• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.727-755
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• 2011

In this paper, I'll try to read Don Lee's Yellow intertextually with a more canonical text, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, in order to see what kind of traditions and techniques Yellow references and/or rewrites as a way of tracking this production. Yellow's formal properties as a short story cycle are established through its use of particular conventions. For instance, Yellow follows the short story cycle model that includes the assemblage of recurring characters into one locale. Yellow's characters are all connected to and at some point located in the fictional small town of Rosarita Bay, California. The text form aligns it with established literary conventions and traditions and suggests the author's reliance upon or trust in those modes. Yellow's setting in a small town alludes to and has often been compared to Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which is perhaps one of the most well-known and extensively discussed short story cycles in American literature. Also following convention is Lee's construction of Rosarita Bay and the text's third person narrator as a member of that town. Both Rosarita Bay and the narrator become important figures through the related-tale nature of the text. The method of story-telling is similar to how the town Winesburg and its "seemingly sympathetic and non-overtly judgmental" narrator are operational in Anderson's text. In sum, Yellow is opportune for intertextual reading largely because it is a collection of stories that create a linked series.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.307-333
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• 2007

When W. E. B. Du Bois says that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," such a statement clearly recognizes the significance of the issue of racial identity, a cultural phenomenon called 'passing.' Both Johnson in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Larsen in Passing confront this issue. Both novels, using the metaphor of passing, not only trace the racial anxiety and race politics of the time but also expose the unstable landscape of the established social and cultural boundaries of racial identity. Mapping out multiple meanings and various dimensions of passing, this paper argues how Johnson's and Larsen's narratives display the ambivalence of color line while they at the same time complicate, problematize, and destabilize the mainstream racial boundaries and differences. It furthers to delineate how the two writers, with difference, deal with the problem of passing, the significance of racial identity, and black middle class values along with its intraracial differences. Rather than draw a clear definition of and a definitive closure on passing narrative, this paper focuses on its complexities and undecidability, challenging every dimension of its established significations. It also explores the complex dynamic between passing act and individual identity, for passing here is not just a racially signified term but extends its significance to the other factors of identity, such as class and even sexuality. Johnson and Larsen open up a site for a newly emergent, modern racial identity for black middle class in the twentieth century American urban spaces. Both writers, illuminating the subversive and slippery nature of language in their passing narrative, clearly herald new, different forms of Afro-American writings and themes for the different century they face.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.415-427
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• 2009

Woolf s preoccupation with the interplay between gender, commercialism, and the modern city is exposed in higher relief by her feminist remapping of the city through a discourse of fl nerie, which is epitomized in her singular urban travelogues such as Street Haunting and The London Scene essays. A fanatical London-adventurer herself, she assumes the persona of the fl neuse in exploring the street of modern London and especially the public sphere of the marketplace, as represented in Oxford Street Tide. Living and working in the quarter of Bloomsbury, in close proximity to the capital s famous sites of tourism, entertainment, and mass consumption, Woolf was placed at the heart of urban spectacle. In spite of the lack of critical analysis of this high-profile writer s interest in such quotidian matters as shopping, fashion and appearance, which would be informed by a hierarchy of value within literary criticism, it seems that they are inextricably intertwined with her quest into more serious-minded topics that revolve around the twin pillars of her literary project: feminism and modernism. Her essays, in particular, suggest this point in one way or another, mirroring her extraordinary susceptibility to such concerns. For Woolf, street sauntering is synonymous with an act of creative mobility, by which she plays with the notion of shifting identities, rediscovers the urban rarities and splendors, and ultimately pins them down in her literary output. By adopting the identity of a masterly rambler/observer/explorer with an omnipotent gaze, she firmly anchors herself as an active interpreter of urban modernity and viewer of its spectacle. She thus challenges the idea of public space as a male domain, which is central to the classic androcentric discourse of loitering, spectatorship and urban modernity.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.103-133
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to make a critique of racial aspects of Caribbean literature more ethical through a constant concern with history and political philosophy. The first step I take for this purpose is a comparative reading of C. L. R. James's view of Toussaint L'Ouverture's position and Frantz Fanon's view of race and class in the historical context of the Caribbean power-relations. In so doing, I examine how Toussaint's and Fanon's wills to negotiation were thwarted in the New World history. To elaborate upon this ethico-political approach, I have recourse to the so-called later Derrida, focusing on his books, such as The Politics of Friendship, Of Hospitality, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, etc. Taking an up-close look at Derrida's thought, I argue that his political contemplation of ethics is as effective as his deconstruction of "otherness" in dealing with the nature of ethnic clashes in both the real world and minority literature. In the second half of my paper, I reexamine the issues of race, gender, and class in the three novels of Jamaica Kincaid - Annie John, Lucy, and The Autobiography of My Mother. It is conceivable that from the feminist perspective Kincaid's fiction has been read as a postcolonial Bildungsroman. In my supplementary attempts to this criticism, I reveal that the teenage narrator's precocious awareness is still under the colonial influence in the Annie John section. My analysis of Lucy contends that the reasons why the white woman fails to make friends with the young black woman should be sought in the long history of the U.S. racial politics. In the section of The Autobiography of My Mother, I discuss how difficult it is for a minority woman to liberate from the spell of history insofar as she is engaged in the issue of identity. In closing, I pose a need of consolation that literature may grant us by becoming able to produce a different interpretation on all the bleaker reality.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.517-538
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• 2009

This study explores the possibility of finding intersections of commonness and differences between Mahasweta Devi's short stories, "The Hunt" and "Douloti the Bountiful" and Angela Carter's "Flesh and the Mirror" and "Master" in Fireworks. At appearance, Carter as a writer of Great Britains and Devi as a writer of India in postcolonial period do not seem to share any commonness. This study, however, tried to find "common differences," to quote Chandra Mohanty's terminology, as a basis of solidarity possible between these two different feminist writers. Another concept appropriated in this process of comparing Carter and Devi is Gayatri Spivak's 'planetary comparative literature,' which contends the necessity of critical regional studies and the study of Asian Literature in the study of English literature. Devi and Carter, despite their historical, geopolitical and racial differences, share commonness in depicting Asian or colonized women not only as the oppressed others but also as the subjects who show potential for resistance and independence. Carter portrays Japanese women as the colonized and oppressed others of Japanese society, even though Japan did not have any colonial history. Devi finds in the postcolonial Indian women both the oppressed in the interstice of colonial/postcolonial/patriarchal Indian history and the potential for resistance. Despite some limitation in her understanding of Asia, Carter shows her insight to accept Asia as a true origin of her self-knowledge and performativity of her woman's role. Despite their differences, these two writers use Freud's 'unheimlich' from the feminist point of view, in general. Devi's depiction of the heroine's dead body at the end of the story implicates the possibility of resistance through women's 'uncanny' bodies. Carter converts Freudian and negative connotation of woman's body into positive and comfortable 'home' as a starting point of her self knowledge.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.565-588
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• 2012

This paper aims at reconsidering 'suture,' a key concept in early Lacanian film criticism, with a view to narrowing a supposed gap between early Lacanian and later Lacanian film criticism. Early Lacanian film theorists, among whom Jean-Pierre Oudart, Jean-Louis Baudry, Laura Mulvey and Daniel Dayan, to name a few, are prominent, focus on cinematic signifying system as well as its ideological effects on shaping subjectivity of the audience. Initiated by Jacques-Alain Miller's article on suture as the logic of signifier and grafted into film as the logic of the cinematic by Oudart's writing, the concept of suture was established as a key word in early Lacanian film criticism. In their taxonomy, suture refers to the processes by which the audience are stitched into the story-world of a film. The audience are drawn into the film and take up positions as subjects-within-the-film such that they make sense of and respond to what the film represents as they are encouraged to do so by the film itself. On the other hand, later Lacanian film critics, who are much influenced by Lacan's later emphasis on the Real, focus on concepts such as gaze, petit objet a, fantasy, rather than suture. They are more concerned with the failure of suture and the disruption of the Symbolic than the ideological effects of suture and the consolidation of the Symbolic. They require a break from the previous approach of Lacanian film theory which centers around the Imaginary and the Symbolic. However, early Lacanian and later Lacanian film theory do not manifest as much disparity as they are supposed to do, for both are against the ideological manipulation of suture. Slavoj Žižek, a leading scholar of later Lacanian psychoanalysis, revives the concept of suture as a patch of the Symbolic which covers the gap, if not always successful.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.809-837
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• 2012

Philip Roth rejects the narrative unity and singularity of the traditional novel and creates instead a multi-levelled, fragmentary, and repetitive narrative. It is not easy to distinguish fact from fiction in The Plot Against America. As an entertaining and creative work of the postmodern historiographic metafiction, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America interrogates the existence of historically verifiable facts, the validity of authentic and official version of history, and reexamines the narrative conventions of history writing. The aim of this paper is to examine Roth's narrative experiment or 'thought experiment' and to explore the intention of creating alternative history in The Plot Against America. Roth does a 'thought experiment' in The Plot Against America. In this cautionary "what if" political fable, Roth hypothesizes that in 1940 aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, an ardent isolationist who was sympathetic to Hiltler, won the presidency. Jewish communities are stunned and terrified as America flirts with fascism and anti-semitism. Reimagining his children-with considerable fact mixed in with the fiction-Roth narrates an alternative history that has an unsettling plausibility. Roth has constructed a brilliantly telling and disturbing historical prism by which to refract the American psyche as it pertain to the discord of individual, race, history in The Plot Against America. Roth analyzes the life of individual in a historic space, the situation of anti-semitism in world of invisible order, racial conflict between black and white in world of visible order, and the darkest side of national power in this work. Roth's stories argue for the equality of various cultures grounded on the common notion of humanity, for an ethic of mutual respect, and for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.3-24
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• 2009

The Harry Potter series is considered to represent the multicultural aspect of contemporary British society and to show critical perspectives of racism. This series, however, also includes many elements of British imperialism. This paper examines the ideas about education and Harry's role in relation to British imperialism. One of the main ideas prevalent in 19th century British boys' public schools was that people's blood origin is the most important element in determining their characteristics, ability and moral qualities. The students' inherited capacity and their family background are more highly regarded than their secondary learning and training. This reflects a 19th century concept that ultimately, inborn quality makes 'a hero', a truth presented in the educational policies of Hogwarts. Hogwarts' educational policies and systems can also be related to 'developmentalism', which defines children as imperfect, in-progress and incomplete, thus needing proper training and discipline. As this concept functioned to justify the control of children while educating them, Hogwarts adopts diverse controlling devices and oppressive policies, which are mainly justified in the name of education. On the one hand, child characters are controlled and oppressed by the school authorities, on the other hand, some of the students such as Harry have remarkable magic powers enough to resist the adult authority and even to save the magic society from the evil power. Harry plays dual roles, which the British boys of the Empire were assigned from their society; they are important heirs to conquer the 'evil' or 'barbarous' world but need to be obedient to a 'good' authority to achieve the mission. Harry's magic power and self-discipline ultimately contribute to fulfilling Dumbledore's mission, which mirrors 19th century British boys' roles as the heirs of the British Empire.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.61-82
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• 2009

This paper aims to reexamine the issue of racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, especially in the light of Chinua Achebe's critique of the novella as a racist text entrenched with European prejudices of Africa and its people in his 1975 speech at the University of Massachusetts titled "An Image of Africa." While the novella's indictment of imperial exploitation has been noted from an early stage of its critical reception, its racism had hardly been discussed until Chinua Achebe posed it. Achebe offers the canonized status of the text as a modernist classic, "the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses," as one reason for its obvious manifestations of racism being glossed over. One may add that Conrad's militant denunciation of imperialist enterprises as "a sordid farce," his seemingly radical stance against imperialism, serves as ideological constraints upon his readers, blinding them to its immanent racism. A closer look at the novella's attack on imperialism turns out to be contradictory, for it also shows such liberal-humanist ideas as the civilizing mission, the work ethic, and the superiority of civilized man, all of which served to prop up European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. This ideological contradiction also accounts for Conrad's racist attitude, which is betrayed in his portrayal of Africans as obscure, primitive. Euro-American imperialism has frequently justified itself by recourse to racism, but racism has not always been allied with imperialism. Some staunch racists such as Robert Knox and Arthur de Gobineau went against imperialism, and Conrad proves one of such cases whose critique of imperialism is voiced in ways that can be characterized as racist.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.745-765
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• 2009

The Eighteenth Century Shakespeare's Women Audiences: From Objects of Sexual Appetite to Ladies of Quality Abstract Younglim Han (Kyungpook National U) This paper aims to give an account of the eighteenth century Shakespeare's women audiences who marked a turning-point in the history of Shakespeare's popularity. The 1736 formation of the 'Shakespeare Ladies Club' as a leading group of the female audience encouraged the theater managers to perform more Shakespeare. Stage productions relied more than ever on the favorites of women audiences. The establishment of female patronage was associated with the popularity of Shakespeare's crossed-dressed comedies and actresses in 'breeches' part. The outstanding achievement of the Ladies was their contribution to the promotion of Shakespeare's status as an embodiment of British culture and the acknowledgement of the dignity of national literature. They were successful in securing the native sense of Shakespeare in place of Italian opera and Harlequin pantomime. The recognition of the national significance of Shakespeare led a campaign to erect his monument in Westminster Abbey. The female audience's claim to the respectable Shakespeare provided the stimulus for transforming his plays in the interests of family values such as marital duty and domestic morality. Marina (1738), George Lillo's adaptation of Pericles that was dedicated to the Ladies, was an exemplary case. The domestic versions of Shakespeare stressed the importance of women characters and the idealization of them. Thus the reception of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century was characteristic of formulating the women audiences-performers-characters association. The female yearning for a refined theater was a significant achievement, considering its influence on ways of establishing the canonical Shakespeare in the eighteenth century.