Earticle

John Webster’s revenge plots in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are quite different from those of earlier revenge tragedies in the English Renaissance period. Most revenge plots of earlier tragedies focused on the political meaning, as a kind of punishment of corrupted rulers. But in Webster’s revenge plots, the revengers are rulers of high political position, and the objects of revenge are liberal women. Therefore, the surface meaning of Webster’s revenge plots seems to be the patriarchal punishment of liberal women. However, Webster compares the courage and heroism of the women characters with the hypocrisy and corruption of the aristocratic and religious rulers. The revenge plots paradoxically reveal the revengers’ corruption and irrationality. What is common in the revenge plots of The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi is the presence of liberal women and the anxiety of the male-centered social order. In The White Devil, Vittoria is a very different kind of woman from Isabella, who has traditional female values. Vittoria has masculine rhetorical skill and courage, and isn’t controlled easily. The titular character of The Duchess of Malfi is also a similar sort of woman. She is a brave woman who disregards the threat and warning of her brothers, and proceeds with a secret marriage regardless of hierarchy. Webster used the revenge plot, which was popular in the contemporary theater, but created a new kind of revenge tragedy through the presence of a new kind of women.

Jamaican American poet Claudia Rankine’s unique book, Citizen: An American Lyric, depicts various portraits of racism and microaggression in an exclusive white community in the United States. Rankine has suggested that the examples of microaggression in her book effectively showed the way racism harms people in real life. Citizen also subverted the conventions of traditional lyric poetry dominated by white males, through intertwining her poems with various visual art forms as supplement texts. This paper argues that the repeated microaggressions in Citizen inscribed anger, injustice and resignation both on the speaker’s body and the reader’s body. Finally, this paper discusses how the cumulative effect of the black experiences was ingrained into communal memory. Through this, Rankine reframed microaggressions in daily lives into discourses on racial imagery against a social and historical background.

Based on the Postcolonial discourse, the paper studies two first Korean translations of Paradise Lost included in the 1960s World Literature Series. Many renderings in colonized countries contributed to the colonization process, and after political independence, they were extensively used for the expansion of American Modernization. In the 1950s and 60s, Korean translations of the western literatures increased enormously, and most of them were published with financial support from US organizations. USA and English represented the world, and Yoo Yeong and Lee Chang Bae’s Korean translations of John Milton's epic were published under the powerful influence of Americanization. Yoo and Lee’s translations reflect the power relationship between superiority of the original and inferiority of the translation. The translations were regarded as inferior copies of the great English original, so two translations show mechanical fidelity to the English source text by keeping Formal Equivalence and many scholarly footnotes. The two Korean renderings of Paradise Lost also show a heavy dependence on a Japanese translation of the epic. Indirect (second hand) translation made the Korean renderings have the xerox effect, and the source text for the target translation became Japanese version. As a result, the inferiority of two Korean translations stands in contrast to two great originals, English and Japanese.

Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi, published in 1940 as arguably the first Indian Muslim English novel, shows the destructive effects of British imperialism on Old Delhi, the ancient capital of India since the 13th century. This paper examines how British colonial rule, which was firmly established after quelling the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, led to destroying the culture and language of Old Delhi and, ultimately, the construction of New Delhi. This paper also pays keen attention to how the novel uses Urdu and Persian poems to appropriate the dominant English language and revitalize the memory of the past. The novel, published in London with the help of E. M. Forster and Virginia Wolf and once banned in Pakistan, illustrates how the agency of memory can work to counter and even subvert the aftereffects of the forgetting and loss of language and lifestyle in Old Delhi because of British colonialism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the aspects of theatre and family in Eugene O’Neill’s historical play A Touch of the Poet, which belongs to the late period of his writing career. The purpose is also to examine O’Neill’s characteristics as historical playwright, as he is more commonly known for his great tragedies. First, based on the meta-theatrical framework that positions Con Melody, the main character, as a role-playing actor in front of other characters within the play, this paper investigates how the melodramatic revenge motif reflects the history of American melodrama through the autobiographical tendency of this play in which fictional characters are related to the father, a famous actor in the mid 19th century, and the son, a playwright in O’Neill’s own family. O’Neill’s treatment of melodramatic revenge in the play shows his own artistic development in that at first he has contempt for the theatre of his father and tries to avoid it, but eventually he has to come to terms with it. Second, this paper examines the aspect of family in the play. A Touch of the Poet, as a historical play, shows how an Irish immigrant family settles in Yankee-dominated society in Boston. Through the linear progress of succeeding generations of the Irish family and the Yankee family, this play shows the death of dreams and poetry, and the triumph of acquisitiveness and trickery. The rise of the Irish family and the decline of the Yankee family is reflected in the presidential election of 1828, when Andrew Jackson (the Democrat) is about to defeat President John Quincy Adams(the National Republican), and Jacksonian democracy marks the beginning of mass democracy in America. In conclusion, O’Neill’s view of time and democracy is shown through the temporal progression of the play and the historical background, the presidential election year of 1828.

The purpose of this article is to verify the effects on the cognitive and emotional achievement of college students by using coaching techniques based on flipped learning. This study was conducted for 15 weeks on two divisions consisting of first-year university students taking a liberal art English course, among which the experimental group (N=32) was given flipped learning-based coaching lesson, and the control group (N=31) flipped learning-based teaching lesson. As a result, the analysis of reading and writing, which are cognitive factors, showed that a flipped learning-based coaching group performed better than a regular flipped learning group. Meanwhile, the academic self-efficacy was more effective for the control group. The implication of this study is that it is necessary to develop a convergence learning model based on the current trend of flipped learning. In addition, follow-up research should continue so that learners can actively adapt to the era of consilience and create synergy effect between subjects.

This study examines Korean college students’ perceptions of two different general English courses as well as the factors affecting their preferences. A total of 122 students who have taken both College English and Practical English participated in this study. Data from surveys and focus group interviews were collected, and the findings of the qualitative analysis were triangulated with the results derived from the statistical one. The results show that students slightly prefer Practical English to College English in terms of teaching methods, their own English proficiency, and their goals for learning English. In addition, having an interest in the courses, improving one's English proficiency, and suitability to the learning purpose are statistically significant predictors of course satisfaction. The findings not only support the necessity of differentiated courses based on students’ proficiency levels, but also suggest reconsideration of the concept of practical English and implementation of critical literacy practices into reading courses.

This article discusses the significance and limitations of the studies concerning English language teaching (ELT) published in English 21 over the last 3 years (2017-2019) as an attempt to identify the current state and desirable directions of research. A total of 59 studies were post-hoc classified into three topic areas: (1) ELT methodology, (2) teachers, learners, and social contexts, and (3) materials, tools, and linguistic analyses of learner language. Evaluative comments were made not only on the internal and external validity of each study but on the overall contribution of recent efforts in the three broad areas. This review also takes account of the ideological and practical limitations of language teaching under the doctrinal guidelines of Communicative Language Teaching, and speculates that language learning in the next generation (and the teaching thereof) will be largely driven by and adjusted to personal needs rather than social ones. Finally, some suggestions for future research are drawn from the discussion.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning published Casa Guidi Windows in 1851 following the unsuccessful First Italian War of Independence (1848-49). Having recently moved to Florence in 1847 after her elopement with her husband and fellow poet Robert Browning, Barrett Browning became a passionate supporter of the Italian Risorgimento and Italian national independence. Pace recent criticism addressing the poem’s influence on Italian nation making, this article views Casa Guidi Windows as a form of world-making that seeks to educate an English middle class about its international responsibilities and to create new cosmopolitan subjectivities by teaching them to look at Italy in a new way. This article analyzes the poem’s highly fragmented structure as a form of cosmopolitan collage that anticipates key elements of early twentieth-century Cubism. The poem’s representation of overlapping geographical and historical perspectives functions as a form of cosmopolitan collage that resists linear national narratives and introduces a new type of cosmopolitan subjectivity focused on spatial contiguity and synchronic temporality.

Cohesion is an important element in writing as it relates to linking ideas and connecting sentences and passages. Cohesion can influence the overall comprehension of a passage and can guide and assist readers as they encounter more difficult texts. The current study explored the development in the use of cohesive devices in L2 writing, with a particular focus on givenness and connectives, by using the Tool for the Automated Analysis of Cohesion (TAACO) as L2 learners write three response essays in a 16-week semester. Forty-two students, either minoring or majoring in English language and literature who were enrolled in an integrated-skills practical English course, participated in the study. Statistically significant difference were shown in elements of givenness and connectives; however the changes seemed to show fluctuation for givenness and consistent changes in the use of connectives. Based on the findings, implications for teaching L2 writing are discussed.

Recent research has mapped the ways social identity and co-membership have a great impact on the success of children’s language acquisition. Social identity and co-membership are powerful in language learning processes. This study explored the social identities and co-membership of preschool children through language use and interactions with their peers, teachers, and adults in the classroom. The sociocultural theory of learning and the sensitizing concepts are used as the framework of this study to capture what we see in the ordinary social world. Data were collected from observations, interviews, and field notes and analyzed to identify preschool children’s social identities and co-membership in language learning processes. Findings indicate that preschool children’s historical and cultural backgrounds should be appreciated in constructing their social identities and co-membership. The study also implies that ethnographic research should be conducted for deeper understandings of social contexts in shaping people’s lives and experiences.