Earticle

초록

영어

The readers of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court have long been debating on the correct interpretation of the fiction. As Twain’s contemporary readers did, some critics in the twentieth century, read it as a story that emphasizes America’s superiority to England, while others insist that it is an acute criticism of America, not England. This paper provides a new perspective on the controversial fiction by applying Robert J. House’s Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, an established leadership of the discipline of Organizational Behavior, a branch of Management. It focuses on Hank’s leadership style that he uses in his relationship with the subordinates, particularly Sandy, Clarence, and the knights. For that, it analyzes some important contingency factors which critically affects the effectiveness of leadership styles—task ambiguity, locus of control, and authority. The three groups of people turn out to have differences in contingency factors. Sandy has low task ambiguity, external locus of control, and high respect of formal authority while Clarence has high task ambiguity, internal locus of control, and high respect of formal authority. The Knights have low task ambiguity, external locus of control, and low respect of formal authority. This paper shows that contrary to some critics who complain that Hank is inconsistent throughout the fiction, he is consistent in using leadership styles to each group of people. He adopts a proper leadership to Clarence, his executive officer. His leadership in relation to the knights is unsuitable, which causes trouble and finally leads to the total destruction of the civilization that he established. From this, this paper argues that the fiction may be Twain’s experiment of what will happen when a typical businessman in the nineteenth century America is situated in new environment. Twain seems to be quite pessimistic.

목차

I
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  1. 업무 혹은 임무 모호성(Task Ambiguity)
  2. 조절중심(Locus of Control)
  3. 권위주의(Authority)
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 인용문헌
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• 이광진 [ Kwangjin Lee | 숭실대 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  미국소설 [마크 트웨인 리뷰]

• 간기

  연3회

• pISSN

  1738-5784

• 수록기간

  1991~2020

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 843 DDC 813