Seok Woo Kwon

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 671-688, 2003

One of the troubling facts other than the ambivalent representation of Republican politics and the Spanish Civil War in For Whom the Bell Tolls is the presence of Pablo, who has mostly been interpreted as a coward or a foil to Robert Jordan. Critics thus have rarely shown much interest in Pablo`s smart, intelligent, and thus complex and grave character (57-58, 94-95, 104, 215, 284). Why is Pablo, who was once an intelligent and brave Republican leader, more committed to liquor, his horses. and his safety than to the Republican cause? I believe that Pablo has changed after the massacre of Ayuntamiento (city hall), in that his involvement in this traumatic scene of violence brings on his hysterical impotence as well as his cowardice. Pablo wants his band to be saved from the holocaust of the War and is therefore reluctant to take part in blowing up the bridge, which, if executed, evidently will cause them to be hunted to death. As a realist, Pablo knows that it would not give "all" which Republicans had hoped. Because his agony and sorrow are not understood by Pilar and his band, he has to suppress his realization that war is futile if it is not consummated with a complete victory or defeat. while concealing his true intention of saving people, at least some of his band, under the guise of cowardice and hysteria. Pablo`s realization of the situation of and around the Iberian peninsula is correct. Pablo, for his name sake, "bewares" of foreign influences. Pablo wanted "all or none" ; otherwise, to his knowledge, the intervention of foreign forces would only aggravate the situation more complex entailing more casualties. As Pablo says to Jordan, foreigners "come[sl to destroy" (215). Seen thus, Pablo could be regarded as a Republican nationalist, one who determines his people`s destiny autonomously, or an anarchist like a member of POUM, although his narcissistic act of murdering the persons from other band remains troubling for such a view. Pablo finds himself "too lonely" (390) because nobody except Jordan can understand him and his not-so-cowardly cowardice. If Pablo is in a sense a scapegoat of the Spanish revolution, then the Spanish people to which Pablo belongs are victims of pre-wwII international politics. The importance of the discussion of Pablo`s hysteria is that it can shed light on the trauma of war and, further, demystify the (re)masculinizing and (re)generative myth of war`s violence.

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, male hysteria, nationalism, the Spanish Civil War,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Eun Joo Woo

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 689-705, 2003

Dorothy Allison, at a poor Southern working class woman, may not be a typical American woman. However, she presents a woman / mother character in her novel, Bastard Out Of Carolina (1992), who selects her man over her daughter because she is trapped by the delusion that the man is more important to her than her daughter. Also, she creates a daughter character who is silenced and abused by her mother`s own needs. Even though the daughter, Bone, is abused by her step-father, Glen, she wants to protect her mother, Anney, because she knows that her mother needs Glen. Bone considers that she does something wrong and deserves to be punished, so she tries not to make Glen mad, and she is guilty over her masturbation Yet. when Bone realizes that her mother cares about Glen who plays the role of her "boy" rather than cares about her daughter`s desperate needs, she finally gets angry with her mother and turns away from her. Through this novel, Allison voluntarily speaks out about the previously indescribable and unspeakable conflicts in her own mother / daughter relationship in the capitalist and patriarchal society Writing about her own life means to her the ending of her silence. Also, it means that the author is confident in herself, She becomes brave so that she can explore and explain to the public the memories of her miserable and shameful past. This confidence and courage are the result of the fact that she establishes her own identity and subjectivity. By gaining her own voice, Allison creates the character which represents herself in her fictionalized autobiography, and further she re-creates the character to be her new, and better self.

fictionalized autobiography, mother/daughter bond, silence/voice, sexual abuse, identity,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Hyung Ji Park

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 707-729, 2003

As Edward Said points out, Charles Dickens`s novel Great Expectations poses a critical nexus between the criminal and the colonial, through Magwitch`s use of cash earned in Australia the penal colony in order to fund the making of Pip into an English gentleman. This paper proposes that the plot structure of Great Expectations employs a widely accepted Victorian "separation of spheres" between criminality and Empire on the one hand, and English society on the other, only to reject that separation in the course of the novel. On the level of policy and of imagination, Victorian Britain criminalized Empire in ways ranging from the practice of colonial transportation to literary depiction, and Great Expectations represents, but then ultimateTy exposes as faulty, this desire on the part of a genteel progressive domestic society to relegate the criminal and the colonial to an unacknowledged, regressive past. Pip`s difficult process of recognizing Magwitch as his benefactor in fact parallels Victorian society`s reluctance to acknowledge the criminal and colonial sources of its domestic affluence. This paper investigates these issues by examining Dickens`s personal and biographical interests in criminality and in Empire ; by analyzing Pip`s mirror-identification with Magwitch in the opening scene ; by comparing Pip`s visits to Newgate Prison in Great Expectations with Dickens`s journalistic essays on Newgate in Sketches by Boz ; by addressing the representation of the criminal justice system in Great Expectations ; by considering Magwitch`s Australian penal exile ; and finally by comparing that exile to Pip`s rather different, voluntary Egyptian exile.

criminality, crime, Empire, colonialism, imperialism, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Newgate Prison, penal colony, Australia, Egypt,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Ja Mo Kang

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 731-754, 2003

In Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko gives us a warning that the oppression and exploitation of the weak. including nonhuman nature, has reached an extreme. The victims will begin to rise up against their oppressors who blindly worship a material-centered European culture through revolution and natural disasters. She reveals its greed. selfishness, corrupt capitalism and racism, and warns that the world will soon come to an end unless we recognize and escape from the lies of American ideology that are based on tacit belief in capital and linear progress. In Almanac, Silko proposes Native values which put the land in the center of their world view as an alternative to the false American ideology. Almanac is a political text aiming at changing current American society by cleansing corrupt European ideologies prevalent in it. Judged from this perspective, SiIko`s Almanac is a text of hope for humankind and the natural environment suffering from an absence of ecological justice. for Silko, the ultimate aim of`social transformation is to build an ecologically just society in which all forms of oppression and dominating hierarchical structures vanish. This reflects Silko`s belief that all oppressions are closely related and reinforce each other. The oppression of land and Native Americans are inseparably interconnected, and social justice and ecological justice cannot be discussed separately. For Native Americans, the land is not real estate or simply a space in which people live but the basis of a community`s cultural and economic survival. Therefore, to fight for the environment is the fight to end all forms of interconnected oppression. Almanac is a subversive ecoloaical text which criticizes the oppressive ideologies of colonialism and capitalism which have been revered in Western culture for the last two hundred years. I also argue that Almanac illustrates a way to realize ecological justice as an alternative to destructive Eurocentric culture.

Leslie Marmon Silko, The Almanac of the Dead, Colonialism, Ecocriticism, Environment,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Young Min Kim

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 755-780, 2003

Innovative, Innovative methods and techniques of Canadian poetry try to engage the signifier of the poetic sparks as an open space of polyvalence beneath which the potential signifieds of meaning and signification slide, thereby transforming themselves into sliding signifiers of revolution. History of Canadian literature demonstrates one of the exemplars for the signifying chain of this openness, and we can find the origin of the experimental spirit when we go back and trace the process of defining Canadian literature which was revealed in the history of Canadian literary criticism. My main objective in this paper has been to picture the developmental aspects of duplication and multiplication in contemporary poetry seen from the perspective of Canadian literary criticism. I argue that recent Canadian poetry reflects this fragmentary nature of cultural scene, and that Paul de Man`s and Linda Hutcheon`s concepts of duplication and multiplication provide a theoretical grid for filtering various kinds of methods and techniques in understanding contemporary poetry in Canada. It is my contention that Canadian poetry reflects the ironic and fragmentary narratives of duplication and multiplication revealed in Canadian literary criticism. Margaret Atwood`s and Eli Mandel`s poetry reveal the aspects of the duplication of Canadian poetry, by poetizing ironic aspects of human existence and ironic duplicity of language respectively. In contrast, George Henry Bowering and Robert Kroetsch take over what Atwood and Mandel left behind. They investigate the age-old problematics of form and content, and search for the possibility of multiplication in the forms of allegorical displacement, by experimenting fragmentary forms in their poetry, executing postmodern parody, and deconstructing such monolithic traditional concepts of subject, language, meaning, and image. In addition to Bowering and Kroetsch, there are many other experimental poets who also contribute to the event of the multiplicity in Canadian poetry by means of innovation and experiment. They have made every effort to innovate their poetry in the forms of open form poetry, long poems, continuing poems, and concrete poetry including visual poetry and sound poetry.

Canadian poetry, Margaret Atwood, Eli Mandel, George Bowerig, Experimentalism, open form, Robert Kroetsch,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Yang Sook Shin

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 781-801, 2003

Counter to the argument that "Defoe intended The fortunate Mistress to be a `woman`s novel`" of the late 17th and early 18th century, this article argues the novel should be understood as a dramatic reconstruction of how to keep and manage money as a new way of reaching the very summit of wealth in the contemporary European society. The heroine`s illegitimate love stories being merely a device to provide her with seed money for financial management, the story, despite its erotic frame, is flooded not with sex or sensuality, a notable characteristic of the women`s novels of the period, but with financial details. The contemporary complicated monetary system, institutionalized banks that appeared in Europe but a while ago, private bankers such as goldsmiths and international merchants, safe methods of keeping money at home or of remitting it abroad, financial management techniques that ensure regular earning of interest on sure collateral, etc. ; such contemporary financial details of high interest fill the novel and therefore are noted in this article in connection with the heroine`s money accumulating career. The novel, having been published shortly after the 1720 shocking financial bubbles both in France and England, incorporates the downside as well as the upside of the financial management strategies, thus showing Defoe`s economic views and attitudes which were solider than ever before. The "abrupt" ending, pointed out so often as a problem, is explained away in this article as a natural as well as logical ending when viewed in terms of the contemporary European financial reality.

sex, money, financial management, financial bubbles, abrupt ending,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

E Wha Chung

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 803-821, 2003

Readers of the The Mill on the Floss (1860) still struggle with the novel`s tragic ending and its conflict of interpretations. After having painstakingly developed one of the most complex nineteenth-century heroines, Maggie Tulliver, Eliot deliberately chooses to kill Maggie in a controversial flood that is, arguably, artificial and unprepared for within the tightly knit narrative structure of the novel. Thus, not only recent critics but also Eliot herself has had to defend her choice of a flood ending of The Mill. Eliot argues that because characters are not simply made but rather evolve from constant interaction with others and circumstances, the very principle of Maggie`s character defies an absolute and definitive end that a plot requires. The seemingly unconvincing tragic flood, then, serves as a means of breaking out of the restrictive form of the novel, thereby allowing Eliot to remain true to her heroine and allowing Maggie to achieve the understanding she most desires. Maggie`s death, then, allows Eliot to provide space for hope with a mythical flood that does not artificially end with the novel. It is the purpose of this paper to examine and better understand Eliot`s ending, which serves as the author`s answer to thr impending threats of St. Ogg`s and an ending that exceeds the restraints of the novel itself.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, flood, evolution, web structure, destiny, fate,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Hyon U Lee

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 823-843, 2003

The Hollywood Shakespeare boom has been lasting since 1990s. By the way, Hollywood Shakespeare films themselves do not show us enough proper evidence to prove the commercial or industrial logic causing this storming boom of Shakespeare. Even Shakespeare in Love, the most successful one in box office records, is ranked 222 among the top grossing movies of all time at the U.S. box office. This film`s box office rank is far below There`s Something About Mary (51), Three Men and a Baby (59), Sister Act (99), You`ve Got Mail (158), and Driving Miss Daisy (186), which are comparatively small works. Additionally, most box office records of Hollywood Shakespeare films except Romeo+juliet and Rome Must Die, are just 1%-20% of Shakespeare in Love. If so, why is Hollywood so obsessed with making Shakespeare movies? Hollywood Shakespeare films remind me of the classic fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and The Little Mermaid. Many people, probably most children in the world would unconsciously recall Walt Disney`s animation characters and the adapted stories if they were asked about those fairy tales. And this very unconsciousness should be the greatest property of Walt Disney. This paper aims to analyze the realities and strategies of Hollywood`s collective Americanization and Hollywoodization of Shakespeare from the 1990s to the present, centering on William Shakespeare`s Romeo+juliet, Shakespeare in Love, and Romeo Must Die. These three Romeo and Juliet adaptation films, which were released at intervals of two years and are ranked as the big three of Hollywood Shakespeare box office, reveal the qualities or strategies of Hollywood Shakespeare films in more evident ways than the others, and provide some meaningful clues to tell each evolutionary stage of Hollywood`s strategies about Shakespeare or of the Hollywood Shakespeare boom. As a result, this paper deduces the expected effects of the Hollywood Shakespeare boom in the name of "Hollywood Conspiracy about Shakespeare."

Shakespeare, Hollywood, conspiracy, Americanization, Globalization,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Seok Won Yang

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 845-870, 2003

The Hollywood Shakespeare boom has been lasting since 1990s. By the way, Hollywood Shakespeare films themselves do not show us enough proper evidence to prove the commercial or industrial logic causing this storming boom of Shakespeare. Even Shakespeare in Love, the most successful one in box office records, is ranked 222 among the top grossing movies of all time at the U.S. box office. This film`s box office rank is far below There`s Something About Mary (51), Three Men and a Baby (59), Sister Act (99), You`ve Got Mail (158), and Driving Miss Daisy (186), which are comparatively small works. Additionally, most box office records of Hollywood Shakespeare films except Romeo+juliet and Rome Must Die, are just 1%-20% of Shakespeare in Love. If so, why is Hollywood so obsessed with making Shakespeare movies? Hollywood Shakespeare films remind me of the classic fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and The Little Mermaid. Many people, probably most children in the world would unconsciously recall Walt Disney`s animation characters and the adapted stories if they were asked about those fairy tales. And this very unconsciousness should be the greatest property of Walt Disney. This paper aims to analyze the realities and strategies of Hollywood`s collective Americanization and Hollywoodization of Shakespeare from the 1990s to the present, centering on William Shakespeare`s Romeo+juliet, Shakespeare in Love, and Romeo Must Die. These three Romeo and Juliet adaptation films, which were released at intervals of two years and are ranked as the big three of Hollywood Shakespeare box office, reveal the qualities or strategies of Hollywood Shakespeare films in more evident ways than the others, and provide some meaningful clues to tell each evolutionary stage of Hollywood`s strategies about Shakespeare or of the Hollywood Shakespeare boom. As a result, this paper deduces the expected effects of the Hollywood Shakespeare boom in the name of "Hollywood Conspiracy about Shakespeare."

Howells, realism, totality, representation, capitalism,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Byong Hyon Choi

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 871-882, 2003

Division is one of the essential characteristics of Tennyson`s poetry and poetics, and it is manifest in all aspects of his work: structure, character, theme, ideology, and style. Its main importance, however, lies ultimately in its signifying function that produces a plurality of textual interpretations. Division calls for endless interpretations and reinterpretations, and eventually produces a kind of textual metaphor, a critical open space emrhasized by post-structuralists and deconstructionists. This particular aspect of division has been either misunderstood or ignored. Tennyson`s division was often treated as a sign of his artistic failure as well as a weakness of his moral character. The division and disunity notably manifest in the text of In Memoriam is certainly not an exception. However, it can be argued that Tennyson`s division, approached from a post-structural perspective, can be seen as the poet`s strategy for securing his "negative capability," the capacity to be "in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Thus it deters moral didacticism characteristic of conservative Victorian society, producing poetry with more sophisticated and profounder artistic significance. Despite the critical developments over the decades, the notion of Tennyson`s division still appears problematic. While our reception of Tennyson`s division has overcome the old prejudice, it still lacks a clear conceptualization. Tennyson`s division needs to be seen as the essence of his poetics or creative principle, and its main objective is to produce the openness of textual interpretation.

textual, unity, division, structure, interpretation,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Dal Yong Kim

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 883-904, 2003

Ezra Pound suggested the necessity of reviving the Greek mystery of Eleusis to seek a source of enlightened consciousness in the modern age. Dionysiac vitality and exhilaration are intrinsic to his interest in ancient mystery cults, Bacchic festivals, and other irrational rituals. Pound`s struggling progress from the sense of cultural crisis to the experience of mystical illumination underscores Nietzsche`s insight into the Dionysiac myth as a sacred primordial site of life. Pound and Nietzsche believed that the Dionysian cults, which led the initiated to generate ecstasy, euphoria, and intensity of will, could help moderns snap out of the impotence, inanition, and sterilization of the modern world. Pound`s poetry attempts to recapture the Dionysian numens as embodiments of eternal processes in nature and makes his poetic world numinous by foregrounding the presence of Dionysus in all animals (particularly cats), plants, and trees. Nietzsche proposed the "will to power" and the "eternal recurrence" as the Dionysian concepts of nature that he expected to transform the consciousness of modem humans and the structure of Western culture. The mysteries of Eleusis basically mime nature`s reproductive process that employs the occult idea of sexual illumination and ritualistic initiations. The discussion of Pound`s occultism in terms of Nietzsche`s Dionysian vitalism results in identifying the occult images from ancient mystical remains as expressing the religious intelligence and sensibility of discovering and creating divinity in nature.

Modernism, Occultism, Dionysianism, Vitalism, Eleusinian Mysteries,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jae H. Roe

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 905-920, 2003

Carlos Bulosan`s autobiographical novel .America Is in the Heart revises American history from the perspective of a Filipino immigrant. After the Philippines became a U.S. colony following the Spanish-American War in 1898, there was continued resistance against the U.S. and the ruling classes of the Philippines. The peasants were the leaders of this resistance, and Bulosan, as the son of a poor peasant, experienced this history of oppression and struggle. Part One records this experience, and reveals the disparity between the American ideals of freedom and democracy and the reality of colonial domination. Such disparity between the ideals and reality of the U.S. becomes the central theme of the novel. In the U.S., Bulosan becomes a migrant worker and later participates in movements against economic exploitation and racial discrimination. Through this process, he comes to believe that the gap between the ideals of freedom and democracy and the reality of the U.S. is caused by capitalism and racism, and that the ideals of America can only be realized through class struggle. The "America" to which the title refers is not the reality of America but this radical ideal that America represents for Bulosan. In other words, the America in his heart is a sign of an ideal that does not exist in reality but must be realized. From Part Two to Part Four, Bulosan records the pain and suffering experienced by the Filipinos in the U.S., but maintains his hope that the ideals represented by America can be realized. The claim that America is in the heart is an expression of this hope. In order to discuss the historical and political context of America Is in the Heart, this essay quotes from various sources that deal with the history of the Philippines, the relationship between the Philippines and the U.S., the history of Filipino immigrants, the oppression and struggles of migrant workers in California, and so on.

Asian-American literature, Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart, immigration, colonialism, race, class, labor movement,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jie Ae Yu

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 921-934, 2003

It is a little known fact that Lord Byron, who is mainly regarded as a poet, composed eight closet dramas between 1816 and 1823. Despite the fact that these plays demonstrate a considerable amount of dramatic skill, both Romantic and modem critics have largely identified their characters with Byron himself, This stereotypical perception of the poet`s private life, known as the Byronic myth, has led many critics to presume that the protagonists of his dramas are little more than self-portraits, and hence to dismiss the objectivity which Byron achieves through his use of plot structure, theme, ideas and various dramatic techniques. Byron`s historical tragedy, The Two Foscari (written and published in1823), is based upon the tragic lives of an aristocratic father and son who lived in Venice in the fourteenth century. The play`s dramatic subject is the conflict between the Foscaris` sense of duty and patriotism, and the opposing tyranny of the Venetian oligarchy. In portraying this clash, Byron explores ideas of individual will, reason, patriotism, and public responsibility developed by Stoic philosophers such as cicero, Seneca, and Montaigne. At the same time, Byron is alert to the dilemma and limitations of stoic philosophy, which prohibits the expression of emotions. This crucial aspect of the play is embodied by the dramatic contrast which Byron sets up between the emotionally controlled Foscaris and the antithetical figures Marina and Loredano, who are ruled by their passions. Byron thus draws upon contemporary dramas about passion, in particular, those written by Joanna Baillie. Byron`s dramatic skill is further evident during key moments in the play when he interweaves silence and speech. In The Two Foscari Byron also seeks to transcend the limitations of Romantic theater, which tended to be frivolous and melodramatic. He perceived that the contemporary stage lacked the potential to display the subtleties of ideas, theme, and characters` interior worlds. Avoiding the faults of stage representation, Byron makes best use of the freedom of his chosen dramatic form. Lastly, the play also challenges conventional misconceptions about the depth of Byron`s religious and moral feelings.

suppressed passions, patriotic ardor, will, stoicism, dramatic interplay,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Young Cho Lee

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 935-954, 2003

The studies of Shakespeare`s romance The Tempest in large part have been traditionally conducted with a focus on its aesthetic or imperialistic perspective. In doing so, however, they have failed to notice the workings of politics between Shakespeare`s The Tempest and King James 1. If we shift our focus on to the perspective of cultural materialist criticism, we will be able to find new avenues of interpretations. The purpose of this study is to explore the politics in The Tempest in the social, historical, and cultural contexts and examine how the genre of romance effectively represents a particular political ideology. Based on cultural materialism, firstly, I explore how The Tempest reinforces the political ideology of King James I as ideological medium. Secondly, I examine how The Tempest demystifies the absolute power of James I as a sphere of public resistance. Finally, I investigate how The Tempest presents a vision of utopia as a historical venue for cultural practice. The Tempest represents effectively King James I`s political ideology onstage. The stage of the representation reveals the relationships of power and the theatrical discourse affects subversion on the representation of the authority. Shakespeare represents the appropriation of a political ideology by way of images of magic and the tempest. Through the discourse, Shakespeare focuses on the forms of representation by which subversive as well as utopian visions are realised. The Tempest, thus, is not only a space where power is contained, but it also is a space of public resistance as well as a historical space for cultural practice. Through the dramatic genre of the romance that breaks from the tradition of typical literary genres, Shakespeare presents us the needs for social change. The tempest in this work, therefore, is a necessary disturbance that speaks for the crisis of the times and serves as a strong cause of social reform.

romance, representation, cultural materialism, discourse, utopia, absolutism, ideology, appropriation,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jong Seok Kim

DOI: Vol.49(No.4) 955-979, 2003

The aim of this paper is to analyze the nature of main characters` vision in Joseph Conrad`s Under Western Eyes and to examine how vulnerable they are to narcissistic, or self-centered, imagining. Consistent with the title of the novel, the text is full of references to the "eyes" and the vision of almost every character. Razumov, the protagonist of the novel, experiences illusions and hallucinations as a result of betraying his alter ego. At the same time that he feels guilty about the crime he has committed, Razumov lives in fear of being kept under constant surveillance. Razumov gives himself up to a "morbidly vivid vision" by projecting his own fear and guilt onto the world around him. As he imagines the moral consequences of his crime in everything he sees, Razumov`s visual perception becomes distorted. Much like the protagonist, the narrator of the novel shows an equally limited vision, His short-sighted approach to people and events causes him to miss the point of Razumov`s confession scene. Owing to his romantic illusion, the narrator sees the confession scene as a love scene, failing to achieve any sympathetic, imaginative, or intuitive understanding of the most critical event in the narrative. Of special importance is the fact that the problem of illusion is not restricted to the novel`s protagonist and narrator alone ; it is also true of the novel`s other main characters. For them, the world is like "a blank page" on which they project their own ideas, hopes, prejudices, and desires. Locked in his subjective and narcissistic perception, each character creates for himself a vision of the world in his own image, shaping it into the mould his distinctive imagination invents. The question of illusion proves to be ubiquitous and inevitable, exemplifying "the invincible nature of human error." One of the implications of the Conradian characters` limited and distorted views of the world is modernist fiction`s interest in perspectivism. Conrad`s condemnation of their very one-sided perceptions of reality is indicative of perspectivism, which is the widely used modernist technique of portraying characters, objects, and events from different perspectives or points of view. Modernist writers` concern with perspectivism reflects their aesthetic view that they can create a more authentic or original representation of reality, if they develop their sense of perspectivism further.

Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, vision, illusion, perspectivism,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory