• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.79-104
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• 2018

Chung Ji Yong is a well-known poet in the Japanese Occupation Period firstly as a lyrical and traditional poet as a member of the literary journal Simunhak(Poetry Literature) along with Park Yong Chul and Kim Young Rang and later as a prominent modernist poet in the late years of the Period. He is always highly estimated as a poet of pictorial images and lyricism, but his ardor for translations, especially Walt Whitman has been neglected so far. Before him, Ju Yohan, Yi Kwang Soo, Yi Un Sang, Kim Hyung Won and many other poets and critics had been interested in Whitman's democratic ideas and his poems. Chung Ji Young also translated Whitman's three poems in the hard days of 1930s. After the Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on 15 August 1945, ending 35 years of Japanese occupation, Korea was under the American forces and Russian troops. In this critical days of Korean's debating only one korea or separated Koreas, strangely enough, Chung ji Yong fully immersed in translating Whitman's poems only for four years as an English literature professor just before being abducted by North Korean Army, while almost discarding his own poetic ability and sense of duty as a leading poet in the literary circle with only just a few exceptions. Why did Chung Ji Yong focused on the translation of Whitman's poems in this important period as a poet and intellectual in the newly independent country? He may want to warn people too much ideological conflicts or at least express his frustration through translating Whitman's poems. Until now, academic endeavors on Chung Ji Yong's poems and life are focused on his lyrical and modernistic works of the Japanese Occupation Period and naturally little interested in the days of Independence period and his true motivations on translating Whitman's poems. As a proposal, this short article can be a minor trigger for the sincere efforts of Chung Ji Yong's last days.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1295-1310
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• 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.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1089-1109
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• 2011

In an attempt to demonstrate in context of Nietzsche's "overman" (ubermensch) and Heidegger's "Being-in-the-World" (Dasein) the collective human efforts to overcome humanism in crisis, I will provide the ground for the poetics of overcoming, the ground which are based upon the double movements of transhumanism and transnationalism. For this purpose, I will turn to the theories of two distinctive poets who reveal and disreveal their truths about the subjecthood or the subjectivity in terms of overcoming: Christopher Dewdney for posthuman transhumanity and Dionisio D. Martinez for transnational cultural contamination Transhumanism represented by Christopher Dewdney manifests an interfusion of outside and inside, thereby collapsing the boundary between the mind and the world, and provides a breakthrough from the limitedly defined mind to the transhuman perspective of overcoming by using terminalogy and techniques from science and technology. The emerging transhumanism reflects the growing interdependence between humans and bio technologies, and suggests a potential improvement of human beings. The main argument of transhumanism is that we humans can and should continue to develop in all possible directions, by overcoming our human limitations by shedding the body and having the disembodied consciousness which will liberate our mind. Kwame Anthony Appiah's "cultural contamination" is another form of overcoming as well as a way to otherness, a counter-ideal of cultural purity which sustains authentic culture, reversing the traditional binary opposition between enriching authenticity and threatening hybridization. Dionisio Martinez's poetry sublimates the negative side of Appiah's concept of contamination, by redeeming the value of the Appiah's list of the ideal of contamination such as hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. When a poetic subject is doubly exiled and doubly homeless away from his/her native homeland and home of native language, one has no more identification with the authentic culture of both home and away, but rather anticipates a new identity as a transnational subject to cross the bridge beyond cultural authenticity and to enter into the field of cultural contamination.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.43-67
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• 2012

My essay aims at illustrating Whitman's homosexual vision of utopia with a close reading of his representative homosexual text, Calamus. His expansive self is based upon his intimate contact with the world and is almost always drawn to a wider vision of community in which different individuals share the locus of commonness and reach beyond their empirical boundaries. While foregrounding the contingent and the singular, Whitman forges bonds with other people through a series of ecstatic moments that carry us into the public sphere and common interests. Contrary to the current Whitman studies, his homosexual text doesn't repress contingency in order to celebrate the universal, but fully develops the commensurability among diverse historical agents. Whitman knows well the social taboos and inhibitions at the time of national crisis and expansion, but keeps imagining the world where homosexuality plays a central and significant role in founding a democratic solidarity and achieving a desirable social structure. His ideal of America is not a deferred wish for the future, but a concrete vision that can be achieved here and now, realized by the spontaneous bonding and instant attraction among free men. Instead of interpreting history or suggesting practical alternatives, he keeps questioning the dominant ideologies and the given orders of social control, and suggests a free and open relationship among men where no exterior power or mediating other intervenes. His utopian vision is radical as well as ideal, in that it rejects the interventions of the power structure and its institutions and courageously inscribes his homosexuality in the process of writing about and reading his contemporary America. As a predecessor of a homosexual utopian vision of America, Whitman has inspired many later poets, showing a possibility of infusing a homosexual identity into a radical imaging of the nation and its future.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.25-45
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• 2010

While environmental ethics, a relatively new field of philosophy, has gained its practical power in the contemporary world, the ethics of ecological poetry has not been studied well and the relationship between poetry and ethics has also been troubled for a long time. How can it be probed, interrogated, and constructed in ecological criticism? Attempting to steer some critical focus to the topic of ethics and poetic language, this essay is to elucidate these questions within the ecological traits of Mary Oliver's poems. In the process of revisiting Oliver's poems, this essay tries to rescue the poet Oliver, one of the most gifted poets in contemporary American poetic landscape, but a long-neglected one, and questions of ethics which have been evaded for a long time in ecological criticism. Oliver's ecological imagination at once invites readers to become other in the outer world in a most spontaneous way and re-questions the fundamental distance between the self and the other in the process of becoming other. Challenging the humanistic view of nature, she opens the various layers of becoming other: from the possible state of perfect merging to the sad recognition of the impossibility of merging, from the happy moment of rebirth beyond death, to the conflicting moment of being-together. In the different cycles and levels of becoming other, Oliver's poetry completes the poetics of relation in the components of 'self-in-relation.' In those different layers of relations, the ethics of ecological poetry is newly explored rather than residing in the safe net of goodness or sympathy between the self and the other, or the stark division between the two. Oliver's witty, sensitive, sometimes sad eyes toward others, therefore, entice readers to move from the established view of nature to the extraordinary moment of encountering it, thus accomplishing the ethics of beings, not just of ecological poetry.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.843-863
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• 2009

This paper aims at tracing the appearance of Italy in W. H. Auden's poems. Auden summered on Ischia, an island in the Gulf of Naples, between 1948 and 1957. In the process of ten years of contact with Italy, Auden' poetry developed out of Italy, and contributed to the world's picture of Italy by English poets. In the early part of his stay, Auden was fascinated with Italy and found a source of vitality for composing his poems. But Auden's initial view of Italian culture evolved from extolling its virtues to a more critical one weighing its losses and benefits. The happiest mood is reflected in "In Praise of Limestone", in which the ground itself becomes a symbol of Eden. "Ischia" introduces the real landscape of the island. Auden partly admits the darkness of the island in the aspects of its past history and legends, but the poem is still mainly about praising the beauty of the island and the comfort that it gives to the poet. In "Goodbye to the Mezzogiorno" the negative side of the island's life comes to light. There was something in the setting, warm and beautiful as it was, that no longer suited Auden's temperament and Auden bids farewell to his Mediterranean period. His view of Italy is a restricted and detached one seen through the eyes of a successful Anglo-American poet. Auden's cosmopolitan character often is defined such terms as "the Wandering Jew," "alien" or "stateless Auden". But our reading of his poems dealing with Italy reveals his true characteristics which can not transcend his evolving views.

• Sijohaknonchong
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• v.25
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• pp.49-73
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• 2006

The poetic theme is a unified principle of which a poet writes poems out in his work. Theme is a poet's central thought expressed in his works. And it was described on the basis of writer's view of the world and life. In this study, I divided the themes of modern Sijo into three kinds according to the materials for a poem. Especially I am interested not so much in the poems taking outer problems of human life for the subject of a poem as in poems dealing with fundamental problems of human life such as self-consciousness, death, God's presence. Firstly, in modern Sijo which deals with poet's self-reflection and self-consciousness as a poet, poets examine himself. And he intends to write poems more severely. The more poet reflects self-consciousness, the more earnestly he tries hard to write good poems. As a poet. he feels complication between real-self and ideal self, so he tries to conquer the shame made in the gab of them. And he takes writing poems into his divinely appointed work in life. A kind of meta-Sijo is written in this circumstances. Secondly, there are modern Sijo, which shows deep concerns in death problems of human life. Thanatopsis expressed in modern Sijo is connected with poet's personal experiences. In most cases, poet describes fragmentary thoughts, sorrows and agony after death of his intimate persons. In Sijo, however, poets don't dig Into the death problem deep enough because of the characteristics of genre. But it is very significant work to take various materials of death into poetic themes in Sijo in that it makes us to reflect of human attitude of life. Thirdly, the poetic themes of dealing with fundamental problems of human and God are expressed in Sijo based on Christian view of the world. In such a poems, poet complains to God who looks in illogical human situations as a spectator of vulgar realities of life. But ultimately. poet expresses deep affirmation and obedience of God in his poems. So he manifests Christianity by the poetic paradox. Such poems change over the theme of modern Sijo the superficial Problems of reality to the deep situation of life.

• Journal of Korean Classical Literature and Education
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• no.34
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• pp.115-147
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• 2017

This paper compared and reviewed the poetic theories and Chinese poems of the Korean author Kim Chang Heup and his Japanese counterpart, Kan Chazan. Kim Chang Heup and Kan Chazan shared largely the same opinions on poetry, and both rejected archaism. First, they did not just copy High Tang poetry. Instead, they focused on the (sometimes trivial) scenery right in front of them, and described the calm feelings evoked by what they had seen. They also adopted a sincere tone, instead of an exaggerated one, because both believed that poetry should be realistic. However the differences between the two poets are also noteworthy. Kim Chang Heup claimed that feelings and scenery meet each other within a literary work through Natural Law, and the linguistic expressions that mediate the two are philosophical in nature. However, Kan Chazan did not use Natural Law as a medium between feelings and scenery. Instead the Japanese writer said the ideal poetical composition comes from a close observation and detailed description of scenery. In sum, while Kim Chang Heup continued to express reason through scenery, Kan Chazan did not go further than depicting the scenery itself. In addition, Kim Chang Heup believed poetry was not only a representation of Natural Law, but also a high-level linguistic activity that conveys a poetic concern about national politics. As a sadaebu (scholar-gentry), he held literature in high esteem because he thought that literature could achieve important outcomes. On the other hand, Kan Chazan regarded it as a form of entertainment, thereby insisting literature had its own territory that is separate from that of philosophy or politics. In other words, whereas Kim Chang Heup considered literature as something close to a form of learning, Kan Chazan viewed it as art. One might wonder whether the poetics of Kim Chang Heup and Kan Chazan reflect their individual accomplishments, or if the characteristics of Chinese poetry that Korean and Japanese poets had long sought after had finally surfaced in these two writers. This paper argued that the two authors' poetics represent characteristics of Chinese poetry in Korea and Japan, or general characteristics of Korean and Japanese literatures in a wider sense. Their request to depict actual scenery in a unique way, free from the ideal model of literature, must have facilitated an outward materialization of Korean and Japanese literary characteristics that had developed over a long time.

• Journal of Korean Classical Literature and Education
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• no.33
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• pp.121-152
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the history of the Cheonsu-Temple天壽寺 and to describe the echo verse poem trend with regard to 'Waiting'待人 and why it is beautiful. The Cheonsu-Temple was located in the outskirts of Gaesung開城, the capital city during the Corea高麗 Dynasty. However, the temple was destroyed when the dynasty collapsed. Cheonsu-Station天壽院 was built amidst the temple ruins, as the temple was an important traffic point. The Cheonsu-Pavilion天水亭 was built in 1476 by Yi-Ye李芮 in the station's neighborhood. The station and the pavilion were completely ruined during the 17th century. Many poets visited the Cheonsu-Temple and composed poems in the latter part of the Corea Dynasty. 'Waiting'待人, written by Choi-Sarip崔斯立, -is the most famous work. Following this work, many poets composed echo verse poems 'Waiting' work that represented the anxiety of waiting for an old friend in front of the Cheonsu-Temple. The following is a highlighted verse: So many people who look like the old friend come to me, but it turned out no one was the man. This work is very picturesque. Over twenty echo verse poems 'Waiting' are categorized in three periods. They compared the "present" to the past by using the Zhenglingwei丁令威 origin from the former Joseon朝鮮 period. In the middle of Joseon period, Jungjong中宗 visited Cheonsu-Station and composed an echo verse poem 'Waiting'. The official literaries also composed poems there. In their works, they presented the collapse of the Corea Dynasty as inevitable and the construction of Joseon Dynasty as something reasonable. Cheonsu-Station was ruined in 17th century, followed after by the ruin of the Cheonsu-Pavilion. It appears that the echo verse poems to 'Waiting' in the latter Joseon period represented the ruin of the Cheonsu-Temple, the Cheonsu-Station, and the Cheonsu-Pavilion.

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.69
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• pp.205-232
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• 2017

In the former half of the 18th century, For this period the literary people who led the literature of Nam'in were Sadaebu named the so-called Munoepa. There were Gang Pak(姜樸), Lee In-bok(李仁復), Lee Jung-hwan, Oh Gwang-un(吳光運), and Gang Pil-shin(姜必愼) in Munoepa(門外派). All these people as Sadaebu of Nam'in kept company with families of each other, had close relations from early childhood, and shared with same opinions in various ways like politics, culture, etc. They had intimate relationships not only in politics but also in literature, and primarily acted their part regarding the development of literary circles in the first half of the 18th century. Many individual poets who achieved the outstanding literary accomplishment appeared in the late period of Joseon Dynasty, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They actively made progress in their literary works with Sisa. The poets in similar positions had the Sisa to show their literary ability and check on their view about the literature. They briskly tried to express their own literary intention in activities of Sisa. Gang Pil-shin is a literary representative of the late period of Joseon Dynasty Nam'in. Through the exchange relationship of Gang Pil-shin, we can confirm certain aspects of his literary world. People who have tied up with Gang Pil-shin are largely divided into three. First, it is a literary person in Geungi Nam'in literati, typified by Backryeonsidan, Jinju Gang family, Gyeongsang Provinces area that was a place of residence. The exchanges of Gang Pil-shin were done via a poetry club. a poetry club was basically conducted mainly on relatives such as Gang Pak. However, the members of a poetry club changed according to the area where you live. Gang Pil-shin made a poetry club while coming back and forth between Seoul and Gyeongsang Provinces. This means that Gang Pil-shin also had special attention as Geungi Nam'in (近畿 南人), but also had a positive nature as Yeongnam south person. A closer look at what linguistics of Gang Pil-shin Geungi Nam'in and Yeongnam Nam'in had special characteristics late period of Joseon Dynasty It is possible to confirm the special characteristics of Seoul and the local literary exchange. For this reason, it seems that more detailed examination of the literature of Gang Pil-shin is necessary.