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''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', often published as ''1984'', is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949.〔Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition (1996). HarperCollins:New York. p. 734.〕 The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime"〔The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Columbia University Press: 1993, p. 2030.〕 (also a Newspeak word). The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power."〔"Nineteen Eighty-Four," pg 272.〕 The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue in Newspeak), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line.〔The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Sixth Edition. University of Oxford Press: 2000. p. 726.〕 The instructions that the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all documents that have been edited and do not contain the revisions; in this way, no proof exists that the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as ''Big Brother,'' ''doublethink,'' ''thoughtcrime,'' ''Newspeak,'' ''Room 101,'' ''telescreen,'' ''2 + 2 = 5,'' and ''memory hole,'' have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' popularised the adjective ''Orwellian,'' which describes official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.〔 In 2005, the novel was chosen by ''TIME'' magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.〔Grossman, Lev; Lacayo, Richard (6 October 2005). ("ALL-TIME 100 Novels. 1984 (1949), by George Orwell" ). ''Time''. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 19 October 2012〕 It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editor's list, and 6 on the readers' list.〔("100 Best Novels" ). Modern Library. Retrieved 19 October 2012〕 In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.〔("BBC – The Big Read" ). BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 19 October 2012〕 ==History and title== George Orwell "encapsulate() the thesis at the heart of his unforgiving novel" in 1944, the implications of dividing the world up into ''Zones of influence'' that had been conjured by the Tehran Conference and three years later he wrote most of it on the Scottish island of Jura, from 1947 to 1948, despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis.〔Letter to Roger Senhouse, 26 December 1948, reprinted in ''Collected Works:It Is What I Think, p.487〕〔Bowker, Chapter 18. "thesis": pp. 368–9〕 On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was published on 8 June 1949.〔Bowker, pp. 383, 399〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Charles' George Orwell Links )〕 By 1989, it had been translated into sixty-five languages, more than any other novel in English at the time.〔John Rodden. ''The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of "St. George" Orwell''〕 The title of the novel, its themes, the ''Newspeak'' language and the author's surname are often invoked against control and intrusion by the state, while the adjective ''Orwellian'' describes a totalitarian dystopia, characterised by government control and subjugation of the people. Orwell's invented language, Newspeak satirises hypocrisy and evasion by the state: the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) oversees torture and brainwashing, the Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty) oversees shortage and rationing, the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) oversees war and atrocity and the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue) oversees propaganda and historical revisionism. ''The Last Man in Europe'' was an early title for the novel but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between ''The Last Man in Europe'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.〔CEJL, iv, no. 125.〕 Warburg suggested changing the main title to a more commercial one.〔Crick, Bernard. Introduction to ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)〕 In the novel ''1985'' (1978), Anthony Burgess suggests that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War (1945–91), intended to call the book ''1948''. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' reports that Orwell originally set the novel in 1980 but he later shifted the date to ''1982,'' then to ''1984.'' The final title may also be a permutation of 1948, the year of composition.〔''Nineteen Eighty-four,'' ISBN 978-0-14-118776-1; p. xxvii (Penguin)〕 Throughout its publication history, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' has been either banned or legally challenged, as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like Aldous Huxley's ''Brave New World'' (1932), ''We'' (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ''Kallocain'' (1940) by Karin Boye and ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1951) by Ray Bradbury. In 2005, ''Time'' magazine included ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' in its list of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923. Literary scholars consider the Russian dystopian novel ''We'' by Zamyatin to have strongly influenced ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.〔("Freedom and Happiness" ) (a review of ''We'' by Yevgeny Zamyatin) by Orwell, ''Tribune,'' 4 January 1946.〕〔("1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?" ), Paul Owen, ''The Guardian,'' 8 June 2009.〕 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「Nineteen Eighty-Four」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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