• The Korean Publising Journal, Monthly
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• s.132
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• pp.25-25
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• 1993

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.51-72
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• 2011

This paper explores the issue of strangers and of hospitality in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, based on Kant's concept of hospitality as "the right of a stranger" and on Derrida's discussion of hospitality. It first examines the similarities between the domestic relations within the Frankenstein family and Frankenstein's relation to the monster: an effort to create unity out of a multiplicity of elements, and what can be called a "debt economy." Then, reading the animation scene of the monster as a version of the advent of a stranger, it deals with the question of hospitality. More specifically, the arrival of Clerval immediately follows the animation of the monster because it effectively dramatizes the paradox that there is no hospitality without hostility. The opposition and the apposition between hospitality and hostility are also seen in the De Lacey family's welcoming Safie and rejecting the monster. Frankenstein's failure and the De Lacey family's failure to welcome the monster show that hospitality as "right" exemplified by Kantian hospitality does not apply to a stranger like the monster who has neither name nor relation and who is categorized into what Derrida terms "an absolute other." This paper also looks at Safie's problematic subversion against her father, which loses its subversive charge in the context of racial relations between Turkish Mahometans and European Christians. Safie's father looms large in the context of the issue of hospitality because his episode suggests that the category of race causes hospitality to malfunction.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.255-276
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• 2010

Despite some critics' efforts to highlight Shelley's political fruitfulness, they tend to disregard meaningful differences that Shelley has from other Jacobin radicals of his times. Accordingly, the critics tackle his apparent incoherence revealed in A Philosophical View of Reform; the first two sections contain a keen insight into the socio-political injustice prevalent in Britain and the reasons behind it, while the third section withdraws from the previous radical position and settles with a moderate electorate reform. This paper argues that recent developments in post-structuralist and post-Marxist theory help to clearly assess Shelley's political position. Emphasizing that the Jacobin concept of revolution is incompatible with the plurality and opening which a radical democracy requires, post-marxists such as Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffee claim that a more viable form of political resistance is to expose repression and force involved in hegemonic articulations. For them, dislocation, a distabilization of a discourse that results from the emergence of events which cannot be domesticated, symbolized, or integrated within the discourse, opens up the possibility of freedom for agents. A Philosophical View of Reform is an attempt to dislocate the discourses of monarchy and paper money by exposing their social and historical constructiveness and their repressive exclusion of alternative discourses. The political goal of this essay is to awaken subjects within a hegemonic structure by decentering the structure and to make them act by stimulating new discoursive constructions.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.483-509
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• 2008

For the last decades, criticism on Frankenstein has tried to make a link between Victor's Creature and Rousseaurean "man in a state of nature." Like the Rousseaurean savage in a state of animal, the monster has only basic instincts least needed for his survival, i.e. self-preservation, but turns into a civilized man after learning language. Most critics argue that, despite the monster's acquisition of language, his failure in entry into a cultural and linguistic community is the outcome of a lack of sympathy for him by others, which displays the stark existence of epistemological barriers between them. That is to say, the monster imagines his being the same as others in the pre-linguistic stage but, in the linguistic stage, he realizes that he is different from others. Interpreting the Rousseaurean idea of language, which appears in his writings, as much more focused on emotion than many critics think, I read the dispute between Victor and his Creature as a variation of parent-offspring conflict. Shelley criticizes Rousseau's parental negligence in putting his children into a foundling hospital and leaving them dying there. The monster's revenge on uncaring Victor parallels the likely retaliation Rousseau's displaced children would perform against Rousseau, which Shelley imaginatively reproduces in her novel. The conflict between the monster and Victor is due to a disrupted attachment between parent and child in terms of Darwinian developmental psychology. Affective asynchrony between parent and child, which refers to a state of lack of mutual favorable feelings, accounts for numerous dysfunctional families. This paper shifts a focus from a semiotics-oriented perspective on the monster's social isolation to a Darwinian perspective, drawing attention to emotional problems transpiring in familial interactions. In doing so, it finds that language is a means of communicating one's internal emotions to others along with other means such as facial expressions and body movements. It also demonstrates that how to promote emotional well-being in either familial or social relationships entirely depends on the way in which one employs language that can entail either pleasure or anger on hearers' part.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.667-690
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• 2010

This essay attempts to read Percy Bysshe Shelley s The Mask of Anarchy by attending to a political agenda that Shelley seeks to propose and embody in the poem. This poem was written as a response to an exceptional political event, the Peterloo Massacre, and thus it is evident that Shelley intended to engage in contemporary politics by writing this poem. As many critics have pointed out, however, the way in which this poem addresses social, plitical issues is ambivalent and even confusing, since it contains many elements that contradict each other, and sometimes its political visions are based on incoherent conceptions. For this reason, this poem has been considered to be a failure as an occasional poem which should provide the reader with a clear direction for political actions. Faced with this critical problem, this essay proposes that the ambivalence this poem reveals-e.g., the confrontation between moderate artistic fantasy and radical tenets-is not a retreat from political activism, as some critics suggested, but a result of its creation and embodiment of a public sphere which invites various social classes and their positions. The mode in which Shelley conceives this unified public sphere in the course of writing The Mask of Anarchy can be interpreted in terms of the following three features. First, this poem underscores the significance of thoughts in constituting a communal space between people, thus asking the reader to participate in this process of thinking on given issues. Second, this poem suggests that people should enlighten each other by engaging in communicative reciprocations. Lastly, the public sphere formulated by the previous two features should incorporate various socio-political agents beyond class boundaries (even oppressors themselves) into its own working field. After explaining how these three features are manifested in the poem, this essay argues that the unified public sphere thus formed in the poem is the very agenda that Shelley aims to propose for the contemporaneous politics and culture. As a conclusion, this essay highlights how Shelley s project of creating a unified public sphere finally failed in contemporary history through observing two contrasting receptions of Shelley s works.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.93-115
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• 2012

The decades after the French Revolution witnessed the prolific production and consumption of apocalyptic literature, tinged with the optimistic vision of political progress and human perfectibility. However, the Romantic writers were cautious to embrace the idea of the end of history, even though it promised an aesthetic space relieved of historical determinants. Mary Shelley's The Last Man joined this line of Romantic literature which skeptically questions the millenarian desires of political apocalypse by representing apocalypse without millenium. Using the theme of apocalypse as a tool to investigate the place of human beings in the universe and to test diverse political reform ideas to their fullest potential, the novel diagnoses the ideas of representative political subject as the most problematic aspect of political structure. The notion of subjecthood presupposes a political decision as to who can be counted as subject and this decision, according to the novel, assumed a subject that is "active, free, conscious and willful sovereign," which Raymond embodies in his exemplary body. Against the sovereignty of Raymond is juxtaposed the subaltern subject such as Sybil. The resistance of Sybil to Apollo, another exemplary subject, is the subtext of the novel, which guides the way out of the grim future of humanity. While the plague exemplifies the universalizing ideal with its principle of sovereignty, Sybil and her descendent Lionel practice the unconditional hospitality so that they can renew the community in a way to embrace singularities of individuals.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.259-272
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• 1999

The real nature of the west wind in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind is the divine providence which influences all things in this world- that is, whether they are on land, in the sky, or in the sea. The divine providence is the manifestation of something beyond the present and tangibel object. In the first stanza, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is the wild wind, the breath of Autumn's being, the unseen presence, the azure sister of the Spring, a Destroyer, a Preserver, the winged seed, a creator, a philosopher, a poet, Shelley, and the wild spirit moving everywhere. In the second stanza, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is cloud, the angel of rain and lightning, fierce Maenad, the approaching storm, the congregated might, the black rain, the fire, hail, solid atmosphere, the tremendous power of revolutionary change, and the power that influences all things in the sky. In the third stanza, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is the voice that makes the oozy woods which wear the sapless foliage of the Atlantic, and the power makes the blue Mediterranean wake from his summer dream. the fit medium of expression which Shelley's soul was seeking for, Shelley's passion, Shelley's partner, Shelley's co-worker, and a strong presence which influences in the sea. In the fourth stanza, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is the mightest presence, the power, the strength, the free presence, the uncontrollable, the wanderer over heaven, a vision, the tameless, the swift, the proud and the God who can save Shelley form the heavy weight of hours and lift Shelley as a wave a leaf, a cloud. In the fifth stanza, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is the mighty harmony, the fierce Spirit, Shelley's spirit, the impetuous spirit, incanation of this verse, spark, the trumpet of a prophecy, the Providence which can make the Winter depart and call Spring, and the prophet. To conclude, the real nature of the west wind in this poem is Shelley's accumulated insight that he visulize his impulse of revolutionary thought.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.45-77
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• 2021

The aftermath of the COVID-19 virus continues. There are two potential fears behind the various preventive and quarantine measures. : the fear that "I may be infected" and the fear that "someone may infect me". This subconscious is built on the 'imagination of infection'. This paper attempted to analyze science fiction(SF) narratives and zombie narratives that influenced our imagination of infection. And this paper attempts to examine how SF novels and movies understand and express "infection", and how zombie narratives reveal "infection" and its horror. Mary Shelley's novel "The Last Man" revealed the paradox that the fear of an infectious disease gave humanity an opportunity for reflection. The films and showed that fear and aversion to infectious diseases can lead to riots and conflict. Zombie narrative is a genre that most dramatically expresses the horror of infection. Director Yeon Sangho's zombie trilogy, including , reveals that people around you can turn into the most dangerous source of infection. Through SF and zombie narratives, we can realize that humanity must have a humble sense of solidarity, ethics, and empathy in the face of infectious diseases. Through this narrative texts, we can realize the importance of the imagination of infection. Imagination of infection is the basis for understanding the causes and consequences of the spread of infection, the process and future prospects.