장정훈 Jung Hoon Jang

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 809-837, 2012

Philip Roth rejects the narrative unity and singularity of the traditional novel and creates instead a multi-levelled, fragmentary, and repetitive narrative. It is not easy to distinguish fact from fiction in The Plot Against America. As an entertaining and creative work of the postmodern historiographic metafiction, Philip Roth`s The Plot Against America interrogates the existence of historically verifiable facts, the validity of authentic and official version of history, and reexamines the narrative conventions of history writing. The aim of this paper is to examine Roth`s narrative experiment or ``thought experiment`` and to explore the intention of creating alternative history in The Plot Against America. Roth does a ``thought experiment`` in The Plot Against America. In this cautionary "what if" political fable, Roth hypothesizes that in 1940 aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, an ardent isolationist who was sympathetic to Hiltler, won the presidency. Jewish communities are stunned and terrified as America flirts with fascism and anti-semitism. Reimagining his children-with considerable fact mixed in with the fiction-Roth narrates an alternative history that has an unsettling plausibility. Roth has constructed a brilliantly telling and disturbing historical prism by which to refract the American psyche as it pertain to the discord of individual, race, history in The Plot Against America. Roth analyzes the life of individual in a historic space, the situation of anti-semitism in world of invisible order, racial conflict between black and white in world of visible order, and the darkest side of national power in this work. Roth`s stories argue for the equality of various cultures grounded on the common notion of humanity, for an ethic of mutual respect, and for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

필립 로스, 사고실험, 『미국에 대한 음모』, 서술, 정치적 우화, 인종 갈등, 상호 공존, 파시즘, 반유대주의, 대안의 역사, 포스트모던, 메타픽션, Philip Roth, "thought experiment," The Plot Against America, narrative, political fable, racial conflict, coexistence, fascism, anti-semitism, alternative history, postmo,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

박현경 Hyun Kyung Park

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 839-858, 2012

This study is to analyze dreams and madness in Don Quixote and Hamlet which makes these two heroes quite identical rather than antithetical. Don Quixote is usually considered to be an idealistic, enthusiastic, and unselfish doer, whereas Hamlet is a skeptical, melancholic, and self-conscious thinker. However, Don Quixote and Hamlet both reveal a heroic desire to embody an ideal world into a reality through their dreams and madness. Based on Freud`s interpretation of the similarities between dream and neurosis, this article focuses on the aspects of Don Quixote`s waking dream and Hamlet`s affected madness to find out their characteristics as new types of heroes. Don Quixote, the waking dreamer, acts like a maniac and tries to remain in a state of madness to sustain the dream world where he wanders to save the weak, the poor, and the deprived. He accepts psychic breakdown as well as physical trauma if only he can do the role of a knight errant. Sleepless Hamlet witnesses the dream world and experiences it tangibly while he hears an order from the murdered King`s ghost. Yet, instead of becoming a neurotic, Hamlet waits for the chance to perform his task to regain the harmony of his family and kingdom. Even on the border of madness, Hamlet does not forsake his own life and duty but dreams in reality and acts without losing his reason. Although there are some apparent outstanding differences between Don Quixote and Hamlet, they have fundamental similarities with each other; Both of them exemplify a new type of hero who desperately tries to fulfill a mad dream to face the suffocating, suspicious, and strange world.

돈키호테, 햄릿, 꿈, 광기, 잠, 죽음, 영웅, Don Quixote, Hamlet, dream, madness, sleep, death, hero,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

조희정 Hee Jeong Cho

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 859-880, 2012

This paper aims at analyzing Robert Southey`s Thalaba the Destroyer in relation to cultural colonialism of the British Romantic period and investigating the ways in which this text portrays the Other through its literary representation of the East. Especially, this paper attempts to show that the Oriental world constructed in Southey`s text reveals the imperial subject`s self-conscious awareness of its unstable relation with the unknown Other. For this purpose, this paper attends to the formal aspects of Thalaba the Destroyer, examining the process by which the reader`s generic expectations about the "epic" undergo complex revisions and frustrations through reading this text. The epic elements contained in Thalaba the Detroyer include the battle between good and evil and the hero`s moral epiphany arising from his struggle against malicious enemies. Yet, Thalaba the Destroyer constantly destabilizes the distinction between self and other by leading the reader to recognize the uncomfortable similarity between the poem`s tyrannical figures and imperialistic monarchs in the Western civilization. Thus, when the hero enacts a revolution against despotism, the resistant power points not only to the imagined false kingdom within the text, but to the core of the real Empire that seeks to construct its own "garden" in the global scene. In addition, Southey`s "panoramic" description of Oriental objects and stories in his footnotes lacks a framing perspective, erasing and de-stabilizing subject/object distinctions. In these footnotes, he exposes his profound attraction to the culture of "Other" and also conveys his aspiration to transforming Eastern myths and stories into profitable literary texts. Southey`s attitude to the East in the footnotes appears to be partially grounded upon the interest of mercantile capitalists of the West, who need to discover potential commodities. Yet, simultaneously, he reveals a sense of moral hesitation about his own desire for the materiality of the East, along with deep anxiety arising from the fear of punishment.

로버트 사우디, 『파괴자 탈라바』, 식민주의, 동양, 서사시, 파노라마, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, colonialism, the East, the epic, the panorama,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

이석구 Suk Koo Rhee

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 881-901, 2012

Since 2006, heated debates have taken place on both sides of the Pacific over the historical accuracy of Yoko Kawashima Watkins`s So Far from the Bamboo Grove, the "historical novel" that depicts the author`s painful escape from the just-liberated Korean peninsula to Japan. This study re-visits the controversies that fired up not only the whole Korean society but also not a few Americans and the American press. However, unlike most previous Korean studies on this novel, this study mostly focuses on both the responses of Korean feminists and those of Americans and the American press to the issue. This paper argues that the Korean feminists, who criticized their male compatriots for their feverish reaction, have the same problem as their compatriots, that is, the problem of seeing through a binary perspective that drowns or blurs individual differences. A similar framework is found operating in the Boston Globe`s articles on the same issue. This study proceeds to discuss the pitfalls of liberalism underlying the American parents` and the American civil organizations` defence of Watkins and analyzes their poor historical awareness. The conclusion of this study is that So Far from the Bamboo Grove, dictated by an ideological prolepsis, erroneously inscribes the Cold War in the geographical space of the pre-Cold-War Korean peninsula and, as a result, symptomatically participates in the United States` anti-Communist world view.

요코 왓킨스, 머나 먼 대나무 숲, 이데올로기적 예변법, 역사, 기억, Yoko Watkins, So Far from the Bamboo Grove, ideological prolepsis, history, memories,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

고부응 Boo Eung Koh

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 903-941, 2012

This essay examines Edward Said`s Culture and Imperialism focusing on the concepts of ``culture,`` ``empire,`` and ``nation``. The approach is critical, theoretical, and historical rather than explicatory. Consequently, the range of the essay is not limited to Said`s own explanation and argument about Western imperialism and its culture presented in the book. In doing this, this essay finally purposes to be a discursive resistance to the current global empire, the United States, via a critical reading of Said`s work. Said`s notion of culture is set upon to disclose the function of culture as an apparatus of ideological consent of the dominated to the dominant. When applied to imperial practice, Western culture functions to subject the colonized to the colonizer. Said`s geographical approach to imperialism complements the historical understanding of imperialism. Imperialism is not only the practice of Western-centered historicism but also the spatially mutual interaction between the West and the rest of the world. Along with European imperialism, Said poses the current global empire of the United States as his main target of criticism. Said`s problem is that he takes the United States as a nation-state. When examined, the United States is not a nation-state, but today`s empire. The empire in the appearance of the nation-state United States does not work for the interest of the American nation, that is, the American people. The empire is the transnational and postnational political and economic institution that works for the interest of global capital. In order to resist the current global empire, this essay suggests that the building or restoration of nation-states with its basic principle of people`s sovereignty is in need.

에드워드 사이드, 레이먼드 윌리엄스, 안토니오 그람시, 마이클 하트, 안토니오 네그리, 『문화와 제국주의』, 문화, 제국, 제국주의, 민족주의, 식민주의, 민족, 민족국가, 자본, Edward Said, Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Culture and Imperialism, culture, empire, imperialism, nationalism, colonial,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

이정희 Chung Hee Lee

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 943-974, 2012

This paper aims to suggest the compromising vision of nature and technology as the solution to get out of the globally accelerated technology environment in Don DeLillo`s Cosmopolis. This novel intends to emphasize on the importance of physical environment as a precondition for the survival of human. Eric wants to be a posthuman with the cybernetic idea, pursuing to be the digital self in a vast biosphere that integrates both the nature and the technology. His obsessive worship of technology through his quest for the futurity results in the effacement of the humanity and the insulation from the nature. Cosmopolis is DeLillo`s first 9/11 novel, which describes a young-billionaire asset manager Eric`s one-day life in New York in April 2000. Eric can be the third Twin Tower as a symbol of global economic hegemony. By the allusion of the 9/11 catastrophic event, it can be said that Eric`s fall is caused by his hubris and avarice as a global capitalist. Crossing the 47th Street toward the West in his limousine, his journey is revealed as the environmental reflections on his desires to attain the futurity and transcendence by technology. This novel cautions that the abuse of technology can bring out the obsolescence and erasure of the humanity and the nature. DeLillo suggests that the best hope for the evolutionary possibility of posthuman can be realized through the correlation with nature and technology. This future-oriented novel warns that the excessive technology should not lead to the disappearance of community and humanity, and the separation of self and nature. It admonishes that they should not follow pseudo-cosmopolitanism as the greedy world citizens, devoting on the velocity of newest technology. This novel recommends that humans should be the world citizen of global ecosystem, making the ameliorative environment through the correlation with self/environment and technology/nature, and gardening the restorative biosphere and the younger planet.

돈 들릴로, 『코스모폴리스』, 기술적 존재로서 인간, 글로벌 자본주의, 정보기술 문화, 환경 비전, 미래성, 포스트휴먼, Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis, homo technologicus, global capitalism, information technology culture, environmental vision, futurity, posthuman,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

장선영 Seon Young Jang

DOI: Vol.58(No.5) 975-999, 2012

This paper interrogates what a new point Schmitt shows concerning the problem of sovereignty in Hamlet or Hecuba in comparison with his Political Theology. Schmitt reveals his political stand on sovereignty through ``political representation`` that connects the politics to the aesthetics in Hamlet or Hecuba since Hamlet is above all aesthetic work as play. He stresses the determining effect of political reality over the play as he links the story of Hamlet to the tragic family of James I and the religious conflicts of the Stuart dynasty. This leads to, on the one hand, supporting the myth of absolute sovereignty by elevating Hamlet to the transcendental and the exceptional status of sovereign. However, Schmitt`s intent over the absolute sovereignty is, on the other hand, demolished with the two shadows that he scrutinized through the couple of Hamlet and James I: first, the suspect that Gertrude(Mary Stuart) was involved in the murder of Hamlet(James I)`s father, and second, the century`s conflicts with religious reformation and civil war. The perils of sovereignty are manifested not only in these two, "the taboo of the Queen," and "the Hamletization of the avenger." It is most of all evidenced in Hamlet itself that subverts the unconditional sovereignty consistently. Hamlet`s selfreflective remarks likening the king to the beggar and the reality of Denmark succession prove that Hamlet`s political discourse is totally different from the politics that accentuates the divine sovereignty.

칼 슈미트,『햄릿, 또는 헤큐바』, 주권, 정치적 재현, 제임스 Ⅰ,『 햄릿』, Carl Suhmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba, Sovereignty, Political Representation, James I, Hamlet,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory