Franco Moretti

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 3-19, 2014

“Operationalizing” refers to a process which is absolutely central to the new field of computational criticism, and of the digital humanities. It means building a bridge from the concepts of literary theory, through some form of quantification, to literary texts. The concept of “characterspace,” coined by Alex Woloch in The One vs. The Many, smoothly into “word-space”.“the number of words allocated to a particular character”. and, by counting the words each character utters, we can determine how much textual space it occupies. Measurement does not lead from the world, via quantification, to the constructions of theories; if anything, it leads back from theories, through data, to the empirical world. The measurement of character-space undermines the older notion, replacing it ith the idea of a conflict arising near the center of the network. In this context, this paper attempts to demonstrate how the unprecedented empirical power of digital tools and archives offers a unique chance to rethink the categories of literary study. Digital humanities may not yet have changed the territory of the literary historian, or the reading of individual texts; but operationalizing has certainly changed, and radicalized, our relationship to concepts: it has raised our expectations, by turning concepts into magic spells that can call into being a whole world of empirical data; and it has sharpened our skepticism. A theory-driven, data-rich research program has become imaginable, thanks to this enterprise of operationalizing.

distant reading, less is more, operationalizing, characterspace, network,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Margaret Kelleher

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 21-36, 2014

While recent years have seen the availability of some truly innovative digital resources in the international field of literary studies, there is yet little sustained investigation, reflection or critique by humanities scholars of the new forms of knowledge thus generated, or of the new scales and types of research made possible, or of the new kinds of intellectual brokerage which may be necessary to link digital and analogue resources. The current debate concerning distant and close reading offers an opportunity to advance this necessary wider analysis. The chosen case study is the recently completed online resource Guide to Irish Fiction: 1650- 1900, accessible at http://www.lgif.ie (PI Margaret Kelleher), an electronic version of the Loebers` Guide to Irish Fiction, a bibliography of some 5,000 titles. This project provides a concrete example of the challenges and opportunities presented by distant reading, and relatedly by new developments in digital humanities, to the field of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Irish fiction and to the established canon of Irish fiction. The paper situates this project in the context of current debates on the research significance of macroanalyses and distant readings, with specific reference to the potential gains for previously neglected domains of national literatures.

digital humanities, Irish literature, macroanalysis, distant reading, interaction,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Ralph Bauer

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 37-57, 2014

Recent scholarship has emphasized the prominent role that natural history played among early modern literary genres. Less attention has been paid, however, to the crucial role that the translation from Spanish texts about the New World played in the making of this early modern genre. This paper will begin to address this lacuna by focusing on the natural histories written by the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557). Despite his marginalization by modern historians of science, Oviedo was the first point of reference for all subsequent writers about the New World, the “modern Pliny.” The transmission of his works into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, especially, provide a crucial link in the history of modern science and the Scientific Revolution. Thus, Oviedo`s La Natural hystoria de las Indias (1526) was the earliest sustained European treatment of the natural environment of the Caribbean, and it was also one of the most influential in a long early modern tradition of natural history writing about the New World, going through multiple Spanish editions and being translated into Italian, English, and French. This paper focuses on the legacy of Oviedo`s natural historical writing in the English context, beginning with Richard Eden`s 1555 translation and its many readers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the painter John White to the president of the Royal Society of London, Hans Sloane.

natural history, literary genre, Gonzalo Fernandez de Ovideo, New World, scientific revolution,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Ira Nadel

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 59-76, 2014

What is the nature and reliability of facts in biography? Are they closer to the accuracy of fingerprints or the interpretative power of photographs? Beginning with Boswell`s first meeting with Dr. Johnson and Isaiah Berlin`s encounter with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, this paper analyses the reliability of biographical fact and the importance of the biographer in filtering or distorting information. Through examples ranging from the 18th to 20th centuries, the paper analyzes how the crossing of the record with its interpretation establishes the narrative force of fact in the effort to reveal biographical truth. This is essentially a search for coherence in the life of the subject, something the reader desires and the biographer creates. The double act of the biography, identifying as it analyzes, is set against the reliability or not of the source information. Fingerprints are particularly confirmatory but their history reveals early skepticism regarding their accuracy which is being questioned even today. Photography, mixing the documentary with the interpretative, suffered a similar fate: it began as a sure form of identity used by legal authorities but by the beginning of the 20th century, it turned into an art form. Its reliability came under scrutiny as its practice became theorized. Susan Sontag`s remark in Regarding the Pain of Others that “to photograph is to frame and to frame is to exclude” is especially helpful in analyzing the immediacy of photographic records which always document incompletely. The impact of these critical perspectives on the nature of biography and possible new ways of telling a life drawing on the visualization of narrative, shape the final section of the paper.

biography, photograph, fingerprints, facts, narrative,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jason Barker

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 77-89, 2014

Globalization of contemporary literature raises the prospect of ethics in the name of alterity. Through cultural pluralism comes the responsibility on writers and readers alike to recognize and respect difference, or otherness. This article highlights the difficulties of constructing an ethic founded on such assumptions, which over the years has drawn theoretical inspiration from the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, often in an attempt to attest to the trauma and suffering of the post-colonial age. The philosopher Simon Critchley is arguably a promoter of such a reading of Lacan, and of a “structural homology” between Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, on ethical questions. But such an ethic is inconsistent, arguably ending up as an apology for the political states of affairs that generate trauma and suffering in the first place. This article attempts to correct certain key misunderstandings of Lacan`s work, with reference to Lacan`s Imaginary, Symbolic and Real orders of the psyche, whichalso correspond to consecutive phases of his overall teaching of psychoanalysis. Reference is also made to the work of Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault respectively as welcome antidotes to the messianic pretensions of Levinasian ethics, and in order to point the way towards a-signifying theories of literature. There is ultimately a passage in Lacan`s work through the Symbolic and Real orders of the psyche, from the concept of “signifier” to the “letter,” and in conclusion the article speculates, albeit tentatively, that here one might find the theoretical resources for a “rubbish theory of literature,” one that would seek to divorce literature from the art of pathos and the ethics of the self and its other.

ethics, Lacan, Other, Real, subject,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Nobuyuki Hino

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 91-106, 2014

In the age of globalization, languages leave the hands of their native speakers. This trend is especially conspicuous with English today, sometimes referred to as “Englishes,” symbolizing the linguistic and cultural diversity in the three circles of English.the Inner Circle (e.g. British English), the Outer Circle (e.g. Indian English), and the Expanding Circle (e.g. Korean English). While the traditional teaching of English based on Anglo-American values should certainly continue in its own right, substantial changes are required when the purpose of English language education is focused on international communication. This paper discusses how English may be taught as a lingua franca beyond the linguistic and cultural framework of native speakers, as to the issues of materials, methodologies, and models. In short, the content of teaching materials needs to reflect the diversity of English including non-native varieties. Methodologies for teaching English should also be accommodated in accordance with local sociocultural factors. Most significantly, models of English will be liberated from native speaker norms for free expression of indigenous values. As concrete examples of such pedagogical practice, the author`s efforts to teach de-Anglo-Americanized English are presented. They include a weekly radio talk-show program between non-native speakers of English for which he served as the host, as well as his current university classes where real-time news across the world are used as authentic materials to enable the students to participate in the community of users of English as an international language.

English as an International Language, EIL, World Englishes, WE, English as a Lingua Franca, ELF, de-Anglo-Americanization of English, EIL education,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Young Jin Chung

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 107-129, 2014

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to bring into focus the insights that early modern studies of vision provide for the period`s shift in understanding perception and its relationship with embodiment; second, to extend these insights beyond disciplinary boundaries and locate John Webster`s stagecraft within this changing intellectual and cultural context. The early modern period marked unprecedented developments in visual technology. The inventions and improvements in handling perspective cast light on the problem of perception by making people aware of optical oddities and inconstancies. By tracing how art, philosophy, and literature created, responded to, and appropriated occasions of visual fallibility, I show the extent to which both fascination and suspicion of the eye, the time-honored medium of acquiring knowledge, contributed to paradigmatic changes in early modern epistemology. I examine the history of perspective in art as a revealing example of how theories, practices, and technologies of science and art dynamically interplayed and gave force to the rise of early modern discourses of sight, including skepticism, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Then, by taking a close look at two moments from The White Devil, that is, the dumb shows in 2.2 and Isabella`s ghost in 4.1, I argue that Webster with his complex stagecraft accommodates spectacles of vulnerable spectatorship fallen into the rupture between knowledge and visibility. Staging the failure in recovering the pure observation of reality and its simulation, Webster shares the sustained early modern awareness of the problematic relationship between perception and embodiment.

The White Devil, knowledge and visibility, perception and embodiment, technology of vision, spectatorship,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jen Hui Bon Hoa

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 131-143, 2014

In “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy`s Day, being the shortest day” John Donne undertakes his most original exploration of alchemy, a privileged metaphor for the poet`s craft. As critics have noted, “Nocturnal” tends towards annihilation rather than regeneration and thus, they suggest, inverts or subverts the alchemical process. This interpretation, I contend, tells only half the story. Through a close reading of the poem, I show that Donne develops a metaphysics of absence in order to advance rather than reverse the process of alchemical distillation, ultimately to articulate a purity that transcends matter itself. Engaging with Derrida`s theories of extreme or undialectical negativity, I argue that the poet explores his grief by drawing himself further into the darkness towards an indeterminacy beyond the opposition of presence and absence, life and death. Against the convention of reading “Nocturnal” in terms of a redemptive work of mourning, I propose that, rather than seeking to return to familiarity after the experience of extremity, the poet tarries with this extreme negativity and allows his notion of existence to be transformed by it.

John Donne, “Nocturnal,” alchemy, Derrida, negativity,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jung Pil Park

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 145-167, 2014

Presupposing a postmodern tinge, Fowles`s The French Lieutenant`s Woman revisits the scientific milieu of the Victorian period, and displays complicated approaches to it, criticizing and reappropriating them in parallel fashion. Fowles, first of all, highlights science`s defects in the ontological and epistemological dimensions including solidification, paranoiac omniscience, exploitation, and the transgression of unintelligibility. The fossilization that science affords constrains dynamic momentum, multiple potentials, and fictive narratives. The ambition of science to project its intelligibility on every subject around it develops its subtle maneuvers to formulate and contain all objects. Scientific epistemology encroaches on the singular domain of inarticulateness, causing the confrontation between scientific categorization and indeterminate indecipherability, which is materialized through two different visions of protagonists Charles and Sarah: the one inquisitive, definitive, or possessive; the other filled with unintelligibility. However, Fowles does not ignore the positive traits of science. Darwinism, despite its residual conservatism, nurtures such revolutionary motifs as can destabilize other established principles and structures. The deliberate and collected rhythm derived from the methodicality of the scientific procedures reduces the bewildering rapidity of contemporary lifestyles. The universality that the vast majority of Victorian scientists treasured can supersede the unresponsive overspecialization and incommunicability of postmodern science.

science, Darwinism, fossilization, unintelligibility, appropriation of science,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Eui Young Kim

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 169-188, 2014

This essay contextualizes Nathaniel Mackey`s Song of the Andoumboulou within the topography of postmodern American poetry. In his seminal study of the postmodern series, Joseph M. Conte suggests that the series proceeds without looking back. Mackey, on the other hand, deliberately cultivates echoes, repetition, and recursivity in his serial work. The individual poems in Song of the Andoumboulou maintain a complex interrelation among themselves. The later poems draw out what was implicit, clarify what was inchoate, and qualify what was overly optimistic in the earlier poems. Formally, Mackey uses innovative techniques to create layers within individual Songs, incorporating gaps and breaks into their texture. A similar pursuit of incompleteness can be observed at various levels of his text, including his experiments with the book as a unit, anagrammatic wordplay, and his idiosyncratic use of the apostrophe. The cumulative effect of Mackey`s formal choices is the enlarging of seriality`s capacity for self-questioning and methodological doubt. It is therefore possible to see his work as both an exemplification and an extension of postmodern serial poetics.

Nathaniel Mackey, Song of the Andoumboulou, Whatsaid Serif, serial poetics, recursivity,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Woosoo Park

DOI: Vol.60(No.1) 192-195, 2014

영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory