Tae-kyung Kang

Who's Afraid of M. Butterfly?: The Broadway Reception of M. Butterfly

The 1985 film of Death of a Salesman is a radical reinterpretation of Arthur Miller's original play. It structures the play as the protagonist's last-moment retrospection of his entire life, a panoramic view that runs through the mind at the moment of his suicidal death. As such, the film recuperates the play's original title—“Inside His Head." The unusual interpretation of the film develops along with a deployment of mirrors and doors in its shooting sets, which invokes Jacques Lacan's theories

This paper investigates the popular and the critical responses to the London premiere of Peter Shaffer's Equus (1973). The notion, established by Shaffer scholars, that the theatre production of Equus received unanimous acclaim both from the public and the critics is put into question. An extensive reading of London theatre reviews of the play reveals a much more complicated situation, in which positive reponses to its theatrical achievement are intermingled with negative ones regarding its them

One of the many definitions attributed to the original Broadway production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus(1974～77) is “Nude Theatre.” In the wake of 1960s’ vogue in the exposure of flesh on the avant-garde stage and amidst the so-called “Porno Plague” of the 70s’ sexual revolution, the nude scenes in the play promoted both a huge box office income and a hot debate over its sensationalism. The popular and the critical responses to the sexual overtones of the play as a whole and the exploitative-ness of

This paper explores in the transformation of The Crucible (Arthur Miller’s 1953 play) into a film. At first glance, the film version is basically a faithful retelling of the original story, with its heroes and villains largely intact. Such structural elements of the play had drawn fervent criticism from critics of Miller’s “innocent liberalism,” who had found in it a simplistic moral view of good and evil. However, the 1996 film marked a significant departure from the original play as evidenced

Casting a Marriage Out of the ‘Crucible’: The Crucible (1996)This paper explores in the transformation of The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, into a film. At first glance, the 1996 film version is basically a faithful retelling of the original story, especially with a persistent focus on its male protagonist’s “conscience,” along with its depiction of the conventional triangular relationship among adulterous husband, suffering wife, and young temptress. Such structural elements of the play

Traversing some representative works of New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and Feminism in the field of the English Renaissance studies, this paper investigates the methodological problematic of the historial criticism of 1980s. Apart from their varying ideological penchants and political orientations that have invited a sizable amount of scrutiny for the last two decades, the "new" historical critics of diverse trends and competing quarters turn out to be of a kind within the purview of the

Critical formulations of Helena, the main protagonist of All’s Well That Ends Well, has been radically diverged into either negative or positive portrayal of the character. Even among feminist scholars Helena’s problematic character has been seen either to downrightly subvert the patriarchal values of the Elizabethan-Jacobean society or to adroitly serve to reaffirm them. The critical debates are premised on the interpretation of the character’s blurred motivations and the play’s structural ambi

While a considerable amount of commentaries on the similarities and differences of new historicism and cultural materialism has been enunciated in their aftermath, most of them remain focused on their political orientations and critical agendas. What is left largely unexplored is the methodological assumptions of the allegedly ‘historical’ scholarship, which, this paper argues, reveals an insufficient if not inappropriate conception of history and historical writing. As an investigation of some

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disease which produces repeated seizures. Over 30% of epileptic patients cannot be treated with anti-epileptic drugs, and surgical resection may cause loss of brain functions. Seizure suppression by electrical stimulation is currently being investigated as a new treatment method as clinical evidence has shown that electrical stimulation to brain could suppress seizure activity. In this paper, design of a real-time closed-loop neurostimulation system for epilept