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Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television. The development of nautical fiction follows with the development of the English language novel and while the tradition is mainly British and North American, there are also significant works from literatures in Japan, France, Scandinavia,〔Ray Taras, "A Conversation with Carsten Jensen", ''World Literature Today'', May 2011: ()〕 and other Western traditions. Though the treatment of themes and settings related to the sea and maritime culture is common throughout the history of western literature, nautical fiction, as a distinct genre, was first pioneered by James Fenimore Cooper (''The Pilot'', 1824) and Frederick Marryat (''Frank Mildmay'', 1829 and ''Mr Midshipman Easy'' 1836) at the beginning of the 19th century. There were 18th century and earlier precursors that have nautical settings, but few are as richly developed as subsequent works in this genre. The genre has evolved to include notable literary works like Herman Melville's ''Moby Dick'' (1851), Joseph Conrad's ''Lord Jim'' (1899–1900), popular fiction like C.S. Forester's Hornblower series (1937–67), and works by authors that straddle the divide between popular and literary fiction, like Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (1970–2004). Because of the historical dominance of nautical culture by men, they are usually the central characters, except for works that feature ships carrying women passengers. For this reason, nautical fiction is often marketed for men. Nautical fiction usually includes distinctive themes, such as a focus on masculinity and heroism, investigations of social hierarchies, and the psychological struggles of the individual in the hostile environment of the sea. Stylistically, readers of the genre expect an emphasis on adventure, accurate representation of maritime culture, and use of nautical language. Works of nautical fiction often include elements overlapping with other genres, including historical fiction, adventure fiction, war fiction, children's literature, travel narratives (such as the Robinsonade), the social problem novel and psychological fiction. ==Definition== What constitutes nautical fiction or sea fiction, and their constituent naval, nautical or sea novels, depends largely on the focus of the commentator. Conventionally sea fiction encompasses novels in the vein of Marryat, Conrad, Melville, Forester and O'Brian: novels which are principally set on the sea, and immerse the characters in nautical culture.〔 Typical sea stories follow the narrative format of " a sailor embarks upon a voyage; during the course of the voyage he is tested - by the sea, by his colleagues or by those that he encounters upon another shore; the experience either makes him or breaks him."〔 Some scholars chose to expand the definition of what constitutes nautical fiction. However, these are inconsistent definitions: some like Bernhard Klein, choose to expand that definition into a thematic perspective, he defines his collection "Fictions of the Sea" around a broader question of the "Britain and the Sea" in literature, which comes to include 16th and 17th maritime instructional literature, and fictional depictions of the nautical which offer lasting cultural resonance, for example Milton's ''Paradise Lost'' and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".〔 Choosing not to fall into this wide of a definition, but also opting to include more fiction than just that which is explicitly about the sea, John Peck opts for a broader maritime fiction, which includes works like Jane Austen's ''Mansfield Park'' (1814) and George Eliot's ''Daniel Deronda'' (1876), that depict cultural situations dependent on the maritime economy and culture, without explicitly exploring the naval experience.〔Peck, "Introduction" 1-9.〕 However, as critic Luis Iglasius notes, when defending the genesis of the sea novel genre by James Fenimore Cooper, expanding this definition includes work "tend() to view the sea from the perspective of the shore" focusing on the effect of a nautical culture on the larger culture or society ashore or focusing on individuals not familiar with nautical life.〔 For the sake of this article, and to limit its scope this article focuses on the narrower, shared definitions of sea or maritime literature which focus on the limited sea/nautical novel and the fiction that grows out of that set of generic expectations and avoids broader definitions of "sea novels" which focus on thematic discussions of nautical topics in culture. In so doing, this article highlights what critics describe as the more conventional definition for the genre, even when they attempt to expand its scope.〔〔〔 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「Nautical fiction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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