Kim Yangseon

This paper starts by examining the declining prestige of the humanities, including English language and literature in the present day, and delineates the contours of English language and literature studies in English related departments or divisions in Korea. Next, this study categorizes English language and literature department programs, and explains each program’s features, which are often related to outer influences such as BK21 Plus, ACE+, CK, PRIME, and CORE. It is evident that some univer

This study deals with the questions of “canon” and “canonicity” that have effected all fields of literary study, and examines canon formation in American poetry especially in the first half of the twentieth-century. Discussing the canons in modern American poetry, this paper introduces some canon debates and American poetry anthologies, explains the New Critics' implications for the modern American poetry canon, and emphasizes the fact that there is not a singular tradition of modern poetry. Rec

This study examines Asian American poets’ activities that have contributed to contemporary American poetry’s heterogeneity and pluralism, and especially focuses on the works of three women poets−Cathy Song, Myung Mi Kim, and Suji Kwock Kim. Reading closely Cathy Song’s Picture Bride (1983), Myung Mi Kim’s Under Flag (1991), and Suji Kwock Kim’s Notes from the Divided Country (2003), this paper discusses not only their shared views but also their differences, which are particularly noteworthy. Th

This study explores the characteristics of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry in comparison with the two of her closest friends and poets, Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. Bishop’s reputation has dramatically changed since her death. In the 1970s she was “a writer’s writer’s writer,” and admired by a small group of poets or critics. Since 1990s, however, there has been a great shift in the evaluation of her poetry, which is so called “The Elizabeth Bishop Phenomenon.” It does not seem to be an easy task

This study examines the difficulties of (modern) English poetry, and makes a polemical assertion of the difficulty’s necessity and its value. There has been a general sense that difficulty is one of modern poetry’s central characteristics, and have been arguments about the decline of poetry’s academic and cultural importance. First, this paper classifies the types of difficulty following George Steiner’s argument, and explains each type of difficulty―“contingent,” “modal,” “tactical,” “ontologic

This study examines multiple symbols and repeated motifs in Louis Sachar’s fifth novel, Holes, which has been highly acclaimed as a children’s and young adults’ story. On the surface of this novel, it appears to be simply an enjoyable story with suspense and adventures for teenagers, including the protagonist, Stanley Yelnats, and his friend Zero at Camp Green Lake. The victory of good over evil, friendship, and building up character tend to be considered the distinctive themes of this novel. In

본고는 현대 문단과 학계의 주목을 받아온 T. S. 엘리엇에 관한 지난 80년간의 국내 연구 동향을 살펴보고, 또한 연구의 현황을 점검한다. 2006년에 출판된 글, 영시 연구 50년사에서 필자는 1950년대와 1960년대는 영시를 도입하고 소개한 시기로, 70년대는 연구 영역을 확장한 시기로, 80년대는 영시 연구를 심화한 시기로, 90년대는 다양한 시 분석 방법과 이론이 융성한 시기로 분류하였다. 그리고 2000년대 이후는 1990년대의 연구의 방향을 유지하면서, 더욱 쟁점 중심으로 연구가 이루어진 시기로 보인다. 더구나 학회, 학술대회, 학술지들은 국내에서의 영문학 연구의 흐름에 지대한 변화를 가지고 왔다. 본고는 학술지 영어영문학이 1955년 창간되기 이전, 엘리엇의 작품 번역, 그에 관한 신문기사, 잡지의 글 등의 조사에서 출발하여, 1950년 중반 이후 현재에 이르기까지 번역, 회고록, 에세이, 논문, 단행본, 학위논문들을 중심으로 엘리엇에 관한 연구의 궤적을 살펴본다.

Lois Lowry’s The Giver has been acclaimed as “one of the greatest novels in 1990s for children” and a rich source of timely and heated themes such as utopia/dystopia, sameness/diversity, control/freedom, society/individual, and rules/choices. At first glance, however, the plot and language of this novel seem flat and simple. Although Lowry intended to write “a good story,” oddly enough, due to the mostly simple language and flat structure, one may question whether The Giver is actually a good st

The purpose of this study is to link Eliot’s exploration of “silence” and “negation” in Four Quartets with Derridean deconstruction, especially his essay, “How to Avoid Speaking.” The Eliot/Derrida parallel of this paper deals with a real question that one work can illuminate the other, rather than pursuing the similarities of their thoughts and revealing the interactions or influences.Eliot and Derrida share a common distrust of language. Eliot’s exploration of the void seems to be close to Der

This paper starts with questions concerning the paucity of Canadian children’s poetry even after the British North American Act went into effect in 1867. Against the weak background of Canadian poetry for children up to the 1960s, this study discusses the significance of Dennis Lee’s theory and poetry, which had an impact on fostering Canadian national identity and the freedom of imagination. Criticizing Canada’s colonial position and its inward colonization, Lee explores the authenticity of Can

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, has become “a literary and cultural phenomenon” since it was published in 2008; it was not only a commercial success but also a serious subject of academic discussion even before 2012, the release year of the adapted film, The Hunger Games. This study demonstrates that a major reason for the acclaim derives from the narrator and protagonist of this novel, Katniss Everdeen as a non-stereotypical female character. Unfolding through diverse narrative threads an

This study examines how W. S. Merwin responds to the ecologically bleak realities of our time with his aesthetically constructed poetry. Focusing on Merwin’s interviews and The Lice, his sixth and most critically acclaimed book of poems, this paper explores his acute political and ecological consciousness, and interprets Merwin’s ecopoetry as an effective example of how to capture the apocalyptic despair and move beyond it. Furthermore, Merwin assumes the poet’s responsibility not to avoid treme

This study explores Raymond Williams’s idea of language and literary criticism, focusing on the difference of his approach that epitomizes his role as “the marginal man of Cambridge English,” “alien mind,” and “oppositional” force. His life long-concern for culture and language can be considered as a genuine opposition to the dominant discourse about culture and language in the post-war years. First, reading Culture and Society (1958) and Keywords (1976), this paper discusses Williams’s “histori

Based on a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s love poems, which have been relatively neglected in the Bishop research, this paper examines how she reveals her private feelings for her lover(s), and at the same time how she conceals her desire. Bishop has often been recognized as a poet with a restrained tone, a keen eye, and modest attitudes toward the objects of her observation. Moreover, her shyness and reticence seem to keep her privacy and sexuality in the closet. This study, however, attem

Emily Dickinson is one of the most mystified women poets, and her image and poetry haunt readers’ imagination, which leads to varying and even contradictory interpretations. These critical responses, however, have mainly concentrated on the poet and the text as the objects of analysis. This study aims to read through two women writers’ works on Dickinson, and shifting the critical focus toward characters’ diverse responses to Dickinson. This paper examines their reception of Dickinson through Su