정치적 의제로서의 사유와 소통의 장의 실현 -셸리의『혼돈의 가면극』읽기

민병천 ( Byoung Chun Min ) 한국영어영문학회 2010 영어 영문학 Vol.56 No.4

This essay attempts to read Percy Bysshe Shelley s The Mask of Anarchy by attending to a political agenda that Shelley seeks to propose and embody in the poem. This poem was written as a response to an exceptional political event, the Peterloo Massacre, and thus it is evident that Shelley intended to engage in contemporary politics by writing this poem. As many critics have pointed out, however, the way in which this poem addresses social, plitical issues is ambivalent and even confusing, since it contains many elements that contradict each other, and sometimes its political visions are based on incoherent conceptions. For this reason, this poem has been considered to be a failure as an occasional poem which should provide the reader with a clear direction for political actions. Faced with this critical problem, this essay proposes that the ambivalence this poem reveals-e.g., the confrontation between moderate artistic fantasy and radical tenets -is not a retreat from political activism, as some critics suggested, but a result of its creation and embodiment of a public sphere which invites various social classes and their positions. The mode in which Shelley conceives this unified public sphere in the course of writing The Mask of Anarchy can be interpreted in terms of the following three features. First, this poem underscores the significance of thoughts in constituting a communal space between people, thus asking the reader to participate in this process of thinking on given issues. Second, this poem suggests that people should enlighten each other by engaging in communicative reciprocations. Lastly, the public sphere formulated by the previous two features should incorporate various socio-political agents beyond class boundaries (even oppressors themselves) into its own working field. After explaining how these three features are manifested in the poem, this essay argues that the unified public sphere thus formed in the poem is the very agenda that Shelley aims to propose for the contemporaneous politics and culture. As a conclusion, this essay highlights how Shelley s project of creating a unified public sphere finally failed in contemporary history through observing two contrasting receptions of Shelley s works.

공화주의 사상의 변용적 계승으로서의 낭만주의 시론: 셸리의 『시의 옹호』를 중심으로

민병천 ( Byoung Chun Min ) 한국18세기영문학회 2016 18세기영문학 Vol.13 No.2

This paper aims to read Percy Bysshe Shelley`s A Defence of Poetry as an attempt to revise the ideal of classical republicanism and thus newly create an intellectual community based on the notion of the “Republic of Letters.” As compellingly revealed in the phrase “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” the ideal model of poet suggested in A Defence of Poetry implies two contradictory elements: 1) an enlightening legislator who pursues and spreads the public good; 2) a solipsistic hermit unacknowledged by the general public. Given this problem, this paper argues that these two contradictory elements implied in Shelley`s notion of poet derive from the clash between Shelley`s emphasis on poetry`s publicity that his republicanism endorses and the reactionary nature that his republicanism inevitably accompanies in a new social order. In relation to this issue of republicanism, this paper also argues that Shelley`s intense endeavor to confirm poets` serious role in an intellectual public sphere comes from both his firm faith in the classical ideal of the “Republic of Letters” and his keen awareness of contemporary social realities whereby poetry was increasingly losing its influence on the general public.

정치적 진보성과 문화적 세련성 사이 헌트와 해즐릿의 경우

민병천 ( Byoung Chun Min ) 영미문학연구회 2012 안과 밖 Vol.0 No.32

Recent studies on the second generation Romantic writers have attended to how these writers` literary practices were conditioned upon their contemporary history, as opposed to the traditional notion of Romanticism based on an affirmation of individual creativity. Although these studies meaningfully highlight the historicity inherent in seemingly individualistic Romantic texts, they have frequently considered these writers to be reactionary or at most apolitical. Jerome McCann`s and Ii, P. Thompson`s studies represent this critical tendency. But it is hard to say that these studies bring to full light the historical significance of Romantic literature, because they failed to see the way in which this historicity of Romantic texts is connected to their writers` own will to engage with political issues. More specifically, these critics place too much emphasis on how these writers` pursuit of cultural refinement contradicted contemporary radical politics, and thus most of those Romantic writers` cultural practices are interpreted as an evasion of political engagement. Faced with these problematic issues, this essay argues that the literary practices of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt can offer a meaningful historical case in which Romantic writers` endorsement of cultural refinement did not exclude radical politics but rather productively enriched and even rectified them. Unfortunately, Hazlitt and Hunt`s attempt to unify cultural refinement with radical politics in the ground of Republic of Letters was not actualized in the following historical progress. Still, their politico-cultural ideal toward the public good (as one branch of their contemporary radical politics) should, this essay argues, serve as a historical model which subscribes to the political legitimacy of intellectuals` cultural practices.

Debunking Imperialist Discourses and Setting Up Resistance: Wide Sargasso Sea as a Reflexive Text of Englishness

민병천(Byoung Chun Min) 한국영미문학교육학회 2013 영미문학교육 Vol.17 No.3

In reading Jean Rhy's Wide Sargasso Sea, many critics have focused on this novel's function as a critique of Jane Eyre's English imperialistic subjectivity by identifying what counter-discourses this novel delivers. This essay, however, attempts to read this novel not by identifying counter-discourses against English imperialism but by drawing attention to its process of debunking the falsity of supposedly universal gaze of English subjectivity toward colonial others. The difficulty of finding counter-discourses to imperialism in Wide Sargasso Sea derives mostly from the main character Antoinette's racial identity as white Creoles. The in-between position of white Creoles after the abolition of slavery in the West Indies determines the characterization of Antoinette as a precarious and unstable figure in historical terms. Besides, Rochester's gaze toward Antoinette, which ceaselessly mystifies her historically oriented presence, contributes to her isolation from the reality. That is, Antoinette's character is not able to form an effective site of resistance against imperialistic discourses. Rather, this essay argues that a site of resistance in Wide Sargasso Sea can be found only by debunking imperialist discourses embedded in Rochester's narrative that mystifies and thus exploits Antoinette's historical presence. Ironically, this work of debunking is triggered by Christophine, who is tacitly complicit with imperialistic projects as a black Creole, since she at least functioned as a catalyst by which imperialistic discourses revealed and thus de-mystified themselves even though she did not conduct an act of resistance herself. Indeed, Rhys's critical reconstruction of imperialistic English subjectivity through Rochester's narrative should be said to derive from her insightful recognition of the newly established Englishness in the post-colonial period of England.