Wiebke Ommus

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1027-1045, 2010

What does an Irish modernist have in common with a contemporary Canadian classicist? The present paper attempts an unlikely comparison to bring out previously unnoticed facets of meaning by analyzing James Joyce`s Ulysses (1922) and Anne Carson`s Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998) together. While Joyce and Carson write at different times and in different places, I suggest that they are also remarkably similar. First, both of these authors can be said to have re-invented the genre of the novel in the two aforementioned works. Second, they both set themselves the task of re-writing a Greek text, in Joyce`s case Homer`s Odyssey, in Carson`s case Stesichoros`s Geryoneis, transferring it to their own present reality. The focus of the article is to read Ulysses and Autobiography of Red together in light of their engagement with colonialism. This concept is central to both novels, as literary critics have noted. However, rather than examining the concept in the traditional sense, I use it as a platform to examine the roles that sociolinguistic colonialism, and what I call literary colonialism, play in these two innovative and groundbreaking novels. Finally, I analyze the ways in which these authors position themselves against the tradition. Comparing works by Carson and Joyce allows me to arrive at conclusions that transcend their time and apply to humanity in general.

James Joyce, Anne Carson, Colonialism, Greek Literature, Sociolinguistics,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jong Bok Kim , Jin Young Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1047-1065, 2010

English inversion constructions are not only hard for non-native speakers to learn but also difficult to teach mainly because of their intriguing grammatical and discourse properties. This paper addresses grammatical issues in learning or teaching the so-called ``predicate inversion (PI)`` construction (e.g., Equally important in terms of forest depletion is the continuous logging of the forests). In particular, we chart the grammatical (distributional, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) properties of the PI construction, and argue for adata-driven teaching for English grammar. To depart from the arm-chaired style of grammar teaching (relying on author-made simple sentences), our teaching method introduces a data-driven teaching. With total 25 university students in a grammar-related class, students together have analyzed the British Component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), containing about one million words distributed across a variety of textual categories. We have identified total 290 PI sentences (206 from spoken and 87 from written texts). The preposed syntactic categories of the PI involve five main types: AdvP, PP, VP(ed/ing), NP, AP, and so, all of which function as the complement of the copula. In terms of discourse, we have observed, supporting Birner and Ward`s (1998) observation that these preposed phrases represent more familiar information than the postposed subject. The corpus examples gave us the three possible types: The preposed element is discourse-old whereas the postposed one is discourse-new as in Putting wire mesh over a few bricks is a good idea. Both preposed and postposed elements can also be discourse new as in But a fly in the ointment is inflation. These two elements can also be discourse old as in Racing with him on the near-side is Rinus. The dominant occurrence of the PI in the spoken texts also supports the view that the balance (or scene-setting) in information structure is the main trigger for the use of the PI construction. After being exposed to the real data and in-depth syntactic as well as informationstructure analysis of the PI construction, it is proved that the class students have had a farmore clear understanding of the construction in question and have realized that grammar does not mean to live on by itself but tightly interacts with other important grammatical components such as information structure. The study directs us toward both a datadriven and interactive grammar teaching. English Predicate Inversion: Towards Data-driven Learnin 1051.

predicate inversion, data-driven Learning, DDL, information structure, corpus,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Ewha Chung

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1067-1090, 2010

The epistolary novel, as developed and refined by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), is concerned with distinctly private experience and the morality of individuals-Richardson`s heroine writers. In contrast to nineteenth-century novels, which explore their subjects through the overview of a narrator with a singular moral outlook, the epistolary narrative allows Richardson to examine the various different ways in which individuals/heroines interpret, mold, and respond to their experiences in writing. In this paper, I argue that the authorial voice of Richardson does not control the narrative but rather is present in the prefaces, character sketches, notes and occasional interjections between letters. Although there is little doubt as to whether Richardson intended to make a particular moral point or attempted to control the effect of his novels on his readers, the heroines and their letters dominate the novels so that they put the authorial suggestions in a different light, reducing the author`s to one voice among several. Thus, Pamela`s letters are exemplary for the vigor and intelligence with which they appear to be written, rather than for the imposed morality of their ghost writer-Richardson. Although Clarissa is of a different social class from Pamela, both heroines are united in their oppression as victims of a patriarchal society. In Clarissa`s letters, the heroine`s situation and experience are seen through her own writing in dialogue with that of her confidante Anna Howe, and in contrast to the writing of her oppressors. Clarissa, then, becomes a struggle between different discourses in which their genesis and effect, and the societies and individuals from which they come are implicitly suggested in Richardson`s text. While Richardson may or may not be guilty of taking the writing of women and using it for his own ends, his epistolary novels represent a deliberate and bold attempt to shape the novel in a way conducive to his heroines and to women writers.

Samuel Richardson, Armstrong, Bakhtin, Woolf, polyphony, novelistic discourse, Pamela, Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison, women writers, self-expression, virtue,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Beau La Rhee

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1091-1103, 2010

Absalom Absalom! is not only about family history but also about the nature of reconstructing history. Faulkner shows us what will happen if we give too much credit to the person having the authority; he first makes us listen to Rosa, so we just listen without doubt until we arrive at the question of the objectivity of her narration, when we get to know Sutpen`s design. Meanings of "facts" change depending on who perceives the facts. The incremental repetition of the narrative in the novel resembles the process of our thinking mind and the process of history being constructed. Time is a significant element in determining the meaning of an event, not only because the event cannot be understood without its social, cultural context of the contemporary, but also because only the later events make it possible for the perceiver to categorize it in its proper place in history. Furthermore, through his narrative strategy, Faulkner suggests that imagination play a large part in recreating history. He blurs the distinction between facts and imagination, making us regard Shreve`s and Quentin`s conjectures as facts in several ways. The conversation between father and son, and the two brothers, which is an imagination constructed through the clues Mr Compson has offered, becomes a fact willingly accepted by the readers as well as Shreve and Quentin. The people in the past, present, and future may be very much unlikely to agree on the same event, because the gap in temporality will keep widening our perceptions. Faulkner demonstrates the nature of history in such a way that we can compare our understanding of the Sutpens` history in the earlier and later part of the novel through repetitions.

incremental repetition, history, temporality, consciousness, imagination, narrative technique, historians, archive, progression,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Doo Hyun Park

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1105-1117, 2010

This study traces out female identity and sexuality in George Du Maurier`s novel, Trilby. The heroine`s sexuality in this novel plays some interesting roles invoking both male gaze and male homosocial desire. There seems to have been lots of debates about female subjectivity and gender relations in the Victorian age. George Du Maurier tries to redefine female identity which had been divided into two aspects in the age: angel and demon. When he describes Trilby`s identity, the fixed duality as fallen, demonic and autonomous women might have been considerably fluid. Rather than returning to the old boundaries of female subjectivity and identity through his heroine, he unwittingly describes the female role as an erotic organizer. As Du Maurier shows that Trilby`s identity plays a conduit role for male homosocial desire, he created the tension between masculinity and femininity and revealed a changing relationship between female nature and male culture as well. Furthermore, when George Du Maurier in his novel opened a new possibility for an erotic organizer through his heroin, Trilby, he seems to have represented the more fluid female role in the patriarchal culture that asked only some fixed roles for women.

George Du Maurier, Trilby, Female Sexuality, Male Homosocial Desire, Erotic Organizer,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Eui Young Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1119-1133, 2010

This paper explores Myung Mi Kim`s poetics of the archive in Commons. Commons begins with a gesture that critiques a prior act of archivization: "Here, this speck and this speck that you missed." As the poems accrue in the book, Commons demonstrates the desire to record those experiences that have been neglected by the architects of traditional archives while at the same time interrogating the very logic of the archive. Crucial to that interrogation is the poetic form. Kim`s attempt to archive silences and gaps leads to a radical experiment with form and language. It reformulates the archive as an open system amenable to interruption, extension, and revision. I examine in detail the techniques that contribute to her poetics of the archive, a poetics that draws the readers out of the narrow confines of their personal experiences and their political identities. By juxtaposing Kim`s poems with her statements of poetics given as interviews, this paper connects the project of Commons to Kim`s larger concern with open form and experimental writing. I argue that the "difficulty" of her poetry should be reinterpreted as a demand that her text makes on the readers to broaden their terms of engagement. The linguistic experiment of Commons provides an occasion to rethink the habitual ways in which time is experienced, national histories are written, and literary works are consumed.

Mi Kim, Commons, archive, Language poetry, experimental writing, open form,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Eun Joo Kwak

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1135-1161, 2010

The interpretations of degree expressions require the postulation of new entities to represent degrees. Diverse entities such as degrees, intervals, and vectors are adopted for degree expressions. Positive degree sentences and questions are properly construed with the introduction of these entities, but their negative counterparts need more consideration. Negative degree sentences show dual patterns of entailments depending on contexts, and negative degree questions are unacceptable, making weak islands. To explicate the distinct nature of negative degree sentences and questions, Fox & Hackl (2006) provide an analysis based on degrees while Abrusan & Spector (2010) suggest a proposal in interval readings of degree expressions. I have pointed out the theoretical problems of these analyses and proposed an alternative in the framework of the vector space semantics, following Winter (2005). Bi-directional scales in vector space fit well with the dual patterns of negative degree sentences, and the notion of a reference vector is useful to accommodate the contextual influence in negative degree sentences and to deal with the unacceptability of negative degree questions.

monotonicity, degree, interval, vector, weak island, question, ordering, inclusion, density, scalar predicate, measurement, maximality,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Hae Moon Lee , Hee Soo Park

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1163-1190, 2010

Korean EFL learners` stylistic sensitivity was examined through the two types of letter writing, professional and personal. The base of comparison with the English native speakers` stylistic sensitivity was the linguistic style markers that were statistically found by Biber`s (1988) multi-dimensional model of variation of English language. The main finding was that Korean university students were sensitive to stylistic difference in the correct direction, though their linguistic repertoire was limited to the easy and simple linguistic features. Also, the learners were skewed in the involved style in both types of the letters unlike the native speakers and it was interpreted as due to the general developmental direction from informal to formal linguistic style. Learners were also skewed in the explicit style in both types of letters unlike the native speakers and it was interpreted as due to the learners` heavy reliance on one particular linguistic feature. As a whole, the learners` stylistic sensitivity heavily relied on the small number of linguistic features that they have already acquired, which happen to be simple and basic linguistic features.

style markers, genre differences, Linguistic co-occurrences, multi-dimensional model,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Pong Hyung Lee

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1191-1210, 2010

This article claims that English liquid consonants are characterized by the presence of complex place nodes, regardless of dialectal varieties. The primary difference between rhotic and laterals can be pursued in a phonological sense. The level of subbranching nodes is in charge of the disparities among two types of liquids: the branching immediately below the Coronal node with laterals, while branching at the secondary sublevel with rhotics. In this context, the processes of rhotic deletion and lateral vocalization can be understood as those motivated to get rid of complex place nodes. That is, those processes take place as part of phonological attrition. Next, the onset/coda asymmetry regarding liquids stems from the dispreference of vocoid at the onset position, which is readily accounted for by the series of constraints on the well-formedness on the onset, namely Harmonic Onset. The rationale of gradualness and harmonic improvement proposed by Harmonic Serialism is useful to separate the attested outputs from unattested ones across the whole gamut of English varieties. All in all, the primary benefits of our analysis can be found in the consistence in the explanation for the operations running through the sounds regarded as belonging to liquid consonants, comprising the whole range of rhotic and lateral consonants.

rhotic, Lateral, vocalization, complex place, onset/coda asymmetry, gradualism, harmonic improvement,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Jung Man Park

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1211-1234, 2010

Mule Bone (1931), Zora Neale Hurston`s collaboration with Langston Hughes, has been credited as the ``first`` attempted by African Americans to create black folk comedy. The proposed research is driven from a question to the recent scholarship`s tacit consent on such historic importance imposed on the play. This paper suggests a possibility that De Turkey and De Law (1930), Hurston`s edition of the collaboration work, could be the truly first attempt in the tradition of American black folk comedy. By illuminating a series of historical moments in which Hurston first expressed her dream for writing a real black folk comedy that would be a really new departure in the African American drama, then collaborated with Hughes on the dream play project, and eventually quit the collaborationship due to artistic dispute with Hughes, this paper explains why Hughes edition Mule Bone came to remain ``unfinished`` and, more importantly, fall short of Hurston`s original goal and expectation from the collaboration. On the other hand, this paper sheds light on the significance of often-ignored Hurston`s edition De Turkey and De Law by demonstrating how this play, compared to Mule Bone, fulfills her original idea of black folk comedy in terms of contents and themes compared with Mule Bone. Adding to the knowledge about little known behind story related to the Mule Bone controversy and the subsequent birth of the two different editions of the Hurston-Hushes collaboration project, supplementing the dearth of the related research with a critical comparison of the two editions, and discussing the validity of Hurston`s edition as the real sense of black folk comedy, this paper argues for the necessity of reconsidering the origin of the mentioned genre. This paper finally concludes that De Turkey and De Law, replacing Mule Bone, deserves a right to be truly the first American black folk comedy genre in the sense that it was completed and copyrighted three months earlier than Mule Bone and that, more importantly, it cherished the original aim and artistic vision of black folk comedy Hurston first planned and expected through the collaboration with Hughes.

Zora Neale Hurston, De Turkey and De Law, Langston Hughes, Mule Bone controversy, black folk comedy, artistic dispute,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Sook Kyong Htun

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1235-1253, 2010

Lucy Snowe, the heroine and narrator of Charlotte Bronte`s Villette, has oftentimes been studied in terms of her silence. However, the critics` approach to Lucy`s silence has been mostly negative as her silence has often been interpreted as an illustration of her sense of absence, powerlessness, unreliability, or mental deprivation. Lucy`s silence, however, is complex in nature as the functions and meanings of her silence vary depending on when, why, and how silence is performed. This article particularly looks into the moments in which Lucy`s silence generates multifarious meanings and resonances depending on the contexts in and the purpose for which it is exercised, such as a sense of wholeness, marginality, power and individuality. First of all, Lucy`s silence about herself during the recount of her childhood days at Bretton implies the feeling of entirety and peacefulness where the identification of the "I" becomes unnecessary. Second, Lucy`s silence in relation to Paulina at Bretton denotes her social marginality and powerlessness. Third, as an older self/narrator, Lucy chooses to be silent in order to exert power over the readers. And lastly, Lucy`s conscious refusal to tell the readers what she already knows also serves to reveal her sense of individuality. Through the instances of Lucy Snowe`s silence in Bronte`s Villette, I demonstrate the possibility to reveal various aspects of one`s self through silence.

Charlotte Bronte, Villette, Lucy Snowe, Silence, Narrator,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Myung Hye Huh

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1255-1279, 2010

Much has already been learned about what goes on in the minds of second language writers as they compose, yet, oddly enough, until recently little in the L2 research literature has addressed writing and mental imagery together. However, images and imaging (visual thinking) play a crucial role in perception (the basis of mental imagery), in turn, affecting language, thinking, and writing. Many theorists of mental imagery also agree that more than just language accounts for how we think and that imagery is at least as crucial as language. All of these demands, to be sure, are compounded for EFL students, which is why I investigate EFL students` writing process, focusing on the use of mental imagery and its relationship to the writing. First I speculate upon some ways that imagery influences EFL students` composing processes and products. Next, I want to explore how and whether the images in a writer`s mind can be shaped effectively into a linear piece of written English in one`s writing. I studied two university undergraduate EFL students, L and J. They had fairly advanced levels of English proficiency and exhibited high level of writing ability, as measured by TOEFL iBT Test. Each student wrote two comparison and contrast essays: one written under specified time limitations and the other written without the pressure of time. In order to investigate whether the amount of time in itself causes differences within an individual in imagery ability, the students were placed under strict time constraints for Topic 1. But for Topic 2, they were encouraged to take as much time as necessary to complete this essay. Immediately after completing their essays, I conducted face-to-face retrospective interviews with students to prompt them for information about the role of imagery as they write. Both L and J have spent more time on their second (untimed) essays. Without time constraint, they produced longer texts on untimed essay (149 vs. 170; 186 vs 284 words). However, despite a relatively long period of time spent writing an essay, these students neither described their images nor detailed them in their essays. Although their mental imagery generated an explosion of ideas for their writings, most visual thinking must merely be a means toward an end-pictures that writers spent in purchasing the right words or ideas.

EFL academic writing, Dual-coding theory, imagery ability, mental inagery, visual thinking,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Kwang Soon Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1281-1294, 2010

In Written on the Body, by creating the narrator`s ungendered and unsexed identity, Winterson makes her text open to the reader`s assumption of the narrator`s sexual and gender identity. Thus, this novel has been read, on the one hand, as a lesbian text by those who assume that the narrator is a female and, on the other hand, as a suspicious text colluding with patriarchal and heterosexual values by those who define the narrator as a male. Those readings of the narrator as one of either sex/gender, however, demonstrate how (academic as well as general) readers have been accustomed to the gender-based reading habits in which textual meanings are dichotomously arranged along the lines of sex and gender of characters. Challenging those dualistic "gendered" readings, this paper reads Winterson`s Written on the Body as a queer text which interrogates, troubles, and subverts the heterosexual concepts of narrative, desire, and body without reducing the narrator`s identity to the essentialist sex and gender system. More specifically, this paper examines how the narrator`s ``un-/over-`` determined sexual and gender identity queers the narrative structure of author-character-reader; how the narrator`s queer (fluid) desire is passing and traveling across categorical contours of (homo-/hetero-) sexual desires; how Winterson challenges the concept of a coherent body and queers the concept of body as a hermeneutic text with myriad textual grids which are not coherently mapped by power but randomly inscribed by nomadic desires.

Queer theory, Contemporary Fiction, Lesbian theory, Gender, Sexuality,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Young Min Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1295-1310, 2010

In her "After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical Discontents" in Contemporary Poetics (2007), Marjorie Perloff spotted Steve McCaffery`s and Lyn Hejinian`s points of reference and opacity/transparency in poetic language, and theorizes in her perspicacious insights that poetic language is not a window, to be seen through, a transparent glass pointing to something outside it, but a system of signs with its own semiological interconnectedness. Providing a critique and contextualizing Perloff`s argument, the purpose of this paper is to introduce a topological model for poetry, language, and theory and further to elaborate the relation between the theory and the practice of language poetry in terms of "the revolution of language." Jacques Lacan`s poetics of knowledge and of the topology of the mind, in particular, that of "extimacy," can articulate the way how language poetry problematizes the opposition between inside and outside in the substance of language itself. In fact, as signifiers always refer not to things, but to other signifiers, signifiers becomes unconscious, and can say more than they actually says. The original signifiers become unconscious through the process of repression which makes a structure of multiple and polyphonic signifying chains. Language poets use this polyphonic language of the Other at Freudian "Another Scene" and Lacan`s "Other." When the reader participates the constructive meanings, the locus of the language writing transforms itself into that of the Other which becomes the open field of language. The language poet can even manage to put himself in the between-the-two, a strange place, the place of the dream and of the Unheimlichkeit (uncanny), and suture between "the outer skin of the interior" and "the inner skin of the exterior" of the impossible real of definite meaning. The objective goal of the evacuation of meaning is all the same the first aspect suggested by the aims of the experimentalism by the language poetry. The open linguistic fields of the language poetry, then, will be supplemented by The Freudian "unconscious" processes of dreams, free associations, slips of tongue, and symptoms which are composed of this polyphonic language. These fields can be properly excavated by the methods and topological mapping of the poetics of extimacy and of the klein bottle.

American poetry, the Unconscious, language poetry, poetics, Jacques Lacan, topology, extimacy, borromean knots, klein bottle, revolution of Language,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Chang Hee Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1311-1337, 2010

This paper deals with one of the hottest debates in the history of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) since its inception in the late 1960s. In 1998 at Hawai`i, the AAAS awarded Lois-Ann Yamanaka its Fiction Award for her novel Blu`s Hanging, only to have this award protested. The point at issue was the inappropriate representation of Filipino American characters called "Human Rats" in the novel. This event divided the association into two groups: one criticizing the novel for the problematic portrayal of Filipinos in colonial Hawai`i, and the other defending it from the criticism in the name of aesthetic freedom. Such a "crisis of representation" in Asian American identity reflects on the ways in which local Hawaiians are positioned in the complicate power dynamic between oppositional Hawaiian identity and cosmopolitan diasporic identity within the larger framework of Asian American pan-ethnic identity. The controversial event triggered the eruption of Asian Americans` anxiety over the identity-bounded nation of Asian America where intra-racial classism and conflict have been at play, which are primary themes of Blu`s Hanging. This paper shows how Yamanaka`s Blu`s Hanging becomes so disturbing a work to prevent the hegemonic formality of Asian America identity from being fully dogmatic. Ultimately, it contradicts the political unconscious of the reading public and unmasked its false consciousness by engendering a "free subjective intervention" in the ideological reality of colonial Hawai`i.

Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Blu`s Hanging, The Association for Asian American Studies, Hawaiian Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, Hawaiian Modernity, Pidgin,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Seong Je Kim

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1399-1420, 2010

An analogical reading of socio-historical context of Harold Pinter`s The Caretaker employs some postcolonial discursive analyses of post-imperial British capitalistic interests in their post war reconstruction. It is also concerned with causes of so-called broken society. The Caretaker dramatizes minimal actions: a tramp is invited by the elder brother; a job as caretaker is offered; he is reluctant to accept the first offer by the elder brother, but is willing to the second by the younger; eventually, he is excluded because he makes noises while dreaming. These trivial actions produce serious and critical speech acts with their socio-historical implications. The tramp Davies is socially and thereby existentially excluded from the centre of the cold, banished to even colder peripheries. The audience face to the question. Why is Davies excluded? This study tries to answer the question, uncovering deep-rooted capitalistic racism, and reading its symptoms. Even after 50 years The Caretaker was staged, post-imperial broken society tries to operate the betrayals of disparity between the cause and effect of what has gone wrong. Pinter confirms that the action of the play takes place in a house in west London. With the city of London as its capitalistic centre, British imperialism lavished much of its wealth which has only served sectional interests dividing people against themselves. Pinter dramatizes the root of broken society. On the one hand, Pinter foregrounds the very general conflicts between individuals and forms of power; on the other hand, he underlies the very specific strategies of socio-historical exploitation, domination and exclusion.

Pinter, The Caretaker, broken society, racism, imperialism, systems of exclusion,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Mi Kyung Park

DOI: Vol.56(No.6) 1361-1378, 2010

This paper argues that it is possible to construct an analogy of the literary fragment to an organic individual on the basis of an autonomous system of organic unity by reading William Wordsworth`s ways of self-writing in The Prelude. The organicity of a fragment is borrowed from Friedrich Schlegel`s theoretic and literary approach to the Romantic fragment. Focusing primarily on the two "spots of time" in Book Twelfth, I attempt to formulate a reciprocal relationship between a work of art and a literary autobiographer in terms of the self-generativity of the fragment. To be precise, both the fragment and the autobiographical project presuppose and at the same time depend on the engendering force of an organic unity and its resistance to discontinuity, which ironically affirms the persistent threat of disruption and death. Rewriting traumatic childhood experiences as rites of passage into adulthood, the two specified "spots of time" show the dominant mode of memory operative in the poem. Asserting the prominence of the individual as the very vehicle of realizing universal humanity, Wordsworth tries to re-form his individuality grounded in his childhood memories in a literary fashion. Under the premise that the poet is remembered by his posterity, The Prelude is constituted and reconstituted in conjunction with different versions of each memory. The poem also marks the poet`s unachieved project of writing a philosophical poem, namely, The Recluse; for this very reason, The Prelude, which is complete in itself, points to an eternal work in progress, turning the truth of every fragment complete in its incompletion. As a trope of fragmentation, an autobiographical individuality is reformed in the poet`s process of writing and re-visioning while simultaneously being dispersed once again between words, sentences, and pages.

William Wordworth, individuality, fragment, The Prelude, autibiography, Friedrich Schlegel,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory