Words and Images in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Jung, Yonjae 한국현대영미소설학회 2003 현대영미소설 Vol.10 No.1

In this paper, it is not my intention to provide a radically new perspective on Faulkner's use of visual in As I Lay Dying. Rather, this study is concerned with the long neglected, but significant connection between Faulkner's visual text and his skeptical view of language as transparent medium. Every text has a context: a literary work can never be understood without proper reference to its socio-cultural context. After looking briefly at the cubist and surrealist images and techniques in As I Lay Dying, I will recontextualize Faulkner's use of various visual dynamics in terms of the modernist perception of language. In addition to his textual experiments with unusual italics, punctuation, spacing, capitalization, and paragraphing, Faulkner's idiosyncratic use of the coffin pictogram and the blank space is indicative of his efforts to overcome the inadequacy of language. Faulkner's extensive use of the visual as a privileged mode of expression in As I Lay Dying is closely related to his recognition of the limitations of language. By employing various images and techniques borrowed from the contemporary visual arts, Faulkner attempts to express more than words can articulate and fill the gaps between reality and verbal representation.

Poe`s “The Premature Burial” in Its Cultural Context

( Jung Yonjae ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2017 현대영어영문학 Vol.61 No.1

Poe`s “The Premature Burial” appears to be part literary satire, part Blackwood`s-style Gothic tale, and part journalistic account. In the first section of the story, Poe`s first-person narrator recounts several occurrences of living entombment. After describing the genuine tales of premature burial, the narrator relates the uncanny events in which he becomes involved. As the narrator finds himself buried in what he believes to be a coffin, the story powerfully intrigues readers with one of the most unsettling and terrifying experiences in Poe`s oeuvre, that is, live burial. In this story, Poe depicted the fear of being buried alive more centrally and vividly than his other `buried alive` tales such as “Loss of Breath,” “Berenice,” “Morella,” “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Some Words with a Mummy,” “The Facts in the Case of Valdemar,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Following the recent critical trend which resists Poe`s wholesale assimilation to psychoanalytic criticism, this study attempts to place Poe`s text within the broader American culture and to provide a fuller understanding of his deliberate use of living entombment as a literary theme in the first half of the nineteenth century. (Konkuk University)

The Theme of Madness in Antebellum Fiction: Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville

( Jung Yonjae ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2018 현대영어영문학 Vol.62 No.1

Since Brown’s Wieland in 1798, madness had been prominently featured in the fictional works of many antebellum writers. By the 1830s, insanity became one of main concerns to the American public, as reflected in the extraordinary variety of discussions on mental illness in popular books, newspapers, and periodicals. In contrast to the elitist assumption about the canonical American writers of this period as reclusive figures distant from the popular culture, the major works of Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville indicate that they took a profound interest in emerging medical theories regarding insanity. Relatively few studies, however, have attempted to trace their understandings within the broader context of nineteenth-century theoretical concepts of mental disorder. These three writers wrote much of their fiction during a period that witnessed the rapid development of medical perspectives of the human mind. Drawing upon antebellum psychological discourses, they speculated about the workings of the diseased mind and offered diverse portrayals of mental experience through their fictional characters. In this study, I intend to explore the pervasive presence of monomania in the fiction of Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville. (Konkuk University)

Poe, Journalism, and the Birth of Detective Fiction

Yonjae Jung 한국중앙영어영문학회 2015 영어영문학연구 Vol.57 No.2

The Poe scholarship has long been dominated by either Gothic or psychoanalytic criticism. Since the late 1980s, however, renewed critical efforts have begun to place Poe’s work in antebellum contexts. Indeed, this contextualization of Poe has been insightful and productive. In line with the recent historical trends in Poe criticism, I intend to explore Poe’s first two tales of ratiocination, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” in the light of his professional reactions to the rapidly growing Penny Press journalism. In so doing, I will demonstrate that Poe’s creation of the new literary genre in 1840s was closely tied to the revolutionary rise of the Penny Press. This historical reading will provide a more balanced understanding on the birth of Poe’s tales of ratiocination.

The Poe-tics of Reputation in the Antebellum Literary Scene

Jung, Yonjae 한국현대영어영문학회 2008 현대영어영문학 Vol.52 No.2

While the traditional Poe criticism has interpreted Poe's writings as anomalous works of asocial, ahistorical genius, this study attempts to relate his literary work and career to larger nineteenth-century cultural milieu. Although Poe often attacked the public taste and regarded the reading public as rabble or mob, his animosity, however, does not mean that he was uninvolved or unaffected by the conditions of the antebellum marketplace. As we investigate Poe's literary career, what we see are two contradictory impulses: on the one hand, there is a strong yearning for the artistic integrity separated from the material and economic conditions; on the other hand, there is a powerful desire to get the popular acceptance by exploiting or capitalizing on the emerging mass audience. In this paper, Poe's artistic employment of the Blackwood's tradition in "Metzengerstein," the sensational "Berenice" incidents, and the notorious Poe-Longfellow War are woven into the discussion in order to illuminate his politics of reputation in the burgeoning mass market in the antebellum literary world.

Irving, Poe, and “The Man of the Crowd”

Yonjae Jung 한국중앙영어영문학회 2009 영어영문학연구 Vol.51 No.4

Poe’s early literary inspiration as a fiction writer was clearly Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and other popular periodicals. However, one of the most significant sources critics have left out of critical consideration is Washington Irving. While Irving’s influence on other literary figures such as Longfellow and Hawthorne is relatively well documented, his influence on Poe’s work has gained little attention in the scholarly circle. When Poe turned from the creation of poetry as his literary mainstay to the writing of fiction in 1832, the short story as the peculiar magazine form was already flourishing in the hands of Irving. Poe was well aware of Irving’s tales and envied his reputation as one of the day’s most famous and well-paid American writers. In this study, I have explored the specific intertextual connections between Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” and Irving’s Mysterious Stranger tales such as “The Little Man in Black,” “The Stout Gentleman,” and “The Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger.” Poe carefully studied Irvingesque Mysterious Stranger stories with special reference to their construction and subject matter, and thus effectively perfected his own techniques in writing “The Man of the Crowd.”

Clinical Presentation and Outcomes of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the Republic of Korea

Choi, Won Suk,Kang, Cheol-In,Kim, Yonjae,Choi, Jae-Phil,Joh, Joon Sung,Shin, Hyoung-Shik,Kim, Gayeon,Peck, Kyong Ran,Chung, Doo Ryeon,Kim, Hye Ok,Song, Sook Hee,Kim, Yang Ree,Sohn, Kyung Mok,Jung, You The Korean Society of Infectious Diseases and Kore 2016 Infection and Chemotherapy Vol.48 No.2

<P><B>Background</B></P><P>From May to July 2015, the Republic of Korea experienced the largest outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outside the Arabian Peninsula. A total of 186 patients, including 36 deaths, had been diagnosed with MERS-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection as of September 30th, 2015.</P><P><B>Materials and Methods</B></P><P>We obtained information of patients who were confirmed to have MERS-CoV infection. MERS-CoV infection was diagnosed using real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay.</P><P><B>Results</B></P><P>The median age of the patients was 55 years (range, 16 to 86). A total of 55.4% of the patients had one or more coexisting medical conditions. The most common symptom was fever (95.2%). At admission, leukopenia (42.6%), thrombocytopenia (46.6%), and elevation of aspartate aminotransferase (42.7%) were observed. Pneumonia was detected in 68.3% of patients at admission and developed in 80.8% during the disease course. Antiviral agents were used for 74.7% of patients. Mechanical ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and convalescent serum were employed for 24.5%, 7.1%, and 3.8% of patients, respectively. Older age, presence of coexisting medical conditions including diabetes or chronic lung disease, presence of dyspnea, hypotension, and leukocytosis at admission, and the use of mechanical ventilation were revealed to be independent predictors of death.</P><P><B>Conclusion</B></P><P>The clinical features of MERS-CoV infection in the Republic of Korea were similar to those of previous outbreaks in the Middle East. However, the overall mortality rate (20.4%) was lower than that in previous reports. Enhanced surveillance and active management of patients during the outbreak may have resulted in improved outcomes.</P>