• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.155-184
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• 2014

The present study aims at exploring in detail the Buddhist worldview and aesthetics of humor in Jo O-hyeon's literary works. This includes the same context as an elucidation of the ways in which his poems closely correspond in expressive forms and thematic contents. It is because, in Jo's literary world, where short poems and prose poems form a contrast, the expressive forms and thematic contents sharply differ depending on the ways in which prajnapti (provisional designation) is either foregrounded or backgrounded. In his literary world, when such a view of language and a worldview based on prajnapti are foregrounded, works that either inherit or play a variation on the fixed structure of the sijo emerge; and when they recede to the rear and are backgrounded, verses in the form of the prose poem are formulated. In addition, in Jo's literary works, where such a worldview of prajnapti and an aesthetics of secular humor intersect together, the thoughts on bheda-abheda(difference-non-difference) and the madhyama-pratipad (middle way) are formed. Such thoughts have considerable significance because they not only harbor a possibility of deconstructing and overcoming the opposition of the sacred/profane but also present a vision of a new unity.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.567-574
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• 2018

This paper investigates how Korean newly-composed pieces (Changjak Gukak) can be used as good cultural contents to publicize a characteristic and nowness of Korean culture in the era of globalization, focusing on the works of composer Seong-Cheon Lee. LEE Seong-Cheon is a typical Changjak Gukak composer who academically and creatively speculated Korean tradition and identity. In his works, traditional ones, natural-thematic ones, nationalistic ones, and Korean literary-thematic ones are the works which have a possibility to use cultural contents with respect to the Korean traditional culture and identity. This study dealt with the fact that newly-composed pieces based on traditional music can play a significant role in expanding Korean cultural contents between tradition and modern.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.567-596
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• 2009

A staple of feminist literary anthologies which was instrumental in reevaluating the writer Susan Glaspell, Trifles(1916) has received numerous comments from feminist scholars so far. Most of them tend to concentrate on the themes of female solidarity and justice challenging the androcentric system of law and order. Lacking in the plethora of thematic approaches to the play's feminist subject, however, are formal analyses considering the way in which the play's generic form assists in communicating such thematic concerns of feminism. An alternative to the typical scenario at the courtroom whose mistreatment of women must have loomed large to the young Glaspell as she revisited the old trial of a midwestern murderess which she had covered as a journalist for a local newspaper in Iowa, Trifles serves as a corrective to the courtroom dynamics offering a 'dramatic justice' as opposed to a strictly legal procedure. What this article discovers at the heart of this dramatic justice is the celebration of the unsayable, or what Wolfgang Iser termed negativity, of women's experience which has no room for reflection in the legal discourse at the courtroom tyrannized by the sayable and the evident. Examining how the dramatic form of Trifles gives a voice to the unsayable of woman's experience, which can not be properly represented at the courtroom governed by the straightforward and definitive male rhetoric, the article argues that the play is a better form than its fictional adaptation "A Jury of Her Peers"(1917) in that it syntactically suppresses the monopolizing operation of the verbal by giving precedence to the scenic and non-verbal which is constituted of setting, props, gesture and eye contacts. As a theoretical frame of reference with which to examine the modes of the unsayable in the play the article brings the concept of 'negativity,' defined by Iser as textual effects or modes of the unspeakable and unsaid, into the discussion of the taciturnity of the absent heroine and the non-verbal representation of drama.

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.71
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• pp.205-229
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• 2018

This article proceeds to scrutinizing a oral tradition called the story of ruining one's family by daughter-in-law's cutting-condemnation conducive to any estimation of Koreans' religious mentality. This oral tradition begins with mischievous behaviors of daughter-in-law. She cut away any materials, which a vagabond monk of Buddhism identified as a source of solacing numberless visitors to her house. Tired of serving all the visitors, she cut away the material. It caused her parents-in-law's house to be collapsed. At a first glance, the daughter-in-law appears to be blamed for the collapse. Interestingly, no one cannot be blamed for the misfortune. A face value of the text does not show that the fate of misfortune comes from any ethical misconduct and its posterior mishandling. Behind this oral tradition, by the way, lies the consciousness that relates misfortune with a ceremony of cutting away any unique material; cutting away any material, cutting away the trend of coming visitors, and cutting away the mood of prosperity becomes identical. The thematic mentality of the text reveals a religious consciousness of seeing human beings' life to be identical with nature. This oral tradition must have focused on the importance of a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.9-32
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• 2019

This paper tried to analyze the post-human phenomenon of our age with a focus on the 'emotional machine' motif. The post-humans of our time are closely linked to the creatures in very old storie. The post-human concept is based on the universal and intellectual imagination of humanity that is shared beyond humanities and technical civilizations, cultural and historical boundaries between East and West. This paper is about the creatures from mythical stories that have fascinated human beings, the mechanical humans who brought fear through the sophisticated mechanism of technology civilization era, the post humans. Through my process of looking at the post humans, I sought to clarify the conditions of the sensitivity and humanity of the age. In the process, we come to understand the vagueness of the boundaries between human beings, nature, and machines, and study the coexistence of humans, nature, and machines in the post-human era of the 21^st century, beyond the limitations of human-centered humanity.