資本主義国家でのRobert Frostとニューイングランド

Abstract

Since the colonists from Britain arrived the new land which they called Virginia, the land has given the great opportunities to construct the immaculate Eden and create enormous wealth. Thomas Jefferson as the third president of the United States inspired an ideal of freedom and equality for this world first democratic nation whose society should be founded on agriculture but his ideal included a contradiction in which nature and humans could not live in perfect harmony. After the mid 19th century American society has been influenced by developing capitalism, in which humans utilized nature with technology like steam engines for its own use. Literature as an art could not be an exception to the capitalism. Even the elite artists like Emerson and Thoreau should establish their art conforming themselves to the capitalist society in the 18th century New England. Robert Frost, as a New England writer in the 20th century, created his own art in the genealogy of those two former great artists in the highly capitalized society. This paper examines how Jeffersonian ideal should be transformed by capitalism, and New England writers have accepted the conflicting relationship between nature and capitalism.