|
''The Temple at Thatch'' was an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the novel in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments he began a suicide attempt before experiencing what he termed "a sharp return to good sense".〔 In the absence of a manuscript or printed text, the only information as to the novel's subject comes from Waugh's diary entries and later reminiscences. The story was evidently semi-autobiographical, based on Waugh's Oxford experiences. The protagonist was an undergraduate and the work's main themes were madness and black magic. Some of the novel's ideas were incorporated into Waugh's first commercially published work of fiction, the 1925 short story "The Balance", which includes several references to a country house called "Thatch" and, like the novel, is partly structured as a film script. "The Balance" contains characters, perhaps carried over from ''The Temple at Thatch'', who appear by name in Waugh's later fiction. Acton's severe judgement did not deter Waugh from his intention to be a writer, but it affected his belief that he could succeed as a novelist. For a time he turned his attention away from fiction, but with the gradual recovery of his self-confidence he was able to complete his first novel, ''Decline and Fall'', which was published with great success in 1928. ==Background== Evelyn Waugh's literary pedigree was strong. His father, the publisher Arthur Waugh (1866–1943), was a respected literary critic for the ''Daily Telegraph'';〔Hastings, p. 45〕 his elder brother Alec (1899–1981) was a successful novelist whose first book ''The Loom of Youth'' became a controversial best seller in 1917.〔Stannard (1993), pp. 43–45〕 Evelyn wrote his first extant story "The Curse of the Horse Race" in 1910, when he was seven years old. In the years before the First World War he helped to edit and produce a handwritten publication called ''The Pistol Troop Magazine'', and also wrote poems.〔Stannard (1993), pp. 37–40〕 Later, as a schoolboy at Lancing College, he produced a parody of Katherine Mansfield's style, entitled "The Twilight of Language".〔Stannard (1993), p. 70〕 He also tried to write a novel, but soon gave this up to concentrate on a school-themed play, ''Conversion'', which was performed before the whole school in the summer of 1921.〔Stannard (1993), pp. 62–63〕 At Hertford College, Oxford, where Waugh arrived in January 1922 to study history, he became part of a circle that included a number of future writers and critics of eminence—Harold Acton, Christopher Hollis, Anthony Powell and Cyril Connolly, among others. He also formed close personal friendships with aristocratic and near-aristocratic contemporaries such as Hugh Lygon and Alastair Graham, either of whom may have been models for Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's later novel ''Brideshead Revisited''.〔Hastings, p. 484〕 From such companions Waugh acquired the fascination with the aristocracy and country houses that would embellish much of his fictional work. At Oxford Waugh did little work and dedicated himself largely to social pleasures: "The record of my life there is essentially a catalogue of friendships".〔Waugh (''A Little Learning''), p. 190〕 However, he developed a reputation as a skilful graphic artist, and contributed articles, reviews and short stories to both the main university magazines, ''The Isis'' and ''The Cherwell''.〔 One of the ''Isis'' stories, "Unacademic Exercise: A Nature Story", describes the performance of a magical ceremony by which an undergraduate is transformed by his fellows into a werewolf. Waugh's interest in the occult is further demonstrated by his involvement, in the summer of 1924, in an amateur film entitled ''666'', in which he certainly appeared and which he may have written. He appears to have been in a state of some mental confusion or turmoil; analyst Simon Whitechapel cites a letter to a friend, written at this time: "I have been living very intensely the last three weeks. For the past fortnight I have been nearly insane. I am a little saner now."〔〔Amory, p. 12〕 However, most scholars take this as a referring to Waugh's homosexuality rather than black magic. 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「The Temple at Thatch」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|