• Title/Summary/Keyword: Protagonist

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Melodrama as a Form of the Moral (멜로드라마, 그 근대적인 모럴의 형식)

  • Woo, Sujin
    • Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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    • no.49
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    • pp.49-71
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    • 2013
  • Melodrama emerged as a form of the moral in the early modern age. As an approach 'the moral' not only means that rewarding virtue and punishing vice, but also refer to a principle of spiritual life and a way of life. -Melodrama theatricalizes a new vision of human life and society through a new type of the virtuous protagonist and sentiment/-ality. -This allows melodrama to be a dominant cultural form in this modern age, beyond the borders of the theater, mass-media, and literature. Virtue and sentiment/-ality are the core elements of melodrama, which differentiate it from tragedy and comedy especially in the structure and effect of the drama. Actually virtue and sentiment/-ality have been a main target of criticism. Virtue has been regarded as a trite quality of the stereotypical protagonist, and sentiment/-ality as a banal emotion which paralyzes an audience's recognition of reality. -However, this thesis regards both virtue and sentiment/-ality as vehicles for showing and sharing the morals of the modern age. First, the virtues of the protagonist included the general and universal ones of the bourgeois -at that times, the bourgeois represented themselves as a human being- such as the responsibility and obedience of a father, a mother, a wife, a husband, a daughter and a son. They also included the professional ethics such as courage, honesty, and justice and so on. The fall or salvation of the protagonist is largely determined by his/her private individual virtue. Second, sentiment/ality is a theatrical device that makes the audience internalize the protagonist's virtue. The protagonist expresses his/her universal virtue sentimentally, and the audience also expresses their virtue by sympathizing with the protagonist's virtue sentimentally. However, the melodramatic protagonist as an individual, is not connected with society, but remains isolated. As a result, s/he has no influence on the society, where s/he can only ends her/his play alone with a happy-ending. S/he is happy alone, or at best happy with his/her own family. On the contrary to this, tragic protagonist usually fixes social disorder through his/her fall. In that sense, we can say that melodrama presents only the half of the human life.

A Study on the Individuation Process of the Protagonist in the Webtoon <Return of the Blossoming Blade> (웹툰 <화산귀환> 주인공 개성화 과정 연구)

  • Soyeong, LIm
    • Smart Media Journal
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    • v.12 no.9
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    • pp.152-158
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    • 2023
  • This study analyzed the consciousness, unconsciousness, and individuation process of 'Cheongmyeong', the protagonist presented in the webtoon "Return of the Blossoming Blade", based on Jung's theory of individuation. The subject of the research was the webtoon "Return of the Blossoming Blade", which has formed a readership across various genders and age groups, based on a successful web novel. The individuation process of the protagonist of "Return of the Blossoming Blade", analyzed using Jung's theory, is as follows: Firstly, the protagonist's ego originated from the shadow derived from the unconscious. Secondly, the protagonist's persona is social and positive in reality, but the personal persona manifested as an unrevealed shadow. Thirdly, the protagonist's anima/animus connects the profound inner consciousness with reality, maintaining a complementary relationship with the persona. Fourthly, the protagonist's Self symbolizes the collective ideal human and the essence of the volcano. The protagonist was shown to achieve individuation through a continuous repetitive process of integrating consciousness and unconsciousness, and through the compensatory process.

A study on Philip Roth's fiction: Crisis of Jewish identity (필립 로스의 "포트노이씨 병" 연구: 유대적 정체성의 위기)

  • Baek, Nak-Seung
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.12 no.3
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    • pp.211-226
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    • 2006
  • This paper examines the crisis of the protagonist's Jewish identity in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Jewish values are centered on the philosophy of Judaism and Jewish history. Judaism is based on an ethical monotheism which is Bible-centered. It is characterized by its covenant with God, its humanism, and its emphasis on moral action. It provides essential reasons for man's existence and stresses human confidence and sufficiency. Jewish values can be found in words such as "good," "humanity," "dignity," "responsibility," and "sense of community." These positive Jewish values pervade Philip Roth's fiction paradoxically. Throughout especially Portnoy's Complaint, the protagonist fails to embrace Jewish values in contrast to Bellow or Malamud's heroes and repeat the same mistakes eliciting fits of laughter from readers. The protagonist suffers from his strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses perpetually warring with his extreme sexual longings against which he struggles. His desperation grows as he finds himself unable to channel his dissatisfaction and change his situations. His dominating mother and his confusion over Jewishness and Americanism are the main obstacles to his establishment of self-identity. He attempts to build up his gender identity and Jewish identity through his ego-centric sexual relationship with shikses(female gentiles). His inability to embody Jewish values leads to the failure to fulfill his identity. Roth paradoxically shows that the protagonist's realization of Jewishness is essential to the cure for his fragmented self.

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Semiotic analysis focusing on protagonist and antagonist in the feature animation (장편애니메이션에서 프로타고니스트와 안타고니스트를 중심으로 하는 내러티브의 기호학적 분석 : <마당을 나온 암탉>을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Young Hun
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.33
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    • pp.79-97
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    • 2013
  • Animation is the aggregate of signs based on narrative. Algirdas Julien Greimas made structuralist frame and analyzed the meaning with it. Greimas's semiotics among the animated characters appearing in the conflict structure is suitable for the analysis and figure out the structure and meaning of the conflict which is hidden. Because Greimas Semiotic Square is suitable for apprehending meaning structure, it help for us to identify between characters and meaning that from character. Actantial Model help to apprehend power relations in structure between characters by axis of desire. This study search Greimas's semiotics and based on this analyse animation, . Also this study analyse conflicts between protagonist and antagonist with Greimas Semiotic Square after analysing narrative of like Vladimir Proof's folktale analysis. Unlike the protagonist's internal conflict, the antagonist's internal conflict moves the audience's emotions. Finally, this study analyse animation in the synchronic structure with the Actantial Model.

A Study of the Narrative Structure of ″Travel in Mujin″ (무진기행의 서술구조 연구)

  • 정연희
    • Lingua Humanitatis
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.179-196
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    • 2001
  • According to Formalist theory, form is not separate from content. Form does not merely convey or express content but can itself produce meaning. The close correlation of the narrative structure, more specifically the time structure of the narrative, and the narrative style of Kim Seung-Ok′s short story′"Travel in Mujin" provides a good example of this argument. The story opens with the first-person narrator, currently living in the bustling city of Seoul, back in his small provincial home town Mujin, where he brings up memories that had been hitherto suppressed. The revived memories are ordered into the narrator′s present thought structure, in effect bridging the vast psychological rift between the lost past and the present. The narrator′s travel in Mujin thus becomes a psychological journey, and Mujin becomes a psychological space where the narrator can experience the continuity of his own being. The "narrating I" excludes the principles of reality from his narrative, concentrating on the inner thoughts, recollections, psychological experience, and the level of consciousness of the "narrated I." This narrative attitude or style expresses the narrator-protagonist′s acceptance and affirmation of the thoughts and actions occur in Mujin (which he had till now been resistant to). It is also an affirmation of the narrative act itself. Before the travel back to Mujin, the narrator-protagonist′s thoughts about his home town was ambivalent-an attitude originating from nostalgia, together with the narrator-protagonist′s ambivalent attitude toward his youthful past. It is a reflection of the narrator-protagonist′s desire for purity intermingled with a disdain for his enervated existence in Seoul. This ambivalence is resolved by the "I" of the narrative present, and Mujin enables him to come to a renewed affirmation of his life.

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The Return of Modern Cinema to the Classic Film : The Storytelling of the Film Asako I & II (모던한 방식으로 찍은 고전적 영화 : 영화 <아사코>의 스토리텔링)

  • Han, Dong-Gyun
    • Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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    • v.15 no.7
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    • pp.59-70
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    • 2021
  • This research studies the specific cases of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's re-arrangement of the original novel Net emo Samite mo(2010) by Tomoka Shibasaki to his 2018 film Asako I&II. The study focuses on the difference that has been made between the original novel and the film, which occurred after Ryusuke adapted the novel's "Telling" to the film's "Showing." The presence of the passive protagonist and the repetitions are the elements that have been avoided from the traditional Screenwriting theory for a long. Instead of avoiding it, Ryusuke Hamaguchi inherits these traits of the original novel when re-arranging to his film. Despite the presence of a passive protagonist, Hamaguchi's method of adaption increases the attention of the audience by using the other tools of Hollywood's tradition: the use of goal and want of the protagonist. In addition, Hamaguchi's storytelling strategy captivates both the modern cinema audiences and the classical film audiences by creating a story, which both repetitive structure and normative narrative structure were applied.

A Symptomatic Reading of 'Discrimination' and 'Difference' in A Gesture Life (『제스처 라이프』에 나타난 '차별'과 '차이'의 징후적 읽기)

  • Rhee, Suk Koo
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.56 no.5
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    • pp.907-930
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    • 2010
  • Most previous studies on A Gesture Life focused on illuminating the role and significance of Kkutaeh, the Korean comfort woman, whom Hata runs across at a military camp in the Burmese jungle. For instance, Carroll Hamilton argues that the return of Kkutaeh as a traumatic subject disrupts Hata's nationalist narrative, causing the protagonist's eventual failure at national enfranchisement. However, this paper focuses on Hata's relationship with Bedley Run, the sleepy suburban white town, in which the protagonist settles down right after immigration to the US. The racial/racist nature of Bedley Run has not received due critical attention, although a few studies on the novel saw Hata's gestures as a survival tactic deployed against the hostile environment of his new host society. This paper, resorting to Pierre Macherey's thesis on symptomatic reading, exposes what Hata, the narrator/protagonist, hides from his readers concerning his status in his muchbeloved town; and it also explores the subversive significance of Hata's ethnic memories. The aim of this study is, after all, to map both the subversive possibilities and the limitations of Hata's immigrant narrative as a bildungsroman.

A Study on 'the Character' in Adolfo Bioy Casares' Literature Works - Focusing on protagonist/antagonist, protagonist narrator/editor narrator (아돌포 비오이 까사레스 작품의 등장인물 연구 - 주인공과 반주인공, 주인공 화자와 편집자 화자를 중심으로)

  • Jeon, Yong Gab
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.25
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    • pp.453-482
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    • 2011
  • Until now and in the studying of fantastic literature, there has been likely to regard the character as secondary element, compared to their actions. However, it has to be recognized that the characters is a barometer to divide the boundary among the marvellous literature, or fantasy, magic realism, etc., in particular it is an important narrative element to understand an epistemological vision of fantastic literature. This thesis analyzes the characters, focusing on two dimensions divided such as between protagonist/antagonist and protagonist narrator/editor narrator. The characters in fantastic literature are usually set-up as people like ourselves, because it is necessary for the readers to consider the supernatural phenomenon as real world situation. The reason why many characters in fantastic literature usually meet a tragic end is that the structure of fantastic literature embedded unresolved supernatural confusion into ordinary order in the end, while antagonists are viewed as holders of extraordinariness and they are far from vero-similarity. Together with usual characters who represent the world of logic and reason, antagonists who seek to understand more about the universe totally and thus regarded as symbols of intuition and imagination and ultimately are the elements of fantastic literature. On the other hand, the "first person narrator" is divided between "protagonist narrator" who narrates the supernatural things through his/her own experience to readers and "editor narrator" who narrates the other's experiences. Particularly in the case of "editor narrator", he/she may narrates the stories with different explication and angle, which lead to hesitation and confusion for readers to identify between reality and unreality or natural logic and supernatural one. Even though there are various categories in fantastic literature, this thesis exclude 'neo fantastic', 'metaphysical fantastic' ones, characterized as a possibility of convergence with the secondary interpretation and symbolic implication. Beyond these materials, the literatures which involved with this thesis and analysis are normally related with traditional fantastic literary works which supernatural events intervene in real world and bring out collision between real and unreal, or natural and supernatural logics. Based on this criteria, this thesis chooses literary works such as "De los Reyes Futuros", "El Perjurio de la Nieve" written by Adolfo Bioy Casares who is a representative author in Latin American fantastic literature.

Mind and Attitude for Self-Development and Growth: Exploring the Protagonist's Unconscious and Unethical Attitude in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

  • Wooyoung Kim
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.85-93
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    • 2024
  • In this paper, focusing on Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," we explore the protagonist's lack of conscience and unethical attitude, emphasizing its relevance to our self-development and growth. The primary goal is to interpret the impact of Dorian Gray's actions and choices on personal development and growth, highlighting the importance of a specific mindset and attitude to the reader. It dissects how Wilde navigates the intricate layers of Dorian's character, exposing the ethical dilemmas and transformative moments that contribute to the profound changes within him. The examination sheds light on the depth and complexity of Dorian Gray's character, offering readers a nuanced understanding of the forces at play in his moral and psychological journey. Interpretation of Wilde's intent to impart lessons on the reader's personal growth and development through Dorian's story is undertaken. The discussion also explores the impact of Dorian's unethical attitude on contemporary readers and its influence on our daily lives and values.