Shaw and Galtonian Eugenics in Victorian Britain

Jang Keum-Hee(장금희) 한국현대영미드라마학회 2007 현대영미드라마 Vol.20 No.3

『상심의 집』에 나타난 허무의 판타지 그리고 절망적 희망: 동시대의 문화읽기

장금희 ( Keum Hee Jang ) 한국영미문화학회 2013 영미문화 Vol.13 No.3

This essay explores Bernard Shaw`s Heartbreak House in terms of disillusionment of nihilism, materialism and pessimism of high society people describing contemporary British culture of early twenty-century in the context of Capitalistic society drifting towards destruction. In doing so, this essay analyzes how Shavian paradox and desperate metaphor were developed to the purpose of life force through the play. It is because Heartbreak House paradoxically connotes hope and conviction for human betterment in spite of the destructiveness, daydreaming and nothingness during the war time. Heartbreak House seems to deal with the tragic aspects of our days negatively on the surface. The opposite values, the desperate hope and the fearful destruction which are two aspects of the life force make the play powerful. Heartbreak House is illustrated as negligence, inertia, dishonesty, and stupidity of its characters. The play produces not only the social crisis of “cultured, leisured Europe before the war,” but personal crisis as well. According to Shaw, man made the forces of darkness and death, which are the burden of Heartbreak House. In Heartbreak House, the procedure of destruction seems to be essential for the inhabitants of the house to be brought rebirth. In spite of negative attitudes in the play, Shaw envisions the change of social progress though possibly only when man changes his attitude toward life from a personal self-centered to an altruistic one. In a sense Shaw also seems to intend to say what the war really meant in terms of human improvement through Heartbreak House.

『돼지처럼 살아라』에 나타난 존 아든의 딜레마

장금희 ( Keum Hee Jang ) 21세기영어영문학회 2016 영어영문학21 Vol.29 No.1

The purpose of this essay is to explore how John Arden deals with political and social issues such as the policy of housing schemes in his second play, Live like Pigs. Through the play, Arden tries to portray objectively the way in which the welfare state hinders an individual``s way of life. For the purpose of this play, Arden contrasts two families with different values and alternative ways of life, families that represent various human deficiencies and offend conventional senses of civilized society. In Live Like Pigs, Arden raises the question of what happens when the state carries out a policy for people who want to maintain their way of lives against the authorities. The play demonstrates the inevitable truth that political problems cannot be solved simply by changing the environment, a change that may, rather, beget violence and tension between individuals and political society. In the play, Arden tries to show how the incompatible values between individuals and authorities stifle, disintegrate and transform the free vitalities of uncivilized people. In a sense, public interests are bound to encroach on the individual’s right to choose a way of life, which is a dilemma in Live Like Pigs.

콩그리브의『세상만사』속 세상 읽기: 미라벨, 그는 영웅인가? 난봉꾼인가?

장금희 ( Keum Hee Jang ) 한국영미문화학회 2014 영미문화 Vol.14 No.1

This essay explores Congreve`s last play The way of the World in terms of English new identity of the gentry represented by Mirabell in political, social and historical context of the Bloodless Revolution. Particularly, this essay focuses on behavioral differences between Mirabell and Fainall as characters who manage a certain type of acceptable Englishness through their heir. The acceptable Englishness separates what the differences are between two rakes from the outside of normative principle. The Way of the World reflects Lockean republican ideology in personal and familial relationships. Mirabell as a heroic rake represents new expectations for Englishmen who rejects absolute sovereign contrasted by Fainall`s foreign tyrannical ways of domesticity. The Foreignness of Fainall`s in the play is displaced by corollary change in the new model of English identity exemplified by Mirabell. Through the play, Congreve tends to satirize repressive morality of Hobbesian extremism and emphasizes the Revolution settlement based on consent sand trust instead. Mirabell`s normative will harmonizes individual desire for happiness with social demand. In a sense Congreve`s The Way of the World is a play reaching typical Restoration ending of intrigue and conspiracy through two rakes`s interaction. Accordingly, this essay tries to show what separates the heroic rake from tyrannical libertine through their way of love, money, compromise and negotiation, which is their way of life.

도덕성과 감상성의 경계--파커의 『멋쟁이의 책략』과 왕정복고기 희극의 모럴 코드

장금희 ( Keum Hee Jang ) 21세기영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학21 Vol.26 No.3

This essay explores moral consensus between morality and sentimentalism at the Restoration comedies and eighteenth-century ones analysing George Farquhar`s The Beaux` Stratagem in relation to the social and political changes during the periods. These changes have to be explained in the context of the Bloodless Revolution influencing the emergence of Sentimental comedy for middle class. As a reference group of the late seventeenth-century English society, they tend to regard sentimentalism as moral standpoint. Contrary to the condemnation of the immorality in the Restoration plays, the ending of Farquhar`s The Beaux` Stratagem shows morally different attitudes though the plot of the play is still immoral. It seems true that The Beaux` Stratagem is Farquhar`s greatest work and typical work as well at the late Restoration period. As a representative dramatist during the period, Farquhar developed typical Restoration plays to more sentimental forms of comedy reflecting the moral consensus of his society both of early eighteenth-century and late seventeenth-century.

The Dead Puritanism vs. the Diabolonianism in The Devil's Disciple

Jang Keum-Hee(장금희) 한국현대영미드라마학회 2009 현대영미드라마 Vol.22 No.2

Bernard Shaw found his socio-religious thought beyond the Victorian age which can be traced back through the preceding conventional tradition, even though he wrote that “the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love (21)” in the preface to Three Plays for Puritans. Shaw presents his own controversial opinion on Puritanism in the preface to the plays. As a social, political or philosophical thinker, Shaw developed his own artistic means of promoting his goal of reforming the existing institutions of his society. In The Devil’s Disciple Shaw attacks both theatrical conventions and certain societal evils. In the play, the artistic protest is intricately bound up with the social protest however this social protest has religious implications. In the play Shaw presents the power of greatness through such a human being eager for divinity as well as the power of established institutions and beliefs in such a society. The characterizations of the play are interesting primarily because of the way they are related to Shaw’s unorthodox treatment of the conventions of melodrama. The play reveals diabolonian ethics through the characterization of the devil’s disciple in the Shavian perspectives. Richard is at the center of Shaw’s attention in the play and no other characters approach that position either structurally or thematically. Through Richard Shaw attacks the religion of dead Puritanism and the conventional conceptions of duty in the traditional Christianity. In The Devils’ Disciple, Shaw presents his religious idea based on the life force through the devil’s disciple of the institutional religion. The Devil’s Disciple clearly sets the unorthodox spiritual belief in opposition to the lack of charity, compassion or any feeling of generosity of the institutional Puritanism. In the play, Shaw intends to reverse what virtue is compared to the view of conventional religion. The play shows us how far the narrow and perverted sense of Puritanism is contrasted with the broad sense of universal religion emphasizing the instinctive passion for the religion of humanity.

『슬로언씨를 위하여』: 조 오튼의 아이러니

장금희(Jang, Keum-Hee) 미래영어영문학회 2016 영어영문학 Vol.21 No.1

This essay explores Joe' Orton's irony in Entertaining Mr. Sloan through the use of euphemism as the substitution of a immoral terms. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a new comedy of manners dramatizing the modern middle class morals shifted from black comedy, farce to absurd drama which reflects new way of style, Ortonesque. The irony is used to emphasize how traditional moral standards are hypocritical by immoral characters who are representatives of politeness in modern society. In the work, Orton highlights the modern society is intrinsically evil and dishonest. Orton mocks deliberately cultivated modern ideal of decent social behavior and attacks dominant morality hiding lust, greed, callousness and perversity in very moral terms. Entertaining Mr. Sloane reveals disorder and absurdity of modern English middle class society, which make audiences face the fact of hypocritical modern life. The play shows a perversion of traditional sexual mores and a subversion of traditional moral values through characters. They represent the ugliness of the reality and the perversity of the sexual desire in modern society. Orton attacks all forms of authority exposing the dehumanization of modern evils and the absurdity of the modern world as well as private morality. What Orton wants to present in Entertaining Mr. Sloane is the two-faced moral code of contemporary English society. Accordingly, the irony in Entertaining Mr. Sloane is attacking traditional ethics and social mores by Ortonesque way.

Shaw on Ibsen and Ibsenism in Shaw

Jang Keum-Hee(장금희) 한국현대영미드라마학회 2008 현대영미드라마 Vol.21 No.2

‘The Price of Salvation’ : Undershaft’s Economics as a New Moral Standard in Major Barbara

Jang Keum-Hee(장금희) 한국현대영미드라마학회 2011 현대영미드라마 Vol.24 No.1

『성녀 조안』에 나타난 쇼와 버틀러의 도덕률 -반-성직주의의 도그마

장금희 ( Keum Hee Jang ) 21세기영어영문학회 2014 영어영문학21 Vol.27 No.4

This essay explores Saint Joan in terms of anti-clericalism and anti-jingoism to reveal how institutional religious hypocritical society is irreligious compared to Joan``s individualism and protestantism as a savior and agent of life force. She finds herself to save conventional society and humanity through self-recognition as an agent of new religion. By Joan``s merciful morality of new religion, instead of institutional religious authority, humankind can be saved and reached further development for the betterment of humanity, which is the elements of unconventional religion what Shaw and Butler insist throughout their views. Shaw``s criticism of orthodox religion in the nineteenth century is generally similar to that of Samuel Butler. Both Shaw and Butler were opposed and attacked ethical dualism and hypocritical conventionality of Christianity. Instead, for the modern religion, they emphasized evolutionism with purposive creative force. They regarded men as instruments carrying on the purpose of life and aim of humanity byfulfilling their religious duties. Accordingly, Saint Joan is the play which carries out that purpose most effectively.