Paradoxical Rebellion Bound to Conformity: Isaac Watts’s “Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders”

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2012 영어 영문학 Vol.58 No.6

This paper focuses on eighteenth-century English pastor, poet, and hymnist, Isaac Watts (1674-1748), a significant yet neglected nonconformist dissenter, who defines a public religion and transforms poetry as a new literary political genre. During England’s post-Revolutionary religio-political turmoil, Watts’s poem, “The Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders” (1734), deliberately engages in a methodical refusal to settle upon a single system of images or terms for describing or referring to the speaker’s identity or situation. Watts’s, literal and metaphoric, refusal to identify with one religio-political approach to nonconformist dissent has been the very point of criticism that not only undermines the poet’s monumental work on hymns but also the lasting impact that the poet had upon England’s national consciousness. This study, therefore, questions why the poet refuses to choose one ideal path in his pursuit for religious freedom and, further, analyzes how the hymn writer defends his demotic aesthetics. This paper investigates Watts’s comprehensive and detailed formulation of what a secularized “social religion” should entail and, further, explores its beneficial role in the pursuit for society’s peace. In contrast to Milton’s apocalyptic vengeance,Watts’s nonconformist goal seeks to balance and locate authority in the individual with the ancient ideal of a “sacred order” that is represented in “The Hurry of the Spirits” through the means of poetic imagination.

사무엘 리차드슨의 작품 「파믈라」에 나타난 미덕(美德)

정이화 연세대학교 인문학연구원 1995 人文科學 Vol.74 No.-

마크 트웨인의 『바보 윌슨』에 나타난 록사나의 여성의 성적인 측면과 모성의 형성과 해체과정 연구

정이화 한국아메리카학회 1996 美國學論集 Vol.28 No.1

프란시스 버니의 『 에블리나 』 : 여류 소설가의 사상과 비판 The Case of Frances Burney's Evelina

정이화 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 1996 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.2 No.1

『에블리나, 어느 소녀의 성장사』라는 소설을 통해 18세기 영국의 여성 소설가 프란시스 버니는 아주 독특한 화자를 창출했습니다. 버니는 정신적인 지주의 평가를 받기 위해 글을 쓰는 여성 주인공(에블리나)과 독자들의 인정을 받기 위해 글을 쓰는 작가(버니)라는 두개의 평행적인 이미지를 개발해 소설 속에 독특한 화자 구조를 창출한 것입니다. 이같은 이중적인 화자 구조속에서 주인공과 작가는 18세기라는 시대 배경속에서 자기의 견해를 표현했을 때 따르는 반향을 두려워하지 않고 거침없이 사회의 규약을 비평하고, 여성들이 사회로부터 받는 불이익에 대해 비판을 했습니다. 또한 그렇게 이러한 이중적 화자구조속에서 자기 의견을 표출하면서 "예절바른 여인"으로 사람들의 인정을 받는데도 성공했습니다. 따라서 에블리나와 버니는 마음 속에 있는 생각을 절도있게 표현하기 위해 고안된 이중구조 속에 "마법에 걸린 펜"을 가지고 글을 쓰는 "침묵의 사람"이라 할 수 있습니다. 동시에 이들은 그 당시 여성에게 지워졌던 제약을 잘 묘사하고 있습니다. 그러므로 본 논문에서는, 에블리나와 버니가 "제대로 된 행동양식"을 따랐을 뿐 아니라 행복한 여자 주인공이며 성공적이면서도 예절바른 여성 소설가라는 별개의 목표를 모두 달성하고 있는 것으로 정의하고 있습니다.

George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver: Paradoxical Growth Bound to the Past or Mythical Leap Unbound by the Past

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2003 영어 영문학 Vol.49 No.4

Readers of the The Mill on the Floss (1860) still struggle with the novel's tragic ending and its conflict of interpretations. After having painstakingly developed one of the most complex nineteenth-century heroines, Maggie Tulliver, Eliot deliberately chooses to kill Maggie in a controversial flood that is, arguably, artificial and unprepared for within the tightly knit narrative structure of the novel. Thus, not only recent critics but also Eliot herself has had to defend her choice of a flood ending of The Mill. Eliot argues that because characters are not simply made but rather evolve from constant interaction with others and circumstances, the very principle of Maggie's character defies an absolute and definitive end that a plot requires. The seemingly unconvincing tragic flood, then, serves as a means of breaking out of the restrictive form of the novel, thereby allowing Eliot to remain true to her heroine and allowing Maggie to achieve the understanding she most desires. Maggie's death, then, allows Eliot to provide space for hope with a mythical flood that does not artificially end with the novel. It is the purpose of this paper to examine and better understand Eliot's ending, which serves as the author's answer to the impending threats of St. Ogg's and an ending that exceeds the restraints of the novel itself.

Women Writing through their Mothers: Searching for a Feminine Influence in Medieval Literature

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2002 영어 영문학 Vol.48 No.4

The Epistolary Novel and Samuel Richardson’s Heroines: Female Writers and Readers of Letters

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2010 영어 영문학 Vol.56 No.6

The epistolary novel, as developed and refined by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), is concerned with distinctly private experience and the morality of individuals __Richardson’s heroine writers. In contrast to nineteenth-century novels, which explore their subjects through the overview of a narrator with a singular moral outlook, the epistolary narrative allows Richardson to examine the various different ways in which individuals/heroines interpret, mold, and respond to their experiences in writing. In this paper, I argue that the authorial voice of Richardson does not control the narrative but rather is present in the prefaces, character sketches, notes and occasional interjections between letters. Although there is little doubt as to whether Richardson intended to make a particular moral point or attempted to control the effect of his novels on his readers, the heroines and their letters dominate the novels so that they put the authorial suggestions in a different light, reducing the author’s to one voice among several. Thus, Pamela’s letters are exemplary for the vigor and intelligence with which they appear to be written, rather than for the imposed morality of their ghost writer__Richardson. Although Clarissa is of a different social class from Pamela, both heroines are united in their oppression as victims of a patriarchal society. In Clarissa’s letters, the heroine’s situation and experience are seen through her own writing in dialogue with that of her confidante Anna Howe, and in contrast to the writing of her oppressors. Clarissa, then, becomes a struggle between different discourses in which their genesis and effect, and the societies and individuals from which they come are implicitly suggested in Richardson’s text. While Richardson may or may not be guilty of taking the writing of women and using it for his own ends, his epistolary novels represent a deliberate and bold attempt to shape the novel in a way conducive to his heroines and to women writers. 1076 Ewha Chung

Re-Reading Clarissa and Clarissa: Interpretations of "Virtue" at War

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2008 영어 영문학 Vol.54 No.3

The critical discourse surrounding Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady has pursued questions that examine what “virtue” means and, further, who defines virtue, how, and why. This paper questions whether the novel, Clarissa, can support a model of virtue for both the novel and its heroine. If the novel does not allow for multiple interpretations of virtue, then, whose interpretation reigns to the end? In an attempt to answer such complex questions, this study looks at the critical exchange of readings of Clarissa between William Beatty Warner, Terry Castle, and Terry Eagleton. Rather than build upon the current account of binary struggles or oppositions which set up the primary conflict as that of Clarissa versus Lovelace, this study will focus on the “inside” and “outside” power structure(s) surrounding the novel and its interpretation of virtue. This paper argues that Clarissa, the novel, espouses one model of virtue for itself and another model for its heroine. Although Richardson’s Clarissa continues to live forever as a literary masterpiece defining public virtue, Clarissa, the heroine, struggles to verify the truth of her virtue through her will which is mediated by editors, Belford and Richardson. In conclusion, this paper questions whether Richardson and Belford, as “direct” and “indirect” mediators, force Clarissa to die in order to preserve “his” and/or “their” definition of virtue in the novel, Clarissa. The critical discourse surrounding Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady has pursued questions that examine what “virtue” means and, further, who defines virtue, how, and why. This paper questions whether the novel, Clarissa, can support a model of virtue for both the novel and its heroine. If the novel does not allow for multiple interpretations of virtue, then, whose interpretation reigns to the end? In an attempt to answer such complex questions, this study looks at the critical exchange of readings of Clarissa between William Beatty Warner, Terry Castle, and Terry Eagleton. Rather than build upon the current account of binary struggles or oppositions which set up the primary conflict as that of Clarissa versus Lovelace, this study will focus on the “inside” and “outside” power structure(s) surrounding the novel and its interpretation of virtue. This paper argues that Clarissa, the novel, espouses one model of virtue for itself and another model for its heroine. Although Richardson’s Clarissa continues to live forever as a literary masterpiece defining public virtue, Clarissa, the heroine, struggles to verify the truth of her virtue through her will which is mediated by editors, Belford and Richardson. In conclusion, this paper questions whether Richardson and Belford, as “direct” and “indirect” mediators, force Clarissa to die in order to preserve “his” and/or “their” definition of virtue in the novel, Clarissa.

Putting Michael McKeon to the “Question”: Is Clarissa Harlowe a Prude or Saint?

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2011 영어 영문학 Vol.57 No.6

Michael McKeon, in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, sets forth a theoretical study of a large canon of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury works, based upon the dialectic of genre formations, which attempts to analyze certain “instabilities” in generic and social categories — “instabilities” that McKeon identifies as “Questions of Truth” and “Questions of Virtue.” In this paper, I argue with McKeon’s optimistic reading of Samuel Richardson’s work, Clarissa, or The History of Young Lady (1740), which concludes that—unlike Pamela’s “manifest material and social empowerment”—Clarissa acquires “manifest discursive and imaginative empowerment” and “wins” (to use McKeon’s terms) the “battle” with her antagonist, Robert Lovelace. What is difficult to accept in this reading of Clarissa is McKeon’s claim that the “success” of Clarissa’s resistance to Lovelace, despite the tragic rape, is evident in her “new-found power” which is represented in the heroine’s spiritual “conversion” — her decision to die to protect her “version of truth and virtue.” McKeon’s spiritual “conversion” not only forces Clarissa to surrender her legal right to prosecute her rapist but also forces her to seek the shelter of her “father’s house” in the afterlife because she can no longer “make others accept [her] own version of events as authoritative.” Thus, in contrast to McKeon, I claim that Clarissa represents the necessary conditions for its heroine’s “empowerment”primarily in language that suggests her manifest social invalidation;language which in particular emphasizes that her rape and torture by Lovelace forces Clarissa’s spiritual “conversion” to seek her reward in the afterlife—thereby concluding that Clarissa’s discursive and imaginative empowerment does not and cannot exist in the secular, material world.

What is Jane Austen writing about in Northanger Abbey: Advocacy of Parental Tyranny or Filial Disobedience?

정이화 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2021 외국학연구 Vol.- No.55

This paper seeks to readdress Jane Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey, completed in 1803, by applying Michael McKeon’s theoretical framework which defines the English novel as a genre of instabilities narrating conflicts of class and social identity during the eighteenth century. Although McKeon’s textual analysis covers up to the 1740s and does not include Austen, his theoretical paradigm concerning “Questions of Truth” and “Questions of Virtue” outline the “instabilities” of class and social identity experienced by Austen’s hero and heroine in their struggle to override parental tyranny and avoid punishment from filial disobedience. Austen depicts how her characters, both intentionally and unintentionally, reject being victimized in the marriage market. Applying McKeon, I delineate how Austen challenges the class system and redefines social identity in her last chapter, by introducing a new paradigm in which parental tyranny is not in conflict with filial disobedience.