Character Criticism

Lee Kyung-ook(이경옥) 한국셰익스피어학회 2001 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.37 No.3

셰익스피어의 성격비평은 대개 18세기 중반이후에 영국에서 활발히 일어난 것으로 주로 작품의 플롯이나 언어 등의 문학적 요소를 도외시한 채 성격 분석을 위주로 하는 비평으로 일반적으로 받아들여지고 있다. 18세기 후반기는 특히 셰익스피어에 대한 새로운 관심이 봇물처럼 터지기 시작했고 그는 다시금 국민적 시인으로 추앙을 받았는데, 그것은 셰익스피어극의 공연이 다시 선풍적인 인기를 끌기시작했고 대규모의 셰익스피어 축제가 열렸으며 그의 극을 소재로 한 회화가 유행했던 점에서, 그리고 셰익스피어 비평이 융성했던 것에서도 드러난다. 18세기 중반기는 이미 신고전주의가 쇠퇴의 조짐을 보였고 ‘감성 문학’이 이미 입지를 넓혀가고 있던 추세였다. 또한 모든 아이디어는 감각으로부터 비롯된다는 경험론 철학이 득세하고 있었는데 이는 감정을 중시하는 미학이 자리하는데 중요한 역할을 했을 뿐만 아니라 희노 애락 애오욕 등의 인간의 성정과 심리에 대한 관심을 고취시키는 데 한 몫을 하였다. 흡즈 흉, 하틀리 같은 철학자들은 인간의 아이디어가 지각으로부터 비롯된다는 경험주의 철학을 확고히 하였다 그들의 철학은 지적, 정서적, 미학적으로 큰 영향을 미쳤고 인간의 정서와 감정에 주의를 기 울이게 했으며 인간의 심리통찰을 고취시켰다 특히 이들이 개개인의 감정, 혹은 심리의 특별함과 그 미세함을 강조한 점은 낭만주의 미학이 이들의 영향을 받은 것임을 시사한다. 거기에 청중의 감정에 직접 호소하는 데이비드 게릭의 연기의 영향으로 비평가들은 셰익스피어 극의 인물들의 심리적인 면을 분석하는데 관심을 집중하였다. 그들의 비평 경향은 우울, 질투, 야심 등의 인간의 성정을 『햄릿』,『오델로』나 『맥베드』 같은 작품을 통해 연구, 분석하였으며 주로 연상철학이 작품 에 어떻게 적용되었는지에 대해 논하였다. 대표적인 비평가로는 리차드슨, 메켄지, 모간 등을 꼽을 수 있는데 이들은 인간의 성정에 대한 탐구를 이들 인물들을 통하여 수행하였을 뿐만 아니라 인간의 복잡한 심리와 인간행동의 동기를 셰익스피어 성격비평을 통하여 보여주려 하였다. 이들의 비평은 그 깊고 미세한 심리적 통찰로 유명하다. 특히 리차드슨은 인간 행동의 동기를 철학적으로 연구하는 과정에서 셰익스피어 극의 인물들을 그의 연 구의 이상적 모텔로 삼았는데 특히 그의 성격분석은 햄릿의 성격분석에서도 보여 주듯이 깊고 복잡한 심리적 통찰을 포함하고 있어 당시 비평가들뿐만 아니라 후세에도 많은 영향을 끼쳤다. 그 외에도 워이틀리나 메켄지, 그라고 모간과 같은 비평가들은 셰익스피어 극의 이해에 도움을 주었으며 후세대 비평가들, 즉 코울리지나 헤즐리트와 같은 영국의 낭만주의 비평가에 뿐만 아니라 독일의 괴테나 쉴레겔 형제에게도 적잖은 영향을 미쳤다. 낭만주의시대의 성격비평은 영국의 성격비평에 독일 관념론을 접목한 코울리지의 비평으로 대표된다. 그의 비평은 상당부분 영국 선대 비평가들의 영향을 반영하고 있으며 자선의 보다 깊고 미묘한 심리적 통찰을 가미하였다. 그의 비평의 내용은 그의 영국 비평가갈의 의견을 공유하고 있지만 그의 전체적 조망은 독일 관념론을 토대로 한 것이다 예를 들면 각 인물들이 보편성 속에 득수성을 지니고 있다라는 그의 주장은 일견 신고전주의 이론과 별 차이가 없는 것으로 보인다. 하지만 그 내용은 많은 차이를 보이는데 신고전주의 보편이 인간의 경험 속에서 파악한 보편임에 반하여 그가 주장하는 보편은 플라톤의 이데아의 의미를 지니고 있다. 다만 그 이데아적인 보편이 다양한 현상으로 변형된 것이 셰익스피어의 등 장인물임을 역설한다. 즉 셰익스피어의 인물들은 이데아와 현상이 유기적으로 결합한 것이 그의 주정이다 또한 그는 성격비평을 함에 있어 전체와의 관계 하에 그것을 조명한다. 즉, 투 개개의 인물들은 극의 전개상 마치 한 유기체의 세포나 실핏 줄 같은 작용을 하며 인물의 성격과 전체극의 플롯은 유기적인 관계를 갖는다. 성 격화(characterisation)는 결국 한 유기체의 하나의 부분으로서 다해져야 한다는 것이 그의 지론이었으며 가장 이상적인 예로 셰익스피어의 작품을 상정한 것이다.

「지빠귀부리왕」의 동화적 프레임과「말괄량이 길들이기」읽기

이경옥(Kyung-Ook Lee) 한국셰익스피어학회 2012 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.48 No.1

This essay examines The Taming of the Shrew from the fairy tale frame of "King Thrushbeard." It is well known that Shakespeare often used frame stories for writing his daramas. Before Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew quite a few shrew-taming stories existed and it is suggested that Shakespeare read some of them. Just as Tillyard finds similarities between "King Thrushbeard" and The Taming of the Shrew, I intend to read The Taming of the Shrew within a shrew-taming frame. However, keeping an eye on the similarities between the two stories, I focus on the differences between them, which were mainly caused by the shift from the medieval historical and economical system to the early modern one. As for the causes of the differences, firstly, the social, political, and religious circumstances are considered. The demand for the establishment of a powerful modern nation and the Reformation required a powerful patriarchal society and a solemn regious household, which led to justification for suppressing women"s will and speech. Therefore, the focus of the two stories shifts from the suppression of women"s pride as the cause of the original sin to the control of woman"s tongue and shrewishness as the necessity for the subjugation of women. Secondly, the transition from the medieval economic system to early capitalism changed the economics role of women. With the rise of capitalism, the economic value of women lay not in domestic production but in the consumption of market goods. Therefore the focus of the taming of women shifts from making women as good domestic producers to proper consumers of market goods. Whereas King Thrushbeard imposes the duty of production on the princess, Petruchio controls Kate"s consumption. Consideration of the specialties of The Taming of the Shrew within the frame of shrew-taming stories offers an effective way of understanding the play.

뮈상블레의 근대 비극문화론과 『맥베스』 읽기

이경옥(Kyung-Ook Lee) 한국셰익스피어학회 2011 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.47 No.2

This essay looks at Macbeth from the historical perspective, especially from what Muchemblend calls the tragic culture of the early modem age. According to him, tragic culture depends on the threatening evil which derives from establishment of a powerful hierarchical order. Tragic culture is produced as man is helplessly doomed to fall into the temptation of evil. In order to unfold the argument the disposition of witches is discussed. In Macbeth studies, the arguments about the Weird Sisters vary from the problem of their origins to the issue arguing their supernatural nature. Some critics insist that they are Hecate figures but others maintain that they are demonic ones. As for their supernatural nature some take them as the external projection of Macbeth’s inner state rather than as concrete supernatural powers. In this essay, I argue that they are as concrete demonic witches sharing the characteristics of evil shown in demonology. Early modem England was established as a strong hierarchical nation with the king at the top. This system required the two extremes of a patriarchal Christian order with the unity of God-King-Father and a dreadful devil threatening the very hierarchical order. Accordingly the devil and its dark powers present themselves as even more threatening and man is seen as vulnerable for falling to temptation. Man, in front of the damning power of evil, cannot but feel helpless and fall into a deep nihilism, which forms a sort of tragic culture. Macbeth shares that kind of tragic culture. In this paper, I firstly discuss the historical context of the witches. Then I argue how the evil powers stir Macbeth’s ambition, how he collapses at their temptation, and finally how he feels a sense of emptiness in this world.

단테와 테니슨의 율리시즈: 미완의 귀향

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 한국비평이론학회 2021 비평과이론 Vol.26 No.3

이 논문은 단테의 『신곡』 중 『지옥』편 26곡에 묘사된 율리시즈와 테니슨의 시 ｢율리시즈｣의 율리시즈에 나타난 미완의 귀향에 대해 고찰한다. 호머와는 달리 단테는 율리시즈를 아예 고향 이타카로 돌아가지 않고 세상 끝으로 항해하는 것으로, 그리고 테니슨은 이타카로 돌아와서도 안주하지 못한 채 다시 항해를 떠나고자 하는 모습으로 그를 그리고 있다. 호머의 『오디세이』는 오디세우스의 귀향에 최우선의 가치를 부여하고 온갖 어려움에도 불구하고 귀향에 성공하는 귀향의 구조를 지니고 있는데, 이를 플라톤 철학의 이데아 세계로의 귀소, 그리고 기독교의 돌아온 탕자의 경우처럼 신으로의 회향 같은 서구의 근본적 사고의 은유로 보고 이에 입각하여 단테와 테니슨의 율리시즈를 귀향에 성공하지 못한 인물로서 그 함의점을 분석한다. 단테의 『신곡』에서 단테는 율리시즈는 지옥의 8원 불구덩이에서 모사와 거짓 술수, 그리고 거짓 설득의 죄로 영원히 벌을 받고 있는 존재로 묘사하는데, 이것은 전통적으로 버질을 비롯한 라틴계 시인들의 견해를 계승하면서도 기독교의 거짓언술이 함의하는 죄의 치명성을 강조하는 것으로 알려졌다. 이 논문에서는 그러한 점에 주목하면서도 율리시즈의 귀향의 실패를 이성의 빛을 지닌 인간으로서 자신의 한계를 망각하고 자유의지를 오용하여 신의 영역을 침범하려한 면에서, 특히 당시의 기독교 사상이었던 토마스 아퀴나스의 사상에 입각하여 고찰한다. 비슷하게 테니슨 역시 율리시즈를 고향에 돌아와 완전히 정착하지 못한 인물로 상정하는 것으로 본다. 율리시즈가 자신과 이타카의 백성들을 분리하여 생각하고, 이타카를 떠나 마지막 항해를 시도하는 것을 빅토리아 시대 신앙의 와해 속에 물질적이고 가시적인 가치만을 추구하는 세태에 대한 거부와 죽음 너머 근본적이고 본질적인 것에 대한 탐색으로 포착하고 이에 대해 논지를 전개한다. This present study investigates incomplete homecoming of Ulysses in Dante’s Inferno 26 and Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, where both the poets portray Ulysses as a man who failed to come back home. In this regard, the current study explores the implied meaning of Ulysses’s failure to return home on the basis of the traditional metaphor of homecoming in Western philosophy and religion. One of the most representative Greek philosophies, Platonism, is said to have the interpretation of homecoming. It states that a human soul which originates from the world of Idea always has the tendency to return to it during its sojourn in this world and its returning to the original home is supposed to be its final destination. Of course the person has to overcome all his or her difficulties to reach the final destination. Neo-Platonism particularly celebrates Ulysses in Homer’s The Odyssey as an archetype of a returned hero. Christianity also has a similar notion on homecoming as reflected in the episodes such as Exodus in the Old Testament and the prodigal son in the New Testament. Ulysses in Dante’s Inferno is depicted as a person who is being punished in flames of Hell mainly for fraudulent tricks or evil counsels. However, in this essay, he is analyzed as a breacher of the boundary of man based on the Christian beliefs during Dante’s era. Similarly, Tennyson depicts Ulysses as a man who fails to settle down spiritually but intends to find something essential or fundamental during the declining primacy of Christianity in the Victorian age.

플라톤의 에로스 신화에 나타난 사랑의 상승구조와 기억 그리고 셰익스피어의 소네트 읽기

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 한국셰익스피어학회 2014 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.50 No.4

This essay examines the concept of love and reads Shakespeare’s sonnets from the perspective of the ascent of love as presented in Plato’s myths of Eros. Though Plato’s influence persisted throughout the Western civilization, especially through the permeation into Christianity from the age of the Church Fathers, it was in the era of the Renaissance during which a complete collection of works by Plato was newly introduced to European countries. Once translated into Latin, a task which was first performed by the Italian Ficino, the collection had a great effect on the intellectual and aesthetical climate of the Renaissance. Among these different works, it was especially the concept of love and beauty as expressed in Symposium and Phaedrus that stimulated the aesthetic sensibility of poets and artists such as Shakespeare, who is considered to have been familiar with it as it is reflected in his works. The myths of Eros that are scattered throughout the Plato’s collection provide the relationship between love and beauty; e.g., love as the pursuit of beauty and eternity, the particular love for a beautiful young man that ascends to ideal love, and heavenly and earthly love. Of these, this essay attempts to focus on the ascent of love as reflected in Shakespeare’s sonnets, in which, similar to Plato’s perspective, the initiation of the narrator’s love by the young man’s beauty tends to develop into ideal love that extends beyond physical beauty and age. In the ascent of the narrator’s love memory plays an important role. First, the narrator retains his impressions of the young man’s beautiful appearances in his memory. However, in his memory, he not only retains the initial impressions of physical beauty but also those of abstract beauty that are distilled from all aspects of the young man and furthered into the generalization of beauty. The young man is eventually represented as the model or the substance of beauty from which individual beautiful things are derived, enabling the narrator to perceive the beauty that is reflected in the phenomenal world.

기독교적 플라톤주의의 존재론적 관점에서 본 코울리지의 시 「인간의 삶: 영성불멸의 부정에 관하여」

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 19세기영어권문학회 2014 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.18 No.2

This essay explores Coleridge`s poem “Human Life” from the ontological perspective of Christian Platonism. Subsequent to the development of the biblical view of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus by Origen and the Cappadocian Church Fathers, the Christian Platonic tradition was accepted by Augustine, the 17th century Cambridge Platonists, and eventually Hegel. Coleridge is also know to belong to the tradition. In harmony with Hebraism and Hellenism, Platonic Christianity uses Platonism as a tool to explain, communicate, and develop Christianity with more clarity and comprehension. In this way, the underlying principles of Christianity are clarified by explaining the concept of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the pattern of asceticism. This essay focuses on the concept of God and its related view of man, among other topics. The Church Fathers interpreted the Hebraic understanding of God, I AM what I am, to be the Platonic concept of a Being as the foundation on which the world stands. In Platonism, a Being is considered almost identical with an Idea, developed by Plotinus into the One and the Ground of the unity of life. In Christianity, the concepts of the One and the Ground of life are merged into the concept of one transcendental God. Based on these principles, Coleridge himself designates God as a Supreme Being. From the perspective of Platonic Christianity, man is considered to be a creature imparted with a Being because God made man in His image. In other words our substance only relies on our Being, and anything else is nothing but a shadow. As long as man obeys God`s Will, he maintains his Being. On the other hand, as soon as man rejects God`s Will, he forfeits his Being and turns into nothing, which signifies real death. However, rather than referring to a bodily death, in this context the transformation refers to a symbolical death. Coleridge`s “Human Life” imagines a state in which we case to be. In the first sonnet he uses a number of biblical allusions such as dust or drone in order to represent the state of hollowness or uselessness of our lives were we to lose our Being. In the second sonnet he emphasizes the sense of vacancy and anxiety of our bodily lives. In this poem he tries to warn that, in the absence of a Being, human life including his own is nothing but a shadow, as the subtitle “on the denial of immortality” implies.

레비나스의 ‘있음’과 ‘고독’ 그리고 콜리지의 『노수부의 노래』 읽기

이경옥(Lee Kyung-Ook) 한국비평이론학회 2006 비평과이론 Vol.11 No.2

  This article looks at Coleridge"s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from the perspective of Levinas"s notion of being and existence. The journey of the Ancient Mariner follows the structure of leaving, experiencing, and returning, and then wandering. But the experiences during the voyage, in spite of their mysteries and wonders, bring only a sense of weariness and entrapment. In this article the weariness and entrapment are discussed in terms of Levinas"s account of being and the existent. The mariner"s departure, the entrapment in the silent sea, and the return to his own country constitute both an attempt to escape from some form of imprisonment and the inevitable failure of that attempt, and this may be understood as a representation of Levinas"s notion that it is our own existence that is trapped in being.<BR>  The Mariner"s wanderings after all the hardships that he has undergone are a symptom of his Narcissism which can set itself only one project, to win the other over to its own consciousness. Through this the subject establishes the object as a necessary gauge of itself. When mind establishes the self as the subject and the object as its own negative other, the mind is successfully granted a status of universality. In this case, the other is to be assimilated into myself, rather than the other in the face of which I might abandon myself. When the I does not know the other as itself, the I feels as if it is confined within itself, which is necessarily an experience of solitude. In all his wanderings the Mariner does not succeed in escaping from himself but merely accomplishes an aggrandizement of his self or a projection onto the whole world of his sense of his own universality.

키에르케고르의 불안의 개념과 실존의 3단계의 관점에서 『리어왕』읽기

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 한국셰익스피어학회 2013 셰익스피어 비평 Vol.49 No.3

This essay interprets King Lear from the perspective of Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety and three stages of existence. Kierkegaard evaluates Shakespeare’s genius, especially for his representation of life as it is, including its absurdities and incomprehensibilities. The audience or readers are likely to shudder at the absurdities of human life represented in King Lear. Lear’s sudden decision to divide his kingdom based on his daughters’ love for him, his misperception, and the controversial ending have especially been the focus of critics. My purpose is to show that Kierkegaard’s philosophical concepts could help understand the argumental issues and thus may enrich the meaning of the play. Before arguing the issues, I investigate Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety as a fundamental human feeling, including its origin, its derivation, and its augmentation. Although Kierkegaard based the origin of anxiety on Adam’s fall in Genesis, his argument of anxiety is psychological rather than religious. For him, human anxiety is not an automatic byproduct of Adam’s breach of God’s prohibitory decree. Rather, it draws from Adam’s liberty to keep or breach it. His liberty engenders “a possibility” of disobedience, and the possibility simultaneously produces anxiety in him, in turn motivating him to disobey the order. From this point in the fall, all human sins and anxieties are derived and augmented. The anxiety from “possibility” especially accounts for Lear’s sin, that is, his rash decision to divide his kingdom and disown Cordelia. The spiraling interaction of anxiety and sin drives him even to the point of madness. However, Kierkegaard argues that human recognition from suffering does not help free humans from the vicious cycle, unless they have momentum when they commit to God. Kierkegaard’s three types of human existence, namely, the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, are applied to understand King Lear in relation to Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety. Lear, as a man dependent on immediacy in the earlier part of the play, can be classified as an aesthete. However, as he suffers, he changes inwardly and becomes ethical. Nonetheless, Lear’s repentance and recognition do not bring him justice or freedom from anxiety and suffering. In other words, Lear does not leap into what Kierkegaard calls the religious stage, where one can commit oneself to God and thereby be free from all human absurdities. Shakespeare perhaps suggests the difficulties and limits of solving absurdities within the human dimension by showing Lear’s ordeal and unfulfilled poetic justice in King Lear.

테니슨의 『모드』 읽기

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 한국비평이론학회 2016 비평과이론 Vol.21 No.1

This essay examines the speaker’s psychology of Maud from the perspective of pathological narcissism. As the initial title of the poem as Maud or The Madness suggests quite a few researchers analyzing Maud have focused on the mental disease of the speaker. This mainly occurred by examining the speaker’s abnormalities and self-absorbing propensities or by considering thematic implications of madness, i.e., socially or politically extended meanings implied by a personal madness. This essay, however, offers a possible interpretation of the speaker’s mentality from the perspective of pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism is a type of mental disorder displayed by a person who is pathologically attached to the grandiose self and their idealized parent imago without its integration into the rest of their personality as an integrated healthy self. Its prominent symptoms are extreme self-centeredness, and a grandiosely expanded image of the self, all of which are actually defensive mechanisms against the anxiety of self-disintegration. For a person such as this, underneath his or her sense of grandiosity lie a sense of emptiness, melancholy, and the pursuit of death. Maud with its subtitle “a monodrama” is a poetic narrative where the speaker unfolds his own story unilaterally. The speaker’s reverie of his father’s death haunted by “the bloody heath,” “the dreadful hollow” or “shattered limbs” reveals the extent of the trauma the speaker suffered because of his father’s death. The aftermath of the death of his father as an ideal self-object entails his withdrawal from the world, his own idealized image of his father and himself, the swollen notion of human and social evils, the jealousy, and intense anger against anti-narcissistic figures, but at the same time, a sense of inferiority and nothingness of his self underneath the feelings. These kinds of propensities accord to the symptoms of pathological narcissism; that is, the death of the ideal self-object, the withdrawal within himself and the forming of the swollen image of the idealized object as defensive mechanisms against the disintegrated self, depression and emptiness, and the pursuit of death beneath them, etc. Maud, whom the speaker falls in love with, and expects to be a salvation for him, is likely to be another idealized self-object replacing his father. The despair, madness, and the pursuit of death after the death of Maud shows the same pattern of the symptoms he suffered caused by his father’s death. His recovery after he saw Maud’s ghost and his willing participation in the Crimean war seems to be another replacement that plays a role equivalent to his father or Maud, rather than a substantial solution to his life-long problems.

테니슨의 「왕의 목가」에 나타난 드루이드이자 바드 멀린, 그리고 그 시적 함의

이경옥(Kyung Ook Lee) 한국비평이론학회 2017 비평과이론 Vol.22 No.3

This essay examines Merlin in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Merlin, one of the main characters of a variety of King Arthur’s stories, has been represented from diverse perspectives. This essay focuses on Merlin in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King as a Druidic bardic figure and creative artist among other perspectives. This perspective is closely related to Tennyson’s poetics including his concepts of poem, poet and poetic expression. Before arguing Tennyson’s Merlin, the historically various status of druids are considered from as intellectual elites in the ancient Celtic society to as weakened trifle sorcerers or swindlers in the Christianized era, and then as restored druidic bards in the late 18th century. Tennyson’s Merlin, following the tradition of the restored druidic bards, is especially characterized as a bard and creative artist. Merlin, while maintaining his status as an intellectual elite of the society, is displayed as a druidic bard in many ways such as a poet-prophet and the way of unfolding his ideas in the symbolic triplets known as the traditional druidic method of imparting truth. At the same time Tennyson describes him as a highly creative artist who is being inspired by imagination, his role model of a poet.