스위프트의 주요 작품에 나타난 바흐찐의 대화적 상상력 = Bakhtinian Dialogic Imagination in Swift's Major Works : A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this dissertation is to reconcile the divided criticism on Jonathan Swift's major works, A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver‘s Travels, in terms of Bakhtinian dialogism. Bakhtin regards human life and consciousness as an open-ended dialogue. Bakhtin thinks that our mind, body, and soul are engaged in dialogue throughout our life. Bakhtinian speaking subject is a social entity. The key concept of Bakhtinian dialogism is the self-other relationship. Connecting Swift with Bakhtin is to assume Swift's narrator as a social, and cultural entity beyond the limited personal level. This dissertation is divided into two main chapters and each chapter has two parts.
The preface of the dissertation briefly reviews the opposite responses on both of Swift's works and examines the leading characteristics related with Bakhtinian dialogism such as the double-voiced discourse, the vagueness, the inconsistency, the open-ended form caused by the double-edged satire, and the self-consciousness leading to the self satire.
The most controversial element in Swift's works is the self-conscious narrator. By pointing out the limit of the present reader-response criticism in interpreting the narrator, this chapter suggests Bakhtinian approach to the relationship between Swift and his narrator and the recognition of the Menippean genre will help understand the ambivalence and vagueness of Swift's works.
The first part of the first chapter is directed to study Swift's resistance against the monologic world which aims to oppress the other. In A Tale of a Tub, Swift ridicules the various kind of intellectualism such as dogmatism, Cartesian rationalism, Hobbes' materialism, the modern learned, and reductionism, a quest of which the ultimate aim is the achievement of universal systems. Here Swift's anti-intellectualism stands opposite of intellectualism. The modern narrator, Jack, Peter, political monarch, Descartes, and Hobbes, are regarded as mad system-builders. They all reveal their obsession and madness to reduce the thought of the people into theirs by using the authoritative discourse.
The second part of the chapter I explores Swift's strategy of deconstructing the authoritative discourse represented in A Tale of a Tub. Swift reveals the contradictory attitude concerning satire. In attacking others, Swift attacks his own recognized ambition and weakness. Swift's mimicry is thus a kind of psychic ventriloquism. In this sense, Swift's other can be regarded as his “alter-ego.” The other in Swift is not only the satiric target such as evils, intellectual folly, madness, which he has to attack, but also the necessary entity in establishing Swift's identity. Swift imagines the dialogue with evil, his enemy. In Bakhtinian terms, Swift enters an interior process of polemic and the double-voiced discourse comes out of it. This chapter shows how it deconstructs authoritative discourse including his own through Bakhtinian dialogic imagination which is embodied in the deconstructive strategy, such as undecided and two-faced utterance, parody, “hiatus”, open form and equivocal attitude toward Martin.
In the first part of the chapter II examines the carnivalresque in Gulliver's Travels by taking a Menippean approach. Gulliver's Travels is well-known for its Menippean features such as the fantastic, the carnivalresque, oxymoronic combinations, abrupt contrast, and element of social utopia. Swift reveals his dualism in the narration by using Menippean form as in his use of Gulliver. Nothing in Gulliver's journey-not Gulliver, not the Brodingagians, not the Houyhnhnms- provides the obvious or fixed line dividing the positive and negative except various co-existence of contrasting pairs and voices, such as big men/littlemen, fiction/reality, pro-Houyhnhnm/anti-Houyhnhnm, utopia/anti-utopia, and philanthropy/misanthropy. This chapter show structural principles of combining and juxtaposing these heterogeneous elements serve carnival relativism in that the contrary viewpoint evident in this work promotes the symbolic subversion of the stable, familiar ideologies and questions its cultural authority. In this sense, contrary viewpoints can be regarded as Bakhtinian heteroglossia representing “co-existence of social-ideological contradictions.” The conclusion of Gulliver's Travels is both utopia(or philanthropic) and dystopia (or misanthropic), depending on how it is perceived.
The last part examines the Bakhtinian polyphony in Gulliver's Travels. Swift inserts a lot of literary genres such as travel, novel, comedy, tragedy, and utopian fiction by using parody. Parody is an important narrative device which Swift uses to ridicule and finally subvert the authoritative discourse. The mixture of various genes through the usage of parody is the way of getting “polyphony” allowing a plurality of consciousness and voices. Gulliver's Travels can be called as novel, or comedy, or travel, though it does not belong to any of them. The incompleteness of genres in this work explains Bakhtinian polyphony which leads us to take into account independent other genre' voice, establishing the self-other relationship.
Swift finds there are many contradictions and inconsistences in human nature, and thinks they can not be solved in monologic way of thinking world with a dogma. If Swift's contradiction and ambivalence come from his own particular personality, they also derive from his age cherishing and nourishing them, which means Swift's subject should be regarded as a social entity. Regarding Swift's other as a social and historical entity will be the first step to reconcile the divided criticism.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 목차
• Ⅰ. 서론 = 1
• Ⅱ. 대화주의 : 『통 이야기』= 12
• 1. 반지성주의: 단성적 세계에의 저항 = 16
• Ⅲ. 카니발적 세계: 『걸리버 여행기』= 67
• 1. 메니피안 대조를 통한 상대적 가치 = 70
• 2. 장르 혼합에 나타난 다성성 = 94
• Ⅳ. 결론 = 124
• Bibliography = 131
• ABSTRACT = 143