Earticle

In The Giaour, Byron investigates the Giaour’s unforgettable memory of past sin, which leads to hampering the power of his autonomy in the face of fate. The contemporary reviews of Byron’s The Giaour (1813) in publications such as the Antijacobin Review (1813), the British Critic (1813), and the Edinburgh Review (1813) disregarded such complexity of the Giaour’s inner turbulence, declaring that Byron was so fascinated by his own image that he projected his own personality onto the hero of The Giaour. Most modern critics have also tended toward views similar to that of the poet. However, the problem with such an interpretation is that it does not do justice to the psychological subtlety and intensity of Byron’s characterization -the figure of the Giaour being an important illustration of this point. This paper will show how Byron creates a psychologically rich character in the person of the Giaour. It will highlight the clash between fate imposed upon himself by his past wrongdoing and his eagerness to be free from the unremovable stain of his past sin. His strong perception of sin eventually enfeebles his determination to defy his sorrow, whereby he becomes a victim of his own helplessness.

I think ‘Time’ is essential in Samuel Beckett’s plays. In a sense it is a real existence of life. It continuously passes by and it makes all the living things be changed and brings them to an end. In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone again, in the midst of nothingness. Man cannot identify himself because existence inevitably is in time and is changed moment after moment by the flow of time. This kind of specific character of time constitutes the main structure of the hidden plot in his plays. Accordingly I think the audience watching the plays seem to consider characters as an image reflecting themselves living in time in the world. They become aware of the fact that man has to overcome his despair through his own efforts. They don’t sustain a concept of the continuity of their experience by assimilating images of the past. They must invent and improvise it with materials they find in their present situation. Consequently I think Beckett tells us that let us do something, while we have the chance. At this place, at this moment of time let us make the most of it, before it is too late.

Owen Wister was a typical Easterner who was familiar with Eastern system and law, the inherited tradition from the Europe. At that same time, however, he was a person who felt the limit of the conventional and feminized Eastern culture. By having “Western cure,” he recognized the importance of Western fortitude, vigor and freedom which were greatly needed into the Eastern society. The emergence of Virginian the western folklore hero encapsulates the difference and tension between East and West in early modern America and requires readers to face their decision between Eastern establishment and Western experiences and finally to combine these two conflicting tendencies. Although Virginian is often criticized as the hero who lacks heteroglossia unlike Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, the praise and popularity for his stout soul and frontier spirit is ironically uprising in the post-war period. Despite the overt shortcomings of Anglo-Saxon chauvinism of the western hero, Owen Wister’s romantic superman cowboy in The Virginian strongly embodies the healthy American post-frontier ethics which is called the spirit of “self-exile expatriate” by Richard Slokin. Like Remington and Roosevelt’s works, Owen Wister’s Virginian heightens the strenuous life for Americans and serves as the popular model for us to examine American potential energy, clues for understanding American culture, and limits of its paradoxical qualities.

Blacks demanded increasingly realistic screen images. As the works of black writers realized the black experience more fully and more sympathetically, flimmakers looked to that literature as the basis for their productions. When black novels, however, were adapted as motion pictures, they were often reworked for mainstream audiences so that much of their cultural and idiosyncratic importance was lost and/or downsized. Native Son, Richard Wright’s most distinguished work, was adapted into film twice, by Pierre Chenal in 1951 and by Jerrold Freedman in 1986. The film in 1951 suffered from many of the problems that the early independent black films did. And Freedman’s film did the same mistake. This shows how hard the black films and/or the films in general free from the multiple layers of Hollywood’s commercial net.

Published in 1979, Kindred is a work that examines not only slavery but also the issue of race that was ebullient and culminated in the 1970s. This novel also explores the issue of history and how writers historicize their work through literary imagination. Drawing on nineteenth century slave narratives, Butler’s Kindred is a good example of a work that demonstrates how the contemporary readers of America might be able to deal with slavery and its ongoing effects on the people of African American heritage. This paper is an attempt to explore how Butler presents the question of race in the 1970s and how she addresses slavery. Butler reconceptualizes the issue of race by challenging black cultural nationalists at the time and envisions an America that encompasses both black and white Americans. She also challenges the idea of racial purity in America. I interrogate how she fictionalizes and reveals a potentially integrated America by tracing back and experiencing the past slavery.

The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter are Greene’s two major religious novels. As the novel of The Power and the Glory begins, the protagonist, Whisky Priest has been pursued by the lieutenant of the Communist Government who oppresses the Church. While being pursued, he is not able to perform his ministry at all. On the contrary, he has even a bastard as the evidence of his moral corruption. In time he realizes true human love and God’s Grace through his own bastard daughter. In the end, he sacrifices his own life for the sake of others. Similarly Scobie, the deputy-commissioner and protagonist of The Heart of the Matter, is called “Just Scobie” by others. He faces many other people’s sufferings and cannot endure their miserable unhappiness because of his pity on others. Eventually he forsakes his life for other miserable people. Greene shows us that sacrificial love is much more valuable than political ideology and religious doctrine in our lives.

John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men is regarded as one of the greatest American novels and is loved by readers. The novel is the story of two young poor workers, George and Lenni, who work on California ranches in the 1930’s, during the Great Depression. The protagonist George kills Lennie with a pistol after accidently choking Curly’s wife to death. George’s intention was to save Lennie from Curly and the ranch workers’ lynch mob. The problem from a moral standpoint is that George goes somewhere with a worker to “eat something” immediately after killing Lennie and he does not receive any punishment from society. Of Mice and Men was successfully adapted into a movie of the same name in 1939 and is considered a Hollywood classic. However, the movie does not perfectly reflect the original story of the novel. While the movie was successful, thanks at least in part to the changes, John Steinbeck’s nonteleological thinking in the novel disappears completely in the movie, as it is replaced by cause and effect. In addition, there is another notable story modification. Lennie carries a dead bird instead of a dead mouse in his pocket. This perverts Steinbeck’s intention and the theme of the novel. Accordingly, we can say that story modifications of an adapted screenplay have both positive and negative functions.

This Essay traces the progresses of the heroine, Elizabeth’s efforts to be free from the society in which she has been comfortably embedded, and analyzes her use of irony and wit as strategic means for social criticism. In this novel, irony is used by both the heroine Elizabeth and the author Jane Austen to show the limits of the people around her. The people whom she observes with irony are of several types and represent the values imposed by the society, the foundation of which is grounded on the values of wealth and rank. Wit is another strategy for the heroine to assert her independency and freedom. It is a disguise for her argument. Therefore, the dialogues between Elizabeth and Darcy can be seen as a dialogic conversation, culminating in the mutual understanding. Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice show the conflicts between individual freedom and conventions of the society, which are resolved in their marriage. Also the marriage symbolize the birth of new society in which the virtures such as honesty, responsibility and mutual respect overcome the barriers of the worn-out conventions.

This paper examines the psychological exile of David Levinsky, the protagonist of Abraham Cahan’s novel The Rise of David Levinsky by drawing upon Karan Horney’s psychoanalytic theory. Although Levinsky’s story is about the “rise” of a poor immigrant Russian Jew in American society, the “rise” entails an ironic psychological “fall.” Horney’s theory of the “basic anxiety” and interpersonal defense strategies, especially her reading of neurotics’ use of others for self-validation and the “search for glory,” sheds light on Levinsky’s profound sense of loss and exile, which is the outcome of such an ironic “rise.” Horney’s analysis of the inexplicable co-existence in neurotics’ lives of apparently irreconcilable moves against, toward, and away from others convincingly explains Levinsky’s perplexing oscillation between an arrogant, vindictive drive for mastery and a morbid dependence on others leading to a desperate self-effacing submission. Understanding the complex relationship between Levinsky’s simultaneous move against and toward others helps readers fathom his profound sense of insecurity and exile that leaves him hopelessly detached from others. Thus, a Horneyan reading of Levinsky’s character structure effectively reveals the multi-layered psychic histories and meanings that render a poor Jewish immigrant’s miraculous “rise” into such a puzzling, bittersweet case of irony.

The purpose of this paper is to show ways in details how to utilize comic strips extensively as materials to teach and learn English in primary schools. We introduced some comic strips and the effective methods to teach English by using comic strips made by us in connection with Synthetic Teaching Method. We compared the experiment class that used comic strips with the control class that did not use, and found the experiment class acquired higher scores in English four skills as well as in interest rate about English, proving the superiority of the effects of comprehensive teaching in which English was taught together with comic strips in connection with other subject matters.

Cluster is an external or internal Merge of more phrases than one in an argument structure at a vP-phase, making their G(oal)/H(ead)-features (fs) form a set of G/H-features. In a multiple WH-question, Cluster order is WPagr WPadj (WPadj…) at a vP-phase. And in a coordinate structure, any phrase may not be moved out of feature-clustered conjuncts. An associate NP feature-clusters to an expletive (EXPL) there, and a nominal that-clause feature-clusters to an EXPL it in an argument structure at a vP-phase, the EXPL there/it forming a complete set of ϕ-fs and a Case-feature. A feature-clustered EXPL there can move to the Spec-Tcomp for simultaneous Agree, but a feature-transferred associate NP cannot possibly move there. And a feature-clustered EXPL it may stay in situ for covert Agree (CA) at a vP-phase or move to the Spec-Tcomp for overt Agree (OA) at a CP-phase. This paper argues that Cluster may be one of economic principles, and that only a feature-clustered EXPL can merge internally with a probe (P) for simultaneous Agree in narrow syntax (NS).

The purpose of this exploration is to find out the relative influencing factors in the transformation of intrinsic energy in college EFL learners under the dynamics of social, cultural and political background as well as class, race and gender, focusing on the study of the actual process of the transformation of intrinsic energy of college EFL students. It suggests directions for research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to collect student response data that will allow for a reconsideration the whole language education approach in English learning and to apply it to the organization of an English class lesson. Based on the whole language education approach, English language learning is most effective when English is taught through whole language activities. Actual classroom activities are developed for whole language education in English learning and teaching through the listening lessons of a TOEIC class. This research emphasizes the need for the teacher to help the learner with practical activities and to implement each lesson in all its aspects within whole language education. In order to assess the effectiveness of the classroom lesson, this study examines questionnaire response data from students enrolled in both Communicative English and Media English classes at the end of the first semester, 2006. The results show overall satisfaction from the respondents, but also indicate some dissatisfaction that shows areas for future improvement.

There have been some attempts to explain second language learning from the perspective of skill acquisition theory, which sees language as one of the complex skills we can master. This paper follows the rule-based approach for explaining skill acquisition theory. Automatization is considered to be the end point of skill acquisition and rule-based approach characterizes the features of skill acquisition such as power law of practice and directional asymmetry of skill acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of the directional asymmetry of skill acquisition, that is, the specificity of production rules, to Korean students’ learning the passive form of English. The results of the experiment conducted in this study show that the students in the comprehension practice group performed better on the comprehension test than the students in the production practice group. In the case of the production test, the students in the production practice group outperformed the students in the comprehension practice group. This supports the argument of skill acquisition theory: comprehension practice is better for comprehension skill, and production practice for production skills and the transfer of skills is limited.

This study investigates the origin and development of the English passive construction, especially focusing on a comparison of the grammatical theories for explaining syntactic change. Two views on the modern passive construction study have been introduced, i.e., lexical and transformational. Throughout the discussions on two conflicting predictions about the evolution of the passive constructions, we realize that both Lightfoot’s diachronic argument for the synchronic theory of grammar and Bennett’s diachronic argument for relational grammar are not satisfactory because the only way of explaining language change depends on their theoretical frameworks. A language is not uniform, and a variety of factors involving language change cannot be explained by the simple syntactic rules.