김종환 Jong Hwan Kim

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 3-20, 2003

According to G. Holderness, Akira Kurosawa`s Throne of Blood is the best translation of Shakespeare`s Macbeth into film. In the film, the Shakespearean text is freely adapted; the action shifted from medieval Scotland to feudal Japan; a western Renaissance tragedy becomes an Oriental samurai epic. The film is the most celebrated one among all Shakespearean films for the completeness of its transformation of drama into cinema. Grigori Kozintsev called Throne of Blood "the finest of the Shakespeare movies," and this praise is due to Kurosawa`s aesthetic strategy of the film. The film begins and ends in an epic style with a chorus commenting on the images of a ruined castle and ambitious samurai. Epic detachment, which is one of the important aesthetic strategies, is structured by the conventions of Japanese Noh drama, whlch is artificial, limited, and ritualistic. To achieve the effect of alienation and detachment, Kurosawa avoids close-ups in his camera work. Alienation is one of the effects of moving the camera back just as moving it forward suggests empathy. The chorus and an avoidance of close-ups in the film maintain an aesthetic distance from the action and allow viewers to see objectively the cause and effect of the event. The relationship between Washizu and Asaji is represented in completely different ways in Kurosawa`s film and Polanski`s film of Macbeth. Kurosawa avoids shots of the couple together and the direct physical contact between Washizu and Asaji ; Asaji doesn`t even look at her husband. On the other hand, Polanski prefers to show the physical closeness between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Thus, Kurosawa`s objective camera work excludes direct affective participation among spectators and reduces the emotional factors by means of alienation. Asaji`s face is that of the Noh mask called Shakuml. She is very limited, confined, and artificial, and She moves, heel to toe, as does the Noh actor ; her scenes with Washizu have a very Noh-like composition, and her hand-washing reflects an element of Noh drama. There is a similarity between the mask of Asaji and her attitude as well as her gestures and those of the Forest Spirit, and it creates an indirect relationship between Asaji and the Forest Spirit concerning the hero`s ambition and action. The didactic statements found at the beginning and at the end of the film and ritualized expression of feelings are also characteristics of Japanese Noh drama and the ways of achieving the alienation effect. Washizu dies at the end, but the question of royal succession is left unresolved. The death of Washizu is not the last event in the film. The chorus distances the events of the film by placing them in an unspecified past; the events are narrated with an aesthetic detachment preventing the spectator`s empathetic involvement from the protagonist`s experience of the film, The chorus at the beginning and at the end, the battles during the first scenes and the last, the views of the ruins of the castle, and the vain repetitive actions of Washizu and Miki at the cobweb forest, as Donald Richie asserted, suggest the repetition of history concerning power struggles, the inevitable circle of fate, and the endless repetition of the same actions.

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

왕철 Wang Chull

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 21-43, 2003

J. M. Coetzee`S The Master of Petersburg occupies a Unique Place in his literary canon, unique in the sense that the writer does not seem to address the colonial and post-colonial issues with which his other works are preoccupied. Instead, Coetzee chooses to dramatize the ethics involved in his writing profession and makes the novel a serious "meditation," as Stephen Watson notes, "of the diabolism that can lie at the heart of the creative process itself." Coetzee does so not only by re-writing Dostoevsky`s The Possessed, "Stavrogin`s Confession" In particular but also by appropriating and distorting Dostoevsky`s life. This paper explores what Coetzee tries to achieve by writing this novel, a heavily intertextual fictional work in which he contextualizes the non-South African novel in South African terms. Ultimately, this paper argues that what Irving Howe once said of Life and Times of Michael K can apply to The Master of Petersburg as well: "the real significance of Coetzee`s writing lies in an apparent move beyond politics to universal themes of art or morality."

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

조수근 Soo Keun Cho

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 45-56, 2003

The purpose of the article is to investigate how Korean adults produce relative clauses in English as a second language. The experiment involves an elicited production task, in which pairs of pictures and stickers of different colors were used. The subjects for the experiment consist of 14 Korean adults. The finding is that relative clauses with a subject gap are easier to acquire than those with an object or dative gap, which is attributed to the fact that subject gaps are easier to link to their head than object and dative gaps, according to the Structural Distance Principle suggested by O`Grady(1997). This result accords with the finding in first language acquisition that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses in English, which is accounted for by the Structural Distance Principle. This supports the view that the acquisition device operating in first language acquisition also operates in second language acquisition.

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

송태정 Tae Jeong Song

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 57-73, 2003

This essay concerns how Richard Powers` Gold Bug Variations(1991) recreates the discourse of the "book of life," and connects this to other fragmentary objects to create new forms of "assemblage." While others have examined the novel`s relationship to aesthetics, I focus on the author`s use of the "information novel" to explain the development of genomic research as an interdisciplinary phenomenon. I show how "assemblage" is useful in this context as it emphasizes how scientific theories and their modes of articulation have evolved so that one scientist`s theory or hypothesis will be solved and decoded by the next generation. This causes a consistent movement of the center of scientific focus as each new discovery is made. Powers wants to explore the genome and history of the genomic study in the archaeological standpoint of knowledge, and more importantly, the current historical moment, in which the infinity of the genome is articulated through the cybernetic metaphor. By weaving things such as multiple discourses with Bach`s Goldberg Variations, Herri`s art, biology, and computer science, he shows the development of biology from modern to postmodem through cybernetic metaphors and advanced technologies. In this context, my paper examines the field of scientific referents represented in the discursive world of The Gold Bug Variations to analogize Powers` thought processes, and the change of a paradigm in biology with the emergence of a network of exchanges in signifying fields. I then look closely at the ways by which the discourse of cybernetics has transformed molecular biology as scientists have wrestled with the infinity of the genome. The essay represents my desire to draw together the fields of cultural studies and science through a meaningful exchange of ideas.

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

양승갑 Sung Kap Yang

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 75-99, 2003

In the Romantic Era in which many poets found a shelter and consolation in Nature, Shelley also sang of Her. Idiosyncratically, Nature in his poems never appears benevolent or generous to human beings; rather, overwhelmingly awesome and devastating. Shelley`s powerful Nature is frequently recognized as being the same with the Platonic "Idea." But Nature in Shelley`s poems never transcends the physical world and also the enmity associated with Nature is not against human beings but against whatever we have built under the name of "culture." The enmity leads to removal from Nature "the disturbance" which has been imposed by human beings to help us today see exactly where we are in, not beyond or out of, Nature. From the ecological perspective, this alienation of the priority of human beings to Nature can be the prototype of the anti-anthropocentric perspective. Shelley`s anti-anthropocentric thought fathoms the depths of ecological consciousness. As far as human`s will is concerned, Nature is still subject to human control. For human beings are easily subject to the comfort and easiness which come from the exploitation of Nature. In Shelley`s works, human subjectivity on and activity toward Nature are basically absent and replaced with objectivity which is achieved through man`s complete passivity. With today`s world deeply absorbed into the materialism, Shelley`s ecological perspective provides us with the deepest and timely insights into Nature

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

신재실 Jae Sil Shin

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 101-118, 2003

Unlike such modernist poets of urbanity as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Robert Frost became known as a traditional poet of nature. The key to Frost`s nature poetry is his close affinity with Thoreau`s view of language. Inherited from Emerson with a strong sense of a correspondence between nature and language, Thoreau insisted in Walden that every natural fact is a symbolic language nutritious for spiritual growth. He hoed beans, for example, not because he believed in the material economy of beans but "for the sake of tropes and expression" of spirit. Reading classics is necessary for the growth of spirit. Consequently Thoreau emphasizes in "Reading" the importance of written language : "It is not enough to be able to speak the language...for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read." But in "Sounds" he points to the danger of reading only written languages by saying that "we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor." The crucial question of vision that he poses his audience is : "Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?" The "seer" must be able to see physical reality accurately, but also to "see" or contemplate through mind`s eyes the symbolic spiritual meanings contained in natural facts. These facts comprise the poetic language of imagination, which is above the spoken and written languages of culture. Thoreau came to Walden woods to "see" the imagined language for the cure of his neighbors` spiritual diseases. Frost came to the rural landscape of New England to find the poetic language of imagination to substitute his competitors` culture-encrusted languages. Frost`s nature poetry, as we see in his "The Pasture," should be read as a "little calf" fetched from the pasture to his home.

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

정영희 Young Hee Jung

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 119-136, 2003

Florence Margaret-Stevie Smith wrote such playful poems that her authorial dignity was seriously impaired in thr age of modernism when seriousness was considered as one of the prerequisites of good poetry. She has been criticized, especially in her seemingly inconsistent and light tone dealing with seriousv themes, comic doodle-like drawings as illustrations for the poems, and too various poetic modes such as fairy tale, nursery rhyme, hymn and song, while her metaphysical themes such as isolation, death, and religion have been highly evaluated. But playfulness in her poetry does serve not just as simple mischief but as an Instrument of carnivalesque subversion in the feministic point of view. Also her poetic playfulness is a means to objectify and overcome isolation and despair which she suffered so much in her lonely life and to cure her of the trauma in her unhappy childhood caused by her father who threw away his family as soon as she was born. This paper aims to explore the relationships between the light playfulness and feminism, and between lightness and the technique of objectification in Stevie Smith`s poetry. Her overall thorough rejection of marriage and parenthood of the middle-class under patriarchy can be found in Stevie Smith`s poetry. Playfulness works as a means of the carnivalesque subversion of the man-dominant culture in her many poems. The feministic consciousness of Stevie Smith is post-modem : she knew that the real value of woman`s body and mind lay in variety, plurality, and flexibility. Playfulness in Smith`s poetry has another Important function of objectifying and sedating life`s sufferings by means of various objectifying techniques, which include frivolous changes of tone, doodle-like illustrations of her poems, and her identification with a male speaker. Thus she could prevent herself and readers from being involved completely in poetic emotions, i.e., desperateness and alienation, confessed by a poetic persona namely, herself. Stevie Smith`s playful writing can be interpreted much more affirmatively in the context of flowing writing in post-modern feminism.

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

이진아 Jin Ah Lee

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 137-161, 2003

The purpose of this article is by illuminating the gendered aspects of the moral choices by Adam and Eve to explore the relationship between ethics and gender in Paradise Lost, in the context of Renaissance epic tradition and from the viewpoint of Aristotelian ethical theory and the modern feminist views of ethics and subjectivity that criticize the traditional western ethics. Milton`s representations of Adam and Eve and their moral behavior are primarily gendered on the basis of patriarchal and male-oriented standards in seventeenth-century England. In Milton`s frame of hierarchical morality, Adam`s masculine self is fundamentally rational, autonomous, and independent but solitary like any other epic hero`s self in the epic poems by Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser. But unlike those heroes for whose manly achievement autonomous or independent isolation from intimate involvement with others is a necessary step, Adam pursues an Intimate relationship with one like himself, Eve. Eve`s self is relational in terms that she is created from Adam and her identity is prescribed In her relation to Adam. Her moral behavior is based on the ethical principles of care in the modern feminist`s sense : attention to particular historical situations, responsiveness to others that dictates providing care and love, preventing harm, maintaining relationships, and emphasizing a web of relationship that is sustained by a process of communication. Adam needs a relational self to be more mature, and so seeks his maturity through intimate relationship with Eve. Eve pursues just the reverse-maturity through separation, which will ultimately bring death as well as a more blessed life in the future. The testings and the resultant failure in moral choice help Eve grow more mature than Adam in terms of responsibility for one`s choice and the preservation of marital relationship, thereby disrupting the hierarchical order of gender difference in morality in their postlapsarian state. Milton`s "higher argument" revises the concept of the wandering heroic masculine self In Renaissance epic poetry, and the feminine relational self and the masculine autonomous self come to inhabit each other in his ideal of Protestant marriage

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

강희 Hee Kang

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 163-185, 2003

William Faulkner`s fictional world offers a profoundly rich meditation on the society and culture of the early 20th century American South. Faulkner`s representation of the Other(blacks and women) in Light in August is also inseparable from the cultural setting of his own time. Issues of race, gender and sexuality are significant in illuminating the narrative structure, thematic concerns, and the sociocultural ideologies of the work; its narrative poignantly exposes the mind of the American South and creates a dynamic discourse in the dimension of the South`s social and cultural criticism. Light in August explores how southern culture constructs gender and race and sets limits on black and female bodies, and how race and gender are closely intertwined, relating to other identity like sexuality. It further reveals the complex layers of Otherness, `blackness` and femininity/female sexuality in the American South. Thus, not only does this project investigate the racial/sexual bodies and subversive desires of the Other that challenge the established boundaries of race and gender ideologies on which southern society has built itself, but it also focuses on the various cultural signs in the representation of the Other whose bodies are the site of American cultural nexus of racial and sexual typification and oppression. This paper, inquiring critically into the racist and sexist significations over the contaminated/fragmented/imprisoned/alienated black and female bodies, demonstrates how Faulkner criticizes the culture resolutely reasserting its traditional value system and exposes the inadequacy of the white southern(racist/misogy-nist) patriarchy.

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

손정희 Jeong Hee Sohn

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 187-200, 2003

This paper attempts to reread Hawthorne`s most hypercanonized work, The Scarlet Letter in Foucauldian genealogical perspective. Foucault`s genealogical method provides a way of recuperating a part of history hidden, submerged, obliterated by the official history. Seen in a genealogical perspective, Hester`s story can be viewed as one in which Hawthome attempts to trace back to the Puritan settlement in its earliest days in order to explore woman`s status and related conflicts in his day. As is often argued, Hawthome shows a persistent interest in the Puritan origin of the nation and also sets the story of The Scarlet Letter in Boston in the early period of its settlement. Under the Puritan legal system, Hester`s sin of adultery was a clear example of defying the patriarchal Puritan authorities, and as such, she is sentenced to stand for three hours on the scaffold and then wear the letter A throughout her life. This kind of public punishment, most frequently exerted in the Puritan settlement, can be seen both as a public operation in which hegemonic authority is re-asserted and as a process in which "discipline" in Foucaudian sense incessantly forces the deviant to stay confined in the boundary of the law. However, in the end, the Puritan way of punishment fails to discipline Hester. Becoming a Hutchinson-like figure, Hester rather exemplifies the potential for feminist voice, which however does not get voiced but rather silenced as women get saturated and constrained by domestic ideology of nineteenth-century America.

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

권택영

DOI: Vol.49(No.1) 201-204, 2003

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