Chi-hun Kim

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 99-116, 2023

This paper aims to show that Iris Murdoch describes the idea of the Good through the characters’ transformation of the vision from illusion to reality in her two novels, The Sea, the sea, and Bruno’s Dream. She, as a moral philosopher and English novelist, often tries to articulate the idea of the Good which has its origin in Plato’s idea of the Form. Her understanding of human nature is pessimistic in that she regards sin as universal from the perspective of the traditional Christian teachings and accepts Freud’s account of human nature. Thus, for Murdoch, human beings are selfish and egocentric. One of Murdoch’s major concerns is how to overcome the self-centeredness that prevents us from recognizing reality and loving others, and the Good is essentially linked with unselfishness because we may break illusion and become unselfish by contemplating the Good. Likewise, the two novels describe how the characters tend to fail to recognize reality and be under illusions caused by the dynamic of jealousy in the former and the denial of death in the latter. While the illusions are created by different reasons in the two novels respectively, they are crucially associated with egoism. Particularly, the experience of death plays a crucial role in the transformation in these two stories, and the death is metaphorical as well physical. Yet, the idea of death refers basically to the experience of death in daily life.

The Sea, the Sea, Bruno’s Dream, unselfing, The Good, Death

Sungho Lee

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 117-141, 2023

This article analyzes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic novel, The House of the Seven Gables, and its portrayal of the intricate interplay between inherited blood lineage and individual struggles for change. While exploring the negative consequences of past transgressions on future generations, the novel primarily focuses on how each generation has the power to shape its own destiny despite the constraints of the family curse. Indeed, Gothic history in the fiction revolves around a historical compromise and a dialectical understanding of family lines, highlighting both continuity and variation. While Hawthorne establishes the historical continuity through similarities observed between characters like Colonel Pyncheon and Judge Pyncheon, the author’s main concern lies with the efforts made by certain descendants of the Pyncheons and Maules who strive to disentangle themselves from the burdensome legacy. Consequently, the bloodlines of these two feuding families possess a complex history, with successive generations displaying diverse character traits as they grapple with individual transformation. In consequence, Hawthorne values a balance between competing historical forces, including human struggle and Providence, reform and tradition, and progressive optimism and critical skepticism. The author’s emphasis on the importance of navigating the historical juncture where the dark legacy and emergent values converge is showcased through his characters’ personal narratives of growth, where individuals pave the way for a brighter future, despite the presence of numerous setbacks and obstacles. Ultimately, Hawthorne’s romance suggests that the family curse can be lifted through individual initiatives and historical dialectics, highlighting the potential for new and meaningful ways to overcome the impact of past wrongs on future generations.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, The Sins of the Father, Historical Dialectics, Individual Reforms

Byoung Chun Min

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 143-166, 2023

This essay attempts to read Tory reviewers’ critique of Keats’s poetry as a historical instance where a liberal/radical poet’s project of shaping an ideal public sphere through free communication with readers was distorted and ultimately frustrated. The two representative Tory reviews on Keats’s early poetry were John Lockhart’s in Blackwood’s and John Wilson Croker’s in the Quarterly Review, and they intended to criticize Poems of 1817 and Endymion. While these reviews purportedly aimed to critique the immature and vulgar aspects of Keats’s poetry, their true objective was to target Keats’s liberal/radical political creeds associated with the Hunt circle and thus neutralize the validity of his works within the contemporary cultural sphere. For this purpose, those reviewers employ the following rhetorical strategies. First, they focus on Keats’s social status as a lower middle class apothecary in their assaults on his poetry, effectively undermining his credibility as a legitimate poet. Second, they attempt to manipulate the taste of the public by imposing politically and ideologically biased evaluations of literary works upon the reader, presuming that the taste of the general populace is bound to be controlled by superior cultural authorities. As a result of these strategies, the Tory reviewers succeeded in inflicting detrimental impacts on Keats’s literary pursuits not only by subjecting him to a series of financial burdens but also by frustrating his original attempt to connect with the public through his poetic practice. And these detrimental impacts led Keats to develop ambivalent and contradictory attitudes towards the public in his later literary career.

Tory reviewers’ critique of Keats’s poetry, ideal public sphere, free communication with readers, the Hunt circle, rhetorical strategies

정희원 Heewon Chung

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 167-192, 2023

This study reevaluates Bluestockings’ gathering, collecting, and epistolary correspondences as crucial cultural practices that built a feminine vernacular republic of letters in the eighteenth century. It focuses on a miniature portrait, shells, florilegia, and letters as circulating objects of friendship. The discourse of the Scottish Enlightenment on civil society anticipated that the emergent clubs and societies would be favourable to the public values of civic virtue and sociability. This paper starts with a scrutiny of David Hume’s three essays, “Of Essay-Writing,” “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” and “Of Refinement in the Arts,” which describes the relationship between the learned and the conversible, civility and manners, and curiosity and pleasure. Then it reads Catherine Talbot’s “Essay XX: On Our Capacity for Pleasure” which shares Hume’s opinion on the pleasure that it facilitates the refinement and polish of the mind. In the latter part of her essay, Talbot defines the collector of rarities and the botanist as the appreciators of “a wise and reasonable Pleasure.” Montagu’s letter to the Duchess of Portland, portraying her head as the Duchess’s closet, interestingly captures the characteristics of a wunderkammer. In her letter, shells are metonymy objects encompassing naturalia and artificialia. Mary Delany’s Flora Delanica, or “paper mosaic” of various herbs and flowers, a product of the Bluestocking botanist community including Queen Charlotte and the Duchess, dramatically represent a mixture of curiosity and pleasure. This study proposes that Delany’s florilegia should be reassessed alongside Rousseau’s herbaria, considering Rousseau’s long-term correspondence with the Duchess on botanical subjects. In sum, this paper examines how material culture constituted female subjects as individuals and how it mediated their communion.

Bluestockings, Enlightenment, friendship, sociability, material culture, 블루스타킹, 계몽주의, 우정, 사회성, 물질문화

강석진 Sukjin Kang , 박정만 Jungman Park , 이종우 Jong-woo Lee , 강규한 Gyu Han Kang , 노동욱 Dong-wook Noh

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 193-231, 2023

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Canada, this article aims to examine the formation and development of Canadian ecocriticism as a core concept representing Canadian identity, and to archive the Canadian ecocritical journal The Goose. In Korea, ecocritical theories centered on the United Kingdom and the United States have been introduced, so the concept of ‘Canadian ecocriticism’ is unfamiliar. However, Canada’s geographical requirements, especially its extreme cold, vast territory, and border with the world’s most powerful country, the United States, have stimulated the imagination of Canadians and led to unique ecocritical research. In particular, the publication of The Goose is a product of the Canadian ecocritical community’s own efforts to explore and establish a more dynamic and interactive relationship between nature and humans, while avoiding the reductionism of Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood. From its inaugural issue to its most recent, The Goose hasgrown and evolved into an international journal that embraces a global agenda while remaining true to its initial calling to explore ecological literature in Canadian communities. The Goose is both an expression of the current state of Canadian ecocriticism and an indication of its future direction. In this context, exploring its traces by archiving the creative and research works published in the journal for 16 years, from its first issue in the fall of 2005 to the latest issue in the spring of 2021, will be a meaningful task in examining the current state and future directions of Canadian ecocriticism.

Canada, eco-criticism, bio-regionalism, The Goose, archiving, 캐나다, 생태비평, 생명-지역주의, 『기러기』, 아카이빙

김은형 Eunhyoung Kim

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 233-264, 2023

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887 inspired many postbellum readers to become actively involved in various reform movements. However, the work itself ironically vindicates the individual’s passive role in its utopian vision. Bellamy‘s utopia rejects individualism as the cause of inefficiency and immorality and is structured as a highly efficient and orderly state-machine. The organizational models of the utopia―i.e., the large corporation and the army in the Gilded Age―turn each individual into a mere mechanical part of the system. On the surface, the novel presents a splendid utopia that efficiently produces and distributes national wealth, guaranteeing economic equality. Underneath the surface, however, it suggests that postbellum Americans should not behave as independent individuals but instead conform to the demands of tyrannical large corporations and the competitive market, arguing that the ruthless capitalist pursuits of efficiency will eventually enable the hierarchical capitalist society to evolve into the utopian national system of economic democracy. By representing a utopia that rejects liberal individualism and democracy for the sake of efficiency and evolution, Bellamy provides escapist fantasies for the middle class in the Gilded Age, whose individualism was shattered in the face of severe class warfare and capitalist injustice. They suffered from fear, guilt, shame, and even nervous disorders, overwhelmed by the oppressive power of large capital and fearing the influx of immigrant laborers. By condoning their inaction and powerlessness, this utopian novel ironically provided postbellum middle-class Americans with opportunities to restore their broken individualism. Consequently, it mobilized popular support for reform movements in the name of the rising national community of the United States.

Looking Backward, individual, efficiency, evolution, Gilded Age, 『뒤돌아보며』, 개인, 효율성, 진화, 도금시대

성창규 Chang-gyu Seong

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 265-287, 2023

This paper aims to explore the literary and philosophical aspects of smell and its significance in Seamus Heaney’s poems. It analyzes the role of olfactory imagery in recalling past experiences and providing a perspective on the present. His poems, “Digging” and “Death of a Naturalist,” are permeated with distinct odors that serve as catalysts for memory: cow dung and potatoes. “Personal Helicon” is a nostalgic tribute to a well from Heaney’s childhood, a place that adults never paid much attention to. As an adult, Heaney recognizes this place as the source and inspiration for his poetic writing, reminiscent of his childhood days of play and imagination at the well. The smell of aquatic vegetation, fungus, and dank moss lingers in the speaker’s memory as he recalls the past. “Night Drive” appears to be a love poem infused with the “smell of ordinariness,” evoking olfactory images of his wife in a foreign land. Its structure echoes the arrangement of the first and last poems in Heaney’s initial collection, Death of a Naturalist, showcasing a unique feature of his poetry that seamlessly blends the past and present in a circular fashion while retaining its originality. The eighth collection, Spirit Level, includes poems such as “Keeping Going” and “Mint,” both of which reference a tool designed to determine the horizontal or vertical orientation of a surface. Heaney’s unique perspective stems from his refusal to differentiate between scents and odors, or between historical memories of the past and the present reality, allowing them to coexist as they are.

Seamus Heaney, Olfactory Memory, “Personal Helicon”, “Night Drive”, “Keeping Going”, 셰이머스 히니, 후각적 기억, 「개인적 헬리콘」, 「밤 운전」, 「계속 가기」

왕은철 Eunchull Wang

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 289-319, 2023

J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron is a deeply moving attempt to confront the profound grief he experienced after his mother’s death. Initially titled “The House on Toll Road,” the novel reflects on the intense emotional turmoil he endured in the aftermath of her passing, with its central focus on a dying woman who vividly evokes memories of his mother. However, He encountered a significant challenge during the writing process―he “found it difficult to locate the voice.” To tackle this challenge, he reimagined the novel as an extended letter―a heartfelt message from a son to his departed mother. However, the process of composing a letter to a deceased mother proved to be an emotionally charged undertaking for the author, resulting in a text saturated with personal grief. Nevertheless, he skillfully balanced the deeply personal nature of the letter, transforming it into a true work of art. One notable adjustment involved shifting the perspective to that of a mother, addressing the letter to a daughter. This change in point of view allowed the author to incorporate political and social issues afflicting South Africa into the narrative. He moved beyond his personal loss and delved into the concept of alterity. The compositional progress of the novel exemplifies T.S. Eliot’s perspective on artists: “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” Paradoxically, however, the enduring presence of a pervasive spirit of mourning throughout the novel intensifies its emotional impact, making it an even more compelling and poignant narrative. In this regard, Age of Iron can be seen as a form of autobiography, echoing Coetzee’s statement that “all writing is autobiography.” It stands as a testament to the author's exceptional craftsmanship in seamlessly intertwining profound sense of mourning with a compelling political discourse.

Coetzee, Age of Iron, Freud, mourning, South Africa, apartheid, 쿳시, 『철의 시대』, 프로이트, 애도, 남아프리카, 아파르트헤이트

신진범 Jinbeom Synn

DOI: Vol.69(No.2) 321-328, 2023

This book covers the long history and practice of poetry therapy in various fields in the U.S. Mazza expands on existing chapters and adds new chapters on COVID-19 and spirituality to introduce new trends in poetry therapy. He introduces the theory and various practices of poetry therapy, and his model of poetry therapy is called RES Model. R stands for the receptive/prescriptive component, and E stands for the expressive/creative component. Finally, S represents the symbolic/ceremonial component. Based on this RES model, Mazza describes how he has used a variety of carefully selected poems to heal different age groups and populations, and provides examples of what poems were used during the healing sessions. This book traces the history of poetry therapy in the United States over time, including the long history of the National Poetry Therapy Association and its past conferences, a survey of Americans about poetry, the “22 most used poems” in poetry therapy, and activities related to poetry therapy. In addition to introducing Mazza’s book, I introduced recent activities of literary therapy societies in South Korea and suggested ways in which English literature scholars can contribute to poetry therapy, including introducing Korean poetry abroad and translating poetry therapy texts and theoretical works. Mazza concludes his book by discussing the prospects for the field of poetry therapy, suggesting that poetry therapy will be further developed through interdisciplinary research. This book will play a meaningful role in the further development of interdisciplinary poetry therapy research and practice in Korea.

poetry therapy, Nicholas Mazza, RES model, bibliotherapy, COVID-19