary history by making extensive use of all of her writings, including short stories, non-fiction books, essays, reviews, sketches, translations, prefaces, interviews, and autobiographies, in addition to the more-familiar novel cycle Pilgrimage. Richardson had no literary predecessor, and this study explicates her technical narrative innovations as developed through her life and the cultural milieu of turn-of-the-century England. Richardson is both a creator of and a creation of English modernism.
Pilgrimage is considered heroine Miriam's quest for a feminine space, and the thesis examines her involvement with various material and metaphysical spaces. Miriam considers her contemporary late-Victorian and Edwardian eras 'false' civilization, monopolized by men, and searches for a space for women to reside that does not suppress their inherent abilities as creators of 'true' civilization. Miriam's quest progresses with logical consequence from cosmopolis, the largest possible space, to her own consciousness, the smallest non-place, and this study shows how this ceaseless move from space culminates in her reaching her writing vocation and inventing the stream-of-consciousness technique.
The first chapter examines Miriam's attempt to inhabit cosmopolis, the first space that seems to have the potential to free women from the constrictions of contemporary English civilization. The second chapter deals with the London metropolis, particularly the worlds of dentistry and socialism, new social forces in which Miriam hopes to map out a feminine space. The third chapter focuses on the body and Miriam's attempt to free herself from the Victorian womanhood cult through an androgyny discovered in lesbian sexual desire. The fourth chapter turns to spiritual space and Miriam's emancipating herself from the God of a masculinized Anglican church and acquiring a Quaker-like Inner Light. The final chapter looks at the text and Miriam's transformation from reader to writer and her start in portraying scenes from memories in consciousness in the textual space, thereby liberating herself from texts permeated by the male point of view and becoming a creator of the feminine.
Miriam's transformation into a female remapper is driven by her conviction that men and women are equally important and must unite to make civilization. She treads into successive 'male' spaces, erases their masculine order according to her own feminine logic, and converts them into feminine space. Her feminine logic assumes that reality can be conveyed only in silence because language is fraught with limitations; masculine logic assumes language can convey everything. Her remapping journey, therefore, is an un-naming quest to re-fuse the world back to a pre-nominalized one. Silencing the text, Miriam bestows a possibility of infinite expansion of the text through the right to continue Miriam's story according to each reader's logic. This invisible but infinitely expanding world is the feminine space Miriam creates.
本論文は二十世紀イギリスの女性作家、ドロシー・リチャードスン（1873-1957）の自伝的長編小説、『遍歴』（全13巻；1915-67）に関する論考である。リチャードスンは二十世紀以降の小説に大きな影響を及ぼすこととなった「意識の流れ」の手法を英語の文学において初めて用いた作家であるにもかかわらず、文学史上長い間見過ごされてきた。本論文はリチャードスンの著作の中では比較的よく知られている『遍歴』にとどまらず、従来あまり注目されてこなかった短編小説、ノン・フィクションの著作、エッセイ、書評、翻訳書、インタビューなど、彼女の文芸活動を網羅的に追いながら「意識の流れ」の手法の生成過程と意図を明らかにしようとするものである。その究極の目的はリチャードスンをモダニズム文学史の中に明確に位置づけることにある。本論文において、リチャードスンの文体発見の過程は、彼女の人生そのものと、ヴィクトリア朝末期からエドワード朝にかけてのイギリスの文化的風土によって形成されたものとして説明される。新しい手法の開拓者である彼女は、過去の文学作品からではなく、彼女自身の人生における直接的な体験から自らの小説理論と文体を創り出したと考えられるからである。