쿳시의 『철의 시대』에 나타난 타자에 대한 환대

이복기(Bok-Ki Lee) 신영어영문학회 2006 신영어영문학 Vol.33 No.-

This paper investigates the way the South African writer, J. M. Coetzee, represents the harshness of the South African political atmosphere and the method of overcoming the violent relationship between the people in the country. Coetzee does not take the position of other white intellectuals who attempt to support the struggle of the black by their engagements through their writings. He rather chooses to keep a little distance from the strifes and muses upon the new relationship with the others. In Age of Iron, he suggests to the readers that giving hospitality to the others and building ethical relation with them are the only method to dissipate the violence between people. He illustrates this idea with Mrs. Curren’s relationships with the black children, Bheki and John, and with the mythical alcoholic Vercueil. Mrs. Curren moves over her boundary of self when she can accept and trust the incomprehensible character, Vercueil.

『더버빌가의 테스』: 소멸에서 생성으로

이복기 ( Bok Ki Lee ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2012 근대 영미소설 Vol.19 No.1

This paper attempts to approach Thomas Hardy`s Tess of the D`Urbervilles from a different angle. Previous discussions of the novel have focused on deterministic view of the heroine`s tragic life and on proving Tess`s purity. They have kept the heroine on the center of the discussion and attempted to find the causes of the tragedy or to defend her purity. However, in this paper Angel Claire takes the center of the discussion. It is necessary to reconstruct the narrative around Angel`s project of ``new beginning`` to rescue the novel from deterministic fetter. Disappointed at degeneration of his family and society, Angel set a strategy to start reviving them by making a new start in a country with a pure girl. Tess was the right person for this purpose until he was told Tess`s story about Alec. From his response to her confession, we can find the limit of his conception of purity: it is confined within physical virginity. Even if he tried to set himself off of the tradition and convention, he was still harnessed by them. On the other hand, Tess is represented as a person who practiced becoming-nature and becoming-animal. In her experiences of becoming, we can recognize the germinality of being and the nature in the novel. Therefore, to read the novel as being dominated with deterministic view of the world and being can be a longstanding misunderstanding. This reading can cast off the yoke of determinism put on the novel and bring back the life force it originally contained.

돈 드릴로의 『백색 소음』에 나타난 타자성의 소멸과 그 한계로서의 죽음

이복기(Lee Bok-ki) 한국영어어문교육학회 2006 영어어문교육 Vol.12 No.3

In a post-modern society where things exist and events happen in the form of Baudrillardian simulation, alterity of the other is erased and transcendence is denied. Don DeLillo"s White Noise depicts what may happen in a society where alterity and transcendence are experienced in the neutral and safe forms. It will be argued in this paper that such phenomena reflect the desire of the self to conquer the others and neutralize the existence of them for the self"s enduring safety and accomplishment. However, the attempt must fail due to inevitable death. The invincibility of death reminds one of the limit of his ability and the existence of uncontrollable part of the other. This paper will focus on DeLillo"s critique of such a society, the affect of the existence of death as an invincible force, and his message about the way to live under these conditions.

J. M. 쿳시의 『마이클 K』 : 동물-되기를 통한 탈주

이복기(Bok-Ki Lee) 신영어영문학회 2010 신영어영문학 Vol.45 No.-

This paper argues that J. M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K depicts its main character Michael K as one who takes flight by becoming-animal from the territory to which he was captured. Michael K becomes animal in order to escape from the battlefield of the conflicting forces which capture individuals as their terms. In South Africa the ruling white's use of violence for keeping their superior position called the black's opposing violence. These two violent forces induce the individual members of the community and endow them with their significance as part of the systems. Michael K, it being impossible to sustain his position, escapes from all camps which symbolize the institutionalized organizations and keeps his journey for finding a garden where he could raise the vegetables with no outer interruptions. His effort is interpreted as insisting on his individuality as a being independent of any forces and preparing for the society to come after the war.

누가 이웃이 되겠느냐?: 『싸일러스 마너』에 나타난 윤리

이복기 ( Bok Ki Lee ) 근대 영미소설 학회 2010 근대 영미소설 Vol.17 No.1

“God Knows How These Things Work”: Hazy Foundation of Knowledge in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

이복기 ( Lee¸ Bok-ki ) 현대영미어문학회 2018 현대영미어문학회 추계학술대회 발표논문집 Vol.2018 No.-

이시구로의 『희미한 언덕의 풍경』: 여성과 어머니 사이에서

이복기 ( Lee Bok-ki ) 대한영어영문학회 2015 영어영문학연구 Vol.41 No.4

Ishiguro’s first full-length novel A Pale View of Hills delivers the narrative of a woman who recently passed through her daughter’s suicide in England. The narrator, Etsuko, reminisces about her past experience in Nagasaki, Japan, of which she had a variety of memories which have hardly been eliminated from her mind: memory of a bomb and the deaths of her parents and lover, divorce from husband, Jiro, etc. These events have been buried in some blind spot of her memory until she faces her daughter’s death. In order to incorporate the shocking event into her horizon of understanding, she endeavors to detect the cause of the death and to justify her own decision of emigrating to England. In the process of recasting her past, she acts as a detective who explores her past and also as a criminal who blurs some events to conceal her negligence in taking care of her daughter’s trauma. Through Etsuko’s narrative the readers can understand the background against which Etsuko/Sachiko’s struggle to pursue their own self-accomplishments and independence were made. Their hardship in confronting the traditional patriarchal structure, the drive toward the reconstruction of society without the continuous proper work of mourning, and responsibility to take care of their daughters is persuasively addressed. However, Etusko’s possible negligence in giving scrupulous care to Keiko is not obviously rendered, but scattered and concealed in the story about Mariko. (Chonbuk National University)

이시구로의 『남은 날들』: 해체를 통한 깨달음

이복기 ( Bok Ki Lee ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2014 현대영미소설 Vol.21 No.2

Unlike his earlier two novels which have Japan as their backgrounds, Kazuo Ishiguro adopts the genre of ‘the novel of manners,’ which is considered probably the most representative English form of novel, for his third work, The Remains of the Day. Traditionally, a novel of manners uses ‘a reliable narrator’ to establish the authority of the narrative in order to deliver the new values and socio-political ideas to the readers. However, Ishiguro describes his narrator, Stevens the butler of Darlington Hall, as ‘an unreliable narrator’ and achieves the aim of letting the readers think that the values and socio-political ideas delivered by the narrator are dubious and on “the mystical foundation of authority.” As a result, the readers of his novel would keep themselves from empathizing with the narrator`s story and attempt to find the errors and lies in his narrative. In this way Ishiguro deconstructs the most representative genre of English novel and encourages the readers to question the values and socio-political ideas addressed in the novel of manners. The values and socio-political ideas the novel deconstructs can be summed up as “the notion of benevolent paternalism” as Susie O`Brien puts. In the novel, Lord Darlington acts as the benevolent and authoritative father whom Stevens obeys and entrusts all of his own rights of decision to. With this hierarchical system the world of Darlington Hall, representing the past England and even the contemporary England, is believed to keep the stability and to attribute to “the progress of humanity” by Stevens. In order to justify his belief, Stevens argues that he served his employer of greatness with dignity. To identify himself as a man of dignity Stevens addresses how he wholeheartedly inhabit his profession, but through his narrative the fact that he was ignorant of the importance of those he inhibited is revealed. Also, the foundation of the system, Lord Darlington`s authority, is challenged and turned out to be on “the mystical foundation.” In this way, Ishiguro dramatizes the process of the deconstruction of “a particular myth about a certain kind of mythical England” in The Remains of the Day.

『남과 북』: 변화의 불가피성과 수용

이복기 ( Bok Ki Lee ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2015 근대 영미소설 Vol.22 No.1

This paper attempts to analyze Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South in the light of its protagonist’s confrontation with modern industrial society which looks dominated by “everlasting uncertainty and agitation” and her final acceptance of it as a structural condition of modern bourgeois society. In order to analyze the novel in the sense of the effects of the underlying force of bourgeois capitalism, this paper compares three major places depicted: Milton Northern, Helstone, and London. London, differing from the usual depiction as a place of calamities, poverty, abuse of children, and more in Charles Dickens’ novels, is represented as the place of power, luxury, and “the smooth sea,” free from struggles and efforts for survival. Returning to London after spending a couple of years in Milton, Margaret feels “uncanny” about her almost home-like place. This feeling was an effect of her sojourn in Milton, in which she could have witnessed the activities of “everlasting uncertainty and agitation.” She also felt unhomely even in Helstone, which has been idealized as a Home(Heimat) in her mind when she visits there with Mr. Bell. Instead of getting solace of her spirit and recovering her belief in the unchanging Nature, she gets assured that everything changes and one needs to accept the fact. As a result of the argument of this paper, the novel will be proved to have preempted the later intellectual and philosophical ideas such as Nietzsche’s ‘nihilism’ and Joyce’s “ineluctable modality.” Also, Gaskell’s suggestions on the problems of modern industrial society would be recognized progressive from the 21st century viewpoint, even though they were considered conservative in her days.

『허클베리 핀의 모험』에 나타난 환대의 문제

이복기 ( Lee Bok-ki ) 대한영어영문학회 2014 영어영문학연구 Vol.40 No.2

Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been stood in a spotlight because of its usage of politically incorrect terms and the objectification of slave character Jim in recent years. Besides the debate on the usage of the racist term, the long debates have been going on about the ending of the novel. The critics defending and offending the ending have ignored the important theme of hospitality and ethics in their interpretation, which obviously is expressed all through the novel. The acts of hospitality depicted in the novel can be categorized into two types: conditional hospitality and hospitality intending to absoluteness. The acts of hospitality performed by Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and other Southerners share a strong intention to capture and thematize the other, so are conditional hospitality. On the other hand, in their acts of hospitality Mary Jane and Huck welcome the others as they are and become friends of the others, so are categorized as hospitality intending to absoluteness. Huck, though, passes through some inner struggles in his decision of welcoming a run-away slave, Jim, and fails in the ending scene by objectifying Jim. This shows that his hospitality is not absolute one but one which orienting to absoluteness. The ending scene also ironically manifests that the freedom Jim is allowed to is a simulacre which reveals that the emancipated former slaves are still living in a large prison called white supreme society. (Chonbuk National University)