• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.617-628
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• 2018

The aim of this essay is to discuss the relationship between Korean literature and Korean intellectual scenes. Since its first introduction to the local context, literature as a genre has served as a field in which colonial and post-colonial intellectuals have attempted to win the accreditation of Western enlightenment. Literature has been regarded as a crucial instrument of liberal arts and education in Korea. Literature has functioned as a social movement in Korea since its inception. During the colonial period, radical intellectuals and literary writers published essays and articles in literary journals. This status as a social movement is still a distinctive characteristic of Korean literature. From the outset, Korean literature has functioned as an enlightenment project for cultural development. As such, Korean literature retains a political meaning of "literariness," which reshuffles the hierarchy of the sensible and creates novelty against given aesthetic regimes. As a result, in the process these regimes are thereby de-purified of their status as purely aesthetic movements; their perspectives thereby come into contact with other discourses and practices outside the art world. This essay argues that as a genre, Korean literature always functions as "world literature" in Korean intellectual scenes.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.53-71
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• 2014

This paper is about some aspects of the late-modern representation of antiquity in Western countries. The timeframe is mostly the decades since the 1980s, but some works are also mentioned from previous phases. Some information is given on the late-modern historical novel, characterized by mixture of genres and intertextual references to historical events and contemporary varieties of discourse. Eclecticism would seem to be a characteristic feature, and it mainly consists of a mixture of real events and imagination, cohabitation of ancient settings and modernized characters, and interaction between high and low culture. Commercialization often accompanies novels on antiquity in the $21^{st}$ century. And ideologies such as romanness, germanism and barbarianism are employed by some authors to refer to contemporary realities. A number of films and novels are mentioned. More specific analysis focuses on Valerio Manfredi's The Last Legion and the film based on the book; Simon Scarrow's Gladiator: The Fight for Freedom; and Robert Harris's Pompeii.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.9-44
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• 2020

This article aimed to looked back at the 1960s, which were assessed to be 'the age of essays', to survey denotations of essays, amplified by the discourse antagonism surrounding 'essays' and the writings of philosophers. Kim Hyeong Suk, Ahn Byeong Uk, and Kim Te Gil were philosophy professors of Yonsei University, Soongshil University, and Seoul National University and writers of numerous essay collections of the 1960s. However, there have been very few studies conducted on them. This is because of old prejudices within literary history that primarily undervalue essays and practices that try to limit them as 'Literariness'. Essays of the 1960s became the flavor of the times based on democratic demands that attempted to objectify individual experiences and grounds that passed through the war and the April 19 Revolution. The language of philosophers was expropriated through the various senses of first person writing to readers of the times, which lacked civil culture and national morality. Deficits in public spheres of the 1950s and 1960s were filled by Kim Hyeong Suk's narrations of comfort and conquest based on historic experiences, Ahn Byeong Uk's logic of self-discipline and knowledge based on democracy, and Kim Te Gil's humor and introspection that objectified the lives of the petit bourgeois. However, as the essays of philosophers failed to connect with the public discourse of the age, they were unable to go as far as sparking or serving as a medium for civil culture in the 1970s. Regardless, as essays rose historically in the 1960s, thought was given to the characteristics of the 'essay' genre and in connection, to the merits and demerits of cultural history that possesses the language of philosophers.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.39-50
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• 1999

The Chinese poems written by Je-Ma Yi may be categorized into two different facets: one is about a broad spectrum of a man's feelings covering from delight to sorrow; and the other is about self-caution. He has been known to be a warrior having strong self-respect and a man of tough personality reluctant to compromise with others. As a result of analyzing his poems, however, it was confirmed that he was an ordinary person who got along with his neighborhood, took a pleasure in appreciating natural beauty and wandered around in agonies of pain. The literary features reflected in his self-caution poems are compatible with his own philosophical thought. Through these poems, he revealed his autonomous perception of life, and its ultimate goal was placed on the fulfillment of moral obligation, the highest value that a man should achieve as an individual. Je-Ma Yi's Chinese poems are in full harmony with the general tendency shown in the area of poetic literature during the late Yi dynasty. As pointed out above, particular qualities are represented in his poems, and thereby, from comparative perspectives with his unique literariness, future research activities should be directed to a well-defined study on other contemporary writers.