• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.45
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• pp.33-54
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• 2016

This study presents a comparative analysis of the calligrammic poetic dictions shown in the poems of the French poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Eluard and in those of the Korean poet Lee Sang. They were adventurers in the avant-garde movement who used experimental techniques that led to futurism, expressionism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism. They applied a typographic technique that combined pictorial arrangements of fonts, shapes of compositions and between lines, letters of the alphabet, mathematical symbols, and graphical elements, such as circles or lines, to make up a poem that also looked like a painting. Their works, valued as visual lyric poems, break up language and combine anti-poems. They rejected traditional poetic dictions or grammar, but developed a paratactic poem that freely uses letters and symbols. Their calligrammic poetic dictions arouse dynamic images like space extension. Lee Sang's calligrams seem like abstract paintings that apply geometric symbols like those used in technical drawings. As a result, crossing the boundaries between language and pictorial art by using experimental materials and techniques, their poems deconstruct the creative standards of rational and traditional poetic dictions, creating an adventurous, expressive technique. Their calligrammic, avant-garde poems introduced a new spirit of art into both French and Korean modern poetic literature.