• English & American cultural studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.297-321
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to re-read the film of Dead Poets Society, specially focused on a feminist view. The film hides the strategy of recovering the traditional Patriarchal Society. At the beginning, the film resists the values of traditional society through John Keating. His unorthodox methods of teaching literature smack against the traditions of Welton Academy. Furthermore, he stresses on "Carpe Diem"—Seize the Day, the romantic values of free thinking, creativity, and individuality. The forces opposing Keating's philosophy are personified by Welton's rigid, old headmaster, Mr. Nolan, and the cruel, stubborn parent, Mr. Perry. Keating's romantic values are failed by their powerful, dominating attitudes. Effected by Keating's philosophy, Neil decides to pursue acting rather than medicine. He conflicts with his strict father. Finally frustrated by his authority, Neil commits suicide. And Keating is accused of inciting the boys to restart the Dead Poets Society, and at last he is fired. Keating and Neil are victimized by the Patriarchal society. Even though the film concentrates male characters at the all boys' school, it reveals the male angle of binary oppositions between men and women, subject and object, activity and passivity, presence and absence. In the film's dramatic conclusion, English class is now being temporarily taught by Nolan, who has the boys read from the very Pritchard essay they had ripped out at the start of the film. It symbolizes the triumph of the traditional logocentric society. However, influenced by Keating's unconventional attitudes, ultimately Welton Academy will be changed as it is embodied in its closing scene.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.207-237
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• 2009

This paper aims to show that Sylvia Plath searched for the female poetic voice, by tracing the aspects of her early poems. This study attempts to demonstrate that Plath disclosed the violence of male-centered literary tradition against women poets although her early poems seem to be written from a male point of view. In her poems, "Snakecharmer", "Full Fathom Five", and "The Colossus", it is particularly found that Plath hoped to be empowered with the poet's voice, which nevertheless resulted almost in silence or babbling. Plath, indeed, devised a strategy in order to show that, for women poets, the patriarchal literary tradition is a destructive power rather than a generative one. Namely, women poets are not able to fully grow out of a male-oriented tradition. On that account, she tried to represent in her early poems herself who sought to be empowered with an authoritative voice, invoking the male muse, but this ended in failure. Plath was skeptical about the way she had desired to find her own voice by relying upon the male muse, and she needed to free herself from that literary tradition.

• Sijohaknonchong
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• v.20
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• pp.113-139
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• 2004

This article intends to illuminate how the men. leading agents in Saseol-sijo - musical performers. writers of lyrics, patrons. composers. compilers of Sijo anthologies, audience. etc. - In the Late Choson period, viewed or recognized women and how their understanding of women was reflected in the texts. Working with texts with the theme of 'Love,' this article starts with categorizing two types of love: the first type, 'lovelorn heart' focusing on unilateral pining for a single lover who is absent now and the second type. 'physical love' concentrating on bilateral sexual intercourse. In addition to the types of love, the gender of poetic speakers, distinct from real poets is vital to characterize the discourse of love. According to these two factors. texts in question fall into four groups: texts that a female speaker displays her lovelorn heart('Type 1'), those where she speaks about her sexual experiences('Type 2'), those where a male speaker sings his lovelorn heart('Type 3'), and those where he describes his sexual experiences('Type 4'). Of these. 'Type 2' and 'Type 3' are key to understanding of the men's view of women. With respect to the configuration of the theme of 'Love,' it should be noted that in Korean literary history, the nim or a 'sweetheart' had signified the totality of value or a perfect entity which makes one's life meaningful and that 'Type 1,' the pattern that a female subject expresses her love toward male min, had constituted a traditional way to convey the theme of 'Love.' In terms of this connotation of min. a remarkable increase of 'Type 3' implying the increase of male speakers, reveals the extent to which women, the male speakers' min, accomplished their entry into a 'sacred area' -the position of mm-in which only men had occupied; females are focused and centralized. This article considers this phenomenon as an exhibition of the upgrade of women's significance and weight in the Late Choson society and as an index of 'modernity.' Meanwhile, given that most of the Saseol-sijo poets are men, the emergence of the 'Type 2' texts in which male poets have female speakers disclose their sexual experiences, demonstrates a representative example that women are degraded to be a means of men's pleasure; for this situation gives men more pleasure than when male speakers reveal their sexual experiences. Not only 'Type 2,' but texts group which basically belongs to 'Type I' and conveys the theme of 'Loyalty' through the female voice by substituting rulers-subjects relation for men-women relation, also falls under the same case. For men employ female voice as a poetic device in order to stress the theme of 'Loyalty' This article regards this phenomenon as an index of 'pre-modernity,' in the sense that in a pre-modem society, specifically in Early Choson, male-oriented value system dominates, thereby alienating women. As it is well known, the Late Choson is marked by a transitional period from a pre-modem society to a modem society. Therefore the ambivalence of the premodern and the modem can be found mixed in every segment of the society. The dual aspects of the masculine view of women in Saseol-sijo constitutes one example. The significance of the Saseol-sijo in Korean literary history can be found in this phenomenon.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-79
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• 2017

Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman is a pioneering female writer?s important work which was not deeply studied yet very influential in new women literature and its cultural global impact. Although women had been often praised for their beauties specially by romantic poets but their self-realization and innate values were not widely recognized until new women writers advocated their desires and active roles in the society at the end of the $19^{th}$ century. The new women writers including Ella Dixon gained popularity with their professional skills as the journalists or the contributors to the journals which were suddenly popular and actively circulated among Victorian women. From the 1880s to 1920s, in contrast with the traditional images of wives as ?the angel in the house?, these women new women writers broke the yoke of subjugated womanhood and instead tried to freely express their independent spirits and demanded their roles in the society. Although they were criticized sometimes as "the daughter of a new guise" "a lady of restless sex" or "the wild women," new girls? perky images in new women fiction brought into the new cultural phenomenon which led to the ?flapper? girl in the 1920s. Ella Dixon?s protagonist Mary Erle, strikingly similar to author herself, was a representative new woman who displayed a wide range of new cultural perspectives from a feminist?s viewpoint, but her untimely desire in the capitalized society was not fully accomplished, just promising the potentiality of the female solidarity which might be achieved later by her feminist posterity.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.279-302
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• 2019

This paper introduces Youngju Ryu's Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee's Korea, and examines its significance and limitations. The book examines the relationship between literature and politics during the Park Chung-hee Yushin era, focusing on Yang Sŏng-u, Kim Chi-ha, Yi Mun-gu, Cho Se-hŭi, and Hwang Sok-yong. The books starts by describing the relationship between the U.S. hegemony and the Park Chung-hee regime during the Cold War. The book shows how poets like Yang and Kim fought against the Park Chung-hee regime based on poems, trial records and memoirs, while it describes novelists such as Yi's resistance by how novels envisioned a community against the Park administration based on the keyword "neighborhood." This is significant in that it describes how literature from the Park Chung-hee era was able to stand on the front lines against the regime. However, it is regrettable that because the book adopts a heroic tale to describe their lives and literature, these are illuminated in a somewhat flat way. Also it is noteworthy that the lives and works of novelists after the 2000s were illuminated, but Yang and Kim's life and literature were not described. Furthermore, it is regrettable that women writers were not mentioned and its concept of "politics" is rather shallow. Overall, this book is very significant in that it introduces the relationship between Korean literature and politics in the Korea of the 1970s with rich data and a beautiful style, as well as allowing Korean studies researchers to reflect on the future of Korean studies.