근대세계의 폭력성에 대하여: 멜빌의 『모비 딕』과 매카시의 『피의 자오선』 = On the Violence of the Modern World: A Comparative Study of Melville`s Moby Dick and McCarthy`s Blood Meridian

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines the problems of violence underlying the American modernity, comparing Cormac McCarthy`s Blood Meridian with Herman Melville`s Moby-Dick. Violence deriving from racism, inscribed at the beginning of America, seems to have decreased gradually as democracy has advanced. It should be noticed, however, how the visible violence involving killing native Americans and making slaves of the black people has been transformed through modernization into the invisible violence embedded in the modern capitalist system. Moby-Dick and Blood Meridian explore double-faced violence in America and the structural forces behind it by selecting such historical facts as whale-hunting or scalp-hunting as their main subjects. Both of the novels focus on the dark side of violence through drawing the theme of madness into the center of their narratives as well as using complex narrative modes. Though sharing much in common, these novels have their own distinctive ways of approaching violence. Moby-Dick reveals, through the curious madness of Ahab, subtle but iron-willed impulses of violence inherent in the modern system to destroy the vital mysterious forces of life, whereas Blood Meridian presents scenes of American nightmares where white people get obsessed with killing others, violating the ideal of democracy and civilization, thereby debunking the myth of the West and the ideology of imperial expansionism. In relation with the problems of violence, both the concepts and descriptions of nature (seascapes or landscapes) also play major role in these two novels since a whole consciousness of Ishmael or a new perception called optical democracy to appreciate nature is seen to operate here as the only possible capacity of resisting the mad violence of Ahab or Holden.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Cormac McCarthy, "핏빛 자오선" 민음사 2008

2 이현우, "폭력이란 무엇인가" 난장이 23-24, 2011

3 한기욱, "추상적 인간과 자연: 미국 고전문학의 근대성에 대하여" (2) : 1997

4 한기욱, "미국 민주주의와 ‘제국’: 멜빌 문학의 현재성" 영미문학연구회 14 : 8-32, 2003

5 John Emil Sepich, "‘What Kind of Indians was them?’: Some Historical Sources in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, in Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy" UP of Mississippi 1993

6 Andrew Delbanco, "The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope" Harvard UP 56-, 1999

7 George Guillemin, "The Pastoral Vision of Cormac McCarthy" Texas A&M UP 3-, 2004

8 David Holloway, "The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy" Greenwood P 2002

9 Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Decline of American Power" Norton 2003

10 Vereen M. Bell, "The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy" Louisiana State UP 12-, 1988

11 Richard Slotkin, "Regeneration of Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600~1860" Wesleyan UP 1973

12 James D. Lilley, "Of Whale and Man: The Dynamics of Cormac McCarthy’s Environmental Imagination, in The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory, and the Environment" U of Iowa P 152-, 2002

13 Sepick, "Notes on Blood Meridian" U of Texas P 3-, 2008

14 Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick or The Whale" Northwestern UP 186-, 1988

15 Harold Bloom, "How To Read and Why" Touchstone Book 254-255, 2001

16 Dana Philips, "History and the Ugly Facts of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian" 68 (68): 1996

17 Sara L. Spurgeon, "Foundation of Empire: The Sacred Hunter and the Eucharist of the Wilderness in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, in Cormac McCarthy: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views" Chelsea House 2009

18 Barcley Owens, "Cormac McCarthy’s Western Novels" U of Arizona P 2000

19 John Cant, "Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism" Routledge 159-, 2008

20 Charles Olson, "Call Me Ishmael" Grove P Inc 16-25, 1947