• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.315-337
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• 2011

This paper aims to examine a truth about love - the close relationship between a person's passionate love and that same person's loneliness and suppressed desires, a relationship that Carson McCullers (1917-1967) portrays in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. McCullers, one of several brilliant writers from Southern America, managed to overcome her cruel situation and showed deep insight into the human condition, particularly in regard to the relation between love and isolation. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, like her other works, examines the spiritual isolation and the agony of love that three lovers experience. The love in this story is a triangular relationship among the three main characters, Amelia, Lymon and Marvin Macy. The distinctive characteristics of love described in this story are that each character falls into blind and passionate love for the person he/she loves, no matter how the beloved responds. Love also changes the lover, not the beloved, revealing the completely opposite nature of the lover. The opposite nature and the inner secrets that the love reveals about the lovers reflect their frustrated and suppressed desires, which is femininity and motherhood for Amelia, non-violent masculine power for Macy, and physical attraction and power for the hunchback, Lymon. These suppressed desires are rooted in the deep sense of frustration that they had to experience in their childhood. In short, the seemingly unconditional love of the main characters is not an ideal, altruistic love, but a reflection of their inner desires. This story, however, does not seem to criticize this kind of love but simply tries to give an honest picture of what love might be. It also admits that 'deformed' love is still better than no love (and consequently no stimulus) because what really damages and causes decay in human beings and in a community, is the state of boredom.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.17-32
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• 2008

This study focuses on the analysis of Baudelaire's aesthetic perspective which has established a theoretical basis on research of the critical reviews' salon exhibitions as written by Baudelaire. Charles Pierre Baudelaire(1821-1867) having lived during the latter part of Neo-classicism and the era of Romanticism and Impressionism, Baudelaire displayed opposition to customary realities such as social ideology or religious authority that suppressed human nature. Also he pioneered a new genre known as art criticism and wrote much that provided important insights on the essential elements of artistic work, modernity and trend, as well as art definition and art categories. The aesthetic perspective and creative spirit were formed by Baudelaire, during his age were also reconfirmed in the successive ages of modernism and postmodernism. As such, this study sheds light on how Baudelaire's aesthetic perspective was not only temporarily assertion but it is consistently applied to modern art and fashion area. What is more important that, Baudelaire admired new artificial beauty that is created by the human soul liberated from natural instincts or desires. Especially, informed by strangeness and distinctiveness, Baudelaire's view of fashion ran along the same vein as his view of art, and these views form the basis of that creative spirit which situated western fashion on a center of the world. In conclusion, the research on Baudelaire's aesthetic perspective will reaffirm a firm awareness of the creative spirit essential to globally-oriented creative artists and designers who work within the circumstance of the 21st century, a time when the paving of new aesthetic paths is necessary. The research also offers a clear understanding of the aesthetic values demanded by this age.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.281-313
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• 2019

This paper was written to investigate the narrative traits of Lee Ae-rim's Comic Books. Lee Ae-rim arrived on the scene with the boom of comic book magazines in the 1990s. Although she started her career as a Comic Book writer, she expanded her own area gradually and has been working actively as an animation director as well. The superficial characteristics of Lee Ae-rim's works can be summed up as sexuality, grotesqueness, and fantasy. In other words, Lee Ae-rim's comic books are mainly characterized by the visualization of sexual, grotesque, and fantastic shapes. Lee Ae-rim has faced challenges with her own overwhelming and compelling images like no one else. For that reason, it is true that people haven't paid careful attention to the hidden stories behind her pictures. This paper considers that looking back on the narratives that Lee Ae-rim has been interested in, from early days to recent days, that is to say, the contexts of stories, is a shortcut to reveal a point of contact between her past, present, and future. Especially, this paper focused on the properties of the circulated and repeated stories, the stories ruled by fate and coincidence, and the stories in which elements of fantasy encounter an attempt of violation. As a result, it was found that the narratives of Lee Ae-rim's comic books demand us to face suppressed desires in a new way, by wrapping up the most fundamental aspects of human being in universality and constancy with specificity and grotesqueness. The reason why Lee Ae-rim has continued the avant-garde and omnidirectional works thus far explains what our society suppresses, inversely. Moreover, the narratives of Lee Ae-rim are significant, by being devoted to the right function of art not only to disclose suppressed desires but to satisfy them. Making an in-depth investigation of the narratives of Lee Ae-rim's comic books in various contexts, this research is intended to establish a diversity of Korean comic books, by adding meaning to the creative values of individual writers.