감수성 분열론과 변화의 의미 : 『안토니와 클레오파트라』와 『실락원』을 중심으로 in Antony and Cleopatra and Paradise Lost = Dissociation of Sensibility and the Meaning of the Change

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

T.S. Eliot asserted that the dissociation of sensibility was aggravated by the two powerful poets Dryden and Milton in the seventeenth century. And then he placed the metaphysical poets in the mainstream of English literature as successors to Shakespeare. So naturally Shakespeare is regarded as the best of the English canon. Whether his assertion is right or not, his insight was important in that he noticed the social change in the poetic use of language. What he invokes when he talks about the dissociation of sensibility is the inquiring insight of key importance for an intelligent grasp of English literary history.
But new criticism after Eliot didn't pay attention to his insights and perceptions. They rather attended to the phrase that the poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect to express the complexity and variety of our civilization. So the members of new criticism have been criticized as the advocates of the existing power. New historicists are enthusiastic in criticizing them. They accuse Shakespeare because he has been the best of the English canon and so his works are thought to have contributed to the maintenance of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture. In this criticism, we can see that both Eliot's insights and Shakespeare's greatness are neglected, which are more necessary in modern times.
So this essay tries to examine the correlation between the meaning of dissociation of sensibility and that of the change to the sensibility -dissociated age by discussing Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with the theory of dissociation of sensibility.
What Eliot criticizes about Milton's poetry is especially about his music. He insists that his music aggravated the dissociation of thought and feeling in poetry. But in view of what he thought to be the metaphysical poets' merits, "the elaboration of a figure of speech which ingenuity can carry", and "the development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader", what we can criticize is not dissociation of sensibility, but the relaxation of attentiveness to sense by his poetry. It leads to the relaxation, not to the awakening of sensibility on the part of the reader. It is a method to make the reader accept the poet's purpose, and makes the development of incorporated sensibility impossible. It brings about a mechanic movement of sensibility. It shows that such situation has already progressed in the seventeenth century.
In Shakespeare's works, we can see two kinds of people with different sensibility. One kind is people with creative and spontaneous vitality, and the other is those with purposeful and calculative will.
Among the one are Cleopatra and Antony, and Ceaser is among the other. It is natural that the power is transferred to Ceaser with purposeful and calculative will. But such transference means the change of the creative age to the sensibility-dissociated age. In that Shakespeare described Ceaser's time as deteriorating and less glorious, though Ceaser finally had the power, we can insist that Shakespeare was not simple an advocate for order and power.
Shakespware descrived the change of the contemporary power and social order, and predicted what results that change would lead to. And in that the changed society is described inferior to that of the past, we can say that sensibility became dissociated and mechanized in the process.