호모 컨슈메리쿠스: 18세기 소비혁명과 제인 오스틴의 『노생거 애비』

김진아 ( Jina Kim ) 한국18세기영문학회 2018 18세기영문학 Vol.15 No.2

This essay aims to analyze the characteristics of consumers in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey in conjunction with the Consumer Revolution during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The major consumers in this novel such as General Tilney and Mrs. Allen define their identity mainly in terms of their possessions. The things Genral Tilney is attached to are positional goods whose values lie not in their use value but in their semiotic value that imparts the owner’s social status to the viewer. Mrs. Allen’s passion is only for dress through the medium of which she judges herself and other people around her. Austen depicts the characters who are defined as consumers in a very negative light. They are vain, self-centered, and morally deficient. They relate with other people as though they were things, not human beings. This causes them to fail in communicating properly with Catherine Moreland, who does not share their value of the things they are obsessed with. This essay also explores how Jane Austen delineates certain aspects of consumer society of this historical period such as the compulsive power of fashion and the nature of positional goods through her portrayal of these consumers.

셸리의 「줄리안과 마달로」: 감성과 이성의 정치학을 넘어서

유선무 ( Son Moo Ryu ) 한국18세기영문학회 2009 18세기영문학 Vol.6 No.1

This paper claims that Shelley`s "Julian and Maddalo" intervenes a moment of political crisis in the early 19th-century Britain, when the public sphere, essential to the democratic society, started to be disintegrated. According to Habermas, the normative ideal of the public sphere in the 17th and 18th century was the space where a large number of peers came together to engage in reasoned arguments over the key issues of mutual interest and concerns. After the Revolutionary debate in the late 18th century, the foundation of the public sphere was severely undermined mostly because the rise of unpropertied mass public brought the degeneration in the quality of discourse and also because the rise of radical groups made it impossible to escape addressing the class divisions of civil society. Instead of searching for the common good or general interest, the public sphere had changed into a springboard for the diverse interest groups to demand social rights-the services or protections of the state. "Julian and Maddalo" is an attempt to install a new ethical basis for the degenerated public sphere, reflecting the increasing diversity in ethos of the period. In "Julian and Maddalo", the conversation between the two friends over the possibility of social reform breaks down twice because they are incapable of looking at the world from the counterpart`s perspective. In short, their communicative reason is predicated on the exclusion of alterity. However, the Maniac guides the friends to a moment of sympathetic reconciliation by providing a new language which acknowledges the authenticity of otherness and embraces the sincerity of the feelings. Nevertheless, Shelley carefully excavates the oppressive and conforming impulse in the principle of feelings by bringing into focus the social constructiveness of emotions and the disciplinary force of the society which makes the emotions. Accordingly, the diffuse sympathy of Julian does not have the social force to change the system, while rendering the existent factional and exclusive ties and emotions stronger. Just like the way that the disciplinary society incarcerates the Maniac inside the wall of the mental institution, the rational minds of the two friends keeps the feelings that the Maniac evokes within the private sphere. Only after the return of Julian to the Venice, Maddalo`s daughter`s refusal to reveal what has happened to the Maniac gestures towards a new subjectivity which resists both the egoistical desire of the rational subject and the futile sympathy of the emotional subject.

사무엘 존슨과 18세기 계몽주의 공적 지식인의 초상: 21세기 융복합 시대의 새로운 통섭적 지식인을 향하여

정정호 ( Chung Ho Chung ) 한국18세기영문학회 2009 18세기영문학 Vol.6 No.2

The aim of this paper is to discuss Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) as a most representative public intellectual in the 18th-century England. It seems to me that we need badly a public intellectual like Johnson in this age of functional specialization. Many literary scholars and humanities intellectuals now stick to their ivory tower separated from the secular realities of the world. They tend to be secluded technical producer of academic papers for the very small number of professionals. They cannot reach the society and history to which they belong. This is the very beginning of the so-called "Crisis of the Humanities." We can discuss Dr. Johnson as public intellectual in three aspects. First of all, Johnson was a great scholar critic. As T. S. Eliot pointed out, Johnson was "one of the three greatest critics of poetry in English literature" (162) including John Dryden and S. T. Coleridge. The very essences of his criticism come from wide knowledge and acute understanding of language, close reading strategy, historical imagination and deep understanding of the humanities. Secondly, Johnson was a great prolific writer called "Great Cham of Literature" by Tobias Smollett. He read a wide range of books with various topics. Thirdly, Johnson was not a narrow specialist but an open-minded generalist who had a wide variety of intellectual curiosities and convergent or consilient methods. In other words, Johnson was really a public intellectual in the civil society of the 18th-century England with a vision of common reader, common culture and common humanities. How can we thresh Dr. Johnson as a critical intellectual for the 21st century? We can propose nine tentative memos as follows: (1) understanding importance of language in the humanities, and integration and interpenetration of language and literature; (2) the restoration of power of literature for the concrete life and society; (3) expanding the frontier of literary genres for the establishing the wisdom literature; (4) the return of dialogical imagination for the effective communication and comparison; (5) reestablishment of British literary tradition with balance, toleration and golden mean; (6) development of the convergent or consilient humanities; (7) reinvention of public intellectual with wise reading and critical consciousness; (8) avoidance of the philistinism and specialized professionalism; and (9) the pursuit of the whole man including spiritual problem in this age of rationalistic instrumentalism. In order to build a new convergent or consilient humanities in the public sphere for the 21st century we have to redraw and reproduce the portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson as public intellectual in the year of tricentenary anniversary of his birth.

Widowhood, Coquetry, and Desire in Jane Austen’s Lady Susan

조선정 한국18세기영문학회 2015 18세기영문학 Vol.12 No.2

This paper presents a reading of Jane Austen’s lesser-known early novella Lady Susan, examining the representation of widowhood as a critical foray into the modern discourse of female desire. Challenging the mainstream scholarship which emphasizes the authorial verdict on the amorous escapade of the eponymous heroine in one way or another, I demonstrate that the novel creates a less judgmental, less moralizing and more tolerant, more exploratory space for signifying capacious female desire. My first argument is that Austen, by taking a defamilarizing look at the discourses of motherhood and sensibility, the two powerful cultural scripts for constructing the ideal of domestic femininity, illuminates the performative nature of both and the possibility of critique as well. Next, I interpret coquetry as a transgressive strategy of deferral of marriage, whereby the patriarchal gender relation in the regime of heteronormativity is called into question. The heroine’s conclusive marriage, I contend, is not a submissive sign but another performativity that enacts the potential female agency. Lastly, I revisit the implications of the narrative shift in the conclusion chapter of the novel. I argue that the appearance of omniscient narration does not intend to nullify the heroine’s struggle but rather clarifies the conditions, meanings, and limitations of her desire. Elaborating these three related arguments, this paper aims at placing Lady Susan in a continuum of widow-coquette, the complex figure who interrogates the parameters of domestic femininity, and thereby placing Lady Susan as worthy of a significant precursor to Austen’s canon in its insight into the dynamic link between shaping of modern female sexuality and the narrative of marriage plot.

From Here to Eternity?: Male Body and Voice in the Justification of King`s Authority in John Dryden`s Absalom and Achitophel

( In Han Jeon ) 한국18세기영문학회 2010 18세기영문학 Vol.7 No.2

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Dryden justifies Charles II`s authority in the wake of the Exclusion Crisis. Dryden seems to be in a no-win situation as he tries to defend a king who is amiable as a man but questionable as a king. Dryden`s problem becomes more complicated, because Charles II`s defect, his promiscuity, produced an illegitimate son who became the figurehead of the rebellious. Dryden`s masterful defence, this paper argues, starts when he appropriates Davidic analogy to borrow the authority of Scripture in undermining the cause of Exclusionists. In appropriating Davidic analogy, Dryden`s main tactic is to highlight physicality and femininity of the rebellious thus to expose their unmanliness, and then connect their unmanliness to their disloyalty while he emphasizes the manliness of Royalists and Charles II through the absence of physicality and femininity in their description. Dryden undermines Achitophel/Shaftesbury by revealing his physical deformity that leads to his begetting a "shapeless Lump," his son. In so doing, Dryden implies that the imbalance between matter and form in his generation actually leads to his disloyalty. In his catalogue of the rebels, such as Zimri/Buckingham, Shimei/Bethel and Corah/Titus Oates, Dryden`s tactic of this kind is repeated: their physicality is betrayed and linked to their deformed disloyalty. In dealing with Absalom/Monmouth, Dryden employs another but related tactic: he instills femininity into Absalom and thus reveals his existence as female body. In the scene of Achitophel`s temptation of Absalom, though Achitophel tempts him through the allure of manliness, Absalom becomes another Eve who is tempted by Achitophel. The feminization is not restricted to Absalom, as Absalom in his turn lures the populace and then "glides unfelt into their secret hearts." In contrast to the portraits of these rebels, Dryden presents the normative example through the portraits of Royalists, especially through the portrait of Barzillai-his son/Ormond-Ossory. In Barzillai`s and his son`s portrait, their loyalty is connected to their manliness, heightened by the lack of physical existence. After establishing the satiric norm, Dryden lets David/Charles speak and lets him subdue the subjects with his words. So, in the final section of the poem, David exists only as voice like God. He becomes distinguished from the ordinary whose bodily existence binds them to earth, especially from the rebels whose physicality and femininity eventually merge as they come to be delineated as vipers that tear through mother`s body and creep on their belly on earth. His authority and sovereignty are strengthened without dispute, as he is endowed with godlike status. Yet, this paper argues that, though Dryden`s justification of Charles is masterful, it only reveals the discrepancy between the ideal world that is his poem and reality. For, though Dryden made him godlike by negating his bodily existence, Charles II was so ungodlike in his faithful following of his bodily desire. Also Dryden`s prospect for the proper succession is actually dampened and turned into his painful recognition of the impossibility of proper succession, as his paragon of proper succession, Barzillai-his son/Ormond-Ossory, has actually failed due to the premature death of proper heir.

Trauma and the Crisis of Poetic Representation in Wordsworth’s “The Thorn”

유선무 한국18세기영문학회 2018 18세기영문학 Vol.15 No.1

As a poet of trauma, William Wordsworth is faced with the dilemma of having to find a way to voice traumatic muteness without disrupting silence. “The Thorn” exemplifies the difficulty of acquiring such a poetic voice by portraying a narrator who fails to read, let alone transmit, Martha’s traumatic suffering. The narrator’s failure is bound both to his sense of self that privileges emotional autonomy and transparent knowledge and to the arbitrariness of language itself. Against the backdrop of the failed narrator of “The Thorn,” emerges nature as a force that tempers the very desire of making alterity transparently known and available to the subject’s meaning-making process. Instead of transforming traumatic experience into a communicable form of knowledge, nature lets the noncommunicable aspects of human experience be, momentarily liberating the human mind from the burden of signification. Ultimately, nature in “The Thorn” disciplines the human mind so that it can turn back on habits of thought and easy categorization to discover the unassimilable otherness and inscrutability inherent in both human and non-human worlds. “The Thorn” seeks to show that the successful transmission of trauma is possible only through cutting the experience free from the subject of experience or at least from the familiar forms of subjectivity that require individuation as the condition for their existence. In other words, the grief and loss of Martha must not be experienced as merely subjective, consciously owned and recognized. Instead, the poem seeks to foster affective discomfort and cognitive unease to disturb the very notion of subjectivity itself. The affective interruption of the subject moves readers out of familiar forms of personhood so that the prohibition of mourning imposed on Martha can be ultimately lifted.

Performing the Female Will in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story

최주리,양소정 한국18세기영문학회 2012 18세기영문학 Vol.9 No.2

The story of Miss Milner in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story (1791) can be read as an elaborate testing of exactly what the valences of consent might imply for a female subject, formerly a minor and guard, to become an equal partner of a marriage contract. Miss Milner’s impetuous obsession with subduing her lover to her will is more than a personal psychological flaw. She will only enter into marriage once she has established that they are equals as they enter into a contract that enforces inequality. Submission is a willed decision, based on a faculty that retains the prerogative of choice, hence always resting on the potentiality of disruption and revolution. Meanwhile, the story of her daughter Lady Matilda can be read as an elaborate testing of exactly what the valences of consent might mean for a female subject, a minor and a daughter, who is unfairly subjected to paternal persecution despite her complete compliance with his Gothic and unfatherly rule. Matilda’s will-ful adherence to her father’s injunctions rightfully earns his belated protection, and she is given sole power to determine the matter of paternal inheritance through her will. Re-examined in this manner, both mother and daughter in A Simple Story can be read as “willing” women who take serious and consequential positions within the same story.

House or Lodgings?: A Whore`s Lease on Husbandry in Roxana

( Si Yeon Lee ) 한국18세기영문학회 2012 18세기영문학 Vol.9 No.2

The protagonist of Daniel Defoe`s The Fortunate Mistress, commonly known as Roxana, undergoes a sea change from a "Lady of Pleasure" to a "Woman of Business" in mid-career, and this metamorphosis into a "She-Merchant" or "Man-Woman" concurs with her nonnegotiable rejection of remarriage and the status of a feme covert. Instead of forfeiting "Liberty" for the delusive proprietorship of the husband`s ``house,`` Roxana opts for mistresshood in a succession of ``leases`` on various ``lodgings`` of her choice and management, Roxana`s deliberate assumption of mistresshood for its "Liberty" and masculine "Command" is tantamount to declaring herself to be her own husband, thus bringing into effect her double lease on husbandry, as master/mistress of her space/body and of her business and finances. Housekeeping and bookkeeping become one in Roxana`s unique business of husbandry, of which her narrative serves as the ledger, Numerous exhilarating entries of highly self-conscious spatial and financial management notwithstanding, a closer examination of Roxana`s ledger discloses critical flaws that prove adverse to her ``credit`` in both of her capacities. Not only does she end up losing control over her space/body to male penetration in the end, but Roxana turns out disqualified as a (wo)man of business, too, for her inability to read and keep accounts, whatever her total value may come up to. Accordingly, Roxana forfeits her narrative credit as well, when Susan, her daughter and former servant in the Pall Mall lodgings, appropriates it by persistently re-telling the story of Roxana the king`s courtesan from her stolen gaze, which is a retroactive, hence irrevocable, proof of Roxana`s lapse even at the height of her prosperous housekeeping.

흄과 들뢰즈의 공감 이론 사용법: 경험론의 문학적 사용 가능성에 관하여

정재식 ( Jae Sik Chung ) 한국18세기영문학회 2007 18세기영문학 Vol.4 No.2

This paper aims to examine the core of Hume`s theory of sympathy and empiricism by focusing on the way in which Deleuze creates his theory of sympathy based on his original interpretation of Hume. Furthermore, we seek to devise a new mode of literary theory, which is strongly informed by the creative encounter between sympathy and empiricism. For this project, beyond the limitation of the traditional understanding of empiricism, we newly define Hume`s empiricism as the art of generating, maintaining, transforming and expanding the power of "vivacity." In this new definition, Hume`s empiricism does not simply refer to a mode of thought that privileges the impression over the ideas, but also the faculty of thought/feeling to stimulate a new vivacity from memory, idea, and habit, and furthermore, transform it into the vital power of creative and diverse practices in life. Based on the new understanding of Hume`s empiricism, we argue that the core of his theory of sympathy is to convert the new vivacity into the power of invention that can construct the creative community in ethical and aesthetical sense. In the case of Deleuze, who interprets Hume as the great thinker of "the relation of immanence," sympathy comes to be a principle of connection based on the dynamic flow of differences in life and the logic of "AND." Based on the theory of the relation of immanence, Deleuze offers the mode of resonance in the experience of sympathy, which can overcome the violence of the perverse gaze in the mode of male-centered sympathy. Inspired by Hume`s and Deleuze`s theory of sympathy, we investigate creative ways of writing that is informed by the spirit of empiricism. Such styles of writing can powerfully express the real of life with vivacious aesthetic language, eradicating the empty bubble of abstract idealism and affirming the free flow of differences. Referring to the innovative literary techniques and profound understanding of life in the works of Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen and Laurence Sterne, this paper explores the creative but overlooked connection between literature and empiricism.

『오루노코』와 아프라 벤의 작가성

이혜수 ( Hye-soo Lee ) 한국18세기영문학회 2017 18세기영문학 Vol.14 No.1

Authorship is one of the significant issues in the eighteenth-century studies partly because an author`s self-representation has been hugely altered in that period with the establishment of professional (imaginative) writership along with the cultural shifts from patronage system to literary market or from scribal culture to print culture. In this paper, I examine how the authorship of Aphra Behn, the supposedly first female professional writer in Britain, features in a varied way according to the generic distinctions of play and the new genre of the novel, particularly paying attention to her authorship as a novelist through a reading of Oroonoko. Behn`s authorship as a playwright roughly corresponds to Johnsonian authorship, who argues that writing for bread is an honorable job, as opposed to the Popean myth of author as a hero against literary marketplace. When it comes to the novel, which deals with the contradictory reality of contemporaneity in a “realist” way, however, Behn reveals a distinctive kind of authorship from that of a playwright in heroic drama or Restoration comedy with rigid decorum. She attempts to figure out the place of the novelist as both a passive participant and an active historian/artist, as we see in Oroonoko, who might be helpless in an active intervention in the contemporary reality yet still able to enact empowerment as a writer through her female pen.