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''Regeneration'' is a historical and anti-war novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1991. The novel was a Booker Prize nominee and was described by the ''New York Times Book Review'' as one of the four best novels of the year in its year of publication.〔Westman 65–68.〕 It is the first of three novels in the ''Regeneration Trilogy'' of novels on the First World War, the other two being ''The Eye in the Door'' and ''The Ghost Road'', which won the Booker Prize in 1995. The novel was adapted into a film by the same name in 1997 by Scottish film director Gillies MacKinnon and starring Jonathan Pryce as Rivers, James Wilby as Sassoon and Jonny Lee Miller as Prior.〔 The film was successful in the UK and Canada, receiving nominations for a number of awards.〔 The novel explores the experience of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. Inspired by her grandfather's experience of World War I, Barker draws extensively on first person narratives from the period. Using these sources, she created characters based on historical individuals present at the hospital including poets and patients, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and psychologist W. H. R. Rivers, who pioneered treatments of posttraumatic stress disorder during and after WWI. The title of the novel refers to Rivers' research into "nerve regeneration". Barker also includes fictional characters, based on the larger cultural experience of the period, including an officer who grew up in the lower classes, Billy Prior, and his girlfriend and munitionette, Sarah Lumb. The novel is thematically complex, exploring the effect of the War on identity, masculinity, and social structure. Moreover, the novel draws extensively on period psychological practices, emphasising River's research as well as Freudian psychology. Through the novel Barker enters a particular tradition of representing the experience of World War I in literature: many critics compare the novel to other , especially those written by women writers interested in the domestic repercussions of the war, including Rebecca West's ''The Return of the Soldier'' (1918) and Virginia Woolf's ''Mrs. Dalloway'' (1925). Barker both drew on those texts of the period that initially inspired her and makes references to a number of other literary and cultural works and events. These give an impression of historical realism, even though Barker tends to refute the claim that the novel is "historical fiction". ==Background and inspiration== Barker had long appreciated the literary figures she draws inspiration from in the novel: she read the World War I poetry of Sassoon and Owen as well as Rivers' ''Conflict and Dream'' in her youth.〔Westman 17〕 However, Barker directly attributes the immediate inspiration for ''Regeneration'' to her husband, a neurologist familiar with the writings of Dr. W.H.R. Rivers and his experiments with nerve regeneration.〔 In a 2004 interview with literary critic Rob Nixon in the journal ''Contemporary Literature'', Barker also states she wrote the novel, in part, as a response to how her earlier fiction was being received; she said, Other interviews also emphasise her memories of her grandfather's stories about his experience.〔Westman 18.〕 In her "Author's Note" for the novel, she describes the research which she used to create the novel, and how she drew on a number of sources from different period authors. The novel draws considerable inspiration from historical events. Literary critic Greg Harris describes her use of historical circumstances and historical source materials as largely, " "true" to the extent that the lives of the real-life characters, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves, did intertwine."〔 Moreover, Harris argues that Barker accurately captures the psychological situation in which the characters, especially the literary characters, were producing their poetry.〔 French literary critic Marie-Noëlle Provost-Vallet highlights different misinterpretations and anachronistic cultural references supporting a critique of the novel by blogger and critic Esther MacCallum-Stewart.〔Provost-Vallet 23–25〕 However, she also notes the novel accurately assesses other parts of the historical context, such as the treatment of the World War I poets' and their poetic process.〔 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「Regeneration (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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