Is American Literary Naturalism Nature-Friendly?

김연만 한국현대영어영문학회 2017 현대영어영문학 Vol.61 No.1

Although naturalism in American literature marked a significant epoch at the turn of the twentieth century, it has not drawn much scholarly attention in recent years. As ecocriticism has taken a popular position in today’s literary studies, it is meaningful to rethink the fin-de-siècle literary movement from an ecocritical perspective in terms of literary depictions of nature and human nature. For the purpose of this comparative study, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and “To Build a Fire,” Frank Norris’s McTeague, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath are chosen as sample naturalistic texts dealing with the naturalistic notion of nature, while Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn represent ecocritical texts on the same topic. By comparing the wide selections of naturalistic and ecocritical works, one may be able to map out the similarities and dissimilarities between the two literary trends and to rethink the broad spectrum of how nature and human nature are portrayed within the two frameworks of thoughts.

상악 ( 上顎 ) 에 발생한 Granuloma pyogenicum의 증례

김연만,이승우,손성희,김황중 ( Yun Man Kim,Sung Woo Lee,Seong Heui Son,Hwang Joong Kim ) 대한예방치과·구강보건학회 1968 大韓口腔保健學會誌 Vol.2 No.2

Life, Fishing, and Nature in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It

김연만 문학과환경학회 2022 문학과 환경 Vol.21 No.4

As a semi-autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean (1902-1990), A River Runs through It (1976) portrays the life of the Macleans against the rustic backdrop of Montana in the American west. The plot evolves around how Norman and his brother, Paul, learned to fish under the influence of the Reverend Maclean and how Paul reaches the near-perfect artistic level of fly-fishing skills and yet, in the midst of his rather rough life style. dies at a young age. Norman as the narrator of the novella reminisces about his family history and goes on to meditate on the ephemerality of human life in relation to his view of the spiritual world and nature. His family comes to a better understanding of religion and nature through the act of fly-fishing as an art performed with the body half submerged in the river in the pristine natural environment of western Montana. Fishing in this novella serves as a medium toward the transcendental world which is deemed by the Macleans to lurk behind nature. The process of nostalgic and elegiac writing, as such, helps Norman to revive the now lost members of his family through recollections and story-telling. Also, A River Runs through It helps him to see through fly-fishing that a river, which represents nature, runs through his family history.

James Joyce's (Self-)Subversive Textuality and L'Ecriture Feminine

김연만 현대영미어문학회 2005 현대영미어문학 Vol.23 No.1

Based on the ideas of l'écriture féminine and what Julia Kristeva terms "poetic language" which is primarily characterized by its textual subversiveness, this paper explores the literary texts of James Joyce (1882-1941)--especially, the later Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939)--from a French feminist perspective and exemplifies Joyce's subversive and, occasionally, self-subversive textuality. Joyce's language is so subversive and deconstructive that he does not leave anything privileged including the king and the Father in both its religious and psychoanalytic sense. If there is an exception to Joyce's demystifying process, Anglo-American feminist critics tend to maintain that it is his somewhat controversial treatment of women. Nevertheless, the controversy can be more or less diminished in the light of French feminism as proposed by Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Kristeva. Especially, Kristeva's psychoanalytic feminist theory of the feminine semiotic comes in handy in the sense that it demonstrates that the subversiveness of poetic language, used by creative writers including Joyce as exemplified in this paper, is itself derived from the pre-symbolic, maternal stage of the subject's psychological development. This paper thus opens up a new venue for reading and, furthermore, perhaps claiming Joyce from a feminist perspective by appropriating feminist, psychoanalytical, aesthetic, and semiotic strands of contemporary French feminism to the analysis of the highly subversive textuality of his major works. ‘여성적 글쓰기’(l'criture fminine)와 줄리아 크리스테바(Julia Kristeva)가 ‘시적 언어’라 칭하는 전복적 텍스트성(subversive textuality)의 특성을 지니는 일체의 문학적 언어에 관한 프랑스 페미니즘 이론에 착안하여, 본 논문은 제임스 조이스(James Joyce, 1882-1941)의 작품을, 특히 『율리시즈』(Ulysses, 1922)와 『피네건즈 웨이크』(Finnegans Wake, 1939)와 같은 후기 작품을 중심으로 프랑스 페미니즘 이론의 관점에서 살펴보고, 그에 나타난 전복적인, 경우에 따라서는 자기-전복적인 텍스트성을 예시한다. 조이스가 작품 속에 사용하는 언어가 그 어느 작가의 경우보다도 전복적이고 해체적이어서 전통적으로 종교적·정치척·사회적 특권이 주어진 어떠한 제도, 기관, 또는 인물에게도 인습적 특권을 허락하지 않고 그러한 특권을 가차 없이 뒤집어엎는 역할을 한다는 것은 주지의 사실이다. 조이스의 이러한 신화타파적이고 해체적 시도에 예외가 있다면, 영미 페미니스트 비평가들은 그 예외는 바로 그의 작품 속에 나타나는 다소 논쟁의 여지를 지닌 여성의 면모라고 종종 지적한다. 조이스 작품에 직접적으로 나타난 여성상이 다수의 문제를 안고 있는 것은 사실이지만, 조이스의 전복적 언어를 헬렌 식수(Hlne Cixous), 루스 이리가레이(Luce Irigaray), 크리스테바 등이 제시하는 일련의 프랑스 페미니즘의 관점에서 살펴볼 때, 그의 작품이 반(反)페미니즘적이라는 획일적 주장에 이견을 제시해 볼 수 있다. 특히 크리스테바의 여성적 의미성(feminine semiotic)에 관한 심리 페미니즘 이론은 조이스를 포함한 여러 창의적 작가의 작품 속에 사용된 시적 언어의 전복성은 그 자체가 발달심리학적으로 볼 때 아버지의 간섭이 시작되기 전, 즉 상징기 전의 모성기에서 기인한다고 강조하는 점에서 유용한 실마리를 제공한다. 본 논문은 이처럼 현대 프랑스 페미니즘의 페미니즘·심리학·미학·의미론 이론을 아우르는 담론을 조이스의 주요 작품에 나타난 고도의 전복적 테스트성과 연관 지어 봄으로써 조이스 작품을 페미니즘의 시각에서 읽고, 더 나아가 조이스의 전복적 텍스트성이 내포하고 있는 여성성을 살펴볼 수 있는 장을 열어 준다.

Baudrillardian Simulacral Culture in Thomas Pynchon’sNovels

김연만 현대영미어문학회 2008 현대영미어문학 Vol.26 No.2

The culture of the late twentieth century and the new millenium has drawn attention from both the French postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) and the US writer Thomas Pynchon (1937- ). Their ares of interest in relation to postmodern culture share a large common ground. For them, contemporary postmodern society has become the kind of society that is apparently characterized by the loss of the real and simulacral virtuality. Especially relevant to this paper is their common interest in and critique of the proliferation of simulacral culture. Using Pynchon's fictions as literary exemplars of Baudrillard's socio-cultural observations about contemporary culture, this paper discusses distinctive cultural developments of postmodern and posthuman culture. In so doing, three recurrent themes, which are relevant to both Baudrillard and Pynchon, are examined with a special emphasis on a critique of simulacral culture: television culture, linguistic ramifications of simulacral culture, and posthumanist representations of human life with reference to virtual death and virtual immortality.

Cityscape and Tragedy In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

김연만 한국현대영어영문학회 2016 현대영어영문학 Vol.60 No.1

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)’s The Great Gatsby (1925) has long been read as a critique of materialistic capitalism that uncovers the collapse of the American Dream. The reader may stretch this cultural mode of interpretation further into the New Historicist level and conclude that the urban setting of the novel plays a crucial role as a backdrop in understanding the tragic development of the central plot. On the backdrop of the novel lies the modern megalopolis of New York City along with its skyscrapers, roads, automobiles, billboard, waste dump, etc. The exploration of these features of the backdrop leads to the acknowledgement that the tragedy of the novel is the tragedy of a big city of the early twentieth century. Rather than focus on the foregrounded central plot of the novel, this paper delves into the specific elements of the cultural background in the American 1920s. The exploration of the backdrop will in turn help the reader to better understand the tragedy of The Great Gatsby.

Rereading Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts from an Ecocritical Perspective

김연만 한국현대영어영문학회 2019 현대영어영문학 Vol.63 No.1

Given the modern and postmodern popularity of science fiction, an ecocritically minded reader is under pressure to ponder upon the relative lack of ecocritical discourse in this popular genre. While nature seems to slide out of sight in the majority of sci-fi criticism, one may hope to bring the discourse of nature onto the center stage. In this context, this paper aims to juxtapose science fiction and ecocriticism and delve into the possible interplay between the two apparently unrelated camps of literary practice. Karel Čapek(1890-1938)’s War with the Newts (1936) may well serve as an exemplary prototype of ecocritical science fiction. The text provides an ample opportunity to rethink the possibility in which nature is presented within the framework of science fiction. Although it has been read mainly as a human allegory in most of the existing scholarship, the novel stands a chance of ecocritical interpretation. By examining Čapek’s War with the Newts, one may thus map out the prototypical crossroads between science fiction and ecocriticism.

An Ecocritical Reading of Early American Literature

김연만 충남대학교 인문과학연구소 2012 인문학연구 Vol.42 No.4

This paper aims to examine a selection of early American literature from an ecocritical perspective: Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-82)’s “Nature” (1836), Mary Rowlandson(c. 1636-1711)’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-64)’s “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), and Caroline Kirkland(1801-64)’s A New Home, Who’ll Follow? Or Glimpses of Western Life (1839). These works were selected to represent the variety of views on nature that early Americans had―i.e., from the Puritan association of the natural wilderness with evil, through the metaphysical sublimation of nature in transcendentalism, to the realistic and pragmatic treatment of nature. The process of rethinking the early American notions of nature may possibly reveal the cultural rationale behind the present environmental crisis of American society.

Human Hubris against Nature in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”

김연만 한국현대영어영문학회 2022 현대영어영문학 Vol.66 No.1

Jack London (1876-1916) often wrote about nature in the context of literary naturalism, yet it is worth reconsidering his portrayal of the natural environment from an ecocritical perspective. In this endeavor to recontextualize London’s works in relation to ecocriticism, “To Build a Fire” (1902, 1908) may serve as a prominent exemplary text that renders a variety of ecocritical interpretations possible. Set in the frigid boreal landscape of the subarctic region of the Canadian Yukon, the story helps the reader to delve into the notion of human hubris against nature. The protagonist’s arrogance over nature and its constituents leads to a tragic moment in his life. Interestingly, his materialistic and rationalistic attitude toward nature is presented in contrast with the natural instinct of the dog with which he travels and the wisdom of the old man on Sulphur Creek. Also, it is meaningful to examine the two versions of the short story, published six years apart. The two versions reveal a set of intriguing modifications that are worth exploring from an ecocritical angle.

Simulacral A-Natural Culture in Thomas Pynchon’s Fictions

김연만 한국중앙영어영문학회 2005 영어영문학연구 Vol.47 No.4

Thomas Pynchon(1937- )’s novels contain a number of critiques of contemporary technocratic culture, which has brought about no less negative side-effects than benefits and advantages. Most relevant to this paper is the writer’s critique of simulacral culture, the kind of culture that the French postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929- ) finds prevalent in postmodern society. Drawing a connection between Baudrillard and Pynchon, this paper examines how nature, natural materials, and human nature become stripped of naturalness in the culture of artificiality and virtuality. Pynchon’s novels present various scenes in which the natural turns into the virtual or the artificial is recreated as a meticulously designed artificial environment; the dominance of car culture causes the degradation of nature to a mere backdrop for drivers; natural materials are replaced by synthetic polymers; human nature gets objectified, mechanized, and reified. All these phenomena can be interpreted as a warning against the possible loss of the natural as a result of the so-called postmodern “loss of the real” in contemporary technocratic and simulacral culture.