ロバート・メリーとメアリー・ロビンソン : フランス革命と感受性の詩

This study is based on a hypothesis that the concept of sensibility that bridges different nations, sexes, classes to one common humanity is one of the foundations of the principles that brought about the French Revolution. It is a natural consequence that the highly developed form of the poetry of sensibility represented by the Della Cruscans, namely Robert Merry and Mary Robinson, culminated in two major poems celebrating the French Revolution. The revolutionary ideas based on common humanity is also a common feature shared by the major poets of English Romanticism. The thematic analyses of Merry’s The Laurel of Liberty and Robinson’s Ainsi va le Monde reveal that they have in common the features of English Romanticism. In case of Merry’s, it is the meditation on the state of man and society and the hope for overcoming violence, war, and oppression. In case of Robinson’s, it is the idea of freedom as essential to artistic creativity represented in the mythological figure of Prometheus, which is famous for Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Thus by contextualizing the poetic exchange of the two poets from the Della Cruscan movement in the poetry of sensibility and at the same time contextualizing it in the development of English Romanticism, we have a better understanding of the origin of the revolutionary visions in the later English Romantic poets.