Table of Contents
Vol.60  No.2  2014

Writers in England`s colonies and former colonies have long struggled with the advantages and disadvantages of employing the language of the colonizer for their creative work, an issue that today reaches beyond the older imperial trade routes in the era of “global English.” Creative writers in widely disparate locations are now using global English to their advantage, with what can be described as post-postcolonial strategies. This essay explores the politics of global English, beginning with a satiric dictionary of “Strine” (Australian English) from 1965, and then looking back at the mid-1960s debate at Makerere University between Ngugi wa Thiong`o and Chinua Achebe, in which Achebe famously asserted the importance of remaking English for hi own purposes. The essay then discusses early linguistic experiments by Rudyard Kipling, who became the world`s first truly global writer in the 1880s and 1890s and developed a range of strategies for conveying local experience to a global audience. The essay then turns to two contemporary examples: a comic pastiche of Kipling-and of Kiplingese-by the contemporary Tibetan writer Jamyang Norbu, who deploys “Babu English” and the legacy of British rule against Chinese encroachment in Tibet; and, finally, the Korean- American internet group Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, who interweave African-American English with North Korean political rhetoric to hilariously subversive effect.

keyword : Global English, Achebe, Kipling, Jamyang Norbu, Younghae Chang Heavy Industries,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

In late Victorian England, a “pervert” meant two things. One meaning designated a person who “turned” or converted from one sect of Christianity to another. In Wilde`s time this referred specifically to converts from the established state Church of England to the transnational Roman Catholic Church. The other, newer meaning designated someone who turned from conventional heterosexual relations to a (as yet unnamed) homosexual orientation. In the context of the late Victorian empire, both were considered dangerous. The rising social and political influence of Roman Catholicism appeared threatening as a transnational Church invading a national one. For the Anglican Church of England, this crisis was played out what came to be known as the Oxford Movement, still influential during Wilde`s time as a student there from 1874 to 1878. What is interesting in Wilde`s life, as in his work, is the way he himself played with the dangerous transgressions inherent in being a “pervert.” Sexually, he was converted to same-sex love while still a married man. In terms of religion, he remained fascinated with Catholicism, allegedly converting on his death-bed. But what is provocative is way that Wilde used one “perversion” to play into another: so that in such works as The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome, his version of a kind of anti-Catholic Catholicism becomes a site of sexual desire, and sexual desire expression for that kind of spirituality, which, as unrequited longing, can ultimately n find no object adequate to its imagination.

keyword : “Pervert,” Roman Catholicism, Church of England, Oxford Movement, Transubstantiation,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Cultural Studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature which is usually not dealt with by elite literary scholars or comparatists, but also because it severely challenges the established literary canon and even tries to subvert this elite-oriented canon. In addition, Cultural Studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of new literary canon by expanding the narrow domain of (elite) literature and its studies. What was not touched upon by traditional literary scholars is now studied by Cultural Studies scholars. In this sense, we should realize that it is not the field of Cultural Studies that occupies the domain of literary studies, but rather, it has expanded its traditional domain and added some new cultural elements. This article will illustrate how the interdisciplinary writings of some of the representative Anglo-American literary scholars have paved the way for effective dialogues between literary studies and Cultural Studies. I argue that the practice of Cultural Studies in China will not only contribute to global Cultural Studies in general, but also carry on equal dialogue with its Western and international counterparts. My purpose is to deal with the challenge of Cultural Studies to comparative literature studies in general before mapping the new orientations of Cultural Studies in 21st century China.

keyword : Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, Glocalization, Translation Studies, World Literature,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

An outsider`s perspective is often illuminating and enlightening, as he or she perceives the world differently from us, and sees things that insiders tend to miss. While an outsider`s views are fresh and penetrating, an insider`s vision is often banal and myopic. Although outsiders` perspectives may not be quite right at times, they always shed light and provide insight, allowing us to reevaluate the conventional interpretations of our literature and folktales. In order to prevent our own understanding and knowledge from growing stale and narrow- minded, we should endeavor to consider outsiders` opinions and view all things from multiple angles. When reading literary or cultural texts, therefore, we need to read through others` eyes because it provides alternative perspectives. And we should learn to co-exist with others and see things from others` eyes. In his celebrated novel, My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel Laureate, explores the themes of clashes between the East and the West, the young and the old, and conservatism and radicalism. The confrontation between the stubborn defenders of tradition and the self-righteous innovators ultimately results in bigotry, hatred and murder. As Pamuk aptly perceives in his novel, the inevitable outcome of such uncompromising conflict is degradation of humanity and annihilation of human civilization. That is precisely why we need to embrace others who are different from us and learn to look through others` eyes. Sometimes, we fear other voices and different perspectives. As the movie “The Others” suggests, however, there is no reason for us to be afraid of others.

keyword : cultural imperialism, film studies, postmodern perspective, folk tales, zombies,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Written as her last collaboration with the Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell`s The Verge is an exceptional play in that its formal experiment and modernist theme are clear of her general modernist ambivalence which combines a uniquely American and feminist expression of the modernist spirit with rather conventional forms. Following critics` brief and generalizing comments on the play`s protagonist embodying modernist formalism and alienation, this paper offers a full and concrete survey detailing the tenets and the slogans of Modernism inlaid in the play. Its main argument is that Glaspell strategically deployed the metaphysics of egoism, anarchic hostility to the collectiveness of bourgeois society, and formalist preoccupation in Modernism in representing a female egoist`s longing for a new order of society, illustrating an intersection between Modernism and feminism. It concludes that The Verge is an extremely rare case of modernist literature where a play, allegedly the least modernist genre of all according to Christopher Innes, exemplifies the “eloquent critical acts entangled in the creative work” which Michael Levenson lists as a distinct feature of modernist texts.

keyword : Susan Glaspell, The Verge as modernist literature, female egoism, tenets and rhetoric of the modernist avant garde, critical acts entangled in the creative work,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

Flannery O’Connor’s stories have garnered critical attention for her religious views. Thus, the interpretation of violence in her fiction has been mainly associated with salvation in her characters. Nonetheless, O’Connor was aware of the historical facts surrounding white supremacist activities in the American South. In its revenge narrative, O’Connor’s story “The Displaced Person” (1955) unveils subtle layers of politics from the Ku Klux Klan as well as her white characters’ views of race and immigrants. O’Connor used a voice of reserve due to her minority position as woman and Catholic. Although she was a white female, she lived within repressive Southern religiosity. Racism prevailed beneath Southern chauvinism and patriotism. The conflicts in the South display the violent aspects of the “Invisible White Supreme Empire.” After the World Wars, devalued whiteness elicited atrocities against socially upward mobile African Americans, foreigners and Catholics. This article explores the convoluted issues of racial hierarchy, miscegenation, and xenophobic reactions in the South.

keyword : Flannery O`Connor, “The Displaced Person,” Invisible Empire, Miscegenation, White Supremacy,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

In The Great Hunger (1942) Patrick Kavanagh opens an Irish postnationalist discourse. Taking advantage of historical revisionism and postcolonialism, he not only demystifies a romantic nationalist ideology rooted in rural Ireland but also searches for an autonomous literary tradition free of the Irish Literary Revival, supposedly an outcome of a colonial influence. As a farmer-poet, Kavanagh deconstructs in two ways myths of rural areas, to which the Revivalists aspire. Contrary to Revivalism, he reveals that rural Ireland is not an idealized place where national identity arises and individual spirits are restored. It is instead a cruel place where farmer Maguire, deprived of health, wealth, and love, is tortured by hard labor in the field, moral regulations imposed by the Church, and his mother`s domestic authority, all of which leave him unmarried until age sixty-five. Kavanagh also challenges the Revivalist tradition, led by W. B. Yeats commonly referred to as the poet of the nation, by indicting its reliance on former colonial authority and its lack of a sense of communal autonomy, both of which are diagnosed as “provincialism” by Kavanagh. Given that modern Irish literature has been strongly colored as nationalistic during the course of anticolonial resistance, Kavanagh`s critique of the Revival in The Great Hunger, whose proponents blindly beautify the lives of farmers, runs directly against the grain of the founding ideology of the Irish nation-state. His voice, like that of a whistle-blower, disclosing the harsh realities of rural Ireland, ushers in a “post”-nationalist perspective on nation and national myths in Irish poetics.

keyword : 패트릭 캐바나, 아일랜드 농촌사회, 문예부흥운동, 아일랜드 민족국가, 포스트민족주의, Patrick Kavanagh, rural Ireland, Irish Literary Revival, Irish nation-state, postnationalism,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

This essay reconsiders the subject of Romantic self-consciousness in a postde Manian perspective. Self-consciousness is an attribute of Romantic lyricism whereby the poetic speaker I remains conscious of how (s)he feels or lives here and now. This self-reflective feature of Romantic poetry has been controversially interpreted either as self-centered solipsism or as self-expressive objectivism. The question is stirring more disputes among Romantic critics after the advent of New Historicism and Feminism. These two historicistic approaches reprove Romantic poetry for a lack of the sense of history and ascribes it to Romantic self-consciousness. They argue that Romantic poets in general displace historical materiality into an object of internal consciousness, so negating absurd social realities “merely to gain their own immortal soul.” This essay targets to overcome this negative stance on Romantic self-consciousness with a “subversive” return to Paul de Man’s criticism of Romantic internality.

keyword : 드 만, 낭만적 자의식, 워즈워스, 역사성, 무의식, Paul de Man, Romantic self-consciousness, William Wordsworth, historicity, the unconscious,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

The essay focuses on the relationship between the soldiers and the oppressed women in Lynn Nottage`s Ruined (2009) in terms of Julia Kristeva`s abject to show how the abjected Congolese women expose the falsehood of the order and identity that the military forces try to construct and maintain by war and violence. According to Kristeva, the abject is something that is rejected for the repulsion and horror it arouses but constantly draws the subject to it at the same time. Physically impaired and socially stigmatized, sexually abused Congolese women find a shelter in Mama Nadi`s bar, the only place where they can continue their lives as the abject since the place, like the women themselves, lies outside the symbolic order occupied and corrupted by the men of DRC. Although the men involved in the armed conflict have abjected the women in pursuit of their own system and order, the women are not simply the objects of abuse and oppression. The men have to rely on Mama Nadi and her women not only to reaffirm their identity and power by suppressing them but also to fulfill their biological needs. In addition, the women`s resistance against the soldiers demonstrates their power to challenge the men`s symbolic order and expose its frailty. Apropos of the abject`s resistance, various artistic genres such as poetry, music and dance appear in the play as an escape from the grim reality and a means of challenging and transcending the symbolic order. Bringing all these artistic elements together into a powerful piece of theatre-often considered as an ‘abject’ genre nowadays, Nottage demonstrates both the power of theatre as well as the tenacious Congolese women.

keyword : 린 노티지, 『망가진 여인들』, 비체, 전쟁, 콩고, Lynn Nottage, ruined, abject, war, Congo,영미문학, 문화연구, 비교문학, 비평이론, English and American Literature, cultural studies, comparative literature, critical theory

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