• Iberoamérica
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2020

Jose Donoso's Casa de campo is an uncertain and ambiguous novel because it has a political allegory on one hand and metafiction on the other. The novel may well be considered a political allegory about the 1973 military coup in Chile. This understanding, however, oversimplifies the fictional world of Casa de campo. In the deep level of the narrative, the novel is a literary portrait of challenges and failures that occurred in Latin American history. As metafiction, Casa de campo features discourses on the literary portrait and calls attention to reality outside the novel. Therefore, Donoso seeks to reveal the unusual, temporary and fictional character of the grim reality.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.301-328
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• 2010

Many recent British novels engage with the construction and deconstruction of history and identity; and in dealing with these historical, or historicised novels it seems to be an untouchable ground that truth is beyond grasp. Even when approached, its authenticity should be examined under the post-modern "incredulity toward metanarrative" discourses. Julian Barnes's 1998 novel England, England may be one of these. Yet, unlike others it achieves a complicated and controversial status as a new kind of historiographic metafiction by providing selfconscious reflections on the invention of innocence and the questionable notion of historical authenticity against the background of current postmodern historical, cultural, and literary explorations. The book, set in a near-future, namely post-post-modern England, starts with a story of a young girl, Martha Cochrane, whose first memory goes back to her early infantile years. Yet, the narrator comments that it is a lie, "her first artfully, innocently arranged lie," since memory, or history, is a product of identity, and vice versa. Her memory of the jigsaw puzzle is both a reminiscent and a significant component of who she is now, both a simulacrum and the original of herself. The correlation between her individual memory and identity parallels that of a region, England, in formation of its history and nationality. "England, England" is the replicated miniature of the former glorious Kingdom as well as a becoming der Ding an sich (the thing itself). In search of the English history and identity, the author satirizes the modern mind's perception of the unreliability and arbitrariness of memory and history, and further explores the alternative to the postmodern discourses by suggesting the probability of inventing innocence glimpsed in children's face "believing while disbelieving." In doing so, the author reconstructs not only the history of Englishness on the ground where nothing seems to be solid, but more importantly also the postmodern theme of relativity in relation to memory, history and identity.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.87-120
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• 2020

The study noted the characteristics of the web novel's 'Book Travel' motif, which reflects the characteristics of popular culture content, which is free to use familiar genre grammar or code. The imagination of the main character entering the work he read in the real world is a reinterpretation of the existing genre grammar of the web novel, and studying the motif is meaningful in reviewing the intertext of the genre. This motif, summarized as 'Book Travel' differs from other genres in the romance fantasy genre, which can also be used to reveal the gender characteristics of the genre. The study noted that the 'Book Travel' motif was born from an interactive interpretation of existing narratives, thus having a affinity with dimensional shift, regression, and alternative historical objects, and referring to the writing norms of Fanfiction. Through this, it was predicted that the re-combination of existing narratives and interference between genres would continue in the future. Next, the original move in the romance fantasy genre was seen as quite conservative and revealing the logic of self-improvement even though people around him became the main characters and overthrew the narrative. The characters should use their knowledge of the future of the real world to fight in a world of survival where destruction has been predicted. The appearance of an ethical and self-help subject is interesting, but on the other hand, I could look at conservatism in that romance is a way of survival and achievement of characters. The research is meaningful in that it reviewed the characteristics of the original transfer motif, which started fairly quickly in the romance fantasy genre, and reviewed its appearance background and characteristics. There was a limit to the collection of physical works and limited platform. The above limits are intended to be supplemented by further reviewing and supplementing later works.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.809-837
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• 2012

Philip Roth rejects the narrative unity and singularity of the traditional novel and creates instead a multi-levelled, fragmentary, and repetitive narrative. It is not easy to distinguish fact from fiction in The Plot Against America. As an entertaining and creative work of the postmodern historiographic metafiction, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America interrogates the existence of historically verifiable facts, the validity of authentic and official version of history, and reexamines the narrative conventions of history writing. The aim of this paper is to examine Roth's narrative experiment or 'thought experiment' and to explore the intention of creating alternative history in The Plot Against America. Roth does a 'thought experiment' in The Plot Against America. In this cautionary "what if" political fable, Roth hypothesizes that in 1940 aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, an ardent isolationist who was sympathetic to Hiltler, won the presidency. Jewish communities are stunned and terrified as America flirts with fascism and anti-semitism. Reimagining his children-with considerable fact mixed in with the fiction-Roth narrates an alternative history that has an unsettling plausibility. Roth has constructed a brilliantly telling and disturbing historical prism by which to refract the American psyche as it pertain to the discord of individual, race, history in The Plot Against America. Roth analyzes the life of individual in a historic space, the situation of anti-semitism in world of invisible order, racial conflict between black and white in world of visible order, and the darkest side of national power in this work. Roth's stories argue for the equality of various cultures grounded on the common notion of humanity, for an ethic of mutual respect, and for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.191-221
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• 2019

This study aims to analyze the post-humanistic imagination that has emerged as a major academic thesis in Korean literature, especially novels. In particular, this paper focuses on Cho Ha-hyung's two novels Chimera's Morning(2004) and A Prefabricated Bodhi Tree(2008), published in the early 2000s, for intensive analysis. Post-humanism can be seen as an extension of post-modernism that tried to overcome the limitations of modernity and seek to establish a new world view. In particular, this thought pays attention to the comprehensive understanding of how the rapid development of science and technology, which has developed since the 20th century, has changed the view of humanity and human-centered civilization itself. At the concrete level, it is developing in the direction of constructing a new subject idea by reflecting and dismantling Western-, reason-, and male-centered power mechanisms that are the core of modern civilization. Cho attempts to discover and re-illuminate the surrounding figures, non-humans, and objects that were not noticed in the classic works written in the past. This ideological flow reflects the fact that the concept of human beings, which had been dominated by the humanities in recent years, has been completely changed, and the natural science and technology perspective is applied to the discourse field in various ways. From the point of view of post-humanism, objects that have not been classified as humans and objects that were considered inferior to humans should be included in human or comparable levels. These questions generate interdisciplinary research tasks by involving the large categories of philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology and empirical fields, as well as calling for the participation of the entire literature, science and social sciences. Against the backdrop of a disaster-hit world, Chimera's Morning and A Prefabricated Bodhi Tree depict human beings as variants transformed by bio-technology, and creatures made out of the artificial intelligence built by computer simulations. Post-humanistic ideas in Cho's novels provide a reflective opportunity to comprehensively reconsider the world's shape and human identity reproduced in the text, and to re-explore boundary lines and hierarchy order that distinguish between human and non-human.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.39
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• pp.59-83
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• 2015

Magical realism, blooming and improving in Latin America, opened the new vision about reality and rationalism, coming out from the out-styled frame of past. While having common points with unrealistic literature, which uses fantastical components, magical realism is different from Surrealism and fantasy literature that is focusing on reality and realizing reality intensely. In the early stage of this research, magical realism was restricted by the characteristics of literature of Latin America, but the research of magical realism is expanding in planning Post-Modernism nowadays. Lately, the influence of magical realism is identified in literatures, arts, films, and animations over the world; according to the research, however, research about magical realism in animations was not done in Korea before. A Korean independent animation "A coffee vending machine and its sword" was evaluated positively in many international film festivals is valuable as the research of magical realism. Throughout this study, this animation "A coffee vending machine and its sword" was analyzed by its narrative and images. The analysis of narrative consists two parts. One is about the form of narrative and the other is about contents through the story. Analysis of Image is also divided into two parts: background image and character image. In this animation, the protagonist is narrating about the fantastic accidents in his life and his own feelings towards it. The narration leads audience to understand his situation and feelings in meta-fiction. On the surface, audience watches the love story of a normal girl and coffee vending machine in this artwork, but deep inside the animation, it is visible that the directors tried to make audiences think about the life of 880,000-won Generation in Korea. The background image was represented as real places in Seoul including the landmark of Seoul, making mimesis of reality in Korea. The character image has two conflicting aspects with reincarnated warrior, Jinyoungyoung and a coffee vending machine. It is a hybrid-character transmogrifying between two characters. Likewise, "A coffee vending machine and its sword" has the characteristics of Korean magical realism through form, content and image. Through analyzing the Korean independent animation "A coffee vending machine and its sword", this research tried to find a way of using factors of fantasy, of representing reality as a dramatic device and of using magical realism of Korean animation for bond of sympathy with audience.

• 기호학연구
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• no.57
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• pp.211-255
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• 2018

This paper attempts to "re-read" the webtoon Misaeng, which was once an important issue in the field of public discourse on "labor". Our hypothesis was that the dual actactial structure of Misaeng's hero Jang Geurae gave a dual structure to the entire text, which leads to the discovery of text meaning that was not mentioned in the existing discourse. This is based on the concept of 'meta-story character', which Hiroki Azuma talked in his postmodern literary theory. To verify this hypothesis we analyzed the text by applying the Parisian semiotics, more specifically J. Fontanille's theory. Jang Geurae is observed to be a actant of dual structure divided into 'character' of the enunciated level and 'player' of the enunciation level. Considering this characteristic of the hero, Misaeng can be interpreted as a metafiction that shows the 'shifting' between the subject of the enunciated level and the subject of the enunciation level. On the level of 'character' Jang's existence mode turns out to be "Deficiency (actualized)", but on the level of 'player' Jang 's existence mode turns out to be "Inanity(potentiallized)." His somatic responses also show a duality, which is represented by Fontanille's corps-actant model, where on the level of 'character' the somatic actant of Jang consists of 'Moi-chair(ego-flesh)' and 'Soi-idem(self-idem)', and on the level of 'player' it consists of 'Moi-chair(ego-flesh)' and 'Soi-ipse(self-ipse)'. The former mainly acts as a 'role' and takes charge of exteroceptive perception, while the latter mainly acts as 'attitude' and takes charge of interoceptive perception. Because of this dissociative nature of actant, Jang's two 'self' draw the re-adjustment of values without serious conflict between the collective norms and the individual identity. This is in sharp contrast with other characters who struggle with the conflict between the environment and "self". It becomes customary to adopt norms that are suspected to ineffective, but if you raise questions, the normative system can be updated. On one axis of Misaeng there are characters who have lost themselves in customs. On the other axis, there is Jang who can not help dismantling the existing ineffective norms and updating the normative system. Jang's existence mode seems to be one of many possible modes generated by this era where people share no longer solid community values, His actantial structure also communicates with readers of these days who put themselves more in subject of enunciation level than of enunciated level.