|
Port William, Kentucky is a fictional rural town found in each of the novels, short stories, and some poems〔http://brtom.typepad.com/wberry/port-william-the-poetry.html〕 by Wendell Berry. The larger region, set along the western bank of the Kentucky River, consists of Port William proper and several outlying farms and settlements around the also-fictional Dawe's Landing, Squire's Landing, Goforth, and Cotman Ridge. The town is set about "twelve miles or better"〔''Jayber Crow'', 240〕 south of the fictional town of Hargrave and the Ohio River. It is generally acknowledged that Port William is a fiction inspired by Berry's own hometown of Port Royal, Kentucky—and that Hargrave is the fictional form of Carrollton, Kentucky, a larger town located at the confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio rivers.〔http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0051.html〕 Carrollton itself was originally known as Port William.〔Carrollton, Kentucky〕 == The Port William Stories == Each of Berry's fictional works is set in and around Port William. There are to date eight novels, thirty-eight short stories, and seventeen poems that touch on the people and life of the place. The chronology of the tales stretches from 1888 to 2008. Within these stories a reader encounters both momentous and ordinary events in the lives of the Beechum, Feltner, Coulter, and Catlett families, individuals of which, along with others, make up the Port William membership. In his essay "Imagination in Place," Berry comments on his intentions for Port William: "I have made the imagined place of Port William, its neighborhood and membership, in an attempt to honor the actual place where I have lived. By means of the imagined place, over the last fifty years, I have learned to see my native landscape and neighborhood as a place unique in the world, a work of God, possessed of an inherent sanctity that mocks any human valuation that can be put upon it."〔''The Way of Ignorance,'' Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005, 50-51 and ''Imagination in Place,'' Counterpoint, 2010, 15〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Port William (Wendell Berry)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|