I Have to Thank Many People for Help and Encouragement Over This Thesis

Acknowledgments

I have to thank many people for help and encouragement over this thesis.

Chief among those whom I should like to thank are the professor of English literature in Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Mr. Jan Baker Gordon for his valuable advice and considerable suggestions. Without his encouragement and support, this thesis would have never been completed and his study, scholarship and enthusiasm have set a standard for me.

Preface

This thesis is regarded as a first step of my literature study. I am thinking of going to graduate school and studying more about literature especially about “the meaning of literature in our society”. This is the very theme that I started to study British literature in my high school days and I am still studying to resolve it now. When I was a high school student, I was majoring science and I (my fellows as well) sometimes thought that everyone could have lived without literature. And at the same time, I also thought that the existence of literature must have had something quite important for our society. While studying, I would like to teach the interest and the importance of literature to whoever mistakes the literature for the works of nothing or to whoever cannot understand the importance of it.

In the last year’s Jane Eyre class, I had discovered one of the answers of my question; that is “to confess”, or to tell readers what the author has in mind. I found that transferring one’s self was very important factor of the novel. In so doing, readers can share the character’s experiences and may make use of them in their lives.

The theme which I would like to discuss in this paper is about supernatural existence such as fairies and witches in a literature. Nowadays, we can nearly share such kind of things because they do not exist in our society now. I am not able to imagine the reason for their existence and the role of theirs. Have we got just to believe in them or just to worship them? I do not know exactly, but it is not impossible to guess that they can be regarded as a imaginative aspect of literature.

One of the supernatural characters is a “Fairy,” which plays an important role not only in Shakespeare’s plays but also in the literature. Fairy has a magic and sometimes controls nature but sometimes controlled by human beings. Fairy seems to be a mysterious existence but it is not clear to me what the “fairy” is. It seems neither to be a human nor to be a natural creature.

The other supernatural being that has to be mentioned in this thesis is a “Witch.” Except witches and fairies, ghosts in Hamlet and apparition in Macbeth can be regarded as supernatural. Actuary in the Oxford English Dictionary, ghost is defined as “the soul of a deceased person, spoken of as appearing in a visible form, or otherwise manifesting its presence, to the living,”[1] and apparition is as “an immaterial appearance as of a real being; a spectre, phantom, or ghost. (The ordinary sense).”[2] However, these definitions mean that they are also related to supernatural; so it is beyond the scope of this thesis to deal with them, except Hecate in Macbeth.

Basically, the first notion that makes me write this thesis is the doubt of literature’s existence in this science-oriented society. It is quite clear to us that the scientific or medical discoveries, such as the discovery of plastic or the discovery of the prevention from cancers and so on will be made use of our lives instantly and directly; while the most famous works in literature such as Oe Kenzaburo’s or Toni Morrison’s Noble Prize works will not. This point of view is quite pragmatic one but it is true that scientific studies are more useful in our daily lives. Actually, it is true that peoples without language or peoples whose ratio of illiteracy is higher in the world are able to live a normal life in their ways: they eat and they wear and they marry and so on.

This fact, however, does not mean that the literature is nonsense or is meaningless. On the contrary, it seems to me that what exists in the world always has some important meanings. This way of my thinking things will be evaluated as optimistic but quite significant idea, which sometimes comes on like that.

The answer to my question, what is the role of literature in the society, partly is in my mind. The example of it is like this: the folklores or lyrical poems such as Beowulf in ancient times seems to be used as the media of transferring something important to other people. In those days, printing skill was not yet invented, people had to convey information only with sound. Sound is quite difficult to memorize in a normal condition like novels or newspapers today. So, rhythm and rhyme were invented and developed to make the information effectively told and to make their words more easily learned by heart. And another example is that the plays on the stage like Shakespearean plays are due to make the audiences notice the social problems or the wonder of human life in a visible way. Only quoting famous lines will prove this fact: ‘All the world’s a stage, | And all the men and women merely players:’ (A. Y. L. II. vii. 139-140). These lines can offer a reversal interpretation that nothing can never be expressed on stage and that the play on the stage reflects the reality. A drama was quite essential and was used as a more understandable media to transfer a true fact in the society or dramatists’ idea.

While the aim of a poem and a drama is quite clear, it gets unclear for me what is the role of “supernatural” and what an author wishes to tell us. Supernatural beings just seem to be imaginary existences nowadays, but actually, James I wrote a book[3] about fairy and witches, in Scotland and seventeenth century’s England, fairies are told to appear at the witchcrafts[4].

What is meaningful for my thesis is that supernatural beings are peculiar to literature in the point that, unlike King James I and many other authors’ great works, it may not have really existed but can be interpreted as an imaginary thing, which allows me to think that the role of the supernatural creatures in the play and the role of literature in the society are similar figures,

which is the relationship between a portion (fairies and literature) and a unity (drama and society) like the Figure1. This notion of this similarity is the key to resolve the role of literature in the society. The study of supernatural in my thesis shall be done for that purpose.

Preceding this thesis, there are two things that I have to declare here. One thing is that the abbreviations of Shakespeare’s play are from The Oxford English Dictionary second edition; and the other is that this thesis is original with me.

It has to be remembered that academic dishonesties such as so-called plagiarism are not allowed under any circumstances. I swear by Almighty God that this thesis I have written for a long time is nothing but my original and I promise it by the signature below.

Signature:

1.1. Fairies’ Definition

1.1.1. Representation of Fairies in Pictures

The first question that has to be asked here seem to define what the fairy is and whether it has a particular figure. In The Tempest, Ariel, who is made from air by Sycorax, can change himself into variouskinds of things. And in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fairies that appear are Puck, Oberon, Titania, which are

often described as human figured; and Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote and Musterdseeds, which seem to be far from the figure of human being’s one but the other. It is true that when the play is performed, the roles have to be acted by human actors or actresses, which seems to me to be the reason why painters in the middle ages always draw fairies as the figure of human beings (see picture 1 and 2[5]).

1.1.2. Definition in Dictionaries

According to a dictionary[6], fairy is defined as: “a small imaginary creature with magic powers, which looks like a very small person”. And another[7] says that fairy is “one of a class of supernatural beings of diminutive size, in popular belief supposed to possess magical powers and to have great influence for good or evil over the affairs of man.” Both of these dictionaries agree with the points that the fairy is a creature with magical powers and that a fairy is a being of very small size. However, the former dictionary says that fairy looks like a very small person, which is not the same as the latter one. The latter one just says that fairy is one of a class of supernatural beings, which means that it is not always a figure of a person or a particular creature. For me, this seems to be a proper definition of fairy because, it is certain Oberon seems to be a human figure in A Midsummer Night Dream but other fairies are sometimes plants or insects. Furthermore, in The Tempest, Ariel changes himself into a various figures. In short, the definition of fairy is not certain and varies from dictionary to dictionary.

1.1.3. Fairies’ Relationship with Witches from Books

By the way, some special books refer to a fairy as often has a relationship with witches. Sir Walter Scott[8]writes that fairies and witches are narrators of a particular kind and that fairy dealt with in the same status as witches, whose figure is often represented as an old female, in short, a human figure. This seems to me that a fairy is not different from a witch: that is to say, a figure of a fairy is not different from that of a man. He says that fairies and witches sometimes appear together on witchcraft in Scotland and in England of the middle of seventeenth century, about the same time as troubles with Catholicism[9]. Fairies and witches have some common points: that is related to supernatural powers, magic and religious minds. These common points will be quite important to distinguish these creatures and to make clear the relationship between them and what supernatural is.

1.1.4. Origin of Fairies

In ancient Europe, there were many sects in a country, where people believed in minor religions other than Christianity. It is also said in the book that fairy and witch together are the traces of these religions. Many years ago, according to Pennethorne Hughes[10], there were many peoples in Europe. They have their own culture, religion and customs in their society. But one day, Christianity had spread in European countries and the original tradition rooted in the former occupants had been abandoned or, in some instances, was adapted to Christianity, the power of which had been increasing. Their original traditions, customs and religions, however, managed to survive in the custom of the people and the society and in the folktales. Moreover, the rites of the religion had left many customs into the society. Fairies and witches are thought to be the traces of the ruins of those rites abolished as time had gone by. In Ireland, fairies often appeared on the three great festivals: May Eve, A Midsummer Eve and November Eve[11].

These facts show that fairies (in addition to witches) are related to the ancient religion and rite in Europe; in addition, it can be said that they are influenced by Christianity, which had an effect on their religion and rite.

1.1.5. Relationship between Folktales and European Ancient Rites

The relationship between folktales and European ancient rites introduced in a former paragraph has to be mentioned further here. This is mainly about the description of the folklore in Ireland, where fairies are said to have lived until recently in accordance with W.B.Yeats’[12]. He says that in Ireland there are a plenty of tales, where fairies often appear and that they can be classified into some kinds of fairies like Trooping Fairies such as “Merrow” and “Solitary Fairies” such as “Pooka,” “Barshee,” “Leprocaun.”[13] A peasantry views these fairies, thinking that fairies are like “fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost.”[14] A Book of Armagh says that they are “the Gods of the earth”[15] and an Irish antiquarian suggests that they are “the gods of pagan Ireland”[16]. These descriptions show that people in Ireland think of fairies as a very sacred existence on the earth. They are no more a left thing of ancient rites, but they are a kind of god or something from a sacred place and people worship them. This fact may be rooted on the idea of fairy’s mortality. Irish people think that the fairy is immortal, while William Blake, a British poet, regarded it as a mortal being.[17] Therefore, it seems to me that in Britain, fairies disappeared until at least the Renaissance; hence, William Shakespeare had to give them a revised life. This fact seems to mean that fairies can live in people’s minds. In short, if they think a fairy can die, it will die; but if they do not think so, it will not.

1.1.6. Conclusion of the Fairies’ Definition

The three facts mentioned above can be summarized and make a definition of fairy that will be written in this thesis. That is, a fairy is a small existence with magical powers, which has a relationship with an ancient rite or religion, living in folktales or in literatures. This definition shows that in this thesis, fairy must de told not from the viewpoint of folklore but from that of literature. That is to say, they will be explained, by the analyses of its words and actions in some Shakespeare’s works in this thesis.

1.2. Fairies Overall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

When fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are told, there must be at least three classifications made in this chapter: that is, first, about Puck; second, about Oberon’s relationship with other fairies; and third, about fairies whose figure is derived from a plant or an insect.

But before mentioning about these themes, the following hypothesis must be investigated; notably that the existence of fairy is based always upon the situation that is prepares by human beings. This means that the fairy’s existence is relative, associated with human beings. This relativity of the fairy’s existence, or rather the fairy’s relationship with human beings, seems to be the first question of this section.