Form Without Boundaries - An Interpretation of the Structure in Herman Melville"s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Jaekwang Hwang(황재광) 한국영미어문학회 2007 영미어문학 Vol.- No.83

  Melville"s The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade has generally been regarded as  a failure of form. It has also been read as a satire against American culture. Critics prone to read The Confidence- Man with such a disapproving eye tend to see those unlikely aspects of the novel as symptomatic of a failed author. Against these dis-commendable views of the work, this essay argues that the form of The Confidence-Man is not a "failure of form ; it is simply dictated by the fiction"s material rather than by the troubled mind of the author. The primary determinant of the novel"s form is the shifting actions and ideas of the multi-formed confidence man. Thus, The Confidence-Man is another variation in terms of the forms of Melville"s novels, which assume an organic aesthetic as its form corresponds with the multiple implications of the fiction"s material. In addition to, or because of the continuity between material and form in The Confidence-Man, there is the tendency to openendedness and ambiguity in the structure of the novel. However, this seemingly disturbing quality of the form is not to be interpreted as a manifestation of the author"s frustrated psyche or his lack of narrative techniques. Instead, it should be taken as an outcome of the author"s own predilection for the organic aesthetic derived from his anti-essentialist vision of art and literature. This essay also contends that The Confidence-Man is by no means a satirical work against American culture by pointing out that it provides no possible criteria for moral judgment. Nor is the novel a display of the author"s pessimistic view of humanity, considering that Melville chose to set the novel on April Fool"s Day.

Rhetoric of Punishment and Consolation: A Reading of the Metaphor of Seed in Milton’s Paradise Lost

Jaekwang Hwang(황재광) 한국영미어문학회 2006 영미어문학 Vol.- No.79

  This paper explores Milton"s use of the multiple implications of the metaphor of seed in Paradise Lost as part of the poet"s rhetorical strategy to fulfill the aim of the poem stated explicitly at the outset of the poetic epic: The aim is to "assert Eternal Providence/And Justify the ways of God to men." The plurality of meaning inherent in the metaphor of seed in Paradise Lost can be listed in the multiple sets of opposing referents such as death and regeneration, singularity (individuality) and multiplicity, stoppage and continuity, beginning and end, guilt and grace and the list goes on. In Paradise Lost Adam and Eve before the Fall are presented as everlasting flower or fruits. Yet these grand parents of mankind are stripped of their immortality and paradise and take on the image of seed as they fall and become subject to the power of death. Yet the metaphor of seed in which the sinful couple are invested, alludes to not only the fallen possibility but also the promises of a new life. With the dual meaning of life and death, the metaphor of seed in Paradise Lost help us to articulate the shifting reality and paradoxical nature of Mankind before and after the Fall.   In addition, it is with the masterful deployment of the metaphor of seed throughout the poem that Milton shows how mercy and the justice of God, two quint-essential attributes of the Deity, are working together harmoniously for fallen mankind, The frequent use of the metaphor of seed in the final two books of Paradise Lost justifies the rational of Milton"s inclusion of the final two books of the poem, which has often been criticized as the bathos of the poem, by making the poem into a poetic epic of punishment and consolation.

The Life of Text and the Text of Life in Herman Melville’s Pierre or The Ambiguities

황재광 ( Jaekwang Hwang ) 대한영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.39 No.3

This paper explores the manifold aspects of the textuality in Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities in terms of his anti-essentialist tendency toward his art and non-formist aesthetic which departs from the tenets of the traditional organic view of literature. These aspects of the novel will also be discussed in the language of Deconstruction. In Pierre, the life of Pierre is paralleled with that of a plant and a text. With the abrupt ending coincided with the untimely death of the novel's hero, Pierre thwarts the end-oriented readers' desire to see the truth of the novel revealed at the end of the text and the New Critical obsession with a unified whole in literary works. Melville renders his text performative and functional rather than foundational by directing the reader's attention to what the text does rather than what it says. The novel's ambiguous open form serves for the same purpose, enticing the reader's active participation in making the text grow even beyond its ending. (Keimyung University)

The Will to Power and Autobiographical Candor in August Strindberg's Naturalistic Plays

Jaekwang Hwang(황재광) 신영어영문학회 2007 신영어영문학회 학술발표회 자료집 Vol.2007 No.3

나사니엘 호손의 『주홍글자』에서 나타나는 프래그마티즘적 미학의 윤리성에 대한 고찰

황재광(Hwang Jaekwang) 신영어영문학회 2003 신영어영문학 Vol.24 No.-

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of the pragmatic aesthetics configurated in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Textual analysis for this particular project is preceded by some discussion of the latest development of American pragmatism, especially its shift of interest from aesthetics to ethics. I analyzed the pragmatist aesthetics in The Scarlet Letter by making reference to American pragmatists such as Emerson, James, Dewey, Shusterman, Poirier, and Gunn, and to some of the Derrida's deconstructive insights into the differential play of language and the self-deconstructive propensity in textual operations. In “The Pragmatics of the Ethics” Giles Gunn equates the pragmatic narrative with the esthetic text in that "the aesthetic texts are less interested in confirming or interpreting the known than in extending the realm of the knowable"(9). Gunn also argues that the "aesthetic experience" we get from such texts "is pure experience. For it is experience, freed from forces that impede and confuse its development as experience; freed that is, from factors that subordinate an experience as it is directly had to something beyond itself" (139). Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter provides the reader with such an experience by using the scarlet symbol as one of the significant characters of the fiction. The referent of the fragmented signifier becomes the center of the reader's attention as well as the other characters in the novel. The symbol invokes in the audience an aesthetic experience with its ever-shifting meaning. As Nina Baym has already pointed out the A in the fiction has no meaning so that it has multiple meaning, a condition of diverse responses, freeing its reader from the conventional attitudes toward language, self-hood and meaning. The semantic variety of the letter A caused by the differential play of language and self-deconstructive textual operation serves as an antidote to both the single-minded puritan authorities and the Puritan's holistic value-system by hampering their efforts to essentialize one ideal meaning or a wholesales value with which they want to govern and restrict the individual's private affairs of the heart. The subversion of such a monistic value system is prerequisite to postulate a new sense of community which is built upon appreciation of difference than reference of it. Thus, the letter not only deconstructs the outworn mode of thinking but also helps us envisage a possibility of alternative ways of being. Indeed, The Scarlet Letter is one example of the pragmatic and aesthetic narrative which "could be held to carry within itself practical dimensions with markedly ethical overtones," to borrow Gunn's words (Pragmatics 5).

경피적 추체 성형술을 이용한 골다공증성 추체 압박골절 치료의 1년 이상 추시결과 : More Than 1 Year Follow Up

황재광,김정환,김주현 대한골절학회 2004 대한골절학회지 Vol.17 No.4

목적: 골다공증성 추체 압박골절로 골 시멘트를 이용한 경피적 추세 성형술을 시행 받은 환자 중 1년 이상 추시가 가능했던 환자들의 임상증상 방사선 결과를 분석하여 경피적 추체 성형술의 추시 결과를 분석 하고자 하였다. 대상 및 방법: 2001년 1월부터 2002년 8월까지 흉, 요추부 압박골절로 본원에서 경피적 추세 성형술을 시행 받은 환자 110명 중 1년 이상 추시가 가능했던 75명, 139추세를 대상으로 하였다. 시술 전 단순 방사선 검사 및 골밀도 검사, 골주사 검사, 컴퓨터 단층 촬영을 시행하였다. 시술 직후 및 시술 후 1년, 2년, 3년 추시 시의 임상증상과 방사선 검사를 분석하여 시술 전과 비교 하였다. 대상 환자는 추시 기간에 따라 3군으로 나누었으며, 1군은 1년 이상, 2군은 2년 이상 3년, 3군은 3년 이상 추시가 가능했던 경우로 하였다. 임상평가는 환자의 만족도 및 통증 정도에 따라 우수, 양호, 보통, 저하, 불량으로 나눠 평가하였다. 시술 직후 단순 방사선 검사를 통해 추체 높이의 변화를 측정하였고, 인접 추체의 추가 골절 여부 및 골 시멘트의 누출여부를 확인하였다. 결과: 시술 직후 양호 이상의 증상호전이 있었던 경우는 74례 (98.6%)였으며, 최종 추시 시 양호 이상을 보인 경우는 1군 69례 (92%), 2군 46례(93.8%), 3군 16례 (80%)였으며, 각 군 간의 유의한 통계학적 차이는 없었다(p〉0.05). 평균 추체 높이는 1군의 경우 시술 전 71.1%, 시술 후 75.0%, 최종 추시 시 73.5%였고, 2군의 경우 시술 전 71.5%, 시술 후 75.5%, 최종 추시 시 73.1%였으며, 3군의 경우 시술 전 71.2%, 시술 후 78.0%, 최종 추시 시 77.8%로 추시 기간에 따른 추체 높이의 차이에 있어서 통계학적 의미는 없었다(p〉0.05). 시술 후 시멘트 누출은 47례(38.8%)였고, 추시 시 4명, 7례에서 인접 추체에 추가적인 압박골절이 발생하였다. 결론: 골다공증에 의한 추체 압박골절 환자에서 골 시멘트를 이용한 경피적 추체 성형술은 1년 이상 추시에서 임상증상이 양호하고, 유의한 추체 높이 감소가 없는 유용한 치료법으로 사료된다. Purpose: To assess the clinical and functional outcome of the patients who underwent percutaneous vertebroplasty with bone cement for the osteoporotic compression fracture and who had been followed up for minimum 1 year. Materials and Methods: Among 110patients who had been undergone percutaneous vertevroplasty with bone cement for osteoporotic compression fracture in Gangneung Asan Hospital from January 2001 to August 2002, 75 patients who had been followed up for more than 1 year were selected. And retrospectively, we analyzed the clinical and radiographic finding of 1 year, 2 year and 3 year follow-up. The patients were divided into 3 groups, the first group who have follow-up period of the from 1 to 2 years had 75 patients, the second group who the from 2 to 3 year, 49 patients and the third group who the more than 3 years, 20 patients. We graded the clinical results to excellent, good, normal, fair and poor. Also, we assessed the height of vertebral body, the adjacent vertebral body fracture and the leakage of bone cement. Results: 74 patients(98.6%) had the excellent or good results postoperatively, 69 patients(92%) of the first group, 46 patients(93.8%) of the second group and 16 patients(80%) of the third group had excellent or good results at last follow-up. There was no statistical correlation of each groups(p〉0.05). In first group, the average height of body was 71.1% preoperatively, 73.5% postoperatively and 73.5% at follow-up. In second group, 71.5%, 75.5%, and 73.1%. In third group, 71.2%, 78.0% and 77.8%. There was no significant statistical correlation of each groups(p〉0.05). 47cases(38.8%) had some leakage of cement immediate postoperatively. In 4 cases(7 vertebra), there were adjacent vertebral body fractures. Conclusion: Based on the results of our study, percutaneous vertebroplasty is a useful method in the treatment for the osteoporotic compression fracture of vertebra body.