• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1131-1149
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• 2011

Michael McKeon, in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, sets forth a theoretical study of a large canon of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury works, based upon the dialectic of genre formations, which attempts to analyze certain "instabilities" in generic and social categories- "instabilities" that McKeon identifies as "Questions of Truth" and "Questions of Virtue." In this paper, I argue with McKeon's optimistic reading of Samuel Richardson's work, Clarissa, or The History of Young Lady (1740), which concludes that-unlike Pamela's "manifest material and social empowerment"-Clarissa acquires "manifest discursive and imaginative empowerment" and "wins" (to use McKeon's terms) the "battle" with her antagonist, Robert Lovelace. What is difficult to accept in this reading of Clarissa is McKeon's claim that the "success" of Clarissa's resistance to Lovelace, despite the tragic rape, is evident in her "new-found power" which is represented in the heroine's spiritual "conversion"- her decision to die to protect her "version of truth and virtue." McKeon's spiritual "conversion" not only forces Clarissa to surrender her legal right to prosecute her rapist but also forces her to seek the shelter of her "father's house" in the afterlife because she can no longer "make others accept [her] own version of events as authoritative." Thus, in contrast to McKeon, I claim that Clarissa represents the necessary conditions for its heroine's "empowerment" primarily in language that suggests her manifest social invalidation; language which in particular emphasizes that her rape and torture by Lovelace forces Clarissa's spiritual "conversion" to seek her reward in the afterlife-thereby concluding that Clarissa's discursive and imaginative empowerment does not and cannot exist in the secular, material world.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.4 s.62
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• pp.185-194
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• 2005

In the perspective of hybrid, design contains confused forms and styles. Thus, the question is what 'decisively affects' on life, happiness and peace of human beings: In the past scientific ecology that tries to solve the problem in the aspect of functional design was important. Now the question is beyond the scientific ecology because human has a different way of environmental adaptation from animals. From this point of view, design is defined as something beyond materialistic standard. Terry Eagleton said, 'Creative ability deviating oneself and transcending is the very standard to measure human beings' A tendency to hybridize one's own section off genre or pursuing dismantlement is found on such creative perspective. In other words, it focuses on making a space of human's cultural behavior by unifying creatively natural environment and architecture space in the organic aspect. Such phenomenon provides a new chance and possibility in environmental design through a new molding experiment according to the development of digital technology. As experiments of environment design using digital technology are actively implemented, ecological and cultural views hybridize to create a new cultural space of various functions and features. Such experiment in environment design highlights the connections of ecological view, recognition of value, and relation-centered ideas, and enables a tool pursuing a new cultural development. This study focuses on the paradigm of such digital hybrid design and purposes to set the system by analyzing the application styles and principles of environment design through theoretical and case studies. In addition, it promotes a new possibility to develop environment design in the history of civilization.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.40
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• pp.307-344
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• 2010

Cultural Studies built on the critical mind of New Left exposes the relationship between culture and power, and investigates how this relationship develops the cultural convention. It has achieved the new perspective that could make us to think culture and art in terms of political correctness. However, the critical voices against the theoretical premises of Cultural Studies have been increased as its heyday in 1980s was nearly over. For instance, Terry Eagleton, a former Marxist literary critic, declared in 2003 that the golden age of cultural theory is long past. This essay, therefore, intends to show the weak foundations on which the approaches of cultural studies to theatre rest and to clarify the general problem of their introduction to theatre studies. The approach of cultural studies to theatre takes the form of 'top-down inquiry' as it applies a theory to a particular play or historical period. In other word, from the theory the writer moves to the particular case. The result is not an inquiry but rather a demonstration. This circularity can destroy the point of serious intellectual investigation as the theory dictates answers. The goal-oriented narrow viewpoint as a logical consequence of 'top-down inquiry' makes the researcher to favor the plays or the parts of a play that are proper to test a theory. As a result it loses the fair judgment on the artistic value of a play, and brings about the misinterpretation. The interpreter-oriented reading is the other defect of cultural studies as it disregards the inherent meaning of the text, distorting a play. The approach of cultural studies also consists of a conventionality as it arrives at a stereotyped interpretation by using certain conventions of reasoning and rhetoric. The cultural theories are fundamentally the 'outside theories' that seek to explain not theatre but the very broad features of society and politics. Consequently their application to theatre risks the destructive criticism, disregarding the inherent experience of theatre. Most of, if not all, cultural theories, furthermore, are proven to be lack of empirical basis. The alternative method to them is a 'cognitive science' that proves scientifically our mind being influenced by bodily experience. The application of cultural materialism to Shakespeare's is one of the cases that reveal the limits of cultural studies. Jonathan Dollimore and Water Cohen provide a kind of 'canonical study' in this application that is imitated by the succeeding researchers. As a result the interpretation of has been flooded with repetitive critical remarks, revealing the problem of 'top-down inquiry' and conventional reasoning. Cultural Studies is antipodal to theatre in some respect. It is interested chiefly in the social and political reality while theatre aims to create the fiction world. The theatre studies, therefore, may have to risk the danger of destroying its own base when it adopts cultural studies uncritically. The different stance between theatre and cultural theories also occurs from the opposition of humanism vs. antihumanism. We have to introduce cultural theories selectively and properly not to destroy the inherent experience and domain of theatre.