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Walden is Henry David Thoreau’s work on American transcendentalism. The fundamental problem for the transcendentalists is dualism about the spiritual and the material, human spirit and flesh, and nature and God. It is because the dualistic viewpoint is the origin of all kinds of dehumanization. The dualistic viewpoint is from the human nescience ― inability to understand the oneness of everything in the universe. Thoreau finds out an ideal way to overcome the dualistic problems in Hinduism, and it is yoga. The definition of yoga is to yoke, or to calm down our senses in order to see and realize the oneness with God in our serene mind. Among the Hinduistic scriptures Bhagavad Gita has the most powerful influence on his transcendental ideas and life.

This article analyzes on Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest focused on the resistance of the individuals against the absolute power of the social system. In Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey shows the distorted way for conferring the meaning of individual identity through the bizarre state of the asylum, which reveals the power system of the mechanized civilization. This asylum, which is organized by the Combine and its perpetrator Big Nurse Ratched, symbolically reflects the system of modern society and its operation system, and it has an effect on man’s physical and mental lives in the asylum. Therefore the individual imprisoned in the asylum is deprived of his inherent identity, confidence, and self-respect by conforming to the oppressive social norms. Kesey reveals the absurd structure of the society from the aspects of individuals who resist the oppression of power systems in Cuckoo’s Nest. And he suggests the meaning of the identity search from the sacrificial death of McMurphy who tries to regain his and his fellow patients, which has been the recurrent theme of American literature.

The objective of this paper is to show the influence of Volumnia among many factors that have an effect on the play and the hero in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Volumnia, Coriolanus’ mother, plays an important role in contributing to the theme and illuminating the hero. Coriolanus is continually manipulated by his mother. Her method of manipulation keeps him from maturing. So, Coriolanus is crippled by his mother’s distorted view of the world. In the end, Coriolanus is dominated by his mother all his life. I arrived at a conclusion: In Coriolanus Volumnia dominates and controls the play and the hero.

Henry Thoreau identified so deeply with his native Concord all his life that it had an inseparable bearing on the formation of his thought and literature. Demonstrating his fabulous kinship with nature was his two-year stay at Walden Pond, an occasion which rendered him fresh momentum for his engagement with the natural world as well as a living foundation for his nature-oriented epistemology. His pondside life was depicted in Walden(1854), a lucid and pithy account resonating with his constant reminder of man’s ineluctable ties with nature. Walden Pond, thus coupled with the name of Thoreau, remains embedded in the minds of his readers as the emblem of his mental landscape.

Despite the financial success and the critical applause the major plays of Tennessee Williams have received, many of the plays often convey confused and contradictory attitudes towards sex. Within a single play, sex can be a positive assertion of life, a vigorous life-force, a destructive force that consumes and destroys human beings, a cause for atonement and a means of self-punishment, as well as a way to ward off time and death. Thus, sex is different things at different times. The effect of this is that the characters’ behavior sometimes appears inconsistent or unbelievable, and the play becomes ambiguous and contradictory. Williams does not offer any positive alternatives to his characters’ sexual attitudes or behavior, and no people or relationships can seem to be healthy, optimistic, mature, or even normal. No matter how compelling and powerful Williams’ plays might have been, they leave the audience and reader with a curiously unsatisfactory feeling about this sexual confusion. Consequently, it is likely that this problem keeps Williams from accomplishing much more dramatic achievements.

David Mamet is widely considered to be one of the most prolific and powerful voices in contemporary American theatre. Glengarry Glen Ross concerns a group of real estate salesmen whose company has imposed a ruthless regimen. The most successful will receive a cadillac, the runner-up a set of steak knives; the loser will be fired; that is a neat paradigm of a competitive capitalist society. The compensation in this competition is completely materialistic. Mamet’s sensitivity to language, precision of social observation, images of alienation, brilliant use of comedy, and continuing productivity account in large part for his staying power and critical respect. Under the system and discourse of capitalism and competition, salesmen’s identity is determined by their ability to employ language, that is, the ability to sell. The salesmen’s own fraudulent activities, by contrast, in deceiving their customers, is regarded simply as a good business, sanctioned by the ethics of a world in which success is a value and closing a deal an achievement.

This paper aims to examine the social features of Dombey’s pride in Dombey and Son. His pride has the following characteristics: the reduction of the human relations to business transactions, an absolute belief in the power of money, the utilitarian way of thought, and the reified consciousness, all of which comprise the driving force and the dominating principle of the capitalist modernity. Dombey’s life enclosed in the “cold hard armour” of pride is blank to the tender feeling and the gentle sympathy. It is the fundamental irony of this work that Paul, the focal point of all Dombey’s ambition and design, suffers death by Dombey’s own pride, the ethos of which first deprives Paul of his mother, then of his wet nurse, the so-called “second deprivation,” and finally, drives him to death. Another ironical nature of Dombey’s pride lies in that his supposed negation of change with relation to the private sphere is antithetical to his representative character of the social change related to the public sphere. The irony of Dombey’s pride leads to the duality of the modernity, which is symbolized by the railway as the “life’s blood” and the “triumphant monster, Death” as well.

Pope devoted himself to the formal excellence of his verse. The Rape of the Lock is a masterpiece of perceptible symmetrical structure. Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. In The Rape of the Lock every element of contemporary scene conjures up some images from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces are wrought with cleverness and expertise, which makes the poem surprising and delightful. According to Aristotle, pleasure is a certain movement of the soul, a sudden and perceptible settling down into its natural state, and a beautiful thing must have not only an orderly arrangement of parts but must also be of a certain magnitude. This paper aims to examine the surface symmetrical structure of The Rape of the Lock and reveal the deep symmetrical structure in relation to the Aristotelian body of doctrines of Poetics.

William Shakespeare was tied up with the daily life of Eugene O’Neill’s family and with O’Neill’s growth and education. It was a psychologically necessary for Shakespeare to have written Hamlet just as O’Neill had to write Long Day’s Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Hamlet seems to have exerted considerable pressure on O’Neill’s creative imagination when he was writing his last two plays, Long Day’s Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. That the past controls the present is the strongest thematic link between O’Neill’s last two plays and Hamlet. The return of the ghosts of the past, the shattering of illusions, the disappointment with what life has become, the sense of what could have been―these are common to the three plays. Shakespeare’s Hamlet allowed O’Neill to become better acquainted with his own night and with the night of the dramatic world he created. Long Day’s Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten, dealing with the ghosts of the past, was written in the shadow of Hamlet, itself dealing with the ghosts of the past.

August Wilson is an influential African-American playwright. In his plays, he focuses on the importance of connecting with one’s past in order to understand one’s relation to society. Specifically, the theme that surges through Wilson’s work is that there is need for black American to forge their new identity, an identity that is both African and American. In this play The piano, a symbol of the Charles family heritage, holds different meanings for the brother and sister. For Berniece, the piano must not be sold, because it represents parental sacrifices. To Boy Willie, selling of the piano means the purchase of a piece of the American Dream. Finally, this thesis examines how the Charles family tries to come to grips with it’s own history.

In this paper, our discussion is based on the evaluation of the coindexation-based binding theory and Linking Theory. In Linking Theory, binding relations are meant to be captured through linking. Linking is partly similar to and partly different from coindexing. In this paper, we demonstrate that such differences between linking and coindexing are empirical rather than notational. We also provide several semantic and syntactic evidence for Linking Theory. Those cases are really empirical and hence prove important arguments in favor of Linking Theory. As further evidence for Linking Theory, we consider the possibility of dispensing with reconstruction in BVA. There are some tenable reasons to argue for it.

This study investigated the dimensions of teacher efficacy beliefs specific to English teachers. The subjects in this study were middle and high school teachers whose schools were located either in rural areas or cities. With the application with component factor analysis technique, it was found that English teacher-specific efficacy beliefs consisted of ‘Teaching Improvement’, ‘Classroom Management’, ‘Confidence in English’, and ‘Concerns for Student Affect’. Goodness-of-fit indexes calculated through confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the factor structure was acceptable. The results of this study suggest that inservice teachers as well as preservice teachers should be trained to hold a high degree of English competence, to be able to apply communication-based activities with ease, to recognize the importance of affective variables in learning a language, and to handle disciplinary issues effectively.

Recently, the importance of writing has increased in teaching English to speakers of other languages. However, the practice of teaching english writing in Korean colleges has been less effective due to; 1) lesson goals or curriculum emphasizing reading comprehension, and 2) the attitudes toward writing exercises. This study suggests peer collaboration as a possible alternative for solving this issue. This study was designed to investigate how peer collaboration works for writing exercises in reading comprehension classes. For research methodology, observation and the analysis of the researcher’s log and students’ final drafts were used. The findings of this study concluded that peer collaboration contributed to the fluency and the development of ideas in students’ writing. Therefore, peer collaboration in writing exercises could enhance Korean students’ writing fluency in reading comprehension class.

The purpose of this paper is to give a new account for what principles govern the mapping of arguments of a verb onto grammatical functions. Some previous approaches claim that arguments can be mapped on grammatical functions based on thematic or actor/undergoer hierarchies. Recent studies on this issue propose an account of argument selection that does away with intermediary mechanisms such as thematic or actor/undergoer hierarchies. Some problems, however, remain associated with a set of stative verbs such as ‘border, follow and precede.’ The present study argues in favor of argument selection without using thematic or actor/undergoer hierarchies and proposes ‘the principle of argument selection based on metaphorical extension’ to account for the problematic stative verbs.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of videoconferencing on English as a Foreign Language Learning(EFL) speaking skills. The subjects were 8 EFL students. They were divided into 2 groups. Each group completed task-based activities for 14 weeks through videoconferencing. This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative method, data were collected from questionnaires and a public English speaking skill test. The questionnaires and interviews were used to evaluate the students’ attitude. On the other hand, for the qualitative method, data were collected for a case study. Through discuss analysis, the change of speaking skills was analyzed and this study found out the following results. The interaction between the teacher and students/ students and students through videoconferencing was effective in speaking skills. The development of the subjects’ English speaking skills was indicated through the data obtained from the questionnaires, interviews and observations, and testified through the increased number of words and sentences in their utterances throughout the study.

The purpose of the study is to identify which type of vocabulary exercises is most effective for Korean ninth grade learners’ meaning retention of new L2 words. Chapter Ⅱ presents the principle of vocabulary learning, the theory of memory, the types of vocabulary learning, and the methods of vocabulary learning. Chapter Ⅲ presents that three hypotheses and class procedure are shown. 267 students are divided into three exercise type groups--the Association, Comprehension, Generation group. Each type is designed to represent a different level of mental processing on the basis of previous studies’ classification. In chapter Ⅳ tests and questionnaires are analyzed. The results of the study are that the association group in the short-term memory is found to be the most effective to memorize the meanings, in the long-term memory the generation group is found to be the most effective to memorize the meanings, and especially in the low-level student of generation group shows meaningful differences. So this study concludes that the deeper mental processing the type is, the greater retention rates produce.