• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.129-147
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• 2008

Since the beginning of her dramatic career, Suzan-Lori Parks has considered digging up and restoring African-American history buried under the dominant white Anglo-Saxon history as her mission as a playwright. In Red Letter Plays, she attempts what Deborah Geis called "canon-critique" by taking canonical work by Nathaniel Hawthorne and casting an African-American character as the main character and describing her oppression as an African-American female. This paper argues that Suzan-Lori Parks accuses the oppressive social system by restoring and representing the history of sexual, economic, and racial exploitation that African-American females had to suffer through the dominant image of body and blood. Parks had to rewrite the history of black female characters on their bodies and in the blood because their bodies have been the ultimate object of revulsion and attraction in the perspective of white male. While abhorring and despising Hester La Negrita's abject body, male characters in In the Blood nonetheless not only exploit her sexually and economically but also impregnate her. Hester resorts to her only means of revolting against this oppressive system; she kills her most beloved son and writes "A" on the floor with his blood. Likewise, Hester Smith in Fucking A, who wears "A" on her bosom like Hester Prynne, which in this case means "abortionist," "saves" her son from the hunters by slitting his throat. Abundant graphic and sensational images written on black female body and in the blood are Parks's dramatic strategy to rewrite the forgotten and hidden history of black women's history.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.37
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• pp.157-183
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• 2014

Although Marguerite Yourcenar, a representative French woman writer, lived 47 years in the United States from 1939 to 1987, the American influence on her life has not been studied either at home or abroad. The purpose of this study is to examine chronologically the American influence on the following three literary works of Yourcenar: The Little Mermaid (1942), River Deep, Dark River (1966) and Recluse (1982). The Little Mermaid is a drama, presented in musical format, about the identity crisis and inner conflict of Yourcenar. Unlike the little mermaid who burst like a bubble in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, Yourcenar associates her death with the image of ascension. River Deep, dark river is a translation of the Negro spiritual expressing the suffering of African Americans. Recluse, her last novel, deals with the life story of a simple man living in nature on a small island. This novel shows Yourcenar's desire for a pure world that is not defiled by human greed. Yourcenar sponsored major human rights organizations and environmental groups in her life, and donated her entire fortune for human rights and the protection of Wild Fauna and Flora. The American influence on the literary works of Yourcenar can be summarized as a "great turning point", because she was transformed from a humanistic writer into an intellectual actor.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1211-1234
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• 2010

Mule Bone (1931), Zora Neale Hurston's collaboration with Langston Hughes, has been credited as the 'first' attempted by African Americans to create black folk comedy. The proposed research is driven from a question to the recent scholarship's tacit consent on such historic importance imposed on the play. This paper suggests a possibility that De Turkey and De Law (1930), Hurston's edition of the collaboration work, could be the truly first attempt in the tradition of American black folk comedy. By illuminating a series of historical moments in which Hurston first expressed her dream for writing a real black folk comedy that would be a really new departure in the African American drama, then collaborated with Hughes on the dream play project, and eventually quit the collaborationship due to artistic dispute with Hughes, this paper explains why Hughes edition Mule Bone came to remain 'unfinished' and, more importantly, fall short of Hurston's original goal and expectation from the collaboration. On the other hand, this paper sheds light on the significance of often-ignored Hurston's edition De Turkey and De Law by demonstrating how this play, compared to Mule Bone, fulfills her original idea of black folk comedy in terms of contents and themes compared with Mule Bone. Adding to the knowledge about little known behind story related to the Mule Bone controversy and the subsequent birth of the two different editions of the Hurston-Hushes collaboration project, supplementing the dearth of the related research with a critical comparison of the two editions, and discussing the validity of Hurston's edition as the real sense of black folk comedy, this paper argues for the necessity of reconsidering the origin of the mentioned genre. This paper finally concludes that De Turkey and De Law, replacing Mule Bone, deserves a right to be truly the first American black folk comedy genre in the sense that it was completed and copyrighted three months earlier than Mule Bone and that, more importantly, it cherished the original aim and artistic vision of black folk comedy Hurston first planned and expected through the collaboration with Hughes.