vintage Aviation Meet poster

Title

Sora to America Bungaku (American Literature and the Sky)

Size

320 pages, 127x188mm, hardcover

Language

Japanese

Released

September 17, 2019

ISBN

978-4-7791-2598-0

Published by

Sairyusha

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Sora to America Bungaku

Japanese Page

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This study renders the significance of the cultural imagination about the sky in American literature. The targets of its discussions include the novels of nineteenth and twentieth century canonical authors, influential literary and visual works of science fictions, writings of early twentieth century best-selling aviator-authors, and the latest fictions of the twenty-fist century. The book starts with editor’s introduction that overviews the cultural history of aviation in America with some references to significant studies, followed by ten chapters loosely arranged in chronological order to help readers to have historical perspectives on this important topic.
 
The first half of the book discusses literary works of major American writers in the 19th century. The works examined are: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” a fantasy of balloon travel to the moon (Chap. 1), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Mardi (Chap. 2), Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, a fantasy of Tom Sawyer’s futuristic balloon travel (Chap. 3), and the same author’s “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” a fantasy about cosmic-travel with unlimited speed and space (Chap. 4). The second half of the book deals with the literary and cultural works in post-Wright brothers’ world. The book analyzes the originals works of twentieth-century American science fictions set in the space (Chap. 5), the thematic development of flying in the works of French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Chap. 6), Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s non-fictional writing of her flying journey to the Far East (Chap. 7), and William Faulkner’s Pylon, a novel about barnstorming flyers in the 1930s in New Orleans (Chap. 8). The last two chapters focus on modern literature. One of them deliberately examines various items related to the sky in Raymond Carver’s stories (Chap. 9), and the other one targets at the sky in twenty-first century American novels and suggests that the “networks” created by airwaves, drones, and capitals diversifies the definitions of the latest road narratives (Chap. 10).
 

(Written by ISHIHARA Tsuyoshi, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2021)

Related Info

Reviews
BOOKS & MEDIA (“Gekkan Airline”  Dec 2019)
https://www.ikaros.jp/sales/list.php?tidx=2
 
(The American Literature Society of Japan “Studies in American Literature”  2020)
http://www.als-j.org/contents_269.html
 
(The English Literary Society of Japan “Studies in English Litrature”  2020)
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/elsjp/97/0/97_127/_article/-char/ja/

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