• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1193-1213
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• 2012

This essay "Twain's Contestation of Emersonian Transcendental Manhood in Huckleberry Finn" explores how Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) manifests his postwar contestation of Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendental manhood that endorses the dogmatic, egocentric, and decorporealized position of the Cartesian subject, who believes his being's unity, elevation, and centrality through his fantasy of possessing direct access to divine truth. The connection between Emerson and Twain is based not on Emerson's influence on Twain but on their common interest in American landscape as a site for the redefinition of manhood and masculinity. I examine different types of manhood in their association with nature in Huckleberry Finn by comparing them with the two fundamental concepts of Emerson's philosophy: "a true man" in "Self-Reliance" (1841) and transparent eyeball vision in Nature (1836). Twain's use of Huck's ambivalent position-his centrality as a protagonist in the novel in spite of his marginality in society-renegotiates Emerson's valorization of nonconformity, wholeness, and nonchalance as the characteristics of both boyhood and "a true man," Emerson's term for the ideal individual in "Self-Reliance." I also read Twain's satire of two different types of masculine characters-Bob and the Child of Calamity, boatmen of the Southern frontier, and Colonel Grangerford, patriarch of a Southern aristocratic family-as Twain's denouncement of the antebellum desire for transcendental vision, which Emerson crystalizes into his notion of transparent eyeball in Nature.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.159-176
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• 2004

Mark Twain's works are very good texts for students' understanding of American literature and culture deeply and comprehensively, However, professors teaching Mark Twain could be confronted with several problems: how to teach vernacular language in his works; how to deal with the massive volume; how to teach various issues systematically. This article aims to present a way to solve these problems, based on my experiences of teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in novel classes. One of good methods of discussing the various issues systematically in his works is focusing on his contemporary dominant discourses and his critiques on them. In teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the black discourse is the comtemporary dominant dicourse to concentrate on. I tried to discuss various issues in my classes, mainly relating them to exploring how Twain was contained in his contemporary black discourse and how he resisted it at the same time. The representation of the blacks in the work is a good example to show this. To what extent Huck can have human relationship with Jim is an important question to contest his interaction with his contemporary discourse. In my paper I examine various issues and problems I was faced with in the classes. In teaching A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the crucial discourses are industrialism and modernity. Here, what must be paid attention to is that although industrialism is a part of modernity, it is convenient to deal it separately from the issue of modernity. Twain was dominated by those discourses, but he criticized them on the other hand. Various issues can be discussed, related with the question how much he was contained in the discourse of modernity and how much he criticized it. Students' understanding of this work and his contemporary dominant discourses can be enhanced by discussing his ambivalence toward modernization, democracy. and the Medieval feudalism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.679-700
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• 2012

This study aims to examine Mark Twain's criticism of American capitalistic ideals in the late nineteenth century. During this second industrial revolution, industry showed rapid growth and capitalism established an order, while America suffered under the monopolization of capitalistic conglomerates. This resulted in the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the dehumanization caused by rapid industrialization. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Hank Morgan, the protagonist--who represents nineteenth-century America's industrialism, individualism, and capitalism--is sent back in time to the sixth century of Arthurian England. Hank attempts to introduce nineteenth-century technologies and machines to build a capitalistic system in the middle ages. However, Hank's efforts lead to disaster in which the country and civilization he worked to build is completely destroyed. Although Twain does not deny capitalistic ideals, he criticizes the "governmentality" that operates Hank's reform system to the extreme. Hank values efficiency and utilizes human beings as capital. Hank's economic reason not only transforms the Round-Table knights into speculators but also transforms their religious acts and abstract ideals into moneymaking businesses. The destructive ending anticipates the World Wars and the Great Depression in the first half of twentieth century and even serves to predict the dangers that follow.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.157-174
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• 2012

This study tries to describe personal name access point control ontology for the American novelist Mark Twain using RDF/OWL axiom to control access point based on the ontology. The Axiom used in this study are disjoint with class, domain and range, property cardinality, inverse functional property, individual and literal data property. As a result, in the ontology environment we can accept various access points as equal access points exclusive of authority heading and heading concept. It can successfully describe Mark Twain's personal name access point control ontology and display using the OntoGraf.