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Focusing on Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle, this paper examines the genre transformation of black detective fiction. In the Harlem Cycle, a series of detective fiction comprising nine novels, Himes alters the way of representing a detective from the traditional hard-boiled detective fiction through race and occupation. Whereas the earlier hard-boiled detective is established as white, Himes introduces black detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Unlike the hard-boiled detective who maintains absolute independence as a private eye, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed have a close relationship with governmental authority as police detectives. This paper argues that, producing a radically different type of detective from the traditional hard-boiled detective fiction, the Harlem Cycle provides a new, opposing paradigm of criminality and exposes the racism in the police investigation structure. Hard-boiled detective novels define blacks as criminals; but Himes redefines whiteness as the root of criminality. Revealing intense hatred and strong aversion to racial oppression and exploitation, the Harlem Cycle warns against the apocalyptic future under systemic racism.

In dealing with the issues of race, masculinity, and individualism in the nineteenth century antebellum milieu, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’s representation of the interracial relationship between Huck and Jim has been heavily contested. This is mainly because the novel’s portrayal of Huck’s individualism is intrinsically associated with his pursuit of control over his own body, which is threatened by his abusive father. These unstable psychological underpinnings are transformed upon his escape from his father and the emergence of Jim as his companion. This relationship is complicated by Jim’s racial identity, and the power and privilege at play in the interracial friendship. The symbiotic relationship between the white protagonist and his African- American comrade serves as a vessel that transports the protagonist’s immature desires from reality to fantasy, bringing him closer to the yearning emblematic of the American cultural ethos. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn prioritizes the mythic hero of the frontier, emphasizing self-determination and self-sufficiency achieved by navigating white-male selfhood. The adolescent fantasies of adventure and adult aspirations of independence, masculinity, and race amid the politico-cultural circumstances of the nineteenth century basically establish the novel’s notion of African American culture, which supports Huck’s frontier individualism. Consequently, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a white-male commentary on slavery and antebellum southern culture, allegorically projecting antebellum anxieties into Huck’s psychology.

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between dialogues and monologues in Samuel Beckett’s two novels, Molloy and The Unnamable. Focusing on the problems of language, Beckett reveals the failure of communication through mechanical dialogues, and shows the illusion of inner monologue. For Beckett, traditional novel writing, which constitutes the entire linguistic order, is an object of destruction. Thus, through subversive Beckettian novel writing, the limits of human conversation and monologue are revealed, and through speaking like a schizophrenic, Beckett breaks those limits and opens up new possibilities. In other words, language in the schizophrenic disruption cannot function as a tool for transmitting information, but a way for telling about ontological existences.

This essay aims to explore the possibility of recovering the ethics of the other, which has become lost in contemporary society as portrayed in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. It examines the (un)representability of otherness and investigates the figuration process of the other, who defies representation. This study delves into the role of language in representing lost memories through the perlocutionary acts of others, and its contribution to reviving a human life within a community. To address these inquiries, the essay commences with a fundamental question: “Is it possible to unconditionally mourn for others who have lived an unethical life?” At the core of Ruhl’s play lies the theme of recovering humanity through the “confabulations” (65) of others. This theme explores how the perlocutionary acts of others can transform an inhuman existence into a human configuration, even though it is impossible and inappropriate to represent it directly. The study employs the concept of melancholia to analyze Ruhl’s play, which captures the dreamlike phenomenon of animating a lifeless object as a stranger within oneself. Through Ruhl’s nonlinear writing, the essay unveils the ethics of others at the juncture where human active subjectivity fades away and passive vulnerability takes hold.

This study analyzes the meaning and emotions conveyed in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and visualizes the iceberg theory to understand them by utilizing network analysis. Network analysis enables multidimensional examination of the author’s emotions and values by considering the correlation between language expressions reflecting the author’s consciousness. First, the analysis showed the changes in the positive and negative aspects of emotion words according to the narrative structure by analyzing the frequency of emotion words and the frequency of emotion words that co-occur with the topic words. Second, UCINET was used to extract centrality, clustering, and network strength indicators, and the correlation between topic words and emotion words was quantified and visualized based on them. By tracking the changes in emotion words and their connections at each stage, it was possible to clearly confirm what emotions the author emphasized in what situations and how they influenced the overall story. Through specific numerical indicators provided by various indicators of the network, this study objectively quantified the correlation between topic words and emotion words, such as which emotion words are connected to the topic words and the strength of the connection. This quantitative linguistic and network analysis objectively proves how the author’s intention and message are reflected in language, and it also enabled observations of aspects that are difficult to perceive intuitively, highlighting the importance of these research methodologies in language studies.

Since around 2000, a series of historical and political events transformed Paul Auster from a solitary writer who communicated with the world through his writings into a writer who expresses his thoughts and opinions manifestly and publicly. Especially, as the September 11 attacks required different ethics and aesthetics to cope with the post-9/11 realities that engulfed postmodernist imagination, the principles Auster had adhered to went through transitions, as well. This article investigates the ways in which Auster responds to the post-9/11 era in his post-9/11 novel, Man in the Dark (2008). To that end, it examines the shift in the survival strategy in relation to dynamics of author and reader that veers toward a third party: the character. In so doing, it expounds upon the validity of Auster’s postmodernist aesthetics, the potential for images as an alternative to words, and suggests different ethics that comes in the form of active readership. This active readership, the reciprocal way that readers interact with texts in contrast to the passive way people consume images, is applied to the way that people cope with the post-9/11 world, in which either words or images are exploited by terrorists and governments alike. With the active readership, Auster ultimately challenges readers to develop a different ethics that can respond to the post-9/11 era.

This paper approaches oral poetry by setting Bob Dylan, an American singer-songwriter, as an example. Dylan has been widely recognized as a major figure in popular culture and the realm of oral poetry for over half a century. Being the only musical creator entitled to the Nobel Literature Prize (in 2016) for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” (Nobelprize.org.), Dylan proves to be an artist and scholar who successfully integrate conventional literature with sound in the new media era. However, it remains unknown whether the combination of oral poetry with technoscientific tools brings literature infinitely closer to reality or merely fabricates another fictional domain with hyperreality. This study takes the musician as a postmodernist and explores the power of presentation in his lyrics. By appreciating the poetic lines and the patterns of expression, this paper primarily aims to provide a novel take on Dylan’s oral poetry as well as literature itself in the current digital era.

The present paper described a quasi-experimental study aimed at investigating the effects of different instructional approaches on the reading comprehension of Chinese EFL learners in a literature class. Specifically, the study examined the impact of input-based instruction using textual enhancement (TE), output-based instruction using dictogloss (DC), and input-to-output-based instruction using literature circles (LC). A total of 92 participants who enrolled in a literature course took part in this study and they were randomly assigned to the three groups (TE, DC, LC). During the study, the participants underwent three comprehension tests at distinct time intervals: a pretest, a post-test, and a delayed post-test. The data analysis indicated a notable disparity in instructional effectiveness among the three approaches when it came to enhancing L2 learners' reading comprehension. Particularly, the post-test and delayed post-test scores for the literature circle method displayed a significant improvement compared to the other instructional methods. These findings underscored the importance of incorporating literature circle practice into reading classes and offered practical implications for educators and curriculum designers.

This study aimed to develop a reading and writing integrated model for Korean undergraduates to improve their literacy and thinking skills through flash fiction. The participants (n = 50) were provided with opportunities to write from sentences following specific patterns to essays. While predicting what can happen before and after the content of the flash fiction, the participants could analyze the story critically and share their ideas with peers through oral discussion. While completing their essays, they also developed their writing strategies in three phases: Before writing (BW), In writing (IW), and After writing (AW). Descriptive analysis, paired t-test, and one-way ANOVA were employed to evaluate literacy improvement through pre-and post-tests. What elements of the writing strategies the participants used more were explored as well. The results showed that Korean undergraduates used planning of BW, memory retrieval through reviewing process, and mobile-based self-problem-solving effort (82%) of IW more actively. They also used meta-cognition to deliver clear meaning to readers by encouraging logicality and clarity of AW. BW and IW showed more interaction (r = .500**) than BW and AW (r = .438**), or IW and AW (r = .426**). Above all, 80% of the participants tried to produce their sentences. Therefore, the flash fiction-based integration model can improve Korean undergraduates’ self-directed writing strategy. It also can be helpful for people of various ages from young students to seniors, when adjusting the length of flash fiction according to learners’ language performance level.

In this comprehensive meta-analysis, we investigated the effectiveness of consciousness-raising tasks in improving English grammar proficiency among Korean EFL students. Experimental studies were sourced from various academic databases and coded using criteria such as publication type, experimental design, school level, treatment duration, and target grammar elements. The statistical values of each study were used to calculate individual effect sizes and the mean effect size of utilizing consciousness-raising tasks. The results indicated a medium-sized effect (g=.617, p=.000) of consciousness-raising tasks on English grammar proficiency. The study also examined the influence of moderator variables on the effect sizes. The findings provide valuable insights into the effective implementation of consciousness-raising tasks in English grammar instruction and inform future research and pedagogical practices in this area.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of content on learning satisfaction in college English classes using TED Talks. To achieve this purpose, at the end of the semester, questionnaire responses consisting of four items: content satisfaction, learning satisfaction, perception of academic achievement, and interest in class were collected from 64 students. The SmartPLS 3 program was used for data analysis. This study first found that content satisfaction had a positive effect on interest. Second, content satisfaction had a positive effect on learning satisfaction. Third, contents satisfaction had a positive effect on academic achievement. Fourth, interest had a positive effect on academic achievement. Fifth, interest did not affect learning satisfaction. Sixth, academic achievement had a positive effect on learning satisfaction. Additionally, it was found that academic achievement played a mediating role in the effect of content satisfaction on learning satisfaction. In conclusion, when designing college English courses, it is important to carefully consider the content because learners’ satisfaction with the material has a significant impact on their interest in class, academic achievement, and overall satisfaction with a course. Lastly, the future direction of content for college English courses is discussed based on the results.