• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.287-292
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• 2018

The present study proposes a model for literature-based instruction within the context of a fashion design curriculum at a Korean university. The fashion design market continues to grow. The fashion design market now requires more cultural-bound strategies and efficient communication skills. The literature provides authentic resources and is highly relevant to the development of students' culture awareness as well as language awareness. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll contains various cultural contexts of the Victorian Era. The text provides explicit knowledge of the era depicted in both illustrations and satire languages. This study instructs students to analyze and interpret texts and illustrations so that they can engage critically and analytically in reading text to increase culture awareness and language awareness. The integration of literature and fashion design can provide students an opportunity to explore language choice and acquire refined knowledge of the target culture. Along with the text, illustrations in the literature provoke student's imaginative and creative thinking skills. Students can think and discuss many issues that deal with Victorian values and reinforce creative thinking skills. In the final stage, students can design fashion inspired by Victorian values and present their own designs using the acquired languages. This eventually leads students to adapt to a new notion for the fashion market and become competent communicators in the fashion world.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.519-541
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• 2010

A number of recent Victorian studies have participated in a renewed focus on form. E. Warwick Slinn and Monique R. Morgan, for instance, have contributed to enhancing our understanding of the Victorian dramatic monologue. This paper aims to expand what they have addressed by revisiting the mechanics of the dramatic form as a form, in particular addressing two types of dramatic monologue represented with supreme adroitness by Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, both of whom successfully attempted to widen our epistemology through a large act of the poetic imagination and great intellectual power. To this end, this paper lays particular attention to the role of the reader who is regarded as a key element of the dramatic aspect of the genre. In the dramatic monologue proper, real readers are actively brought into dialogic relation with the speaker or the poet, or both, whereby it seeks to represent an act of play among the poet, the speaker, and the reader. What the genre achieves in this fashion is twofold. For one thing, it pushes itself sufficiently to the very centre of the complex of apparently various narrative motives that animate the genre; for another, it honours the world of multiple viewpoints more than any other previous form of literature, all the more so as readers' views vary across their own time, space, and socio-cultural contexts. Incidentally, in one way and another, the dramatic monologue is of kinship with a Jamesian type of fiction, which is noted for its exterior impersonality. So this paper concludes by suggesting some theoretical implications that the dramatic genre assumes for, not only the naturalist novel, but also the (post-)modernist one.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.461-485
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• 2010

The present paper focuses on a specific aspect of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), namely the issue of homosexuality, particularly as it concerns Prendick, the novel's primary narrator, and Montgomery, Moreau's assistant on the island, both of whom are implicitly associated with homosexual identity-and suggested to represent various forms of repression or acceptance-their personalities, or psyche, explored in relation to other characters on Moreau's island, particularly the Beast Folk, as well as Doctor Moreau and his treatment of the creatures as an allegory of Victorian anti-sodomy legislation and its most celebrated victim, Oscar Wilde, who had been convicted for male sodomy in 1895, only months prior to the original publication of The Island of Doctor Moreau. In addition, this paper examines an extensive series of allusions to Oscar Wilde and to late-Victorian homosexual scandals, including that author's own conviction, allusions to others involved in the affair-some of which involve situational/plot analogies, while others involve echoes or semantic associations between the names of characters in Moreau and historical figures-as well as allusions and parallels involving the most recognizably biographical of Wilde's works, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The deliberate, complex web of allusions and ironic implications of homosexuality, presented in this essay, thus, expands considerably upon existing scholarly work on a range of matters concerning homosexual identity and conduct within the context of social conventions and legislation in the late-Victorian period, as well as more broadly, in scientific and humanistic terms. In this respect, one key aspect of this essay is the exploration of the novel's setting of Noble's Island, which, among other things, includes topographical allusions to nineteenth-century scientific theories of anatomical anomalies in pederasts-namely those of the eminent French forensic medical scientist, Ambroise Tardieu (1818-1879), whose underlying framework of physiological adaptation, moreover, intersected with the scientific interests of Wells and of his protagonist. Beyond this, it is shown that, in Moreau, there is as a web of allusions to homosexual practice and those same anomalies, involving the character of Montgomery and his name.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.565-584
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• 2018

The pedagogical dynamic dramatized in Shaw's Pygmalion, which sets man as a distinct pedagogical authority and woman his subject spawning similarly patterned plays many decades later, has been relatively overlooked in the play's criticism clouded by its predominantly mythical theme. Shaw stages Eliza's pedagogical subordination to Higgins followed by her Nora-esque exit with the declaration, "I'll go and be a teacher." The central premise of this article is that the pioneering modern playwright and feminist's pedagogical rewriting of A Doll's House sets out a historical dialogue between Eliza, a new woman who repositions herself as a teacher renouncing her earlier subordinate pedagogical position that is culturally ascribed to women while threatening to replace her paternal teacher, and her immediate precursors, that is, Victorian women teachers whose professional career was socially "anathematized." Through a historical probe into the social status of Victorian women teachers, the article attempts to align their abortive career with Eliza's new womanly re-appropriation of the profession of teaching. With Pygmalion as the starting point of its query, this article conducts a historical survey on the literary representation of pedagogical women from the mid to late Victorian era to the turn of the century. Reading a wide selection of novels and plays alongside of Pygmalion (1912), such as Jane Eyre (1847), A Doll's House (1879), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Odd Women (1893), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), it contextualizes Eliza's resolution to be a teacher within the history of female pedagogy. This historical contextualization of the career choice of one of the earliest new women characters in modern drama helps appraise the historical significance of such choice.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.993-1011
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• 2009

Generally, the parts narrated by Esther in Bleak House has been considered less convincing and reliable than those by the anonymous narrator for some problematic qualities in her character and narration. However, Esther's narrative shows Dickens' masterly depiction of emotional deprivation, the psychic consequences of the Victorian sexual repression on its victim. Therefore, to restore the reliability of Esther's narrative is the prerequisite for claiming its value as an appropriate locus of the meanings of the text. On the other hand, the anonymous narrator is not so omniscient as he has been regarded. As the chapters proceed, his omniscient power and authority is conspicuously weakened, and even transferred to other characters such as Esther and Mr. Bucket. This shows that the identity of the omniscient voice is unstable and that Dickens does not intend his voice to be the sole center of meanings of the text. In short, these two narratives are the necessary partners in imagining and understanding the society in its wholeness. Alternating and sometimes intersecting each other throughout the novel, these opposing viewpoints make us see the contradictory multi-leveledness of the Victorian society. The equality of them implies Dickens' notion that more than single unified voice is needed to portray ideological conflicts of his age.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.188-203
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• 2010

This study purposed to identify the design and composition characteristics of mantle through a historical review of its change and development focusing on women's dress. This analysis was particularly focused on the Victorian age because the variety of mantle designs introduced and popularized was wider than ever since ancient times to the present. For this study, we collected historical literature on mantle from ancient times to the $19^{th}$ century and made comparative analysis of design and composition, and for the Victorian age we investigated also actual items from the period. During the early Victorian age when the crinoline style was popular, mantle was of A.line silhouette spreading downward from the shoulders and of around knee length. In the mid Victorian age from 1870 to 1889 when the bustle style was popular, the style of mantle was changed to be three-dimensional, exaggerating the rear side of the bustle skirt. In addition, with increase in women's suburban activities, walking costume became popular and mantle reached its climax. With the diversification of design and composition in this period, the name of mantle became more specific and as a result, mantle, mantelet, dolman, paletot, etc. were used. The styles popular were: it looked like half-jacket and half-cape. Ornaments such as tassels, fur, braids, rosettes, tufts and fringe were attached to create luxurious effects. In the late Victorian age when the hourglass style was in fashion, mantle returned again to plain design emphasizing the details of the shoulders. The results of this study are expected to present motives for the development of contemporary designs, to contribute to the new recognition of the value of mantles, and to open a new research area of clothing history.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.501-517
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• 2010

This paper examines the British imperialism found in Edith Nesbit's fantasy stories by looking at the function of magic and of the hierarchical relationships seen in the books. Although Edith Nesbit is relatively unknown in Korea, she is widely recognized as having had a great influence on the 20th century British literary world, and is also well-known for her political position as a socialist. Nesbit's fantasy books are commonly differentiated from other Victorian children's books written before her in that she created realistic and liberal children characters and rejected the adult didactic tone. While Nesbit's books have been recognized as revolutionary and being distinguished from other Victorian children's books, I suggest that the ideas found in her fantasy novels largely include the dominant Victorian message of British imperialism. This imperial ideology is delivered by the logic of magic and the multilateral hierarchies. The two magic creatures (The Psammead and the Phoenix) and the two magic items from an Oriental background (the Carpet and the Amulet) all have a magic power to grant people's wishes, wholeheartedly exercising their power and knowledge for the sake of the British characters. While the magic agents serve to fulfill the children's wishes, the children aim to please their parents and to benefit their family, showing layered hierarchies among the characters. Also, there is a hierarchical distinction between the magic items and the magic creatures in that the magic items have no voice to express themselves but only serve and obey the British children. The foreign characters that the children encounter in their adventures also cooperate with the British characters to help them to fulfill their goals. In short, magic frees the children from the adult-centered world but ultimately their free adventures serve their parents and other adults, and represent the ideals and hierarchical concepts of British imperialism. Thus, Nesbit's position as a modern writer seems to be ambiguous, switching between modern characterization and style, and the old Victorian imperial messages that also exist in her fantasy novels.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.211-232
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• 2014

In late Victorian England, a "pervert" meant two things. One meaning designated a person who "turned" or converted from one sect of Christianity to another. In Wilde's time this referred specifically to converts from the established state Church of England to the transnational Roman Catholic Church. The other, newer meaning designated someone who turned from conventional heterosexual relations to a (as yet unnamed) homosexual orientation. In the context of the late Victorian empire, both were considered dangerous. The rising social and political influence of Roman Catholicism appeared threatening as a transnational Church invading a national one. For the Anglican Church of England, this crisis was played out what came to be known as the Oxford Movement, still influential during Wilde's time as a student there from 1874 to 1878. What is interesting in Wilde's life, as in his work, is the way he himself played with the dangerous transgressions inherent in being a "pervert." Sexually, he was converted to same-sex love while still a married man. In terms of religion, he remained fascinated with Catholicism, allegedly converting on his death-bed. But what is provocative is way that Wilde used one "perversion" to play into another: so that in such works as The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome, his version of a kind of anti-Catholic Catholicism becomes a site of sexual desire, and sexual desire expression for that kind of spirituality, which, as unrequited longing, can ultimately n find no object adequate to its imagination.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.999-1026
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• 2010

There was a Golden Age of Fantasy novels in the United Kingdom in the 19th Century, which had the major writers, Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald. These writers pushed the boundaries of imagination and created a new world in which explore their own selves and societies. Fantasy novels flowered in the 1860s when a group of writers including Carroll and MacDonald published their works. These writers used the trait of dream framing to create their own fantasy world in which they took the action against the complicated and oppressive Victorian reality. Carroll's fantasy worlds of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass were an insane and chaotic world where the certainty of the real world was overturned. MacDonald's dream worlds of At the Back of the North Wind and the Princess books including The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie were ideal societies in which imaginative characters could create harmony between fantasy and reality. Fantasy writers engaged in making journey to other lands to do philosophical and moral discussion critiquing Victorian society and to find insights into those problems in their works. Thus, their fantasy journey traverses time and place can produce some suggestive answers to the questions that lie in other times and realities as well as theirs.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.551-564
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• 2018

Laodiceanism is the blueprint from which Hardy draws one of his most ingenuous effects: the creating of a Laodicean around which the novel constructs its ambiguity. Hardy's command of "ingenuity" joins both the leading heroine Paula and the minor character Dare into the same category of a Laodicean. Alongside Paula, Dare is the most important ingredient in the novel in that he acts as an enigmatic persona defying the reader's attempts to establish a coherent type. This paper aims to offer a close reading of Dare's life story, which is chosen for discussion as he has been deemed as a simple functionary and thus apparently escaped serious critical notice thus far. It is stressed that the structure of sensations Dare embodies is fascinating in the sense that it is a locus where the coexistence of both meaning and nonmeaning would not amount to harmonious peace or stability so much as permits the impossibility of single and central significance. In this coexistence is inscribed a notion that the binaries in opposition are endlessly inter-mingled in dialogic tension, which is the hallmark of Laodiceanism that Hardy aims to present through the creation of Dare.