Ira Nadel

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.001 Vol.61(No.2) 173-192, 2015

What did the interaction of Apollinaire, Picasso and Stein, three seminal figures of the avant-garde, mean for Modernism? This paper analyzes the exchanges between the poet, prose writer, and painter and how their encounters, direct and indirect, contributed to the shaping of modernism via a re-thinking of verbal and visual forms in the early years of the 20thcentury. How they met, who they knew and what they created are as important as their criticism and complaints of each other as they shaped the art of the time. Stein wrote a poem entitled “Apollinaire,” Picasso painted Stein’s portrait and Apollinaire wrote a study of Cubism. These are only a few of the surprising intersections examined in this study. One remarkable element is the way artistic distinctions dissolved among the three. Apollinaire’s views of Cubism, Picasso’s view of Apollinaire’s art criticism and Stein’s view of both men intersected and overlapped so that the ideas of one were absorbed by the other. In this way, the modernist enterprise, at least between 1900-1920 possessed a kind of unity of approach and understanding. The death of Apollinaire in 1918 and the visual advances undertaken by Picasso, as well as new work by Stein, separated the three-but for a certain period they interacted on multiple levels: artistically, socially and historically forming a remarkable triumvirate that remade art, poetry and prose setting the path for others to follow.

modernism, cubism, Stein, Apollinaire, Picasso,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Ioana Luca

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.002 Vol.61(No.2) 193-217, 2015

Literary representations of post-1989 immigration from the former communist bloc to the US fall between the cracks of current scholarship. My paper focuses on Aleksandar Hemon’s critically acclaimed work and reads The Question of Bruno (2000), Nowhere Man (2002), and The Lazarus Project (2008) in order to shed light on his mnemonics in connection to the displacement originating from the specific socio-historical experience of life under socialism, war and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. The juxtaposition of geographical places and time frames that characterizes his writing leads to a discussion of the “cosmopolitan” (Levy & Sznaider) and “multidirectional” memory processes (Rothberg) in his work. By analyzing Hemon’s multilayered memories about Eastern Europe’s past and present and the way he transposes them within an US American frame, I argue that his texts, written from a position of transnational shuttling across the Atlantic, revise both the Cold War paradigm and its aftermath with reference to writing Eastern Europe in American literature. I also suggest that the post-Cold War immigration processes and the articulations of memories and identities emerging from the former Eastern European bloc that Hemon’s work renders open up, in a creative and ethically engaged way, new trajectories and dialogues between Eastern Europe and the US.

Aleksandar Hemon, memory, immigration, Bosnia, postsocialism,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jun Ye

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.003 Vol.61(No.2) 219-229, 2015

Based on his travels across the Middle East and eventual exile in North America, Edward Said makes many assertions on those migrations between ideas and theories, later developed into his popular theoretical model which he terms his “Traveling Theory.” Taking Said’s theoretical inventions into account, this essay re-reads Georg Lukacs so as to speculative on new possibilities for the transmission of ideas into theories, and theories across cultures. Re-reading Said’s Traveling Theory against the grain of what I frame as “Kiao-Iology” (which draws on theoretical resources from Chinese traditional culture, so as to propose a unified schemata of Eastern thinking), this paper seeks to unfold the possibilities for a resituated inter-cultural dialogue, casting new light onto how humans make particular knowledge products (cultural, spiritual, ideological). Through an extra-spatial Kiao-Iological framework, knowledge products can then mutate into new shapes and new tropes when crossing over into newer culturally-situated contexts. In an era of mass production and globalization, this may well be a theory for the times. I seek here to unfold new possibilities for modeling how cross-cultural dialogue takes place, which I hope can provoke new ideas toward thinking on how ideas transmit both spatial-synchronically (that is, within each generation and across cultures) and temporal-diachronically as intergenerational, mobile, historically mutating modes.

Georg Lukacs, Edward Said, Traveling Theory, Kiao-Iology, Transculturalism,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Kelly S. Walsh

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.004 Vol.61(No.2) 231-249, 2015

The recent turn in Stevens criticism has largely been phenomenological in nature, concerned with moving past the poet’s “failure” to overcome the epistemological problem of the relation of mind and world, imagination and reality, and thereby realize the “supreme fiction.” While many of these critics, who tend to focus on Stevens’s later poetry, have interpreted the effects of grammar or rhetoric in isolation, there has not been a satisfactory account of their complex interplay, which, at heightened junctures, realizes a multidimensional poetic world simultaneously constituted by seeing, interpreting, and feeling. My intervention, then, is pedagogical in inflection. I make the case that Stevens’s efforts in the later poetry to move beyond epistemology can be productively put in relation to the classical liberal arts trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. But pedagogical, too, in the sense that these poems self-consciously teach us to read differently, to be attentive to the richness, vitality, and subtlety of rhetoric and grammar, which, in their active interpenetration, create a poetic logic of their own.one that takes us beyond empirical truth, beyond the types of truths religion has traditionally proffered humankind. In resisting “the intelligence / Almost successfully,” in continually framing and unframing phenomenal reality, the “endlessly elaborating” dance of grammar and rhetoric ultimately discloses the extent to which we share in the making of the logic of the poem.

Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn, Rhetoric, Grammar, Poetic Logic,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Hyun Dong Ko

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.005 Vol.61(No.2) 251-270, 2015

This paper discusses Marlowe’s foregrounding and prefiguring of homosociality from the perspectives of kingship, homosocial bonding, and spiritual homosociality in 1 Tamburlaine. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is highly successful in solidifying sovereign homosociality, reinforcing sovereignty, and obtaining legitimacy through his own spiritual homosociality. The conqueror’s mode of spiritual homosociality lies in his assertiveness, the apotheosis of the Scythian shepherd or his self-deification. Marlowe foreshadows diverse aspects of both secular-spiritual and personal-institutional homosocial bonds throughout the play. By tracing Tamburlaine’s spiritual and homosocial relations, then, this paper examines the ways in which Marlowe explores the inner self of a prince as a natural person, presenting the ruler’s cognition of human subjectivity. This paper also explores spiritual homosociality as a necessary quality for successful rulers in the interpersonal and institutional relations and the extent to which early political science overlaps with political theology and the supernatural.

Marlowe, 1 Tamburlaine, sovereignty, homosociality, divine kingship,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Joon Hyung Park

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.006 Vol.61(No.2) 271-288, 2015

This essay explores how William James developed in his own philosophy ideas and techniques found in Hawthorne’s literature, particularly “Wakefield” (1835). The characteristic vagueness and ambiguity of Hawthorne’s short story anticipate James’s theory of consciousness, especially his use of “field” and “room” as metaphors for human consciousness. Both Hawthorne and James in their investigation of the interrelation between socially prescribed binary oppositions repudiate Emerson’s idealist concept of transcendental observer and the Cartesian dualism of subject and object. I demonstrate how their fascination with vagueness resulted from their intention to grasp phenomenal concreteness by renouncing the noumenal unity and stability in transcendental idealism. Their interest in concrete but changing and unfixed realities of life and the human mind caused both James and Hawthorne to reject the idealist notion of a dichotomy between noumenon (the realm of ideas) and phenomenon (that of senses). In Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), James accentuates the significance of the interaction between seemingly contradictory notions such as fringe and focus, relations and elements, transitive and substantive, and conjunctive by disjunctive. “Wakefield” crystalizes Hawthorne’s championing of vagueness by deconstructing the two sets of conceptual binaries that Emerson constructs to theorize his transcendental idealism:mediocrity/commonness/simplicity vs. eccentricity/oddity/ strangeness; a selfish and self-centered subject/seer vs. an insignificant other/object to be seen.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, stream of consciousness, transcendentalism, vagueness,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Mi Seong Woo

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.007 Vol.61(No.2) 289-308, 2015

This article analyzes Sun Mee Chomet’s play, How to be a Korean Woman, as a point of departure in the history of self-representation by Korean international adoptee writers and artists. The issue of international adoption in Korea parallels the compressed modernity of Korea and Koreans’ changing social and cultural awareness of kinship and ethnic identity. Historicizing international adoption in the Korean context and the controversy over intercountry and interracial adoption within the larger global context, this paper attempts to examine the socio-political commentary and performance politics embedded in Chomet’s play. Chomet’s performance of both humor and satire involves the audience in her shifting sense of belonging and displacement, providing an affective and festive site for social change. Performing international adoption as forced displacement for a transnational audience, Chomet’s diasporic sensibility, based on her life politics, differs from the emancipatory politics of the Baby Boomer generation of American theater artists of Asian ancestry.Representing a new generation of Asian transnational playwrights and performers, Chomet’s work can contribute to creating communities of international adoptees and empower others with similar diasporic experiences through evoking the displaced subject’s sense of mobility and multi-locationality to the audience.

intercountry adoption, diasporic sensibility, representation of adoptees in Korea, transnational performance, displacement,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

박주영 Joo Young Park

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.008 Vol.61(No.2) 309-333, 2015

This paper aims to explore how Sylvia Plath``s The Bell Jar analyzes American consumer culture of the 1950s. Plath entirely depends on the diverse descriptions of the consumption in order to portray the bell jar of confining 1950s patriarchal culture and society. Plath``s literary work prompts new ways of thinking about American mass media-magazines, newspapers, and advertisements, etc. in consumerism. She provides an extraordinary instance of the inseparability of the consumption and subjectivity in the age of Cold War. From the beginning of the novel, The Bell Jar represents Plath``s heroine, Esther Greenwood``s paralysis when faced with the constellation of the consuming desire in the consumer society. Throughout The Bell Jar, Esther shows a conflicted stance toward the consumer culture in capitalistic society; she tries to speak as "a subject against the dehumanizing commodity culture," while at the same time, "improving her ``feminine`` allure as a valuable object within this same culture." In other words, Esther seems to be fascinated by the commodities of the beauty and fashion industry; however, simultaneously, she protests against the feminine values promoted by consumer culture. Plath casts Esther``s rebellion against 1950s codes of femininity in Cold War perspectives; Esther signifies to be transgressing ideals of femininity. Furthermore, Plath creates the direct, immediate language and surreal images advertised in magazines, which breaks the rigid boundary between high masculine art and low feminine popular culture.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, consumer culture, desire, bulimia,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

이석구 Suk Koo Rhee

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.009 Vol.61(No.2) 335-355, 2015

A reader familiar with Jean-Paul Sartre’s Letre et le neant will be surprised to find how much Frantz Fanon is indebted to this existentialist in writing Black Skin, White Masks. Most of the key words in Fanon’s first book, such as freedom, creation, responsibility, choice-making, are also those of Existentialism. Sartre is not the only European thinker Fanon draws on in Black Skin, White Masks. From Hegel, Fanon borrows notions like dialectics, master-slave relationship, and gaze in formulating a new ontology for blacks. This list, of course, does not reflect Fanon’s heavy indebtedness to European psychology and psychoanalysis. This paper brings to light the way Fanon makes use of Hegel and Sartre, the object of his virulent criticism, in exploring an anti-colonial politics; and it discusses the limitations and self-contradiction Fanon ends up embracing. In particular, this paper revisits the controversy over the issue of the universal that took place between Negritude and Sartre and later between Sartre and Fanon. Thus this review elucidates the complexities that beset Fanon’s attitude towards the Negritude Movement and, in so doing, proves that despite his fierce critique of the universalist tendency in both Negritude’s essentialist philosophy and Sartre’s socialist position, the Martinican critic himself ends up espousing another universalism.

Negritude, Sartre, Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, universal,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

김선옥 Sun Ok Kim

DOI:10.15794/jell.2015.61.2.010 Vol.61(No.2) 357-381, 2015

This study aims to explore Toni Morrison’s cosmopolitan vision in Tar Baby by focusing on the construction of Jadine’s identity as a cosmopolitan subject. In most novels, Toni Morrison usually deals with issues of African American identity in the white-dominated American society, pursuing the identity politics. However, she reveals a cosmopolitan vision in Tar Baby by exploring the conflicts of two opposite values, Black nationalism and cosmopolitan ideas represented by two main characters. Morrison criticizes exclusive and male-centered Black nationalism represented by Son, and characterizes Jadine as a ‘restless’ subject on the ‘routes’ of identity in the conflict and hybridity of black and white cultures. Morrison shows a cosmopolitan vision by stressing Jadine’s unstable identity on the ‘routes’ in the conflicts of various values related to race and sex. Jadine resists the black traditional values which oppress female sexuality and force women to prioritize the roles as a mother and a daughter. She pursues a cosmopolitan life in which she makes a success by utilizing the benefits provided by the white world and being willing to accept the unstable but independent life. Seemingly, the process of her identity and self-realization is dominated by white values, but Morrison suggests the possibility of her change by emphasizing her contact with the black culture and the powerful impact it has on the construction of her identity.

Toni Morrison, Tar Baby, Black nationalism, cosmopolitanism, hybridity,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory