양정웅과 스티븐 그린블랏: 애도극으로 『햄릿』 읽기

임이연 한국중세근세영문학회 2016 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.25 No.2

This essay analyzes two readings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a play of mourning: Stephen Greenblatt’s monograph, Hamlet in Purgatory (2001) and Yang Jung-Ung’s Hamlet with Yonhangza Theatre Company (2009). In his influential study of Hamlet, Greenblatt locates the tragedy’s “literary power” in the historicity of the Ghost and the post-Reformation debates on Purgatory it triggers. Hamlet stages the trauma of the loss of communion with the dead, and by doing so participates in “a cult of the dead.” Greenblatt’s new historicist reading, however, fails to account for Hamlet’s effect on the modern audience. While ‘universality’, like ‘literary power’, is a concept marginalized in current academic discourse of difference, I would suggest that Yang Jung-Ung’s Hamlet enacts the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy through Gut, Korean Shamanic ritual, thus demonstrating the universal theme of mourning inherent in the play. I focus on the three scenes of Gut for the dead in Yang’s production: Jinogigut to appease old Hamlet’s Ghost, Sumanggut for drowned Ophelia, and the final Sanjinogigut for dying Hamlet. Yang’s Hamlet, through the mise-en-scène of Gut as the cultural other of purgatorial system, expands theatrical horizon to religious expression, just as Shakespeare’s theatre fills in the vacuum left open in the religious turmoil.

The "Tragedy" of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage and an Afterthought on Current Literary Historicism

임이연 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2009 중세근세영문학 Vol.19 No.1

The story of Dido and Aeneas offers a handy plot for a love tragedy: a man torn between love and duty, a woman abandoned immolating herself for love, a heartrending tale of unrequited love. Christopher Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Carthage resists such amorous expectation, weaving its erotic thread with the discourse of gender, race and politics. In the past two decades, Elizabethan politics has been the most important key to the understanding of the play and the period that produced it. However, it yields little understanding for the present and ourselves. This essay is a search for the juncture where the historicity of Marlowe's text intersects with ours. The first half locates the play in the moment of its production in the milieu of Elizabethan empire. Refuting some critics's opinion of Aeneas as incompetent coward, I argue that Marlowe presents Aeneas as real-politic manipulative prince and Dido as barbarous queen that adores Troy. Thus, to the Elizabethan audience, Dido stages the importance of Troy, participating in the imperialist discourse of the Troy legend. In the latter half of the essay I reverse the Elizabethan reading of the play from Dido's position of inferior race and gender, which is often obscured by the current historicist fad. Thus, I argue that the play is about a wronged woman, her disillusionment and belated recognition of her racial identity. Marlowe makes the play Dido's tragedy not so much as of unrequited love as of identity crisis. I also relate Dido's failure to my position as Third-world academic in relation to historicism, and urge for the need of "local" reading.

The location of Shakespeare in Korea: Lee Yountaek's 'Hamlet' and the mirage of interculturality

임이연 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV PRESS 2008 THEATRE JOURNAL Vol.60 No.2

[이론 발제] 〈운전배우기-그 은밀한 기억〉

임이연 공연과이론을위한모임 2012 공연과 이론 Vol.- No.45

The Lure of Intercultural Shakespeare

임이연 한국중세근세영문학회 2007 중세르네상스 영문학 Vol.15 No.1

Shakespeare is unarguably a most active participant in the so-called intercultural theatre, but has attracted little attention from intercultural theorists and critics. This essay locates Shakespeare within intercultural debates, the two most significant issues of which are cultural equality and authenticity. In most intercultural Shakespeare productions, non-Western cultural elements are no more than scenographic embellishments to the framework of Shakespearean plot, character and theme. Despite the increasing emphasis on performance in contemporary theatre, the continuing hegemony of verbal signs over performing signs makes an "intercultural" Shakespeare theatre of this kind mainly a Shakespearean event. While deconstructionist and indigenized Shakespeare productions deliver cultural equality, they lose claims for Shakespearean authenticity. Intercultural Shakespeare turns out to be a paradox.Despite such dilemmas, productions dubbed as intercultural Shakespeare abound. The way to the universal Bard was paved through the long stage history that approved any theatrical changes as long as Shakespearean "spirit" was retained: a telling example of Western logocentrism that disregards outward materiality and puts value in ideas only. Shakespeare, deprived of Elizabethan/Jacobean historicity, operates like a "universal solvent" in the international theatre circuit under the logic of global capitalism. The use of the Western canon like Shakespeare adds a tinge of high art to an intercultural production as well as guarantees easy circulation in the countries that were and are under Western influence. For such reasons productions advertize themselves as intercultural and Shakespearean, creating an illusion of utopian cultural pluralism; a close analysis of intercultural Shakespeare only exposes the liaison between interculturalism and cultural imperialism.

“자기-사랑의 죄”: 셰익스피어의 『연인의 탄식』과 낭만적 거짓

임이연 한국중세근세영문학회 2015 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.24 No.1

Shakespeare’s A Lover’s Complaint is an enigmatic poem that puzzles readers with its archaic diction, obscure syntax, nonce words and dubious morality that deviates from the complaint tradition. One of its enigmas is the youth’s seduction strategy, which capitalizes on his past relationship with other women rather than hide it. Also inexplicable is the psychology of the maid, who desires the youth despite her knowledge of his questionable past. Drawing on René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, this essay explores the mechanism of desire that underlies the game of seduction in A Lover’s Complaint. According to Girard, desire is not spontaneous from the subject or in the object but mediated by the other. In other words, one imitates the other’s desire in order to achieve his or her ontological position; mimetic desire is a metaphysical one that ultimately results from the lack in self. Girard’s model of triangular desire sheds a fresh light on the relationship of the maid and the youth in A Lover’s Complaint, which is always mediated by a third party. The triangles of desire ubiquitous in A Lover’s Complaint effectively expose the “Romantic lie” about the autonomy of self.

오태석의 「템페스트」와 한국의 포스트셰익스피어 공연

임이연 영미문학연구회 2014 안과 밖 Vol.0 No.36

"Look What a Wardrobe Here Is for Thee": Costume in the Early Modern Theatre

임이연 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2006 중세근세영문학 Vol.16 No.2

This essay reviews a series of extant evidence relating to early modern costume and reappraises the commonly held belief that actors wore contemporary clothes in Shakespeare's theatre and that thus they had no concerns for historically or geographically accurate representation of the dramatic world. I argue that Shakespeare's stage did make efforts to represent the play with some chronotopic precision within their resources. The purpose of this essay is twofold: to highlight the materiality of the early modern theatre, particularly costume, as an active participant in the formation of Elizabethan and Jacobean culture as well as in the production of theatrical meanings, and to challenge the universality myth of Shakespeare that transcends time and space by showing that the setting in his plays was not a mere label that could be anywhere and anytime but had significance of its own.For this purpose, I examine the "period" costumes recorded in the wardrobe inventories for the Lord Admiral's Men and estimate their impact on the stage, which, I would argue, was far greater than their number suggests. We also need to gauge the range of contemporary clothes in early modern England. I underscore the fact that "foreign" fashion was an essential part of Elizabethan and Jacobean sartorial culture. Despite the attempt at chronotopic accuracy, however, the representation of the dramatic world was far from complete; anachronism was inevitable on the stage. Anachronism has been traditionally taken to signal inconsistencies and disregard for chronotopicity in the early modern theatre; rather, it is a gargantuan desire typical to the Renaissance to encompass both past and present, fiction and reality. Like a "Mbius strip," as Leah Marcus terms it, what relates Shakespeare more cogently to the modern audience is such chronotopic pluralism that encourages dialogues between his times and ours.(Yonsei University)

셰익스피어 대중문화와 한국의 실제: 2000년대 연극산업을 중심으로

임이연 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2012 중세근세영문학 Vol.22 No.1

This essay explores the signification of “popular” Shakespeare in contemporary Korea. After defining the meaning(s) of popular culture, the essay surveys Shakespeare’s cultural history in Britain and America. Shakespeare’s transformation from folk culture to high culture and popular culture suggests that highbrow/ lowbrow culture is not a rigid category. Paradoxically, Shakespeare as popular culture relies on the Bard’s cultural capital accumulated through his non-popularization and canonization as highbrow culture. Unlike his popularity in the West, Shakespeare’s presence is meager in Korean popular culture. Most Shakespearean theatre productions remain highbrow, even when they attempt to popularize the Bard. Three popular entertainments produced in the 2000s are examined in turn: Comic Show Romeo&Juliet (2008), Club Twelfth Night (2010), and Musical Hamlet (2007). These productions suggest that Shakespeare exists only in name(and thus virtually absent) or is elevated to the middlebrow taste. Genuine popularity presupposes appreciation. Popular Shakespeare in a positive sense, of being widely liked or originating from the people, seems inconceivable in current Korean culture, where Shakespeare is known only superficially as chunk of world classics.

[이론발제] 〈히스토리 보이즈〉 : “허정함, 현란하되 빈 매력의”

임이연 공연과이론을위한모임 2013 공연과 이론 Vol.- No.50