“여인과 그림과 계절”의 타블로 비방: 린다 패스턴의 「윤리학」과 렘브란트

백정국 한국문학과종교학회 2024 문학과종교 Vol.29 No.1

그림을 소재로 한 기존의 시와 달리 린다 패스턴의 시는 자신이 의도한 메시지를 부각하기 위해 회화 작품을 주체적이고 창의적으로 활용하는데, 「윤리학」은 여기서 더 나아가 ‘렘브란트’라는 이름 말고는 그림의 정체 파악에 필요한 정보를 극도로 제한함으로써 시인의 인생관과 예술관을 집약하는 시의 결론을 난해하게 만든다. 본 연구는 시인 패스턴과 화가 렘브란트와 철학자 아리스리토텔레스의 상호관계성을 논의의 중심축으로 삼아 「윤리학」에 언급된 첫 번째 그림은 렘브란트가 그린 일련의 자화상을 깊게 의식한 것이며, 두 번째 그림의 정체는 종교적 성격을 강하게 띤 선한 사마리아인이 있는 풍경 이라고 주장한다. 그림에 대한 세밀한 관찰과 독자적 해석을 병행하면서도 막상 그림의 정체는 모호하게 제시한 패스턴의 독특한 시적 전략은 에크프라시스적인 시에 대한 정치(精緻)한 강독과 비평이 해당 그림에 대한 충실한 음미와 해당 화가에 대한 폭넓은 이해를 수반해야 한다는 점을 드러내는 것이기에 시사하는 바가 크다. Diverging from conventional ekphrastic verses, Linda Pastan’s picture-based poetry appropriates paintings in a subjective and creative manner to underscore the intended messages. In the case of “Ethics,” Pastan elevates this approach by minimizing the information on the identity of the paintings other than the painter’s name, strategically incorporating ambiguity into the poetic conclusion to encapsulate her distinct thoughts and vision on art and life. Through an exploration of the paintings’ identity, this paper aims to provide evidence elucidating the reasons behind Pastan’s choice of Rembrandt, in terms of the conflicting alignment of her rationale with Aristotelian principles. Pastan’s poetic strategy of this nature implies that a faithful appreciation of both the painting and its artist is fundamental for a nuanced reading and critique of picture-based poetry.

「눈 내리는 저녁 숲가에 멈춰 서서」에서 엿보이는 노동자 계급에 대한 로버트 프로스트의 시적 양면성

백정국 한국현대영미시학회 2015 현대영미시연구 Vol.21 No.2

Although Robert Frost has been known to sympathize with impoverished working class folks, his conservative political stance has rarely been indicated in the examination of his representative poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” As is revealed in some of his notes, he opposed the idea of collective political action on the part of the working class for fear that it might endanger American capitalism. This paper takes note of his conservative politics and argues that Frost’s political views are traced within one of his most famous poems, to specifically render the poem’s structural dichotomy unstable. Appropriating particular conceptual tools from Marx and Benjamin, this paper asserts and argues for a tension between the apparently straightforward narrative surface of the narrator’s aesthetic immersion and his possessive preoccupation with a matter of ownership. Reading this way, the narrator’s hesitancy seems inscribed with Frost’s political conservatism concerning the working-class impulse for bettering their given conditions of life.

용병 이야기로서의 『오셀로』

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2008 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.17 No.1

This study is designed to show how and to what extent the historical reality of mercenary soldiers and its related epistemological accoutrements in Renaissance countries, particularly Venice, enrich the proper understanding of the complicated dramatic and ideological texture of Shakespeare’s Othello, a tragedy often regarded in recent criticisms as a disturbing dramatization of the downfall of an alienated cultural other. The practice of employing alien mercenary soldiers in early modern Europe was a great source of social and political anxiety on the part of the host countries, despite the foreign soldiers’ tremendous contributions to their national security and aggressive foreign policies, and their military modernization project. The multi-national nature of the military troops of mercenaries was vulnerable to the inner conflicts among soldiers, which was seriously detrimental to their expected cohesive power; more importantly, the mercenary soldiers often invited backhanded suspicions about their possible betrayal as their commitment was ultimately contingent upon how much they got paid for their service. Othello reflects or refracts this contemporary anxiety surrounding the ambivalent perceptions of mercenaries. What is particularly remarkable about Othello is its use of the mercenary theme not merely as a foil for highlighting Othello’s cultural otherness but as a structural device, which helps clarify the complicated relationships between main characters in the context of Venice’s ideological concern about the possible subversive potentiality of mercenaries and their mentality. In order to drive home this aspect of the dramatic function of the mercenary theme Othello attempts to evoke the image of mercenary soldiers as wandering lots, a group of social underdogs who were frequently imagined in the contemporary European minds as residing outside the reach of state power, a dangerous threat that could challenge the established social order. For all this, however, the Venetian government in the play fails to completely erase the shadow of alien mercenaries from the surface of its territory as they are still desperately in need of the service of mercenary soldiers.

셰익스피어의 『햄릿』에 투영된 앰릿 사가의 흔적

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2015 중세르네상스 영문학 Vol.23 No.2

The long-standing glorious aura hanging around Hamlet is not necessarily an indication of its dramatic perfectness and by extension Shakespeare’s inviolable theatrical virtuosity. Hamlet has been by fits and starts a target of doubts from quite a few critical minds. Their doubts center around what they believe the unstable, if not labored, development of the events, the apparent inconsistency of the plot, along with more or less unsatisfactory representation of some of the characters. Keeping a moderate distance from a relentless vivisection of the awkward elements of the drama, this essay, while acknowledging the legitimacy of those doubts, argues that Hamlet’s indebtedness to Saxo Grammaticus’s Amleth saga is largely responsible for such doubts, in ways to suggest the challenging nature of transforming the original work and the referential importance of experiencing Hamlet. The invisible as well as visible texture of Amleth’s adventurous heroic life affects the present shape of Hamlet. The suppressed part of the saga in particular subtly left indelible marks on it. In the course of reshaping extrovert Amleth into introvert Hamlet Shakespeare might have found it hard to radically revamp the saga, as its ethos, form, narrative voice and pattern, possible audience, and the representation of characters are sharply different from those of drama. Hamlet’s controversial disguise of madness in its purpose and validity, the changing focus of his anger and his strange attitude toward Gertrude, the inevitability of (re)creating the mysterious ghost, the introduction of Horatio and his dominant role in the drama, all these will not be convincing enough if we fail to notice that the playwright resorted to some suppressed and re-envisioned parts of the saga.

“All for the Sake of the Belly”: Aggressive Images of Eating in Gargantua and Pantagruel

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2009 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.18 No.1

Mikhail Bakhtin’s groundbreaking study of François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel has opened a new critical possibility of reading the story as a mytho-socialogical text in which man’s anxiety about his existential vulnerability to external forces finds a liberating moment of self-empowerment through the metaphor of eating. However, Bakhtin’s reading largely ignores the political symbolism embedded in the apparently simple act of eating of which essence is the primal human desire for power. Eating is basically a barbarous act of violence, containment, and destruction, an emblematic manifestation of power in its purpose and consequence. In Rabelais’s mock-heroic chronicle, the recurrent images of eating, despite their benign facade of hilarity, mask contrapuntal manifestations of power politics such as incarceration, cannibalism, kingship, and even colonialism. This ideological association is made possible by the presence of those gigantic prodigies of insatiable appetite and tremendous digestive power. Political leadership, when imagined through giantism, is both disturbing and fearsome, partly because of the age-old conception of the giant as devourer and partly because of the intrinsically aggressive nature of power. To examine the diverse images of eating in Gargantua and Pantagruel is to break through the turbid textual surface and map out the subterranean terrain of the dire nature of power.

기사도의 변증: 사자와 동행하는 기사 에서 와일드 맨의 역할

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2007 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.16 No.2

Jung-kook PaikThis essay explores how the knighthood theme looming large in recent Hollywood films is related to the complex identity politics discovered in Arthurian romances, which, I hypothesize, serve as the important backdrop of the Hollywood fascination with warrior stories. Focusing on the narrative and structural correlation between the representation of Yvain and that of the "wild man" in Chr tien de Troyes's "The Knight with the Lion," I argue that epistemological osmosis of idenity is taking place between these two seemingly binary oppositional characters. In order to support this conceptual operation I politicize the traditional conception of chivalric sense of justice. I propose that in the Chr tien's Arthurian romance might defines jusice, not necessarily the other way round, and that knighthood, which Yvain supposedly embodies, is not an isolated, self-sufficient but formative, developmental concept. Yvain's self-identificaiton as a chivalric knight, and that of other Arthurian knights by extention, hinge on their conscious or unconscious affiliation with power politics and realpolitik. The blurred line of demarcation between Yvain and the wild man, and the chivalric admiration for physical power as a touchstone by which the good and the bad are defined, lead us to suspect that such popular Hollywood films as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and the like are disturbing reflections or refractions of the intense conflicts between the Western Powers and their opponents in the recent international political scenes. Just as Arthurian romances and their modern adaptations often rule out the possibility of happy coexsitence with cultural Others, so the Western Powers hardly dream a world of happy-togetherness. A serious moment of realization that one can be a stranger to oneself has not yet come to the modern "knights."

Tyranny and Counselling Politics in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2010 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.19 No.1

This study is intended to modify the traditional readings of The Winter’s Tale as a kind of domestic tragedy in which jealousy is taken as the thematic locus of the play. I argue that jealousy is used as a catalyst to highlight the play’s strong political orientation: the dynamic tension between tyranny and counselling politics. Jealousy in this drama has an enormous political dimension in its cause and effect. Leontes’ jealousy is an external mark that reveals the competitive nature of Sicilia’s relation to Bohemia, which in turn brings in the foreground the issue of misdirected leadership and possible remedial measures against it. The play seems to assert, through the apparently admirable characterization of Camillo and Paulina, that the royal abuse of power and its devastating consequences should be avoided by the counsels of enlightened advisors. However, in a subtle and subdued tone the play gives a warning that counselorship itself is also vulnerable to tyranny: the tyranny of egotism and of audacious solipsism on the part of court advisors.

학술적 셰익스피어 번역을 옹호하며: 『햄릿』 번역에 대한 소고(小考)

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2015 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.24 No.2

Appropriating the case of Hamlet, this essay attempts to defend the academic translations of Shakespeare into Korean language against some of the harsh attacks on them from such an influential theater director in Korea as Lee Youn-taek. He contends that most scholarly translators of Shakespeare are incompetent with their mother tongue and that their translations show an unnecessary dogmatic allegiance to Shakespeare’s original, rhetorical and figurative use of language without giving a due regard for the unique distinction of Korean language and Korean culture, thus failing to reflect what he calls the essence of Shakespeare. However, Lee Youn-taek ignores the fact that Shakespeare’s language is multi-faceted, multi-layered, complex, contextual, sometimes extremely hard to fathom, so much so that with Koreanized adaptations of Shakespeare the power, beauty, and rhetorical virtuosity of his language could not be fully revealed and rightly appreciated. No less important is that Shakespeare’s language is like a palimpsest on which the contemporary cultural, religious, economic, and political ideologies are subtly inscribed, a great challenge to those who translate his drama across the gulf of time and space, language and culture. Even though there is a sense in which academic translations of Shakespeare into Korean seem to be targeting the readers rather than the viewers of Shakespeare, their faithfulness to the original text is not something to be easily put aside. For Shakespeare's text is not merely for a physical stage but also for the world of the reader’s imagination.

조지 허버트의 기도 혹은 기도하는 사람

백정국 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2013 중세근세영문학 Vol.23 No.1

This essay problematizes the conventional reading of George Herbert’s “Prayer (I)” as an extraordinary poetic enterprise of demonstrating the inadequacy of metaphoric language for a clear definition of prayer. Inspired by some of the recent scholarly focuses on the experiential and performative aspect of the poem, I argue that “Prayer (I)” is not so much a premeditated failure of metaphorizing prayer for any aesthetic or religious reason as an untrammeled spiritual footprint of which contour and depth can best be traced and fathomed no other than by those who pray. For this purpose, I reexamine the linguistic and poetic structure of the poem, foregrounding “the Church’s banquet,” the unmistakable imagery of the Eucharist, as an anchoring metaphor. And I explore how closely all those apparently obscure and slippery images are stitched together in terms of thematic consistency. “Prayer (I)” is no doubt a sumptuous banquet of metaphors; yet they are not something imagined to crystalize the definitional essence of prayer. Rather they are there as spiritual hieroglyphics of diverse associations triggered by the act of praying, an implication that the understanding of “Prayer (I)” is predicated predominantly upon unique Christian experiences.

「로미오와 줄리엣」을 ‘순진하게’ 읽는 세 가지 관점

백정국 한국중세근세영문학회 2011 고전·르네상스 영문학 Vol.20 No.2

This essay responds to three hypothetically innocent questions that uninformed readers might have on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy of which persistent popularity is said to be found in its aesthetic elevation of untainted, unworldly love of two innocent hearts. Those questions are primarily concerned with (1) the authenticity of the family feud as an undoubted background on which the entire tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is supposed to stand, (2) the thematic relevance of the exceptionally frequent use of the religious word “holy” to the story proper, and (3) the problem of Romeo’s obsessive fascination with visual beauty of women. Answers to these questions, I argue, facilitate the enlightened reading of the drama. The importance the conventional criticisms attach to the “ancient grudge” between the Montagues and the Capulets is more highlighted than it deserves, for the diverse textual evidence hints at the probability that the old bloody edge of the mutual antagonism has been quite blunted by the passage of time. However, this subdued antagonism does not necessarily diminish the play’s tragic vision; in fact, it heightens the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, as it provides an ironic dimension to their untimely death. The habitual use of the word “holy” serves as a conceptual lens through which one can see the systematic evil embodied in the destructive hostility between the two powerful households and the political and religious helplessness of the dignified personages in Veronian society. This perspective enables an interpretation that the tragedy of this drama hinges not so much on individual hamartia as on collective corruption of society. Even though Romeo’s vulnerability to the visual attraction may be quite regrettable, there is a sense in which it largely partakes of the early modern preoccupation with the deceptive power of appearances. However, in Romeo and Juliet the deceptive power of appearances should be felt on the collective and communal rather than on individual level, an important dramatic aspect that makes Romeo and Juliet particularly hopeless lovers.