• 영어영문학
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• 제58권1호
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• pp.69-91
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• 2012

Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats.... (1998) is the last play of the trilogy of "the midlands plays" which can be regarded as her re-writing of both Euripides' Medea and J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World by resetting the two plays in the midlands of contemporary Ireland. Carr intends to courageously explore into the dangerous liminal space, i.e., the middle between the past and the present, the high Greek and the Irish folk culture, dealing with the ghosts of the dead writers for her own Irish feminist theatre. Thus, in the middle Carr can build a new Irish theatre by minorating and abjecting the Greek tragedy and subverting and expanding Synge's theatre of grotesque realism. This paper attempts to read By the Bog of Cats... as Carr's final project of exploration into the midland of Ireland to establish a new Irish feminist theatre and at the same time a new Irish folk theatre. By focusing on her strategies of minoration and subversion through grotesque imagery and carnival rituals it argues that Carr put Hester's becoming-ghost in the middle, the bog of the cats as both grave and womb, waiting for the birth of a new Irish people. And it emphasizes that the ghost of Hester, merging with the ghosts of her mother and daughter by the bog of cats will haunt the official society as a threatening abjection, challenging the restoration of the social order.

• 영어영문학
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• 제57권5호
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• pp.889-910
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• 2011

Heracles has been adored as one of the bravest mythical heroes all times and all places because it was thought that he protected his people and lands from invasion, plunder, or enslavement. However, I argue Heracles should be criticized as a war machine of violence and murder. War is homicide itself, which means humans kill humans, unlike other violent and sensual animals such as dogs, apes or pigs. It is ironically ambivalent to celebrate an excellent hero in homicide in this age of nuclear weapons. This irony leads to S. Freud's 'Death instinct' or Malcolm Potts's 'war genes'. Unlike Freud, Malcolm Potts insists that humans' war genes can be changed into peace genes because they were just remains of Stone Age. According to Apollodoros' myth or Euripides' tragedies, he was mad enough to kill his own sons and wife after he had murdered the king Lycos in Thebes. Though Rene Girard says that his madness was derived from contagion of violence and blood, I think that his madness came from horrible experiences of cruel wars as well as Hera's maltreatment in his childhood. It will be demonstrated to be war neurosis, that is, PTSD(Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). In a different way from the modern media in which Heracles is being glorified as a purest macho and war machine, his old myths show the ambivalence of his violence and murder, and his daily misfortunes owing to his madness. In this sense, his myth is a kind of warning to the humans not to kill each other, or to stop wars.

• 문화기술의 융합
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.393-398
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• 2022

요르고스 란티모스의 <킬링 디어>는 그리스 3대 비극작가 중 한명인 에우리피데스의 『아울리스의 이피게네이아』를 원형서사로 삼고 있다. 그리하여 란티모스는 현대 미국 대도시의 영화적 디제시스 내에 '신적 존재에 의한 피의 폭력'으로 물든 신화적 세계를 도입하면서 저주와 희생양이라는 신화적 모티브를 변주한다. 본 논문은 <킬링 디어>의 현대의 시공간에 구축된 신화적 세계를 통하여 인류의 가장 오래된 집단적 희생위기 탈출 기제인 희생양 메커니즘과 욕망과 폭력의 모방적이고 상호적인 특성을 르네 지라르를 경유하여 읽어보고자 했다. 영화 속에서 마틴은 스티븐을 아버지의 자리에 놓으려고 한 자신의 욕망이 좌절되자, 스티븐에게 저주의 신탁을 내린다. 그 순간 두 사람의 '좋은' 상호성은 급격하게 '나쁜' 상호성으로 변환된다. 영화는 스티븐의 가족을 통하여 희생양 메커니즘이 작동하는 방식을 탁월하게 묘사한다. 제비뽑기에 의한 희생양 선택은 그 신명심판적 (神命審判的) 성격에 힘입어 희생양에게 성스러운 특성을 부여하고, 희생양은 성스러운 존재가 되며 가족의 질서는 재구축 된다. <킬링 디어>는 오래된 신화적 소재를 통해 관객들에게 존재의 근원을 경험하고 그것을 성찰하게 함으로써 고뇌와 고통이 존재의 근원임을 깨닫게 한다.