@article{oai:dwcla.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002203,
 author = {風間, 末起子 and Makiko, KAZAMA},
 journal = {Asphodel},
 month = {Jul},
 note = {application/pdf, AN00000289-20210724-13, Margaret Drabble’s eighth novel, The Ice Age (1977) is a challenging work in which she attempts to take some new lines in writing. IA is remarkably different from her previous seven novels in the sense that it makes a difficult departure from her writing of novels of manners based on describing everyday life with a touch of humour.
First of all, the major character is not female but male. Although Drabble has been labeled as “a women’s writer,” and she had been focused on female characters since her first novel, A Summer Bird-Cage (1963), IA is a story about a male figure, Anthony Keating.
Second, the social background of this novel is the economic recession of the 1970s UK. Anthony is a typical middle-class son of an Anglican archbishop in northern England, a graduate of a public school, and an Oxford dropout. He thrusts himself into the trade of property development so that he can avoid a gentleman’s profession expected by social class conventions. As a result, he finds himself involved in the economic stagnation of the first half of the 1970s and also experiences a great depression meandering through a dangerous realm of physical and mental bankruptcies.
Third, Anthony’s mental record is traced through some architectural landmarks such as a cathedral, a gasometer, and a sweet factory; he can merge the present with the past and circulate
through both by perusing the present situations overlapped on past memory and history just as if reading a palimpsest. At the same time, a major character’s viewpoint is linked with that of the other characters in order to comprehend what he/she feels; this shift functions as a means to embody multiple viewpoints.
Fourth, in this novel Anthony Keating finally relies on religious belief, a belief in God, through reading Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (AD 525) when he is at a halt and fails in connecting past, present and future. Although many of Drabble’s main characters attempt to unite human free will with an irrational fate, Anthony declares the convergence between a free will and Providence, instead of the reconciliation between a free will and absurdity which is pursued in many of her novels.
On the whole, IA can be seen as a sort of trial work followed by a next masterpiece, The Middle Ground (1980), which further develops ingenuity, artistry, and skill. In this article, I’d like to examine IA to exemplify how Drabble tries to explore a new direction in her writing., 論文},
 pages = {13--39},
 title = {記憶のパリンプセストとその先へ：ドラブルのThe Ice Age（1977）の考察},
 volume = {56},
 year = {2021},
 yomi = {カザマ, マキコ}
}